o be a poet--there is so
much to be put in one. I had now got two of the ingredients--good
sense and imagination; and I knew by their help that the third
ingredient was to be found in the library; for a great man has said
and written that there are romances which are useful in easing people
of a superfluity of tears, and which also act as a sort of swamp to
cast feelings into. I remembered some of these books; they had always
looked very enticing to me. They were so thumbed, so greasy, they must
have been very popular.

"I returned home to the library, ate almost as much as a whole
romance--that is to say, the soft part of it, the pith--but the crust,
the binding, I let alone. When I had digested this, and another to
boot, I perceived how my inside was stirred up; so I ate part of a
third, and then I considered myself a poet, and every one about me
said I was. I had headaches, of course, and all sorts of aches. I
thought over what story I could work up about a sausage-stick, and
there was no end of sticks and pegs crowding my mind. The queen ant
had had an uncommon intellect. I remembered the man who took a white
peg into his mouth, and both he and it became invisible. All my
thoughts ran upon sticks. A poet can write even upon these; and I am a
poet I trust, for I have fagged hard to be one. I shall be able every
day in the week to amuse you with the story of a stick. This is my
soup."

"Let us hear the third," said the King of the Mice.

"Pip, pip!" said a little mouse at the kitchen door. It was the fourth
of them, the one they thought dead. She tripped in, and jumped upon
the upper end of the sausage-stick with the black crape. She had been
journeying day and night, travelling on the railroad by the goods
train, in which she took great pleasure, and yet she had almost
arrived too late; but she hurried forward, puffing and panting, and
looking very much jaded. She had lost her sausage-stick, but not her
voice; for she began talking with the utmost velocity, as if every one
was dying to hear her, and no one could say anything to the purpose
but herself. How she did chatter! But she had arrived so unexpectedly
that no one had time to find fault with her or her talking, so she
went on. Now let us listen.

IV.

WHAT THE FOURTH MOUSE--WHO SPOKE BEFORE THE THIRD ONE HAD SPOKEN--HAD
TO RELATE.

"I went straight to the greatest city," she said. "I do not remember
its name. I do not recollect names well. I came fro