Adventures in indigence, and other essays

by Laura Spencer Portor

I was discontent with our order of things, not to say conscience-stricken, and thought much about it. How we patronize and humiliate and rout and exterminate these humbler folk! With how marked an arrogance we deal with them! How we impose our morals upon them, and bid them live up to our laws or be gone! They must exist in the presence of a perpetual ultimatum. No court is held for their benefit. There is no appeal possible save to mouse-traps with their inevitable death-penalty. There is no more chance of getting their case correctly stated before us than before the White Queen. Who ever listened to even their most able and eloquent attorney?

"My lords," he begins, with nervous whiskers, "the case of my client is one that especially commends itself to human clemency. Six little ones at home, my lords, and not a mouthful to eat! If this, my lords, if this be not—"

"Off with his head! Sentence first" (the inevitable sentence!), "verdict afterward!"

So we behave ourselves atrociously toward these, who, though of a humbler order, are yet susceptible, I doubt not, of sensibilities and sorrows and enjoyments; we, who in turn are so ready to abuse our own order for their atrocities when we do not happen to be a party to them.

These things are disturbing to philosophy and troubling to the heart. How shall we with a conscience justify ourselves in the eyes of the animal creation? Humbler folk than ourselves, yet I cannot think that mice suffer by a comparison. I have attended to them with much speculative attention, and I have found them a peaceable people without malice. The worst offense that I have to record against them is the demolition of several fine books in my library; but it was done (it is not fair to hide this testimony) with the high intent of providing a comfortable nest for the birth and early tending of the tender young. As much cannot be said for the destruction of Louvain, for the shelling of Rheims. They have purloined my cheese and been sly as to my soap and tallow candles, but not, you will note, that they might grow disproportionately fat and sleek thereon; no, nor for the sake of banking these riches, to exchange them later for horseless carriages in which to loll lazily or to pursue madly some unwholesome excitement; no, nor yet to lay such things by in hoard and stores in such a manner as to make it difficult or impossible for others to have the same pleasure as themselves. No; they took only what hunger rendered legitimate, a few satisfying nibbles at the candle, then leaving it free, with a fine democracy, for the next man to take whatever was his need.

Where shall you find me a millionaire, or even a moderately conscientious business man among us, with as generous and as democratic a tendency? We who are so sharp with them, so eager to give them the death-penalty, would we have thieved as little as they? Nor have I ever, for all my listenings, been able to hear any quarrelings or recriminations among them. Solicitous cautions, dangerous adventure, frolickings and gigglings and squeaking laughter I have heard, but nothing to compare with our harshnesses, spoken and unspoken; nor do I believe them capable either of our sullenness or our spites. I have met, as have most of us, with days of such from honorable men and women, which I do not believe a mouse—of a so much lower order!—would for a moment be capable of.

In the face of uncertainties and disappointments such as theirs, what would become, I wonder, of our philosophy? Yet they would appear to maintain their gentleness unspoiled. We who take offense so readily; we who would boast if we forgave a man seven times seven! They, it would appear from easily collected data, do, in all likelihood, forgive seven hundred times seventy, and make no ado about it at all. They seem always ready to try life anew, and to give you another chance to be generous.

I was sitting once in the library of the old house, of which I have written, reading. Stillness and the stars were out; a fire burned on the hearth, for the night was cold. I read by the light of a lamp a book that I loved. At my feet slept Commodore, my collie, his pointed nose resting on his paws. On the rug by the fire was the old tortoise-shell cat, Lady Jane, a spoiled but endeared companion. Both had had their supper so bounteously that the dish of milk lay unemptied still on the hearth, and, like the Giant in the fairy tale, they slept "from repletion."

They slept and I read, and for comfort of mind and body you might have gone far to find three so comfortable as we that night. And then presently I became aware of a little timorous shadow, that was not a shadow, after all, but a tiny, tiny mouse. It put up its nose and sniffed the air nor'-nor'-west, sou'-sou'-east. It tasted the possible danger with its whiskers. It tasted and made sure, delicately, like a connoisseur. Could the great adventure be risked?

I can give you no idea by what sensitive soundings and testings and deliberations and speculations it at last crept into the flickering firelight. I wish I could convey to you the delicacy of its behavior: manners to make those of Commodore and Lady Jane (they with their sounding titles!) seem crude and greedy and plebeian. Its little pauses said, "May I?" Its delicate deliberations conveyed, "If I am troubling no one?" Its hesitations offered, "If I may be so bold?" And then, after these preliminaries, it took its place how politely on the brim of the flat dish of milk, and drank, and raised its head, and drank, paused and drank again, daintily. Once, I thought, it offered a courteous toast to me and my silence.