A MOUSE-STORY.
[To TX! EDITOR OF THE *8PECTATOR:1 SIR,—A lady living in my house in the country announced to me one day that she bad tamed a family of mice, consisting of a father and mother and seven young mouse children, who had made their nest in the partially decayed sash-frame of the window in her first-floor bedroom, which had an opening on to the sill outside. She further stated that she could identify each of the members of this family, and could induce them to come at her call, and feed out of her hand. These -statements appeared so incredible that I felt compelled to express my disbelief in them in the absence of personal proof of their veracity, and she therefore requested me to accompany her to her room, there to receive such evidence as would satisfy my doubts. I went and stood with her close to the open window, and she called the mice by the names, 'Jim,' Tom,' `Jack,' and so on, to which she asserted that she had accus- tomed them, and I saw them come, one by one, on to the window ledge, where they ate bread out her hand, and subse- quently out of my own, not timidly, but as if in full assurance of safety. On the afternoon of the same day I bad a small tennis party in the garden on to which this bedroom looked. My cousin, whose Christian name is Jim, was playing tennis, and several of the party, including myself, were sitting in the garden beneath the mouse window, when afternoon tea was brought out to us, and I called loudly "Jim," "Jim," several times to communicate that fact to my cousin. At the third or fourth call something ran across the path, and one of the party impulsively threw his low bat at it, and killed what we found to be a mouse.
The mouse-tamer was not of the party, and knew nothing of the occurrence, to which indeed none of us attached more than a. passing importance. The next morning however, still in ignorance of the incident, she distressfully informed us that her little ' Jim ' had disappeared from her family, and that, although the others appeared as usual at her call, be re- mained absent; and I know that he never reappeared. She had no doubt of the identity of the particular mouse which was missing, and unlikely as it seemed, one could not avoid the speculation that this special mouse had heard its own familiar name, and made its way rapidly down the ivy with which the house was covered, to meet with its sudden and violent death when it reached the ground. The whole thing may have been a mere coincidence ; but if so, it was certainly a curious one. I can absolutely vouch for the facts as I have stated them. The conclusions to be drawn from them I leave to your readers, if you consider the story worthy of publication.—I
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