00100	COMMENT ⊗   VALID 00002 PAGES
00200	C REC  PAGE   DESCRIPTION
00300	C00001 00001
00400	C00002 00002	LIVES OF FAMOUS HOBBITS
00500	C00012 ENDMK
00600	C⊗;
     

00100	NOTABLE HOBBITS
00200	
00300	
00400	%. The historian who discovered the true history of the third age.
00500	
00600	% The builder in mithril.
00700	
00800	%. The tamer of the ring.
00900	
01000	%. The statesman who made the Shire independent of the House
01100	of Aragorn.
01200	
01300	%. The businessman who mass produced Palandrir rings.
01400	
01500	%. The navigator to the west and other explorers.
01600	
01700	%. The Orc-friend.
01800	
01900	%. Bilbo and Frodo.
02000	
02100	%. The founder of the university.
02200	
02300	% The soldier of the Shire.
02400	
02500	
02600		The two hundred years since the start of the Fourth Age has
02700	been very good to us Hobbits.  When the Fourth Age started we lived
02800	in holes in the ground, we often didn't have enough food
02900	, we were afraid of
03000	Orcs and wargs and hardly ever went out of the Shire, and
03100	the rangers had to protect us.  Now we live in mithril
03200	sky ticklers and go into holes only on holidays.  We always have
03300	plenty to eat.  We are friends with the Orcs, we travel all over
03400	Middle Earth and beyond, and whenever something important comes up
03500	the other races all want to know what the Hobbits think about it
03600	and will do about it.
03700	Even we grown-up
03800	Hobbits take all this for granted and suppose
03900	that Hobbits are just naturally a leading people, but no-onw in
04000	the third age would have thought that Hobbits would ever become an
04100	important people.
04200	What made me think hard about it was when we had Threlin as a guest
04300	in our house.  You remember that Threlin is a Dwarf that went to
04400	back to the Mines of Moria with Balin near the end of the Third Age.
04500	The Dwarfs and the Orcs were fighting then, and the Orcs killed
04600	all of Balin's people except Threlin.  They tied up Threlin with
04700	chains and they put him in a hole and filled up the hole with
04800	huge stones and covered it all over with cement.  But Threlin had
04900	a spell so he could go to sleep and not have to eat or breathe,
05000	which was lucky because there was no way he could get out.  Freldo
05100	Glamick found him, because he was looking under all the mountains with a
05200	ground-looker ring to see if he could find some more old Dwarf
05300	things to put in the museum.  Imagine his surprise when the ring
05400	told him there was something alive there, and imagine his surprise
05500	when he found one of Balin's very Dwarves alive there.  Imagine
05600	Threlin's surprise when he woke up in a room in a sky tickler
05700	after going to sleep in a hole with the Orcs piling stones on top
05800	of him.  At first Threlin would not believe he was in the Shire.
05900	He thought he knew what the Shire was like and what Hobbits were
06000	like, because he had gone through the Shire many times taking
06100	xxx from yyy to zzz.
06200	We had
06300	to take him to Bag End Park and show him Frodo's house before he
06400	would even begin to believe it.  We all spent many pleasant days
06500	telling him stories of what happened and trying to explain it, but
06600	what it really comes down to is this: there have been some really
06700	outstanding Hobbits in the Fourth Age, and each of them has showed
06800	us how to do something that Hobbits never did before.  We have only
06900	just begun to see that some of them are things that not even the
07000	Elves ever did, and we are beginning to see that the Fourth Age
07100	will be greater than any of the preceding Ages.
07200	
07300		I hope you will like these stories of famous Hobbits, and
07400	I hope these stories will help you study hard
07500	and think hard and work hard and maybe you
07600	you will do things that will surprise us older Hobbits and the
07700	other races of Middle Earth just as much as the deeds we tell about
07800	here surprised Threlin.
07900	
08000		You will see that all these outstanding Hobbits had the help
08100	many other Hobbits in carrying out their good ideas.  We think this
08200	is why Hobbits have done so well in the Fourth Age.  When a Man has
08300	a good idea, it is hard for him to get other men to help him, and
08400	Orcs almost never used to help each other at all except when forced
08500	to.  We hope you will also want to help other Hobbits with their 
08600	good ideas.
08700	
08800		We had to leave a lot of things out of this book, otherwise
08900	the stories would be too long, and some of the things we had to leave
09000	out are about how some people had part of the ideas first and how
09100	our heroes depended on other people's work.  This isn't quite fair,
09200	and maybe there is even more unfairness, because we didn't hear about
09300	some important things that were done.
09400	
09500	
09600	DREGO BAGGINS - THE ORC-FRIEND
09700	
09800	
09900		Drego Baggins had one of the hardest jobs of any famous Hobbit.
10000	This was because he wanted to find out the truth about Orcs, and almost
10100	all the other Hobbits were sure they already knew the truth about Orcs.
10200	They thought they knew that Orcs were as bad as they could possibly
10300	be and should be killed whenever possible.  "The only good Orc is
10400	a dead Orc", they said.
10500	Drego was a great-nephew of Frodo Baggins and was born in F.A. 11,
10600	before Frodo left the Shire.  He tells us that what first got him
10700	started thinking about Orcs was hearing his great uncle Frodo and
10800	his friend Peregrin Took tell about the end of the war of the ring.
10900	The book says that after the One Ring was destroyed, men went into
11000	Mordor and destroyed all the castles and towers.  That's all the
11100	book says.  Drego asked them who lived in the castles and towers
11200	and what happened to them.  Peregrin Took told him that they were
11300	mostly Orcs and they were destroyed too.  Drego asked what about the
11400	little Orcs, and Peregrin told him that he didn't know anything about
11500	little Orcs and Orcesses, but he supposed they were just as bad as
11600	the big ones and deserved to be destroyed.  Frodo started to say
11700	something, but then he changed his mind and changed the subject.
11800	Little Drego could see that his great uncle didn't like to think
11900	about destroying the little Orcs, but little Drego decided he wanted
12000	to know about what happened to the little Orcs and whether they
12100	deserved to be destroyed or not.
12200	
12300		Drego didn't learn any more about Orcs - none of them
12400	ever came near the Shire - until Mr. Took brought him along to
12500	Gondor with him.  Mr. Took was going to Gondor, for the wedding
12600	of one of the king's sons, and the king liked to have creatures
12700	from all his lands on such occasions.  Drego didn't know how to
12800	read Elvish yet, but he could read the common tongue very well
12900	and knew many words that were not used in the Shire.  In Gondor
13000	he was presented to many of Mr. Took's old comrades-in-arms,
13100	and he heard many stories of the great war.  Mr. Took told him
13200	about the time he and Mr. Brandybuck were prisoners of the Orcs.
13300	Drego asked lots of questions.  "Why did the Orcs fight with
13400	each other so much?  Did you ever see an Orcess or an Orcling?
13500	Did the Orcs have wives and children?  Did they ever say where
13600	they were born?"
13700	
13800		Drego didn't get very good answers to his questions.
13900	Nobody thought much about Orcs except how to kill them and
14000	not be killed by them, but by asking enough questions he learned
14100	a few things.
14200	
14300		Nobody knew why Orcs fought so much.  Maybe they were
14400	made to, and maybe it was just their nature.  There were never
14500	any Orcesses or Orclings in the Orc bands, but you wouldn't
14600	expect that.  When they were about to go back to Mordor, they
14700	sometimes stole women and the Elf Legolas had told someone that
14800	a long time ago they had even stolen and Elfmaid and no-one
14900	ever heard what became of her.