Youthful Ingenuity. 5 



him either to blind-smash or to any other form 

 of unreasoning violence and destruction. He had 

 much more pleasure in a living mouse than a dead 

 one, and at last a good excuse presented itself for 

 keeping one of his favourites alive. 



One day, being with his mother at the herd-market 

 in Glasgow, he there saw a little toy-cottage with a 

 mouse driving a large wheel on the side of it. The 

 motion of the wheel set a shoemaker to work. He 

 was in raptures with it. Here was a use for his mice, 

 or at any rate for one of them. He begged his 

 mother to buy him the mill with the mouse, but could 

 not prevail on her to do so. Therefore, on reaching 

 home he at once set to work to reproduce the whole 

 contrivance for himself. Many another child might 

 have conceived the idea of doing this, but very few 

 could have succeeded in carrying out their intention. 



For making his treadwheel, little David had the 

 bottom of an old broken birdcage. This supplied the 

 light wood needed for the two sides of the wheel. For 

 the passage of his mouse from the cottage into the 

 wheel, he bored holes in both by the help of a red- 

 hot poker. He found no difficulty in cutting some 

 wire into proper lengths for the bars, but to receive 

 the wires holes had to be made in the thin wood near 

 the edge, which was no easy task, as the wood was 

 only too ready to split. To meet this emergency, he 

 heated a knitting-needle of the requisite thickness, 

 and so accomplished his purpose. Although this was 

 a tedious business, time was no object to him then. 

 The wires were soon put in, a mouse was procured 

 for motive-power, the shoemaker was set on his bench, 



