Ver.04.29.93*END*
THE ADVENTURES OF PADDY THE BEAVER
Thornton W. Burgess
1917
CONTENTS:
CHAPTER
I Paddy the Beaver Begins Work.
II Paddy Plans a Pond.
III Paddy Has Many Visitors.
IV Sammy Jay Speaks His Mind.
V Paddy Keeps His Promise.
VI Farmer Brown's Boy Grows Curious.
VII Farmer Brown's Boy Gets Another Surprise.
VIII Peter Rabbit Gets a Ducking.
IX Paddy Plans a House.
X Paddy Starts His House
XI Peter Rabbit and Jerry Muskrat are Puzzled.
XII Jerry Muskrat Learns Something.
XIII The Queer Storehouse.
XIV A Footprint in the Mud.
XV Sammy Jay Makes Paddy a Call.
XVI Old Man Coyote Is Very Crafty.
XVII Old Man Coyote is Disappointed.
XVIII Old Man Coyote Tries Another Plan.
XIX Paddy and Sammy Jay Become Friends.
XX Sammy Jay Offers To Help Paddy.
XXI Paddy and Sammy Jay Work Together.
XXII Paddy Finishes His Harvest.
CHAPTER I Paddy the Beaver Begins Work.
Work, work all the night
While the stars are shining bright;
Work, work all the day;
I have got no time to play.
This little rhyme Paddy the Beaver made up as he toiled at
building the dam which was to make the pond he so much desired
deep in the Green Forest. Of course it wasn't quite true, that
about working all night and all day. Nobody could do that, you
know, and keep it up. Everybody has to rest and sleep. Yes, and
everybody has to play a little to be at their best. So it wasn't
quite true that Paddy worked all day after working all night. But
it was true that Paddy had no time to play. He had too much to
do. He had had his playtime during the long summer, and now he
had to get ready for the long, cold winter.
Now, of all the little workers in the Green Forest, on the Green
Meadows, and in the Smiling Pool, none can compare with Paddy the
Beaver, not even his cousin, Jerry Muskrat. Happy Jack Squirrel
and Striped Chipmunk store up food for the long, cold months when
rough Brother North Wind and Jack Frost rule, and Jerry Muskrat
builds a fine house wherein to keep warm and comfortable, but all
this is as nothing to the work of Paddy the Beaver.
As I said before, Paddy had had a long playtime through the
summer. He had wandered up and down the Laughing Brook. He had
followed it way up to the place where it started. And all the
time he had been studying and studying to make sure that he
wanted to stay in the Green Forest. In the first place, he had to
be sure that there was plenty of the kind of food that he likes.
Then he had to be equally sure that he could make a pond near
where this particular food grew. Last of all, he had to satisfy
himself that if he did make a pond and build a home, he would be
reasonably safe in it. And all these things he had done in his
playtime. Now he was ready to go to work, and when Paddy begins
work, he sticks to it until it is finished. He says that is the
only way to succeed, and you know and I know that he is right.
Now Paddy the Beaver can see at night just as Reddy Fox and Peter
Rabbit and Bobby Coon can, and he likes the night best, because
he feels safest then. But he can see in the daytime too, and when
he feels that he is perfectly safe and no one is watching, he
works then too. Of course, the first thing to do was to build a
dam across the Laughing Brook to make the pond he so much needed.
He chose a low, open place deep in the Green Forest, around the
edge of which grew many young aspen trees, the bark of which is
his favorite food. Through the middle of this open place flowed
the Laughing Brook. At the lower edge was just the place for a
dam. It would not have to be very long, and when it was finished
and the water was stopped in the Laughing Brook, it would just
have to flow over the low, open place and make a pond there.
Paddy's eyes twinkled when he first saw it. It was right then
that he made up his mind to stay in the Green Forest.
So now that he was ready to begin his dam he went up the Laughing
Brook to a place where alders and willows grew, and there he
began work; that work was the cutting of a great number of trees
by means of his big front teeth which were given him for just
this purpose. And as he worked, Paddy was happy, for one can
never be truly happy who does no work.