nd its nails are
scratchy, and its fur tickles, and its tail feels crawly, and there is
nothing pleasant about it, and you are all the time afraid it will try
to gnaw out, and begin on you instead of on the cloth. That mouse
was next to me. I could feel its every motion with startling and
suggestive distinctness. For these reasons I yelled to Maria, and as
the case seemed urgent to me I may have yelled with a certain degree
of vigor; but I deny that I yelled fire, and if I catch the boy who
thought that I did, I shall inflict punishment on his person.

I did not loose my presence of mind for an instant. I caught the mouse
just as it was clambering over my knee, and by pressing firmly on the
outside of the cloth, I kept the animal a prisoner on the inside. I
kept jumping around with all my might to confuse it, so that it would
not think about biting, and I yelled so that the mice would not hear
its squeaks and come to its assistance. A man can't handle many mice
at once to advantage.

Maria was white as a sheet when she came into the kitchen and asked
what she should do--as though I could hold the mouse and plan a
campaign at the same time. I told her to think of something, and she
thought she would throw things at the intruder; but as there was no
earthly chance for her to hit the mouse, while every shot took effect
on me, I told her to stop, after she had tried two flat-irons and
the coal-scuttle. She paused for breath; but I kept bobbing around.
Somehow I felt no inclination to sit down anywhere. "O Joshua," she
cried, "I wish you had not killed the cat." Now I submit that the wish
was born of the weakness of woman's intellect. How on earth did she
suppose a cat could get where that mouse was?--rather have the mouse
there alone, anyway, than to have a cat prowling around after it.
I reminded Maria of the fact that she was a fool. Then she got the
tea-kettle and wanted to scald the mouse. I objected to that process,
except as a last resort. Then she got some cheese to coax the mouse
down, but I did not dare to let go, for fear it would run up. Matters
were getting desperate. I told her to think of something else, and I
kept jumping. Just as I was ready to faint with exhaustion, I tripped
over an iron, lost my hold, and the mouse fell to the floor, very
dead. I had no idea a mouse could be squeezed to death so easy.

That was not the end of the trouble, for before I had recovered
my breath a fireman broke in one of t