.
I knew that a living being dwelt here, a Dryad as it is called, who is
born with the tree, and dies with it. I had heard about this in the
library; and now I saw an oak tree, and an oak girl. She uttered a
piercing cry when she saw me so near. Like all females, she was very
much afraid of mice; and she had more ground for fear than others, for
I might have gnawed through the stem of the tree on which her life
depended. I accosted the maiden in a friendly and honest way, and bade
her take courage. And she took me up in her delicate hand; and when I
had told her my reason for coming out into the wide world, she
promised me that perhaps on that very evening I should have one of the
two treasures of which I was still in quest. She told me that
Phantasus, the genius of imagination, was her very good friend, that
he was beautiful as the god of love, and that he rested many an hour
under the leafy boughs of the tree, which then rustled more strongly
than ever over the pair of them. He called her his dryad, she said,
and the tree his tree, for the grand gnarled oak was just to his
taste, with its root burrowing so deep in the earth, and the stem and
crown rising so high out in the fresh air, and knowing the beating
snow, and the sharp wind, and the warm sunshine as they deserve to be
known. 'Yes,' the Dryad continued, 'the birds sing aloft there in the
branches, and tell each other of strange countries they have visited;
and on the only dead bough the stork has built a nest which is highly
ornamental, and moreover, one gets to hear something of the land of
the pyramids. All that is very pleasing to Phantasus; but it is not
enough for him: I myself must talk to him, and tell him of life in the
woods, and must revert to my childhood, when I was little, and the
tree such a delicate thing that a stinging-nettle overshadowed it--and
I have to tell everything, till now that the tree is great and strong.
Sit you down under the green thyme, and pay attention; and when
Phantasus comes, I shall find an opportunity to pinch his wings, and
to pull out a little feather. Take the pen--no better is given to any
poet--and it will be enough for you!'

"And when Phantasus came the feather was plucked, and I seized it,"
said the little Mouse. "I put it in water, and held it there till it
grew soft. It was very hard to digest, but I nibbled it up at last. It
is very easy to gnaw oneself into being a poet, though there are many
things one must d