IV
What do they make of life? Their stoicism, their gentleness, their never-jaded curiosity perpetually tempt my speculation. That they are a people of vicissitudes and disappointments due largely to ourselves needs no arguing. What opinions have they of us? What effect have our behaviors on them? A consistently gentle people, they are treated with unvarying severity. What have they in lieu of logic to make life bearable? And what reward is there for their virtues? Or, are they too simple at heart, as yet, to ask for reward at all beyond the hope of a mere precarious existence? Is life as dear to them as that? And what, if any, in the way of religious speculation of a crude and early order, might they be supposed to entertain? I would like to be delegated to investigate and report upon mouse mythology.
I can hardly rid myself of the idea that in their present is, as it were, some dim glimmering of our own past. They seem to me testing the world, as we ourselves must have done when we too were less established, when we also were in a position scarcely less precarious, eons before any written records were kept, long before man had learned to remember at will for the quick purposes of convenience and comparison—in a dim, dim foretime, when to us, in some early Caliban existence, the outward world was as Prospero, unaccountable, and possessed of strange whimsies and quick with unwarrantable revenges.
"When a tree," says Frazer, tracing in his "Golden Bough" the beginnings of mythology, "comes to be viewed no longer as a body of the tree spirit, but simply as its abode, which it can quit at pleasure, an important advance has been made in religious thought. Animism is passing into polytheism."
I cannot help wondering from time to time, whimsically, whether those quiet denizens of that old house had made "an important advance in religious thought"; was "animism," with them, "passing into polytheism"? Were mouse-traps deceptive and evil gods with terrible snapping jaws, or but the abodes of these evil deities? And for philosophy and metaphysic, what had they? In that dim attic world was this perhaps an entire people in its mythopœic age, their gods descending and ascending miraculously, leaving a magenta cheese as incontrovertible evidence, or as unaccountably visiting them with swift and crafty destruction?
I am inclined to think their world is a colored one, fertile in fables. It would not surprise me to find that a small wooden object, known to us of a different development as a mere "mouse-trap," is to them some Dis or Ahriman, a terrible deity of dark powers and multiple personalities. That there are other gods besides,—the great and awful CAT, the less omnipresent but not less terrible TERRIER,—I am not disposed to doubt; nor do I think they lack the shining ones also, as quiet as the others are full of movement, as conducive to life and well-being as the others to death and destruction—bright, effulgent ones of the godlike color of cheese, or silver sheen of tallow and paraffine; and back of all these, it may be, some elder deities,—ourselves,—the older gods with Olympian powers, who can establish earthquakes; who can wipe away entire communities; gods and goddesses whose heads are in the clouds, whose movements are terrific, who shake complete creation when they walk, and with unthinkable besoms sweep with horrible sweepings, and periodically visit the world with awful scourges and hellish visitations of order and cleanliness.
I would not pretend to be acquainted with mouse literature, but I would venture a wager that their "Arabian Nights" outdoes ours as cheese, chalk. Djinns, genii, and affrites—can it be thought that they lack them? If the unaccountability of the world be, as it would seem to me, the basis of all literature and the origin of all fable, philosophy, entertainment, and speculation, can it be denied that they have extraordinary inducement? If our own world seems full of chance, and forever breaking away from bonds and probabilities, I only ask you to compare it with theirs!—in which the unaccountable is the sole certainty they possess.
I awoke one morning in the late fall, and began to dress, giving no thought whatever to them and their problems. When I came to put on my shoe, however, I could no longer ignore them. In the toe of it, stowed away safely, were three hickory-nuts!
Some sleek-coated citizen, with a winter house in mind, had wandered in those purlieus, thinking to begin the arduous labor requisite to the building of a home suitable to the long, dark season nearly at hand, when lo, this prudent necessity was suddenly, by a miraculous bounty, waived! Mark you and observe! Here was provided for him a home such as his best skill could never have contrived. A place how warm, how neat, how conformable! That his acceptance was immediate, was testified by his already accumulated stores.
I paused and took them in my hand: one, two, three. There was a saint, I am told, who allowed the birds to build in his two palms, and did not rise from his knees until the fledglings were ready to fly from the nest. Neither was I a saint, nor could I afford such beneficence. I was pressed for time, as God's saints, I believe, never are, and I needed my shoe. I slipped it on as I had slipped on its mate; I tied its lace neatly, gave the bow an efficient pat, and walked away in it. It is true, I did put the three hickory-nuts on the bureau. I am not sure what I meant to do with them, but I never saw them again. Miss Layng, the terrible goddess of order, probably flung them out of the window with mutterings.
But I ask you only to picture the romance, and it may be the terror, of the thing to the one who had laid such delightful plans, who had enjoyed such anticipations! House, stores, hopes, social aggrandizement, everything—gone! carried off entire, by God knows what spirit! and not so much as a vestige left to tell the tale!
