The Singing Mouse Stories

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THE SINGING MOUSE STORIES

by

EMERSON HOUGH

Author of The Purchase Price, 54-40 or Fight, Etc.

With Decorations by Mayo Bunker







[Illustration]


[Illustration]



New York
Hurst & Company
Publishers

Copyright 1910
by Emerson Hough

[Illustration]




CONTENTS


  The Land of the Singing Mouse        _Page_ 11
  The Burden of a Song                        19
  The Little River                            31
  What the Waters Said                        41
  Lake Belle-Marie                            55
  The Skull and the Rose                      67
  The Man of the Mountain                     77
  At the Place of the Oaks                    83
  The Birth of the Hours                      99
  The Stone That Had No Thought              107
  The Tear and the Smile                     113
  How the Mountains Ate Up the Plains        123
  The Savage and Its Heart                   131
  The Beast Terrible                         137
  The Passing of Men                         155
  The House of Truth                         167
  Where the City Went                        181
  The Bell and the Shadows                   193
  Of the Greatest Sorrow                     205
  The Shoes of the Princess                  215
  Of White Moths                             225
  The House of Dreams                        231




THE SINGING MOUSE STORIES

[Illustration]




[Illustration: The Land of the Singing Mouse]


[Illustration]

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.

[Illustration]




[Illustration: The Burden of A Song]


[Illustration]

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.