io6 



THE Or IDE TO NATURE 



sniffed disapprovingly at the oats, and 

 deliberately marched over and rang 

 his bell f( ir m< ire peanut. 



In a >hort time another mouse had 

 learned to ring the bell, and a third, 

 the smallest of the lot, had learned 

 what oughl to he done, hut not how to 

 do it. He would stand on his hind feet, 

 take hold of the rope with his forepaws 

 and move it back and forth in an exper- 

 imental way as he looked up at the hell, 

 saying so plainly, "Oh dear, how does 

 this thing work"? Whenever I saw 

 him trying 1 \a\ him, and once or twice 

 he succeeded in getting a faint sound 

 from the hell. Thev evidently had a 

 very clear idea of what the bell' was for 

 — namely, to make me hear when I did 

 not see, as shown by the fact that if 

 the} saw that I was looking- at them, 

 they only sat around, looking up at me 

 for their expected treat, or climbed on 

 my desk to get nearer to me and make 

 sure I noticed them, saying by every 

 look and action, "Don't you see us 

 waiting?" If I wanted to see the bell- 

 ringing- I had to watch cautiously from 

 a distance. 



One day as I sat near the bookstand 

 one of the older mice tried to solve a 

 question that had evidently occurred 

 to him something like this : "When we 

 ring that bell the food drops down 

 from somewhere; I wonder if it is in 

 the bell." He started deliberately up 

 a little round rod of the bookstand, 

 climbed steadily up past the four 

 shelves, did a cakewalk out along the 

 little horizontal bar to which the bell 

 was fastened, and examined the bell as 

 thoroughly as he could from his inse- 

 cure position. Having satisfied him- 

 self that there was "nothing in it" he 

 climbed down again. They often 

 played round the stand, but climbed up 

 one shelf at a time and examined every- 

 thing on it carefully before climbing 

 to the next, and seldom went to the 

 top; but this mouse seemed to have a 

 definite object in view and attended 

 strictly to it. 



A box of candy served to completely 

 cement the friendship between myself 

 and two of the tiny folks. They" had 

 been playing around and been given a 

 lunch on the window-sill at my side. 



hut the candy smelled tempting and 

 one of them soon located it, and sud- 

 denly a tiny head appeared over the 

 ediiv ol my lap. and after watching me 

 intently for an instant the mouse 

 climbed up on my lap, walked over to 

 the box of candy and helped himself, 

 sitting contentedly on my lap to eat it. 

 The other mouse watched the affair 

 from the window-sill and finally 

 scrambled down and climbed up on my 

 lap for his share. After that, when- 

 ever 1 had anything tempting, and 

 especially if I brought my lunch, I 

 usually had one of them sitting on my 

 la]) eating with me. Neither of them 

 were the ones I had trained with the 

 inclined board, as those had all disap- 

 peared long before. These two took 

 up the trick of their own notion, seem- 

 ing to think I could be trusted. 



This program sometimes resulted in 

 the familiar situation of "How happy 

 I'd be with either, were 'tother fair 

 charmer away," as it often happened 

 that while one mouse would be lunch- 

 ing on my lap, another would ring the 

 bell for me to "set the table down 

 stairs." Of course the disturbance inci- 

 dent to answering the bell would 

 frighten the mouse from my lap, but it 

 would join in the feast on the floor, and 

 usually, when that was nearly gone (or 

 sooner if what it had been getting on 

 my lap was better), would leave the 

 others and climb up on my lap again. 



It is difficult to say where this unus- 

 ual friendship would have ended, or to 

 set a limit to what they would have 

 learned, but Fate, I suppose in the 

 form of the janitor's traps in the base- 

 men c, intervened, and shortly after the 

 events just recorded my pets all sud- 

 denly disappeared. 



The world is full of mice, and doubt- 

 less there will come others to take 

 their place, but I doubt if any ever 

 equal, in cunning ways, the friendly 

 little souls whose loss has left such a 

 vacancy in the daily routine. 



MOUSE TALES. 



Twice I have seen the "Little Furry 

 ( mes" decide that "In union there is 

 strength." 



On each occasion, two half-grown 



