On a sunny spring afternoon, while busy Farmer Brown was taking a nap in a shady place, Molly the little mouse came out from her house behind the big barn to see if anyone was about. But long before she could come anywhere near the barn, one of Farmer Brown’s children came skipping across the meadow with a little white dog and a big black kitten.
Now, if there was one thing more than another that Molly could not bear, it was a dog. So she just stopped and sat down and waited to see what would happen. Perhaps they wanted to play in the meadow; but it was plain enough, as Molly the little mouse sat watching, that none of the three were thinking about fun. The little girl had her mind on the greenback she was to have if she picked enough flower bouquets to fill some baskets that sat nearby.
The little white dog looked ahead and saw a cow and determined to tell that cow that he was the boss of the whole farm, even if farmer Brown didn’t treat him as such. The big black kitten, who was called Buster, wanted to claw the little white dog just to see how his hair would stand up, but Buster knew that after that he would get his.
They were all three thinking of what they wanted to do; but not one of them was thinking of the others and what they wanted to do. This made Molly the Mouse feel so sad about it that as soon as she could get close enough to scratch the door of her house behind the big barn, she hurried in.
When Molly sat down to supper that night, she told her husband, Mr. Mouse, just how it was that they were no happier than they were, and what a long, long way off the happy times of old seemed to be. So Molly told Open-Mouse all about it.
It was Open-Mouse’s turn to feel sad now. He took a hot potato and a half-burned candle from the kitchen, climbed up on a wooden box and began to make a speech about it, as soon as he could get people to listen to him and couldn’t stop talking for a long time.
The speech made Open-Mouse feel a great deal better. It seemed to cheer up a great many of those who heard it. And it brought out Mr. Finch from New England, although he never intended to come but was attracted. Almost as soon as he had got on his feet he spoke up very bravely.
“We can’t make others kinder and more thoughtful, but we can do something many of us forget. Each one may do something himself, however. Each one may do kind and thoughtful actions or deeds to others all in his daily life. And as he does this he will soon find others responding to his acts.
Try to be helpful and kind, and you will find that kindness spreads like the ripples in a pond or a chain of wild flowers. This is the best way to happiness; and the true way to win listeners always is to speak your own sincere feeling.
That is the business of a good speech, Mr. Finch.”
The next morning broke bright and clear, and Molly the Mouse woke up, with very confused impressions of what happened before. There was such a crowd round and about the front door that it was early noon before anyone thought of asking the little girl from over the way where her pet dog got all those great bones which she carried in the basket when she returned to the house.
And the next she was going to put to this question when she got the chance was, if her father couldn’t possibly find any more for Farmer Brown’s dog. If he couldn’t even save those that might drop on the way. The very next day, for the whole year after Farmer Brown’s dog was ofteener without his bone than he was with one. But the funny thing about it was, that all that time he not so much as growled when he saw Molly the Mouse, but only looked inquiringly at her.
“I wonder if he or she passed the good feeling on, after all, and are each in their own life doing two kinds acts every where they go?” said Buster to the black kitten.
“They might be, that’s for certain,” said the black kitten to the dog.
And it really looks as though every one of us thought about it much more, all this season, than at any time before.
But surely it doesn’t always mean growing so very busy that we have to put the real thought away altogether. There is still room in our lives for it here, Molly.