Out of Context

Today is officially one third of the way through this Leap Year.

The Adventures of Jerry Muskrat
Thornton W. (Thornton Waldo) Burgess

He forgot everything but his own surprise, and he blinked his eyes a great many times to make sure that he wasn’t dreaming. Then he sailed around and around in circles, looking down among the trees of the Green Forest and saying over and over to himself:

“Did yo’ ever? No, Ah never! did yo’ ever? No, Ah never!”

“One step, two steps, three steps, so!
Four steps, five steps, six steps, go!
Keep right on and do your best;
Mayhap you’ll win while others rest.”

Spotty the Turtle said this over to himself every time he felt a little down-hearted, as he plodded along the bed of the Laughing Brook. And every time he said it, he felt better. “One step, two steps,” he kept saying over and over, and each time he said it, he took a step and then another. They were very short steps, very short steps indeed, for Spotty’s legs are very short. But each one carried him forward just so much, and he knew that he was just so much nearer the thing he was seeking. Anyway, he hoped he was.

You see, if the Laughing Brook would never laugh any more, and the Smiling Pond would never smile any more, there was nothing to do but to go down to the Big River to live, and no one wanted to do that, especially Grandfather Frog and Spotty the Turtle.