The Tale of Timothy Turtle

The Tale of Timothy Turtle: Large Print By Arthur Scott Bailey A FAMOUS BITER That black rascal, Mr. Crow, was not the oldest dweller in Pleasant Valley. There was another elderly gentleman who had spent more summers-and a great many more winters-under the shadow of Blue Mountain than he. All the wild folk knew this person by the name of Timothy Turtle. And if they didn't see him so often as Mr. Crow it was because he spent much of his time on the muddy bottom of Black Creek. Besides, he never flapped his way through the air to Farmer Green's cornfield, in plain sight of everyone who happened to look up at the sky. On the contrary, Mr. Timothy Turtle seldom wandered far from the banks of the creek-for the best of reasons. He was anything but a fast walker. In fact, one might say that he waddled, or even crawled, rather than walked. But in the water he was quite a different creature. By means of his webbed feet he could swim as easily as Mr. Crow could fly. And he could stay at the bottom of Black Creek a surprisingly long time before he came up for a breath of air. Indeed, Mr. Crow sometimes remarked that he would be just as well pleased if Timothy Turtle buried himself in the mud beneath the water and never came up again! Such a speech was enough to show that Mr. Crow was not fond of Timothy Turtle. Perhaps Mr. Crow disliked to have a neighbor who was older than he. But Mr. Crow himself always laughed at such a suggestion. "The trouble is--" he would say-"the trouble is, Timothy Turtle is too grumpy. Now, I'm old. But I claim that that's no reason why I shouldn't be pleasant." And then he would laugh-somewhat harshly-just to show that he knew how. There was a good deal of truth in what Mr. Crow said. Timothy Turtle was grumpy. But it was not old age that made him so. He had been like that all his life. There never was a time when he Wasn't snappish, when he wouldn't rather bite a body than not. We are delighted to publish this classic book as part of our extensive Classic Library collection. Many of the books in our collection have been out of print for decades, and therefore have not been accessible to the general public. The aim of our publishing program is to facilitate rapid access to this vast reservoir of literature, and our view is that this is a significant literary work, which deserves to be brought back into print after many decades. The contents of the vast majority of titles in the Classic Library have been scanned from the original works.