The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse
Characters in the Play:
A Mouse Who Lives in Town.
A Mouse Who Lives in the Country.
Some other Mice, as many as one wishes, who live in the same hole as the country mouse.
They include his Father, his Mother, and a number of Brothers and Sisters; a Cat.THE FIRST PART OF THE STORY
Place: A mouse hole in a barn.
Time: The early evening of a day in the fall.
The Father, Mother, and younger mice are seen, sitting about, and nibbling bits of candles, turnips, carrots, and other dainties.
The Father, taking a large bite of turnip, and speaking between mouthfuls:
“I have been a mile to the south and a mile back to-day without meeting an enemy. I found a field of corn, and a garden of turnips, and a patch of large, juicy cabbages. For a comfortable, fat old age, there is no place like the country.”
The Mother, running about very nimbly, and gathering up all the candle ends:
“You are right, Father. The farmer’s wife cleaned the candlesticks to-day, and she threw away all these ends. This evening I shall make a large tallow pudding!”
One of the younger Mice, who jumps up, and begins dancing very gracefully about the mouse hole on the tips of her toes:
“Everybody goes to bed so very, very early in the country. A mouse may dance until morning without being caught.”
As she dances, the other Mice drop whatever they were eating, and they sing in funny, squeaking voices, a tune to which her feet keep time.
This is their song:
“Squeak, squeak, skip, skip!
Gather your tail up, and trip, trip!
Crickets and grasshoppers dance by day,
But night is the time for a mouse to play,
When the moon shines round, like a great big cheese—
When only the sleepy Sand Man sees—
Then—Squeak, squeak, skip, skip!
Gather your tails up, and trip, trip!”
When the Mice finish their song, the Father looks all about the hole. Then he speaks.
The Father: “I do not see your brother. Where is your brother?”
The Mother, peering about in all the dark corners of the mouse hole: “Where is my son? Oh, where is my son?”
All the younger Mice, speaking together: “Oh, where is our brother?”
As the younger Mice speak, the Country Mouse enters at the back of the mouse hole. He wears a large red necktie which has green spots, and is tied in a bow in front. He seems to be very much excited. All the Mice crowd about him.
The Father, taking the Country Mouse by his paw and leading him to the front of the mouse hole:
“Where have you been all day, my son?”
The Mother, re-tying the Country Mouse’s necktie: “You seem out of breath, my dear!”
All the younger Mice, excitedly: “Where have you been? Oh, do tell us where you have been?”
The Country Mouse: “I have had an adventure. I started out early this morning for the dairy, because I heard some one say that there were cheeses being made. On the way to the dairy I met a very fine Mouse, passing by on his way to town. He lives in the town, and he told me all about his home.”
All the younger Mice, crowding closer that they may hear what the Country Mouse is saying:
“What did the Town Mouse tell you about his home?”
The Country Mouse: “He said that he lived in a pantry!”
The Father: “A pantry?”
The Mother: “A pantry?”
All the younger Mice: “A pantry?”
The Country Mouse: “Yes, a pantry! There are pies there, and cakes. There are fat hams, and juicy spare ribs. There are puddings, and there are cheese rinds lying about on the shelves. The servants are careless, and at night they leave the food uncovered. Then the Town Mouse comes out of the wall and sits on the pantry table, and eats his fill.
“No cold gardens to be searched for food. No frozen fields to be dug over for roots and corn stalks.”
The Country Mouse looks disdainfully about the hole. Then he goes on speaking.
The Country Mouse: “The Town Mouse invited me to come and visit him this evening!”
The Younger Mice: “Oh!”
The Father, shaking his head, doubtfully: “Don’t go, my boy. There is a wild animal who lives in town houses. She has eyes as large as saucers. She wears cushions on her feet that no one may hear her when she walks. She has sharp claws and sharper teeth. She can see in the dark.”
The Mother: “It is the Cat! Don’t go to town, my son. The Cat eats mice!”
The Country Mouse: “I am not afraid of the Cat. I am tired of this dull life in the country. I want to see sights, and taste the good things that are to be found in pantries. I am going, to-night, to visit the Town Mouse!”
