To eager youth ’tis vain to preach;
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............