Page 314 - The model orator, or, Young folks' speaker : containing the choicest recitations and readings from the best authors for schools, public entertainments, social gatherings, Sunday schools, etc. : including recitals in prose and verse ...

There is something real disagreeable about 1 laving a mouse inside
the leg of one's pantaloon.1;, especially if there is nothing between you
and the mouse. Its too;, are cold, and its nails arc scratchy, and its
flit1 tickles, and its ti.il feels crawly, and there is nothing pleasant about
it, and you arc aU Lhe time afraid it will try to gnaw out, and begin on
you instead of on the cloth. Tliat mouse was next to me. I could
feel its every motion with start: i tig and suggestive distinctness- For
these reasons 1 yelled to Maria, and as the case seemed urgent to me,
I may have yelled with a certain degree of vigo r; but I deny that I
yelled fire, and if I catch the boy who thought that I did, I shall inflict
punishment on his person,
I did not lose my presence of mind for an instant, I caught the
mouse just as it was clambering over my knee, and by pressing firmly
on the outside of the cloth, I kept the animal a prisoner on the inside,
I kept jumping around with all my might to confuse it, so that it
would not tlunk about biting, and I yelled so that the mice would not
hear its squeaks and come to its assistance. A man can’t handle many
mice at once to advantage,
Maria was white as a sheet when a he came into the kitchen, and
asked what she should do— as though I could hold the mouse and
plan a campaign at the .same time. I told her to think of something,
and she thought she would throw things at the intruder ; but as there
was no earthly chance for her to hit the mouse, while every shot
took effect on me, 1 told her to stop, after she had tried two flat-irons
md the coa"-scuttle. She paused for breath ; but I kept bobbing
around. Somehow 1 felt no inclination to sit down anywhere. *' G s
Joshua/1 she cried, u I wish you had not killed the cat.71 Now, I
submit that the wish was born of the weakness of woman’s intellect.
How on earth did she suppose a cat could get where that mouse was ?
TJather have the mouse there alone, anyway, than to have a cat
prowling around after it. I reminded Marin of the fact that she was
a fool.
Then she got the tea-kettle and wanted to scald the mouse. I ob­
jected to that process, except as a hist resort. Then she got some