hat most of the boys who read it will be
better than he is. I do want, however, to tell you about some children
of whom I am very particularly fond, and whom most of you do not know.
These children live in the town of Nomatterwhat, which, as you are
probably aware, is in the State of Nomatterwhere, which again is, or
really ought to be, one of the United States of America. Perhaps these
are Indian names; similarly, perhaps they are not. There are five of
these children, and I call them my Five Mice; and the queer house that
they live in I call the Mouse-trap. They are such funny children! I
watch them sometimes all day long, their pranks are so amusing; and then
when night comes, I slide down a moonbeam and sit by their pillows, and
tell them stories and sing them songs. Ah! they like that, you may
believe! And you all shall hear the stories and songs too, if you like,
for I will write them down. So now, children all, listen! in America,
Jennie and Johnny; in France, Marie and Emil; in Germany, Gretchen and
Hans; in Italy, Tita and Nanni; in Kamschatka, Patchko and Tinka. Listen
all, great and small, to the old

MAN IN THE MOON

CHAPTER II.

THE MOUSE-TRAP.

[Illustration]

MANY years ago, _very_ many years as you would think, though the time
seems short enough for me, there came to the little village (as it then
was), of Nomatterwhat, an old man. He was a very queer old man, and
nobody knew where he came from, or anything about him, except what he
told them himself; and that was very little besides the fact that his
name was Jonas Junk, that he had come to Nomatterwhat because he chose
to come, and that he would stay exactly as long as it pleased him and no
longer. The good people of the village, finding him such a very gruff
and crusty old fellow, thought it best to let him alone; and this being
exactly what old Jonas Junk wanted, he was well satisfied. Apparently
what he wanted beside was to build a house for himself: at all events,
that is what he did. He bought a large piece of ground and built a high
wall all round it, and put the ugliest and most vicious looking iron
spikes that you can imagine all along the top of the wall. Then he chose
the sunniest and most sheltered spot he could find on the place, and
there the old man built his house. Well, to be sure, what a queer house
it was! in the first place, there were three separate flights of stairs,
one for old Jonas himself, one for his ca