
A moonlit night finds a tiny mauve mouse dancing across a silver beam that drifts lazily across the floor. She chats with an ancient clock, whose slow ticking carries stories of generations of mice who once performed dignified minuets under its watchful face. When the clock mentions Christmas, the mouse’s excitement bubbles over, recalling past gifts from Santa and her own promise to stay well‑behaved.
The conversation deepens as the mouse recounts the cautionary tale of her late sister, a skeptical little fellow who doubted the world’s familiar myths and paid a steep price. Through this gentle recollection, the story weaves humor and a touch of melancholy, highlighting the mouse’s yearning for wonder while hinting at the lurking dangers of the household cat. Listeners are invited into a charming, slightly bittersweet world where imagination and tradition meet under the glow of a single moonbeam.
Language
en
Duration
~23 minutes (22K characters)
Publisher of text edition
Project Gutenberg
Credits
Produced by Louise Hope, David Edwards and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)
Release date
2009-01-04
Rights
Public domain in the USA.
Subjects

1850–1895
Best remembered for warm, playful poems for children, this American writer mixed humor, tenderness, and an ear for everyday speech. His verses helped make him one of the most popular newspaper poets of the late 19th century.
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