Need Not Greed

James Thurber, the well-known American humorist, wrote a number of fables. In them, he pokes fun at our shortcomings by having animal characters act as humans do. One of these parables, “The Mouse and the Money” tells the tale of a money-loving rodent.

It seems a city mouse moved to the country to live in the walls of an old house. From the start, he ruled over the humble little country mice. He grew handlebar whiskers, wore his hair in the latest style and spoke with an accent. He even told the country mice that they were beneath him, or as he put it, that they came “from the wrong side of the mouse tracks.” Every day the newcomer bragged about his forebears, and when he ran out of ancestors he made some up. “My great-great-great-grandfather,” he said, “was a theater mouse at a renown concert hall in Paris. My family came to America in the bridal suite of a great French ocean liner, and…