The City Mouse

موضوع: The City Mouse الثلاثاء أبريل 13, 2010 9:43 pm

The City Mouse

and the Country Mouse

Once a little mouse who lived in the
country invited a little Mouse from the city to visit him. When the little City Mouse sat down to dinner he was surprised to find
that the Country Mouse had nothing to eat except barley and grain.

"Really,"
he said, "you do not live well at all; you should see how I live! I have all sorts of fine things to eat every
day. You must come to visit me and see
how nice it is to live in the city."

The little Country Mouse was glad to
do this, and after a while he went to the city to visit his friend.

The very first place that the City Mouse took the Country Mouse to see
was the kitchen cupboard of the house where he lived. There, on the lowest shelf, behind some stone
jars, stood a big paper bag of brown sugar.
The little City Mouse gnawed a hole in the bag and invited his friend to
nibble for himself.

The two little mice nibbled and
nibbled, and the Country Mouse thought he had never tasted anything so delicious
in his life. He was just thinking how
lucky the City Mouse was, when suddenly the door opened with a bang, and in
came the cook to get some flour.

"Run!"
whispered the City Mouse. And they ran as fast as they could to the little hole
where they had come in. The little
Country Mouse was shaking all over when they got safely away, but the little
City Mouse said, "That is nothing; she will soon go away and then we can
go back."

After the cook had gone away and shut
the door they stole softly back, and this time the City Mouse had something new
to show: he took the little Country Mouse into a corner on the top shelf, where
a big jar of dried prunes stood open.
After much tugging and pulling they got a large dried prune out of the
jar on to the shelf and began to nibble at it.
This was even better than the brown sugar. The little Country Mouse liked the taste so
much that he could hardly nibble fast enough. But all at once, in the midst of
their eating, there came a scratching at the door and a sharp, loud MIAOUW!

"What is
that?" said the Country Mouse. The
City Mouse just whispered, "Sh!" and ran as fast as he could to the
hole.

The Country Mouse ran after, you may
be sure, as fast as HE could. As soon as
they were out of danger the City Mouse
said, "That was the old Cat; she is the best mouser in town,--if
she once gets you, you are lost."

"This is
very terrible," said the little Country Mouse; "let us not go back to
the cupboard again."

"No,"
said the City Mouse, "I will take you to the cellar; there is something
especial there."

So the City Mouse took his little
friend down the cellar stairs and into a big cupboard where there were many
shelves. On the shelves were jars of
butter, and cheeses in bags and out of bags.
Overhead hung bunches of sausages, and there were spicy apples in
barrels standing about. It smelled so
good that it went to the little Country Mouse's head. He ran along the shelf and nibbled at a
cheese here, and a bit of butter there, until he saw an especially rich, very
delicious-smelling piece of cheese on a queer little stand in a corner. He was
just on the point of putting his teeth into the cheese when the City Mouse saw
him.

"Stop!
stop!" cried the City Mouse. "That is a trap!"

The little Country Mouse stopped and
said, "What is a trap?"

"That thing
is a trap," said the little City Mouse.
"The minute you touch the cheese with your teeth something comes
down on your head hard, and you're dead."

The little Country Mouse looked at the
trap, and he looked at the cheese, and he looked at the little City Mouse. "If you'll excuse me," he said,
"I think I will go home. I'd rather
have barley and grain to eat and eat it in peace and comfort, than have brown
sugar and dried prunes and cheese,--and be frightened to death all the time!"

So the little Country Mouse went back
to his home, and there he stayed all the rest of his life.

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