LITTLE JACK ROLLAROUND[1]

　　"This is very terrible," said the little Country Mouse; "let us not go back to the cupboard again."

　　"No," said the City Mouse, "I will take you to the cellar; there is something especial there."

　　So the City Mouse took his little friend down the cellar stairs and into a big cupboard where there were many shelves.  On the shelves were jars of butter, and cheeses in bags and out of bags.  Overhead hung bunches of sausages, and there were spicy apples in barrels standing about.  It smelled so good that it went to the little Country Mouse's head.  He ran along the shelf and nibbled at a cheese here, and a bit of butter there, until he saw an especially rich, very delicious-smelling piece of cheese on a queer little stand in a corner. He was just on the point of putting his teeth into the cheese when the City Mouse saw him.

　　"Stop! stop!" cried the City Mouse. "That is a trap!"

　　The little Country Mouse stopped and said, "What is a trap?"

　　"That thing is a trap," said the little City Mouse.  "The minute you touch the cheese with your teeth something comes down on your head hard, and you're dead."

　　The little Country Mouse looked at the trap, and he looked at the cheese, and he looked at the little City Mouse.  "If you'll excuse me," he said, "I think I will go home.  I'd rather have barley and grain to eat and eat it in peace and comfort, than have brown sugar and dried prunes and cheese,--and be frightened to death all the time!"

　　So the little Country Mouse went back to his home, and there he stayed all the rest of his life.

　　LITTLE JACK ROLLAROUND[1]

　　[1] Based on Theodor Storm's story of Der Kleine Hawelmanu (George Westermann, Braunschweig).  Very freely adapted from the German story.