aid the mouse-king; "shall we
not now hear about the preparation?"

"That 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 the store-room. On my journey, and
here to-day, are the only times I have ever seen a kitchen. We were
often obliged to suffer hunger in the library, but then 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,
however, she could not read, but had heard it read, and in it was
written, 'Those who are poets can make soup of sausage skewers.' She
then asked me if I was a poet. 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 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 be quite easy to you.'

"So I went forth into the world, and turned my steps towards the
west, that I might become a poet. Understanding is the most
important matter in everything. I knew that, for the two other
qualifications are not thought much of; so I went first to seek for
understanding. Where was I to find it? 'Go to the ant and learn
wisdom,' said the great Jewish king. I knew that from living in a
library. So I went straight on till I came to the first great
ant-hill, and then 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;' and that they truly do. They are
divided into the clean and the dirty ants, their rank is pointed out
by a number, and the ant-queen is number ONE; and her opinion is the
only correct one on everything; s