l this happened in the good old days before the
railways came, when northern Michigan was less infested with men than
it is now.

When the youngsters wanted a change they climbed up onto a log, and
nudged and hunched each other, poking their noses into one another's fat
little sides, and each trying to shove his brother or sister back into
the water. By and by they scrambled out on the bank, and then, when
their fur had dripped a little, they set to work to comb it. Up they sat
on their hind legs and tails--the tail was a stool now, you see--and
scratched their heads and shoulders with the long brown claws of their
small, black, hairy hands. Then the hind feet came up one at a time, and
combed and stroked their sides till the moisture was gone and the fur
was soft and smooth and glossy as velvet. After that they had to have
another romp. They were not half as graceful on land as they had been in
the water. In fact they were not graceful at all, and the way they stood
around on their hind legs, and shuffled, and pranced, and wheeled like
baby hippopotami, and slapped the ground with their tails, was one of
the funniest sights in the heart of the woods. And the funniest and
liveliest of them all was the one who owned that tail--the tail which,
when I last saw it, was lying on the ground in front of Charlie Roop's
shack. He was the one whom I shall call the Beaver--with a big B.

But even young beavers will sometimes grow tired of play, and at last
they all lay down on the grass in the warm, quiet sunshine of the autumn
afternoon. The wind had gone to sleep, the pond glittered like steel in
its bed of grassy beaver-meadow, the friendly woods stood guard all
around, the enemy was far away, and it was a very good time for five
furry little babies to take a nap.

The city in which the tail first made its appearance was a very ancient
one, and may have been the oldest town on the North American continent.
Nobody knows when the first stick was laid in the dam that changed a
small natural pond into a large artificial one, and thus opened the way
for further municipal improvements; but it was probably centuries ago,
and for all we can tell it may have been thousands of years back in the
past. Generation after generation of beavers had worked on that dam,
building it a little higher and a little higher, a little longer and a
little longer, year after year; and raising their lodges as the pond
rose around them. Theirs was a marit