Such is the mouse as it appears to man. It is true that he is obliged to wage war with it, for it is so prolific that if man and its other enemies did not keep down its numbers it would, in a very short time, produce a famine in the land. It has most destructive habits of burrowing in walls, and eating holes in flooring and wainscots; while its depredations in stacks, granaries, and other similar places are serious. Thus man is forced in self-defence to war against mice; but he does it without ill-feeling, and would rather be able to leave the pretty little things alone. The last thing that would enter his mind would be to be afraid of them, and the terror with which they inspire women is to him absolutely unaccountable. In many respects women are to the full as brave and courageous as men. In the horrors of a shipwreck, in the dangers of a siege, in times of great peril, such as the Indian Mutiny, women have, over and over again, showed themselves to be at least equal to men in bravery, in calmness, and in endurance. But the woman who would, pale but firm, face a lion in an arena, will fly in terror from a mouse; and many a moment of sweet revenge and triumph has been felt by men with spouses of strong minds and shrewish tongues, when they have seen them paralysed with terror by a tiny mouse.

History records no example of a mouse attacking a man, and, when tamed, they never use their teeth. They have no powers of scratching; they cannot assume a threatening aspect; they neither show their teeth, growl, nor spit; they cannot stick up their furs as can a cat; they are, in fact, absolutely without means of aggression, and yet women quail before them. Man has wearied himself with conjectures as to this phenomenon. The Greek and Roman philosophers were posed by it, and the saying, parturiunt montes, nascitur ridiculus mus, which has ignorantly been supposed to signify that a small matter was produced after great labour, has, when critically examined, an entirely different and far more profound meaning. The philosopher clearly desired to signify that it needed the labour of mountains to produce a creature capable of awing the female mind. In the Greek fable of the Lion and the Mouse, the same feeling of respect and appreciation for the smaller animal is clearly shown. Some have gone so far as to trace back the enmity between the female and the mouse to the earliest times, and the argument has been advanced that the word translated as serpent, in the account of the Fall of Man, really signified mouse, an explanation which alone seems to satisfy the exigencies of the case.

This hypothesis is greatly strengthened by the fact that the mouse does go on its belly; alone among quadrupeds its feet cannot be seen to move, and it apparently glides along on its stomach. Then, again, its head, and, indeed, its whole body, is very frequently bruised, and, in fact, crushed by the human heel, and for every serpent upon which this process is performed it is done a hundred thousand times upon mice. The mouse does not, it is true, in return bruise the heel of its bruiser; but neither does the serpent, so that this objection applies equally in both cases—indeed, a tight shoe is the only article which habitually bruises or raises blisters upon the human heel. This is no novel idea, for in some old paintings the tempter is pictured in the form of a mouse sitting on Eve’s shoulder, and whispering in her ear. That the Jews entertained a feeling of abhorrence for the mouse far above anything that can be accounted for by natural causes, is proved by the fact that Isaiah lxvi. 17 says, “Eating the abomination, and the mouse.” These facts, coupled with the abject terror inspired by the mouse in the female mind, are really worthy of the attention of divines, who cannot fail to notice that whereas the creature, translated serpent, is said to be more subtle than any other beast of the field, the word cunning, which is synonymous with subtle, is still essentially applied to the mouse; while—putting aside the fact that the snake is not a beast at all—no modern investigator has ever claimed any particular amount of cunning for the serpent.

The terror with which women regard the mouse finds expression in various unlooked-for ways. Man has no peculiar liking for his nether integuments, as is evidenced by the eagerness with which cockney sportsmen, who go North, don the Highland garb instead of trousers, and by the popularity among the young fellows who constitute the Scottish Volunteers, of the ordinance which transformed the whole regiment into a “kilted” corps. Among women, however, movements are constantly taking place for the adoption of male lower garments. Sometimes these are spoken of as bloomers, sometimes as knickerbockers, sometimes as divided skirts. The advocates of these garments base their arguments on the ground of health and convenience; but men, who go beneath the surface, are well aware that these are but pretexts, and that the real reason why women desire masculine garb is that they may the better protect their lower limbs from the onslaught of the marauding mouse. No one who has ever seen a woman stand on a chair and wrap her garments tightly round her ankles upon the alarm of “mouse,” can question how keen is the consciousness among the sex of the possibilities of attack by their formidable opponents offered by the present style of clothing. It cannot be pretended that it is the mere fear of being bitten which so unhinges the female nerves where mice are concerned, for there are women who make parrots their pets, although parrots sometimes bite atrociously, and are singularly treacherous withal. There are others who pet spiteful cats, and snappish lap-dogs, and whom neither scratches nor occasional bites at all discompose. It cannot, therefore, be argued that any fear of pain is at the bottom of their antipathy for mice. The mere fact that here and there women can be found who profess not to be afraid of mice in no way affects the general truth of the argument. There are women who are not afraid of cows; who will not jump up in an open boat if it rocks; who are not fond of babies; who do not care for kissing their female friends in public. There are even women who will dress as they please, and not as their dressmakers tell them. But these are the exceptions which prove rules, and the almost universal fear of mice by women can be accounted for only upon the hypothesis of which we have above made mention.