Mouse"
THERE is, I have come slowly and somewhat surprisedly to the conclusion, more fellow-feeling among human beings about mice than about any other creature. More complexity of feeling,
should say. There arc doglovers and cat-worshippers. there are devotees of the horse and Arose who are loud in their praise of the pig; but the magic word of Mouse seems to arouse immediate feelings of unexpected sympathy or dire enmity between unman beings themselves. I have known staunch friendships built over the furry body of a mouse, and I once incurred the real enmity of a Welshman who had farmed a friendship with a Spanish Molise about which— ignorant of the value that. he set on the little creature—I had complained to the hotel management. A trap was set; the mouse was caught; and the Welshman, who until that day had been mast helpJul over nip difficulties with the language, never spoke to me again if lie could possibly avoid it. The mouse, I learned tan late. and to my real regret, had been his close friend for months. And I had been the cause of its very horrid death.
READERS will. then. forgive are if I keep harking back to the creatures. I have had so many enquiries—some admiringly sympathetic and some shacked and horrified—about the friend who gave piano-room to a family of mice. that I feel aiue they will be interested to know of the attitude taken up by her poodle to *these keyboard-crashers. She writes that he got one of them in his mouth the other day " quite by accident. It met his mouth on its way across the kitchen and instead of closing its laws he spat it out in disgust, shook his head and sneezed!"
We are finding our evenings enlivened at the moment by three young field mice that come and play games of hopscotch outside the back-door 415 soon as it gets dusk. They are so entrancing to watch and full of such joic de vivre that we tell ourselves that they really can't be doing suffidiem harm to merit the horribly effective traps then we have been setting inside the house. And I personally take great comfort in that sentiment expressed by one of the greatest writers of our day:
Whatever mischief their ravaging: may cause, may I never live under a roof wherein (cat or no cat) there isn't an inch of houseroom.-and an occasional crumb of cheese, for Mistresse Mouse!"
Julian
5,111 iiiiiiii 111111M11111111111111111111111t1111111 llllll !MUM,