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The Mouse and The Moonbeam By: Eugene Field (1850-1895) |
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[Illustration]
THE MOUSE
AND THE MOONBEAM By
Eugene Field NEW YORK
1919
Copyright, 1912 by Charles Scribner's Sons Through the courtesy of Charles Scribner's Sons,
we were permitted to print this small private edition. GIFT
[Decoration]
THE MOUSE AND THE MOONBEAM Whilst you were sleeping, little Dear my soul, strange things
happened; but that I saw and heard them, I should never have
believed them. The clock stood, of course, in the corner, a
moonbeam floated idly on the floor, and a little mauve mouse
came from the hole in the chimney corner and frisked and
scampered in the light of the moonbeam upon the floor. The
little mauve mouse was particularly merry; sometimes she danced
upon two legs and sometimes upon four legs, but always very
daintily and always very merrily. "Ah, me!" sighed the old clock, "how different mice are nowadays
from the mice we used to have in the good old times! Now there
was your grandma, Mistress Velvetpaw, and there was your
grandpa, Master Sniffwhisker, how grave and dignified they
were! Many a night have I seen them dancing upon the carpet
below me, but always the stately minuet and never that crazy
frisking which you are executing now, to my surprise yes, and
to my horror, too." "But why shouldn't I be merry?" asked the little mauve mouse.
"Tomorrow is Christmas, and this is Christmas eve." "So it is," said the old clock. "I had really forgotten all
about it. But, tell me, what is Christmas to you, little Miss
Mauve Mouse?" "A great deal to me!" cried the little mauve mouse. "I have been
very good a very long time: I have not used any bad words, nor
have I gnawed any holes, nor have I stolen any canary seed, nor
have I worried my mother by running behind the flour barrel
where that horrid trap is set. In fact, I have been so good that
I am very sure Santa Claus will bring me something very pretty." This seemed to amuse the old clock mightily; in fact the old
clock fell to laughing so heartily that in an unguarded moment
she struck twelve instead of ten, which was exceedingly careless
and therefore to be reprehended. "Why, you silly little mauve mouse," said the old clock, "you
don't believe in Santa Claus, do you?" "Of course I do," answered the little mauve mouse. "Believe in
Santa Claus? Why shouldn't I? Didn't Santa Claus bring me a
beautiful butter cracker last Christmas, and a lovely
gingersnap, and a delicious rind of cheese, and and lots of
things? I should be very ungrateful if I did not believe in
Santa Claus, and I certainly shall not disbelieve in him at the
very moment when I am expecting him to arrive with a bundle of
goodies for me. "I once had a little sister," continued the little mauve mouse,
"who did not believe in Santa Claus, and the very thought of the
fate that befell her makes my blood run cold and my whiskers
stand on end. She died before I was born, but my mother has told
me all about her. Perhaps you never saw her: her name was
Squeaknibble, and she was in stature one of those long, low,
rangy mice that are seldom found in well stocked pantries.
Mother says that Squeaknibble took after our ancestors who came
from New England, where the malignant ingenuity of the people
and the ferocity of the cats rendered life precarious indeed.
Squeaknibble seemed to inherit many ancestral traits, the most
conspicuous of which was a disposition to sneer at some of the
most respected dogmas in mousedom. From her very infancy she
doubted, for example, the widely accepted theory that the moon
was composed of green cheese; and this heresy was the first
intimation her parents had of the sceptical turn of her mind.
Of course her parents were vastly annoyed, for their maturer
natures saw that this youthful scepticism portended serious,
if not fatal, consequences. Yet all in vain did the sagacious
couple reason and plead with their headstrong and heretical
child. "For a long time Squeaknibble would not believe that there was
any such archfiend as a cat; but she came to be convinced to the
contrary one memorable night, on which occasion she lost two
inches of her beautiful tail, and received so terrible a fright
that for fully an hour afterward her little heart beat so
violently as to lift her off her feet and bump her head against
the top of our domestic hole... Continue reading book >>
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