The gray dove which had once been Ugu the Shoemaker sat on its tree in the far Quadling Country and moped, chirping dismally and brooding over its misfortunes. After a time the Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman came along and sat beneath the tree, paying no heed to the mutterings of the gray dove.

The Tin Woodman took a small oilcan from his tin pocket and carefully oiled his tin joints with it. While he was thus engaged the Scarecrow remarked:

"I feel much better, dear comrade, since we found that heap of nice dean straw and you stuffed me anew with it"

"And I feel much better now that my joints are oiled," returned the Tin Woodman, with a sigh of pleasure. "You and I, friend Scarecrow, are much more easily cared for than those clumsy meat people, who spend half their time dressing in fine clothes and who must live in splendid dwellings in order to be contented and happy. You and I do not eat, and so we are spared the dreadful bother of getting three meals a day. Nor do we waste half our lives in sleep, a condition that causes the meat people to lose al] consciousness and become as thoughtless and helpless as logs of wood."

"You speak truly," responded the Scarecrow, tucking some wisps of straw into his breast with his padded fingers. "I often feel sorry for the meat people, many of whom are my friends. Even the beasts are happier than they, for they require less to make them content. And the birds are the luckiest creatures of all, for they can fly swiftly where they will and find a home at any place they care to perch; their food consists of seeds and grains they gather from the fields and their drink is a sip of water from some running brook. If I could not be a Scarecrow or a Tin Woodman -- my next choice would be to live as a bird does."

The gray dove had listened carefully to this speech and seemed to find comfort in it, for it hushed its moaning. And just then the Tin Woodman discovered Cayke's dishpan, which was on the ground quite near to him.

The Lost Princess of Oz is the eleventh canonical Oz book written by L. Frank Baum. Published on June 5, 1917, it begins with the disappearance of Princess Ozma, the ruler of Oz and covers Dorothy and the Wizard's efforts to find her. The introduction to the book states that its inspiration was a letter a little girl had written to Baum: "I suppose if Ozma ever got hurt or losted, everybody would be sorry."

The book was dedicated to the author's newborn granddaughter Ozma Baum, child of his youngest son Kenneth Gage Baum.

Ruth Plumly Thompson borrowed the plot of this novel for her 1937 Oz book Handy Mandy in Oz. The Frogman and Cayke's dishpan re-appear in Jeff Freedman's 1994 novel The Magic Dishpan of Oz.

L. Frank Baum, Writer, born in Chittenango, New York, USA. A sickly child, he studied at home, became an actor (1870s), worked in the family oil business, then moved to South Dakota. While working as a journalist there, he wrote his first book, Father Goose: His Book, published in 1899 after he had moved to Chicago to work on a trade magazine for window decorators. It proved a success; but his next book, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900), was even more successful, and he adapted it for the musical stage in 1901. After travelling to Europe, he settled in Pasadena, CA (1902), where he turned out 13 more books in the Oz series and many other children's stories, mostly in the fantasy genre, using pen names such as Schuyler Staunton, Laura Bancroft, Captain Hugh Fitzgerald, Suzanne Metcalfe, Floyd Akens, and Edith Van Dyne. Although appreciated primarily as children's tales, the Oz books have also been read as incorporating Baum's views on American society.