I do not forget that it is the custom to speak of mice as destructive; yet may not that word be used, after all, with something of a bias? I picture one of them on his way to seek a few bits of newspaper for the lining of a nest, and I imagine him suddenly endowed with the ability to read the inky characters. He pauses in amaze. His eyes bulge and devour the news beadily. And what news it is! Statistics! Staggering statistics of the men and officers killed since our great war's beginning; and of aged and innocent citizens shot, women violated, little children sacrificed, noble cities destroyed!
His hand goes over his heart to quiet its violent beating. Ah, what a race of gods they are! Or, he reads this from a recent account of the bayonet practice at Plattsburg—whatever "bayonet" may mean, and whatever "Plattsburg"; for these accessories of civilization lie ahead of him some eons.
"Aim for the vitals," he reads. "Do not fire until you feel your bayonet stick. Thus you will shatter the bone, and you can then withdraw the blade. At the same time, try to trip your enemy with your left foot, so that he will fall forward."
None of this is clear to him. This is the deportment, without doubt, of the immortal gods! Fancy the consequences of his attempting to trip his enemy, the mouse-trap, or the cat, or the terrier, with his left foot!
No; these are powers and potencies to which he can only look forward in dim futures, when the mouse tribe shall have attained, eons hence, perhaps, to a higher order of being, and to these godlike practices. But that, however glorious, is but a far dream! Meek and gentle and forgiving, in his inferiority, he lends himself devotedly once more to his labors, and nibbles the newspaper, carrying off small pieces of it, very destructively, to build that near-by nest in which soon are to be born tiny creatures as gentle and inferior and destructive as himself.
To one who has studied mythology with a reverence for its revelations, it must often have seemed that man is kinder than his conception of the mighty powers that try him. Job would seem to be, rather than the Deity, the hero of Job's tragical story; and how much nobler, to cite a most obvious instance, is the ancient Greek than his deities!
However impious this may appear to the pious, yet to me the thing looks hopeful. Dread and powerful as are our own gods,—Authority, Mammon, Sentiment, Public Opinion, Superstition, Fear,—and many as have been our sacrifices offered up to them, yet may it not be that humanity, frail, and so largely at their mercy, retains some sovereign nobilities still unvanquished by them?
Have we not had our own disappointments and vicissitudes? Have not our conceptions of our duties and privileges and rights and gayeties been but poorly adjusted to those powers whose awful retributions we have tempted? Yet I am inclined to hope that, notwithstanding all this, we shall still preserve some gentleness that cannot be conquered; shall still retain some virtues which, let these terrible powers descend upon us as they will, cannot be obliterated, that we shall be, till the end, something better than our fate, something more kind than our destiny.
I have but speculated widely concerning mouse mythology. Truth compels me to state that it is to me, after all, but dim and debatable territory. I can give you nothing authoritative as to their philosophy. But this I know: they have maintained their gentleness, and are a reproach to those whom I take to be their gods.
All else is but speculation and possibility, but this is the evidence of their lives. They are a meek and a forgiving people. Think only what they endure at our hands, who justly make so great a matter of a Belgium violated, and forget, in a god-like manner, when it so pleases us, a violated Congo, or a divided Persia, or a Poland outraged and cut to pieces, but not defended! How gentle, how consistent, how without spite, ill-will, or grudge, they remain toward those unalterably hostile to them! With what mildness not matched among us do they conduct themselves! How they preserve their cheerfulness, their good nature, their kindliness! Have you not heard with what gayety they roll hickory-nuts away? Has your ear not witnessed their gigglings and rejoicings?
But their virtues go deeper than this. It may be told of them above all, that, however provident in other matters, they store up no malice, they preserve no hate.
Once I lay ill in that house of which I have here written. I had been very wretched, but my physician, seated now by my bed, promised me I would soon be well. After that we spoke together, as we were wont to do, of matters of a philosophic kind, then paused. At the bottom of my bed, on the footboard, was a tiny mouse. No; it was not the same adventurous spirit who had visited the giant's castle and drunk from the plate of milk; this one was smaller and more slender. We did not speak. He came down cautiously, very gently, to the coverlet, then delicately up one fold, down another, pausing, listening, waiting to take note; pausing, waiting, foot delicately lifted, until he had got as far as the tray. He went very carefully about this, smelling and inspecting it; yes, I would have sworn, inspecting. It had every air of his wanting to know whether they had brought me the right and well-cooked food. He tasted nothing save a tiny crumb on the tray itself, and then, as though satisfied, was gone.
I hoped for another visit, but waited for him in vain. He was a little fellow, sleek of skin, with a black, beady eye, and very delicate whiskers. I never saw a daintier foot.