The Father, Mother, and all the younger Mice try to hold the Country Mouse, but he gets away from them. He runs away through the back of the mouse hole.
THE SECOND PART OF THE STORY
Place: A pantry.
The Town Mouse sits on the edge of the table, eating, but nervously, and looking all about him as he nibbles.
Under one of the shelves, and behind the Town Mouse, so that he is not able to see her, sits the Cat.
Time: Midnight of the same evening.
The Cat plays that she is asleep, but she is really watching the Town Mouse. Suddenly she sneezes.
The Town Mouse, dropping a large piece of cheese, which he has been eating, and looking around in a frightened way:
“Oh, my ears and whiskers! Is that a sneeze which I hear?”
He trembles and shakes violently. He sees no one, though, so he picks up the cheese in one paw and a slice of bread in the other. As he nibbles, he talks to himself.
The Town Mouse: “I am tired of this life in town. Late suppers, and rich food to disturb one’s digestion; traps, traps everywhere—wooden traps, and wire traps, round traps, and square traps; traps with doors, and traps with windows—and always a Cat hiding in a corner. She may be in the room now for all I know.
“To-day I took a walk in the country and I met a little farmer mouse in a red necktie. He thought he would like to live in town.
“Ough!” the Town Mouse shivers, “I wish I were safe in the country, now!”
There is a little noise at the back of the pantry, and the Country Mouse enters in great glee, looking about at all the food. The Cat sees the Country Mouse, and she creeps, softly, a little farther under the shelf, keeping watch of him all the time.
The Town Mouse, jumping down from the table, and motioning with one paw for the Country Mouse to make less noise:
“Oh, why did you come? It isn’t safe here. You should have stayed in the country.”
The Country Mouse, paying no attention to the Town Mouse, but running nimbly around the table and tasting all the different things.
The Country Mouse: “Cheese, and bread, and cake, and pie—and jam!”
He puts his paw down in a jam pot, and eats a little jam. Then he crosses to the Town Mouse and pats him on his back.
The Country Mouse: “A thousand thanks, my fine fellow. This pantry of yours is a palace, and you are the prince. No quiet, country life for me. Here will we live and eat our fill—”
He stops suddenly, as the Cat once more sneezes.
The Town Mouse, wringing his paws, and whispering in great fright: “I heard it a moment or so ago. I’ll wager I heard it; and now I hear it again. Some one sneezed.”
The Country Mouse, glancing about, but seeing no one: “Who sneezed?”
The Town Mouse: “The Cat.”
The Country Mouse: “Where is the Cat?”
The Town Mouse: “The Cat is everywhere. She isn’t in the room, now, but she may be on her way. Hours and hours she sits at the door of my hole so I can’t come out in the evening. Then she chases me when I try to snatch a bite of supper, and she follows me—follows, wherever I go.”
The Country Mouse, in a frightened voice: “Are her eyes as large as saucers? Does she wear cushions on her feet that no one may hear her when she walks? Has she sharp claws, and sharper teeth? Can she see in the dark? Does she eat—mice?”
The Cat suddenly springs from her corner. There is a great scamper, in which the mice make their escape, but the Country Mouse leaves his long tail in the Cat’s paws.
Dramatic form arranged by Carolyn Sherwin Bailey.
A Mouse Who Lives in Town.
A Mouse Who Lives in the Country.
Some other Mice, as many as one wishes, who live in the same hole as the country mouse.
They include his Father, his Mother, and a number of Brothers and Sisters; a Cat.
STORIES SELECTED BECAUSE OF THEIR DRAMATIC QUALITIES
| Jack and the Beanstalk | Old Fairy Tale |
| Little Red Riding Hood | Old Fairy Tale |
| Bre’r Rabbit and the Little Tar Baby | Joel Chandler Harris, in Nights with Uncle Remus |
| The Lark and Her Young Ones | Æsop’s Fables |
| The Lion and the Mouse | Æsop’s Fables |
| Hansel and Gretel | Old Fairy Tale |
| The Proud Chicken | Chinese Fable, in The Talking Beasts |
CHAPTER IX
STORY TELLING AN AID TO VERBAL EXPRESSION
NEARLY all children find fluent speech as readily as birds find song and flowers find perfume. Occasionally, there is a “different” child, though, who through shyness, slow motor reaction or a retarded brain development has difficulty in using words as a medium of expressing himself.
