familiar valley. “We've had a lot o' fun here—'bout as much as we're entitled to, I guess—let 'em have it.”
So, in a way, he deeded Tinkle Brook and its valley to future generations.
We proceeded in silence for a moment, and soon he added: “That little brook has done a lot fer us. It took our thoughts off the hard work, and helped us fergit the mortgage, an' taught us to laugh like the rapid water. It never owed us anything after the day Mose Tupper lost his pole. Put it all together, I guess I've laughed a year over that. 'Bout the best payin' job we ever done. Mose thought he had a whale, an' I don't blame him. Fact is, a lost fish is an awful liar. A trout would deceive the devil when he's way down out o' sight in the
water, an' his weight is telegraphed through twenty feet o' line. When ye fetch him up an' look him square in the eye he tells a different story. I blame the fish more'n I do the folks.
“That 'swallered pole' was a kind of a magic wand round here in Faraway. Ye could allwus fetch a laugh with it. Sometimes I think they must 'a' lost one commandment, an' that is: Be happy. Ye can't be happy an' be bad. I never see a bad man in my life that was hevin' fun. Let me hear a man laugh an' I'll tell ye what kind o' metal there is in him. There ain't any sech devilish sound in the world as the laugh of a wicked man. It's like the cry o' the swift, an' you 'member what that was.”