This is my room. I live here; and my friends come here
sometimes, such as I have left. There is little to offer them,
but they are welcome to what there is. There is the table. There
is the fire. There are not any keys.
That is my coat upon the wall. It is worn, a little. The barrels
of the old gun are worn; and the stock of the rifle, broken in
the mountains long ago, is mended but rudely; and the tip of the
old rod is broken, and the silk is fraying in the lashings, and
upon the hand-grasp the cord is loose. The silver cord will
loosen and break in the best of men in time; wherefore,
I beseech you, mock not at these belongings, though your own may
far surpass them. You are welcome to anything there is here....
But the Singing Mouse will not come out, not while you are here.
True, after you have gone, after the fire has burned down and
the room is all still--usually near midnight, as I sit and muse
alone over the dead or dying fire--true, then the Singing Mouse
comes out and asks for its bit of bread; and then it folds its
tiny paws and sits up, and turning its bright red eye upon me,
half in power and half in beseeching, as of some fading memory
of the past--why, it sings, I say to you; it sings! And I
listen.... During such singing the fire blazes up. The walls are
rich in art. My rod is new and trig. There is work, but there is
no worry.... I am rich, rich! I have the Singing Mouse. And so
strange, so wondrous, so real are the things it sings; so
bewitching is the song, so sweeter than that of any siren's;
so broad and fine are the countries; so strong and true are the
friendships; so brave and kind are the men I meet--so beautiful
the whole world of the Singing Mouse, that when it is over, and
in a chill I start up, I scarce can bear the shrinking in of the
walls, and the grayness of the once red fire, and my gold turned
to earthenware, and my pictures turned to splotches. In my
hand everything I touch feels awkward. A pen--a pen--to talk
of that? If one could use it while in the land of the Singing
Mouse--then it might do. I think the pens there are not of wood
and iron, stiff things of torture to reader and writer. I have a
notion--though I have not examined the pens there--that they are
made from plumes of an angel's wing; and that if they chose they
could talk, and say things which would make you and me ashamed
and afraid. Pens such as these we do not have.
[Illustration]
[Illustration: The Burden of A Song]
[Illustration]