Uncle Dick and Lisa's Old Time Animal Tales

A Scotchman, who evidently as patient as he is ingenious, has trained two little mice to spin thread with an apparatus of which he is the inventor. The mechanical principle of the contrivance is a small mill, which is operated by the paws of the mice. They can each wind on and off per day from 100 to 120 pieces of thread, and do this they must supply a motor power by which a course of ten and one-half miles be traversed. Although the two mice are quite small they perform this task every day without apparent fatigue. A cent’s worth of flour furnishes them enough food for five weeks. During that time the little animals have spun in the neighborhood of 3,850 threads, each about one and one-half yard’s long. At this rate each mouse earns not quite one-half cent per day, or the munificent sum of about $2 per year. The ingenious inventor proposes to build a house 90 feet long, 45 feet wide and 48 feet high, which he expects to equip on a large scale with thread mills operated by mice. He says he can put in about 10,000 mills.-St. Louis Post-Dispatch.