Experience alone can teach.

 

                Little Joe Otter¹.

 

Rough Brother North Wind and Jack² Frost had been down from the Far North for some time now. The pond of Paddy the Beaver³, the Smiling Pool, and the Laughing Brook⁴, excepting where it ran swiftly, were covered with ice. The Green Meadows and the Green Forest and the Old Pasture were deep with snow. Only those who, like Johnny Chuck and Nimble Heels the Jumping Mouse and Striped Chipmunk⁵ and Bobby Coon, were asleep in their snug⁶ homes, or, like Paddy the Beaver and Jerry Muskrat⁷, had plenty to eat close by their houses, had nothing to worry about. Those who had to hunt for their food were having a hard time of it. They always do in winter.

 

Little Joe Otter and his family had cause for worry. You know they live on fish. But now they were having to work as they never had before to get enough to eat. You see, they had been fishing so long in the Smiling Pool and along the Laughing Brook that fish were becoming scarce. It was the morning after the coasting party that Little Joe and Mrs. Otter went without breakfast that the two young Otters⁸ might eat.

 

“My dear,” said Little Joe, “this is the poorest fishing I have ever known. So much of the Laughing Brook is frozen over that only a few places are left in which we can fish. And we have already caught most of the fish in those places. We have got to do something about it.”

 

“I’ve been thinking that very thing,” replied Mrs. Otter. “Shall we take the youngsters down to the Big River?”

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