The Life and Perambulations of a Mouse

by Dorothy Kilner

The conversation I have been relating I overheard as I lay concealed in a shoe that stood close by the bedside, and into which I ran the moment I jumped off the table, and where I kept snug till the next morning; when, just as the clock was striking eight, the same Mrs. Nelly, whom I saw the day before in the kitchen, entered the apartment, and accosted the young ladies, saying, ‘Good morning to you, ladies, do you know that it is time to get up?’ ‘Then, pray, Nelly, lace my stays, will you?’ said Miss Nancy. ‘But lace mine first, and give me my other shoes; for those I wore yesterday must be brushed, because I stepped in the dirt, and so when you go down you must remember, and take and brush them, and then let me have them again,’ said Mary; ‘but come and dress me now.’

Well, thought I, this is a rude way of speaking, indeed, something like Miss Nancy Artless, at the house where my poor dear Softdown was so cruelly massacred; I am sure I hope I shall not meet with the like fate here, and I wish I was safe out of this shoe; for, perhaps, presently it will be wanted to be put on Mary’s foot; and I am sure I must not expect to meet any mercy from a child who shows so bad a disposition as to speak to a servant in so uncivil a manner, for no good-natured person would do that.

With these kind of reflections I was amusing myself for some little time, when, all on a sudden, they were put an end to, by my finding the shoe in which I was concealed, hastily taken up; and before I had time to recollect what I had best do, I was almost killed by some violent blows I received, which well nigh broke every bone in my skin. I crept quite up to the toe of the shoe, so that I was not at all seen, and the maid, when she took up the shoes, held one in one hand, and the other in the other, by their heels, and then slapped them hard together, to beat out of some of the dust which was in them. This she repeated three or four times, till I was quite stunned; and how or which way I tumbled or got out, I know not; but when I came to myself. I was close up behind the foot of a table, in a large apartment, where were several children, and a gentleman and a lady, all conversing together with the greatest good humour and harmony.

The first words I heard distinctly enough to remember, were those of a little boy, about five years old, who, with eagerness exclaimed—‘I forget you! no that I never shall. If I was to go a hundred thousand miles off, I am sure I shall never forget you. What! do you think I should ever, as long as I live, if it is a million of years, forget my own dear papa and mamma? No; that I should not, I am very, very sure I never should.’ ‘Well, but Tom,’ interrupted the gentleman, ‘if in a million of years you should not forget us, I dare say, in less than two months you will forget our advice, and before you have been at school half that time, you will get to squabbling with and tricking the other boys, just as they do with one another; and instead of playing at all times with the strictest openness and honour, you will, I sadly fear, learn to cheat, and deceive, and pay no attention to what your mother and I have been telling you.’ ‘No’, that I am sure I sha’n’t!’ replied the boy. ‘What! do you think I shall be so wicked as to turn a thief, and cheat people?’ ‘I dare say, my dear,’ resumed the father, ‘you will not do what we call thieving; but as I know there are many naughty boys in all schools, I am afraid they will teach you to commit dishonourable actions, and to tell you there is no harm in them, and that they are signs of cleverness and spirit, and qualifications very necessary for every boy to possess.’ ‘Aye, that’s sure enough,’ said the boy, who appeared about ten years old, ‘for they almost all declare, that if a boy is not sharp and cunning, he might almost as well be out of the world as in it. But, as you say, papa, I hate such behaviour, I am sure there is one of our boys, who is so wonderfully clever and acute, as they call him, that I detest ever having any thing to do with him; for unless one watches him as a cat would watch a mouse, he is sure to cheat or play one some trick or other.’ ‘What sort of tricks do you mean?’ inquired the little boy. ‘Why, I will tell you,’ replied the other. ‘You know nothing of the games we have at school, so if I was to tell you how he plays at them, you would not understand what I meant. But you know what walking about blindfold is, don’t you? Well! one day, about a dozen boys agreed to have a blind race, and the boy who got nearest the goal, which was a stick driven in the ground with a shilling upon the top of it, was to win the shilling, provided he did it fairly without seeing.’ ‘I suppose,’ interrupted Tom, ‘you mean the boy who got to the stick first.’ ‘No, I do not,’ replied his brother, ‘I mean what I say, the boy who got nearest it, no matter whether he came first or last; the fun was to see them try to keep in a straight path, with their eyes tied up, whilst they wander quite in the wrong, and not to try who could run fastest. Well! when they, were all blinded, and twisted round three or four times before they were suffered to set off, they directed their steps the way they thought would directly conduct them to the goal; and some of them had almost reached it, when Sharply (the boy I mentioned) who had placed a shilling upon the stick, for they drew lots who should do that, and he who furnished the money was to stand by it, to observe who won it by coming nearest; well, Sharply, I say, just as they came close to it, moved away softly to another place, above three yards distant from any of them (for I should have told you, that if none of them got within three yards, the shilling was to remain his, and they were each to give him a penny.) So then he untied their eyes, and insisted upon it they had all of them lost. But two or three of us happened to be by, and so we said he had cheated them, and ought not to keep the money, as it had fairly been won by Smyth. But he would not give it up, so it made a quarrel between him and Smyth, and at last they fought, and Mr. Chiron confined them both in the school all the rest of the afternoon, and when he heard what the quarrel was about, he took the shilling from Sharply, and called him a mean-spirited cheat; but he would not let Smyth have it, because he said he deserved to lose it for fighting about such a trifle, and so it was put into the forfeit-money.’

