sticks himself, from trees that grew near the bank of the pond; and
after dragging and pushing them to the water's edge he swam with them,
without much trouble, to the center of the pond, where he wished to
build his house. Of course, the sticks floated in the water; so
Brownie found that part of his work to be quite easy.

He had chosen that spot in the center of the pond because there was
something a good deal like an island there--only it did not rise quite
out of the water. A good, firm place on which to set his house--
Brownie Beaver considered it.

While he was building his house Brownie gathered his winter's food at
the same time. Anyone might think he would have found it difficult to
do two things at once like that. But while he was cutting sticks to
build his new house it was no great trouble to peel the bark off them.
The bark, you know, was what Brownie Beaver always ate. And when he
cut sticks for his house there was only one thing about which he had
to be careful; he had to be particular to use only certain kinds of
wood. Poplar, cottonwood, or willow; birch, elm, box elder or aspen--
those were the trees which bore bark that he liked. But if he had cut
down a hickory or an ash or an oak tree he wouldn't have been able to
get any food from them at all because the bark was not the sort he
cared for. That was lucky, in a way, because the wood of those trees
was very hard and Brownie would have had much more work cutting them
down.

A good many of Brownie Beaver's neighbors thought he was foolish to go
to the trouble of building a new house, when there were old ones to be
had. And there was a lazy fellow called Tired Tim who laughed openly
at Brownie.