A MOUSE'S STORY.

Men call me a thief. I wonder if they are right. I used to live in the fields, and I found nuts and acorns in the woods for my little family. Then a man came. He dug up my field and planted his own crops. He destroyed my home and killed my little children. He said that the nuts were his, and the field, too, was his. I thought they were mine.

Now I have to live on what I can find near his house. I am sure I eat a great deal that he would not care for. Usually I am half-starved. It seems to me as if the world were big enough for me to have a corner of it in peace.

I dare say the man thinks that he is wholly in the right. He says I am very troublesome, and he sets a trap every night to catch me. One night I was caught by the paw, and held for hours in an agony of fright and pain. I have been lame ever since. He would have been kinder if he had killed me outright.

There is another dreadful trap which does not hurt at all at first, and it is often used for this reason. There is a little door which opens easily, and you find yourself in a wire house. There you starve to death, unless some one comes to drown you. If we are to be caught in traps, I wish that we might be put out of pain at once.

WISE RATS.

Rats are clever and intelligent, and in their way are very useful. In large cities they eat the garbage which collects in harbors and at the mouths of drains. This would cause sickness if it were not removed.

Although the rat's work takes him into the foulest places, he always keeps himself neat and tidy. To wash his coat he uses his tongue and paws in the same way that a cat uses hers, and he invariably takes such a bath after he has been eating or working.

Rats are disliked and hunted by men, yet they often shield our homes from the danger of disease. When rats infest a place it is proof that there is work for them to do, and though they may easily become a plague, we should remember that it was probably our own carelessness which first brought them.