There is always the problem, too, of the foreign-born child. We find him a patient, tongue-tied little scrap of humanity clad in the garb of Italy or Russia or Germany clinging to his mother’s skirts when the big vessel docks and as dazed as she is at the babel of strange speech that deafens, stuns him. Then we see him in school and his linguistic problem becomes more complicated. He is put into a class where the ordinarily complex matters of reading, writing, and ciphering are made increasingly more complex because they are presented to him in a foreign language. The school curriculum leaves small space in the day for teaching a child to talk. Tony, discouraged, baffled, puzzled, drifts farther and farther into his great silence and is dubbed a dunce, because he doesn’t know what his teacher is talking about.
What shall we do with Tony who forms a big unit in our ever increasing foreign population? How shall we quickest help him and every child to that ready expression through speech that means power, efficiency, self-control in later years?
There was my own, special Tony—a quaint little man of five in yellow breeches, a green shirt and a fur cap, which latter he persisted in wearing during his entire school day for fear that some one might steal it. Tony was, “out of Naples.” His melting brown eyes danced with delight at a bit of crimson paper, a gold orange produced as a model for the painting lesson, a red rose that meant a sense game. But Tony’s warm, red lips remained persistently closed. Days melted into weeks and then were months and still Tony was dumb. Ideas he had. Words he had not, although I had tried daily to teach him to say, good morning, good-by, ball, clay, blocks and like words.
One day Tony electrified me, though. He was always an attentive, close listener during my story hour that ended the morning. Because the children were, in the majority, foreign, I selected short, repetitional stories for telling. The children were fascinated with the quaint old folk tale of “The Teeny Tiny Lady.” As I told it, they had formed a habit of joining me when I reached a familiar phrase.
“Tell the Teeny Tiny Lady,” they begged again and as I finished the story, Tony’s eyes danced, his lips parted—
“Once upon a time there was a lady, who lived in a house in a village,” he began in clear, pure English. With a little help he almost retold the story. It was amazing, but through the inspiration of the other children’s enthusiastic story interest, the many repetitions of the story and its simple, cumulative structure Tony had learned nearly a hundred words. He talked after that, and he told us stories. The story had unloosed his tongue.
Stories help children to verbal expression.
In the case of a foreign child who must be taught English, or the American-born child who is shy and so lacking in the power of expressing himself through words, we will use the old folk tale that repeats its words and phrasing with happy familiarity and so teaches speech.
It will not be necessary to make the child or group of children feel that the story is being used as a lesson in English.
Just select the right story.
Tell it over and over again, as long as the children are interested in it—and you will find that their interest will exhaust yours.
And encourage the children to tell the story with you.
This method spells success in using the story to increase a child’s vocabulary.
Certain stories stimulate the child to repeat certain jingles or phrases with the story teller. This explains their popularity and adds to their value. The good old cumulative story of the “Cat and the Mouse” is built around a nonsense ditty:
“First she leaped, and then she ran,
’Till she came to the cow and thus began.”
After a child learns and repeats this verse he begins to add to it the sentences of the story that precede and follow it. When the foreign child is able to tell the last paragraph of the story:—
“So the good baker gave the mouse some bread; the mouse gave the bread to the butcher who gave him some meat; the mouse gave the meat to the farmer who gave him an armful of hay; the mouse gave the hay to the cow and the cow gave the mouse a saucer of milk for the cat. Then the cat drank the milk and gave the mouse his little long tail. And they went on playing in the malt house.”
—he has acquired a good working vocabulary of English.
So there are a score of similar repetitional stories that help a child to learn ready speech. The Greedy Cat repeats the tale of his prowess:
“I have eaten my friend the mouse. I have eaten an old woman, and a man and a donkey, and the King and all his elephants. What is to hinder my eating you, too?”
Chicken Little bewails to every one she meets:
“The sky is falling.”
And in answer to the query “How do you know?” she assures her questioner:
“I saw it with my eyes, I heard it with my ears, and a bit of it fell upon my tail.”
