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THE SINGING MOUSE STORIES
THE LAND OF THE SINGING MOUSE
This is my room. I live here; and my friends come here sometimes, such as I have left. There is little to offer them, but they are welcome to what there is. There is the table. There is the fire. There are not any keys.
That is my coat upon the wall. It is worn, a little. The barrels of the old gun are worn; and the stock of the rifle, broken in the mountains long ago, is mended but rudely; and the tip of the old rod is broken, and the silk is fraying in the lashings, and upon the hand-grasp the cord is loose. The silver cord will loosen and break in the best of men in time; wherefore, I beseech you, mock not at these belongings, though your own may far surpass them. You are welcome to anything there is here....
But the Singing Mouse will not come out, not while you are here. True, after you have gone, after the fire has burned down and the room is all still--usually near midnight, as I sit and muse alone over the dead or dying fire--true, then the Singing Mouse comes out and asks for its bit of bread; and then it folds its tiny paws and sits up, and turning its bright red eye upon me, half in power and half in beseeching, as of some fading memory of the past--why, it sings, I say to you; it sings! And I listen.... During such singing the fire blazes up. The walls are rich in art. My rod is new and trig. There is work, but there is no worry.... I am rich, rich! I have the Singing Mouse. And so strange, so wondrous, so real are the things it sings; so bewitching is the song, so sweeter than that of any siren's; so broad and fine are the countries; so strong and true are the friendships; so brave and kind are the men I meet--so beautiful the whole world of the Singing Mouse, that when it is over, and in a chill I start up, I scarce can bear the shrinking in of the walls, and the grayness of the once red fire, and my gold turned to earthenware, and my pictures turned to splotches. In my hand everything I touch feels awkward. A pen--a pen--to talk of that? If one could use it while in the land of the Singing Mouse--then it might do. I think the pens there are not of wood and iron, stiff things of torture to reader and writer. I have a notion--though I have not examined the pens there--that they are made from plumes of an angel's wing; and that if they chose they could talk, and say things which would make you and me ashamed and afraid. Pens such as these we do not have.
THE BURDEN OF A SONG
The Singing Mouse came out. Quaintly and sweetly and with wondrous clearness it began an old, old song I first heard long ago. And as it sang, back with red electric thrill came the fine blood of youth, and beat in pulse with the song:
"When all the world is young, lad, And all the trees are green, And every goose a swan, lad, And every lass a queen.
"Then hey! for boot and saddle, lad, And round the world away! Young blood must have its course, lad, And every dog his day!"
And young blood began its course anew. Booted and spurred, into the saddle again! Face toward the West! And off for round the world away!
"There are green fields in Thrace," sighs the gladiator as he dies. And here were green fields in the land before us. Only, these were the inimitable and illimitable fields of Nature. Sheets and waves and billows and tumbles of green; oceans unswum, continents untracked, of thousandfold green. Then, on beyond, the gray, the gray-brown, the purple-gray of the higher plains; nearer than that, a broad slash of great golden yellow, a band of the sturdy prairie sunflowers; and nearer than that, swimming on the surface of the mysterious wave which constantly passes but is never past on the prairies, bright red roses, and strong larkspur, and at the bottom of this ever-shifting sea, jewels in God's best blue enamel. You can not find this enamel in the windows. One must send for it to the land of the unswum sea.
A little higher and stronger piped the compelling melody. Why, here are the mountains! God bless them! Nay, brother, God has blessed them; blessed them with unbounded calm, with boundless strength, with unspeakable peace. You can take your troubles to the mountains. If you are Pueblo, Aztec, you can select some big mountain and pray to it, as its top shows the red sentience of the on-coming day. You can take your troubles to the sea; but the sea has troubles of its own, and frets. There is commerce on the sea, and the people who live near it are fretful, greedy, grasping. The mountains have no troubles; they have no commerce. The dwellers of the mountains are calm and unfretted.
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