Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 1.djvu/337

Rh paid the penalty of its temerity by being captured. About a month after, this prodigy was intrusted [sic] to the custody of the writer. Of course, it came introduced as a "singing house-mouse." What was our astonishment at recognizing, in the little stranger, a true Hesperomys, and no house-mouse at all! It was one of the wood-mice, and among the smallest of the species. It is a female, and fully grown, yet not so large as a domestic mouse. Every pains was taken to secure the comfort and well-being of my little guest.

And what an ample reward I reaped! For a considerable time she carolled almost incessantly, except when she slept. Day and night she rollicked in tiny song, her best performances being usually at night. To me it was often a strange delight, when, having wrought into the late hours, and the weary brain had become so needful and yet so repellant of sleep, I lay down, and gave myself up to listening to this wee songster, whose little cage I had set on a chair by my bedside. To be sure, it was a low, very low, sweet voice. But there was, with a singular weirdness, something so sweetly merry, that I would listen on, and on, until I would fall asleep in the lullaby of my wingless and quadrupedal bob-o'-link [sic]. The cage had a revolving cylinder or wheel, such as tame squirrels have. In this it would run for many minutes at a time, singing at its utmost strength. This revolving cage, although ample as regards room, was not over three and a half inches long, and two and a half inches wide. Although I have now been entertained by these pretty little melodies for a year, yet I would not dare redescribe them. In the American Naturalist, for December, 1871, the music is given with that elaboration which was possible under impressions so novel and delightful. She had two especially notable performances. I called these rôles—one the wheel-song, because it was usually sung while in the revolving cylinder, and the other the grand rôle. A remarkable fact in the latter is the scope of the little creature's musical powers. Her soft, clear voice falls an octave with all the precision possible; then, at its wind-up, it rises again into a very quick trill on C sharp and D.

I must quote from the above a paragraph entire. Let me simply premise that in our household this little creature goes by the pet name "Hespie."