LESSON XXV.

STORIES ABOUT MICE.

When the cat's away The mice will play.

1. Mice increase so fast that, if we did not have some way to destroy them, they would soon overrun the house, so that we could not live in it.

2. They have their homes in the hollow walls, and can go about from one part of the house to the other without being seen; and when they smell food they gnaw a hole through the wall to get at it.

3. They are playful little animals, and may easily be tamed. When a mouse comes into the room where people live, it is ready to run away at once if anything moves.

4. But if all are still, it will scamper about the floor, and look over and smell everything in the room. The next day it will come back, and finally it will play about the room as if no one were there.

5. The mice that run about the house have gray coats; but some mice are white, with pink eyes, and these are often tamed and kept as pets.

6. A lady once tamed a common gray mouse, so that it would eat out of her hand. She also had a while mouse in a cage.

7. The gray mouse was very angry when he saw the lady pet the white mouse; and one day he some way got into the cage, and when the lady came back into the room, she found the white mouse was dead.

8. Music sometimes seems to have a strange effect upon a mouse. At one time, when a man was playing upon his violin, a mouse came out of his hole and danced about the floor. He seemed almost frantic with delight, and kept time to the music for several minutes. At last he stopped, fell over on the floor, and they found he was dead.