"I then went nearer to the above-mentioned large tree: it was an oak.
It had high branches, a majestic crown of leaves, and was very old. I
perceived that a living creature resided in it--a female. She was
called a Dryad. She had been born with the tree, and would die with
it. I had heard of this in the library; and now I beheld one of the
real trees, and a real oak-nymph. She uttered a frightful shriek when
she saw me near her; for she was like all women, very much afraid of
mice. She, however, had more reason to be afraid of me than others of
her sex have, for I could have gnawed the tree in two, and on it hung
her life. I spoke to her kindly and cordially. This gave her courage,
and she took me in her slender hand; and when she understood what had
brought me out into the wide world, she promised that I should,
perhaps that very night, become possessed of one of the two treasures
of which I was in search. She told me that Imagination was her very
particular friend; that he was as charming as the God of Love; and
that he often, for many an hour, sought repose under the spreading
foliage of the tree, which then sighed more musically over the two. He
called her _his_ dryad, she said, and the tree _his_ tree. The mighty,
gnarled, majestic oak was just to his taste, with its broad roots sunk
deep into the earth, its trunk and its coronal rising so high in the
free air, meeting the drifting snow, the cutting winds, and the bright
sunshine, before they had reached the ground. All this she said, and
she continued: 'The birds sing up yonder, and tell of foreign lands,
and upon the only decayed branch the stork has built a nest; and it
is a pleasure to hear of the country where the pyramids stand. All
this Fancy can well depict, and very much more. I myself can describe
life in the woods from the time that I was quite little, and this tree
was so tiny that a nettle could have covered it, until now, when it is
so strong and mighty. Sit down yonder under the woodruffs, and be on
the look-out. When Fancy comes I shall find an opportunity of pinching
his wing, and stealing a little feather from it. You shall take that,
and no poet will ever have been better provided. Will that do?'

"And Imagination came; a feather was plucked from him, and I got it,"
said the little mouse. "I held it in the water till it became soft. It
was still hard of digestion, but I managed to gnaw it all up. It is
not at all easy to stuff one's self so as t