Uncle Dick and Lisa's Old Time Animal Tales

One night last week, at a late hour, a gentleman of this city, who, as a matter of habit, rarely retires before midnight, had occasion at that “witching hour” to attend to the furnace fire before retiring. The wind was blowing almost a gale, and the rain was pouring down in torrents, and the night was one to induce a feeling of “uncertainty” in the heart of the bravest. The gentleman in question never indulges in intoxicating liquors, and there is no reason to suppose that his nerves were unusually disturbed. He is very fond of clams, however, and on the morning of the day when the incident ocured had ordered a peck of clams, which were to be cooked the next day. As he descended the stair on his midnight errand, with a lamp in his hand, and shading the lamp with his hand to shield it from the draft, he observed that the bucket of clams had been left at the foot of the stairs.
Groping his way slowly down the stairs, and looking cautiously for the cellar floor, he suddenly saw what appeared to be a small, white clam move gradually from the bucket, where he had hitherto been reposing peacefully with his mates, and work his way steadily and quickly across the cellar floor and mount the wall at the further side of the cellar, to a distance of three feet from the floor. Never having seen a clam walk before, and being especially interested in the apparent fact of the ability of a clam to climb a cellar wall, the gentleman courageously determined to investigate the matter in the interests of science and curiosity. He placed the lamp at a convenient position, took up a piece of barrel-hoop, and boldly advanced, resolving to become a martyr to science if need be. The white object proved to be indeed a clam, but the clam had used other means of locomotion than its own in navigating across the cellar floor. An indiscreet mouse had walked over the bucket of clams, and an ambitious clam had fastened his nippers on the mouse’s tail. The mouse becoming frightened at the advent of the gentleman above mentioned, started for his hole in the wall, when he was compelled to stop on account of the shell-fish attachment to his tail.
The gentleman who narrates the incident is very respectable, and is a regular attendant at church. Providence Journal.