t is all," answered the little mouse, with a bow.

"That all!" said the mouse-king; "then we shall be glad to hear what
information the next may have to give us."

WHAT THE SECOND MOUSE HAD TO TELL

"I was born in the library, at a castle," said the second mouse. "Very
few members of our family ever had the good fortune to get into the
dining room, much less into the storeroom. To-day and while on my
journey are the only times I have ever seen a kitchen. We were often
obliged to suffer hunger in the library, but we gained a great deal of
knowledge. The rumor reached us of the royal prize offered to those who
should be able to make soup from a sausage skewer.

"Then my old grandmother sought out a manuscript,--which she herself
could not read, to be sure, but she had heard it read,--and in it were
written these words, 'Those who are poets can make soup of sausage
skewers.' She asked me if I was a poet. I told her I felt myself quite
innocent of any such pretensions. Then she said I must go out and make
myself a poet. I asked again what I should be required to do, for it
seemed to me quite as difficult as to find out how to make soup of a
sausage skewer. My grandmother had heard a great deal of reading in her
day, and she told me that three principal qualifications were
necessary--understanding, imagination, and feeling. 'If you can manage
to acquire these three, you will be a poet, and the sausage-skewer soup
will seem quite simple to you.'

"So I went forth into the world and turned my steps toward the west,
that I might become a poet. Understanding is the most important matter
of all. I was sure of that, for the other two qualifications are not
thought much of; so I went first to seek understanding. Where was I to
find it?

"'Go to the ant and learn wisdom,' said the great Jewish king. I learned
this from living in a library. So I went straight on till I came to the
first great ant hill. There I set myself to watch, that I might become
wise. The ants are a very respectable people; they are wisdom itself.
All they do is like the working of a sum in arithmetic, which comes
right. 'To work, and to lay eggs,' say they, 'and to provide for
posterity, is to live out your time properly.' This they truly do. They
are divided into clean and dirty ants, and their rank is indicated by a
number. The ant-queen is number ONE. Her opinion is the only correct one
on everything, and she seems to have in her the wisdom of the wh