One day, a long time ago, Robert Burns, the poet laureate of Scotland, was standing beside a field watching a plow cut through the soft brown earth, and he saw the plow cut in half the nest of a tiny field mouse. He went home, and that night in his little cottage, he wrote those lines which are remembered by so many:

"The best laid schemes o' mice an' men
Gang aft a-gley [go oft awry],
An' leave us nought but grief an' pain
For promis'd joy."