In Maud Lindsay’s story of “The Little Gray Pony” there is a delightfully interpolated jingle that repeats itself and adds to itself in such fascinating fashion that children cannot resist saying with the story teller:
“Storekeeper! Storekeeper! I’ve come to you;
My little gray pony has lost his shoe!
And I want some coal the iron to heat,
That the blacksmith may shoe my pony’s feet.”
and its answer:
“Now, I have apples and candy to sell,
And more nice things than I can tell;
But I’ve no coal the iron to heat,
That the blacksmith may shoe your pony’s feet.”
Ever popular Little Half Chick with his happy-go-lucky, daring journey to Madrid compels children to tell his story as he “hoppity kicks” through his adventures. The Three Pigs with their three ever interesting fates help a child to do his own story telling. There is an exhaustless fund of folk lore to draw upon that has few words in its story construction, frequent and happy repetitions of those words, and inspiration for a child to make those words a part of his own vocabulary.
These bits of repeated phrasing in a story, scraps of incorporated lyrics and jingles and built-up cumulative paragraphs are like the beads that help to make the child’s necklace. On them he strings the thread of the story narrative, making it so thoroughly a part of his mental life that he is able to give it out again in the remembered words of the story. Long after the loved, “huffing and puffing” of the wolf in the story of the “Three Little Pigs” has become only a memory, a child uses the words, furze, blazing, scramble, fortune—and a hundred other words that came to him in this happy story connection and so into his every-day conversation.
The older child who has passed the nursery tale and folk lore turnstile in his story road finds help to a greater power in verbal expression by means of the beautifully written story, told in its original pure phrasing by the story teller and enriching him because of its wonderful English. A truly well-wrought story suffers often at the hands of the story teller. It isn’t necessary in telling such a story to bring it down to the plane of the children’s intelligence; rather we will bring the children up to its heights of beautiful imagery and mellow phrasing.
In telling Henry Ward Beecher’s story of “The Anxious Leaf,” in “Norwood,” the story should be memorized by the story teller. No word of its vivid picturing should be lost. It is a short story so this method of preparing it for telling will not be irksome. A little girl six years old who had been told this story several times was out walking one fall with her mother. She picked up a dead leaf, from the ground, and holding it tenderly in her hand, she repeated softly:
“Then the little leaf began to want to go and it grew very beautiful in thinking about it.
“And a little puff of wind came and tossed it like a spark of fire in the air and it fell gently down under the edge of the fence among hundreds of other leaves; and it fell into a dream and never waked up to tell what it dreamed about—”
This child’s vocabulary had been deeply enriched by a story.
In Laura Richards’ stories we find pure English that will help children. In Rudyard Kipling’s “Jungle Stories” and the “Just So Stories” there is virile wording that every child needs. Dean Hodges’ “Bible Stories” preserve for children the line phrasing of the Hebrews as almost no other Bible story teller has succeeded in doing. Hans Christian Andersen’s best translators have kept for us his matchless word painting. Such stories as these teach a child purer use of English. Eugene Field’s few child stories; “The Legend of Claus,” “The Mouse and the Moonbeam,” “The Maple Leaf and the Violet” sing in their classic wording. No child can hear them without having his vocabulary enriched.
It is quite possible to accomplish a great deal through story telling, not only in teaching English to the child who is foreign born or dormant mentally, but in giving the average child new and more colorful examples of word painting than he has heard before.
The steps in story telling for verbal expression in children are:
Selection. The story must be worth while telling from the point of view of its phrasing. In the case of the child who really needs to be taught to talk, short, rhymed or cumulative tales are useful. With older children we will select those beautiful examples of classic story telling that should form part of a child’s mental life and so help him to express himself in pure diction.
Presentation. These stories that are selected by the story teller as being particularly adapted to English teaching should be most carefully prepared and presented happily, compellingly, and in their exact, original form with almost no variation in subsequent telling so that they may present good models to the children.
Repetition. A story selected for its English value should have frequent repetitions that the children may become very familiar with it and gain the power to repeat it themselves, or at least learn certain parts of it, not as a task but naturally, inspirationally.
STORIES THAT HELP A CHILD TO VERBAL EXPRESSION