‘But pray do not you think Sharply behaved extremely wrong?’ ‘Shamefully so, indeed,’ said the gentleman. ‘I never could have any opinion of a boy ‘who could act so dishonourably,’ said the lady, ‘let his cleverness be what it would.’ ‘Pray, Frank, tell me some more,’ said the little boy. ‘More!’ replied Frank, ‘I could tell you an hundred such kind of things. One time, as Peter Light was walking up the yard, with some damsons in his hat, Sharply ran by, and as he passed, knocked his hat out of his hand, for the sake of scrambling for as many as he could get himself. And sometimes, after the pie-woman has been there, he gets such heaps of tarts you cannot think, by his different tricks: perhaps he will buy a currant tart himself; then he would go about, calling out, “Who’ll change a cheesecake for a currant tart?” and now-and-then he will add, “and half a bun into the bargain!” Then two or three of the boys call out, “I will, I will!” and when they go to hold out their cheesecakes to him, he snatches them out of their hands before they are aware, and runs away in an instant; and whilst they stand for a moment in astonishment, he gets so much ahead of them that he eats them up before they can again overtake him. At other times, when he sees a boy beginning to eat his cake, he will come and talk carelessly to him for a few moments, and then all of a sudden call out, “Look! look! look!-there!” pointing his finger as if to show him something wonderful; and when the other, without suspecting any mischief, turns his head to see what has so surprised him, away he snatches the cake, and runs off with it, cramming it into his mouth in a moment.

‘And when he plays at Handy-dandy, Jack-a-dandy, which will you have, upper hand or lower? if you happen to guess right, he slips whatever you are playing with into his other hand; and that you know is not playing fair; and so many of the boys tell him; but he does not mind any of us. And as he is clever at his learning, and always does his exercise quite right, Mr. Chiron (who indeed does not know of his tricks) is very fond of him, and is for ever saying what a clever fellow he is, and proposing him as an example to the rest of the boys; and I do believe many of them imitate his deceitful, cheating tricks, only for the sake of being thought like him.’

‘Aye! it is a sad thing,’ interrupted the gentleman, ‘that people who are blessed with sense and abilities to behave well, should so misuse them as to set a bad, instead of a good example to others, and by that means draw many into sin, who otherwise, perhaps, might never have acted wrong. Was this Sharply, you have been speaking of, a dunce and blockhead at his book, he would never gain the commendations that Mr. Chiron now bestows upon him; and, consequently, no boy would wish to be thought like him; his bad example, therefore, would not be of half the importance it now is.

‘Only think, then, my dear children, how extremely wicked it is, for those who are blessed with understandings capable of acting as they should do, and making people admire them, at the same time to be guilty of such real and great sin. For, however children at play may like to trick and deceive each other, and call it only play or fun, still, let me tell you, they are much mistaken if they flatter themselves there is no harm in it. It is a very wrong way of behaviour; it is mean, it is dishonorable, and it is wicked; and the boy or girl who would ever permit themselves to act in so unjustifiable a manner, however they may excel in their learning, or exterior accomplishments, can never be deserving of esteem, confidence, or regard. What esteem or respect could I ever entertain of a person’s sense or learning, who made no better use of it than to practise wickedness with more dexterity and grace than he otherwise would be enabled to do? Or, what confidence could I ever place in the person who, I knew, only wanted a convenient opportunity to defraud, trick, and deceive me? Or, what regard and love could I possibly entertain for such a one, who, unless I kept a constant watch over, as I must over a wild beast, would, like a wild beast, be sure to do me some injury? Would it be possible, I say, to love such a character, whatever shining abilities or depth of learning he might possess? Ask your own hearts, my dears, whether you think you could?’

To this they all answered at once, ‘No, that I could not,’ and ‘I am sure I could not.’ ‘Well, then,’ resumed the father, ‘only think how odious that conduct must be, which robs us of the esteem, confidence, and love of our fellow-creatures; and that too, notwithstanding we may at the same time be very clever, and have a great deal of sense and learning. But, for my part, I confess I know not the least advantage of our understanding or our learning, unless we make a proper use of them. Knowing a great deal, and having read a great many books, will be of no service to us, unless we are careful to make a proper use of that knowledge, and to improve by what we read, otherwise the time we so bestow is but lost, and we might as well spend the whole of our lives in idleness.

‘Always remember, therefore, my loves, that the whole end of our taking the trouble to instruct you, or putting ourselves to the expense of sending you to school, or your attending to what is taught you, is, that you may grow better men and women than you otherwise would be; and unless, therefore, you do improve, we might as well spare ourselves the pains and expense, and you need not take the trouble of learning; since, if you will act wickedly, all our labour is but thrown away to no manner of purpose.