read
by my countenance what sort of thoughts I had about his mouseship. How
much at home he always contrives to make himself in a family! How very
much at his ease he is, as he regales himself on the best things which
the house affords!

A day or two ago, a friend of mine was telling me an amusing story about
some mice with which he had the pleasure of a slight acquaintance. He
lived in the same house with a gentleman who kept a sort of bachelor's
hall, and who was a great lover of pets. This gentleman took him into
his room one day to see a mouse which he was educating to be a companion
of his lonely hours. The bachelor remarked that he had been a pensioner
for some time, that he fed him bountifully every day, and that he had
become very tame indeed. "But," said the mouse's patron, "he is an
ungrateful fellow. He is not content with eating what I give him; he
destroys every thing he can lay hold of." A short time after this, my
friend was called in again, when he was told by the bachelor, that, the
mouse having become absolutely intolerable by his petty larcenies and
grand larcenies, he set a trap for him and caught him. But still the
larcenies continued. He set his trap again, and caught another rogue,
and another, and another, till at last he found he had been making a pet
of thirteen mice, instead of one, as he at first supposed.

The field mouse, represented in the engraving, lays up a large store of
provisions in his nice little nest under ground, which he keeps for
winter. These mice are very particular in stowing away their winter
store. The corn, acorns, chestnuts, hickory nuts, and whatever else they
hoard up, have each separate apartments. One room contains nothing but
corn, another nothing but chestnuts, and so on. When they have exhausted
their stock of provisions before spring, and they have nothing else to
eat, they turn to, and eat one another. They are regular cannibals, if
their manners and customs have been correctly reported. Sometimes the
hogs, as they are roaming about the pasture, in the autumn, soon after a
family of field mice have laid in their provisions, and before the
ground has frozen, come across the nest, and smell the good things that
are in it. Then the poor mouse has to suffer. The author of the Boy's
Winter Book thus graphically and humorously describes the misfortunes of
such a mouse: "There he sits huddled up in a dark corner, looking on, as
the hog is devouring the contents of hi