The Chinese say, with quaint common-sense, "A mouse can drink no more than its fill from a river." Beyond a certain point that is soon reached all else is needless superfluity.
The strained relations between the cat and the mouse form the subject of divers popular adages. How good is the Scottish, "Weel kens the mouse when the cat's oot o' the house," paralleled in our English version, "When the cat's away the mice will play," or in the French, "Les rats se promenent a l'aise la ou il n'y a point des chats," and there is a pleasant vein of truth and humour in the assertion that "Mice care not to play with kittens."
In the "Order of Foles," a manuscript of about the year 1450, we find the graphic declaration that "It is a hardy mouse that is bold to breede in cattis eeris"; and Skelton writes, in 1520, "It is a wyly mouse that can build his dwellinge house within the cattes eare."[184:A] Heywood and other later writers also refer to this proverb in their various works.
The query, "Who shall bell the cat?" may be called a fable abridged, for it contains the point of one. The mice held a consultation how to secure themselves from the too marked attentions of the cat, and someone suggested that it would be an excellent plan to hang a bell round her neck, so as to give warning of her approach. The idea was taken up warmly, but then the point arose—Who shall do it?
"Quoth one mouse unto the rest,
Which of us all dare be so stout
To hang the bell cat's neck about:
If here be any let him speake.
Then all replide, We are too weake;
The stoutest mouse and tallest rat
Doe tremble at a grim-fac'd cat."
The above is from "Diogenes Lanthorne," issued in the year 1607. Heywood writes:
"Who shall ty the bell about the cat's necke low?
Not I (quoth the mouse) for a thing that I know."
To "smell a rat" is to have one's suspicions aroused as to something concealed, and is suggested by the eagerness of dog or cat to follow scent. The saying will be found in Ben Jonson's "Tale of a Tub," in Butler's "Hudibras," and elsewhere.
The art of the fisherman supplies material for some few wisdom-chips. "All is fysshe that cometh to net" we read in "Colyn Cloute" and other old sources of information.[185:A] "To swallow a gudgeon" is to be caught by some designing schemer's bait, some lying prospectus of the "All-England Aërated Soap Company, Limited," in which it is shown that the profits must necessarily warrant a dividend of sixty-five per cent. after six hundred thousand pounds have been set aside for working expenses. "To throw away a sprat to catch a herring" is a popular adage and of much good sense. "All fish are not caught with flies" is a useful hint too—all people that we would influence are not open to the same considerations. "It is a silly fish that is caught twice with the same bait." To err is human, and to be once entrapped may easily happen, but it is mere folly not to profit by bitter experience. The French say, "C'est la sauce qui fait le poisson," and the way in which a thing is presented to one is often of great importance. The use of proper means to effect our purpose is enforced in the warning that "Fish are not to be caught with a bird-call."
It is excellent advice to "Never offer to teach monkeys to climb up trees"—another variant on instruction in ovisuction. It is very true, too, that "Monkeys are never more beasts than when they wear men's clothes" and "ape" humanity.