<P> The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse is one of Aesop's Fables . It is number 352 in the Perry Index and type 112 in Aarne--Thompson's folk tale index . Like several other elements in Aesop's fables,' town mouse and country mouse' has become an English idiom . </P> <P> In the original tale, a proud town mouse visits his cousin in the country . The country mouse offers the city mouse a meal of simple country cuisine, at which the visitor scoffs and invites the country mouse back to the city for a taste of the "fine life" and the two cousins dine like emperors . But their rich and delicious metropolitan feast is interrupted by a couple of dogs which force the rodent cousins to abandon their meal and scurry to safety . After this, the country mouse decides to return home, preferring security to opulence or, as the 13th - century preacher Odo of Cheriton phrased it, "I'd rather gnaw a bean than be gnawed by continual fear". </P> <P> The story was widespread in Classical times and there is an early Greek version by Babrius (Fable 108). Horace included it as part of one of his satires (II. 6), ending on this story in a poem comparing town living unfavorable to life in the country . Marcus Aurelius alludes to it in his Meditations, Book 11.22; "Think of the country mouse and of the town mouse, and of the alarm and trepidation of the town mouse". </P>

What is the moral of the story the city mouse and the country mouse