CHAPTER I. Looking-Glass house
One thing was certain, that the WHITE kitten
had had nothing to do with
it:--it was the black kitten's fault entirely.
For the white kitten had
been having its face washed by the old cat
for the last quarter of
an hour (and bearing it pretty well, considering);
so you see that it
COULDN'T have had any hand in the mischief.
The way Dinah washed her children's faces
was this: first she held the
poor thing down by its ear with one paw, and
then with the other paw she
rubbed its face all over, the wrong way, beginning
at the nose: and
just now, as I said, she was hard at work
on the white kitten, which was
lying quite still and trying to purr--no doubt
feeling that it was all
meant for its good.
But the black kitten had been finished with
earlier in the afternoon,
and so, while Alice was sitting curled up
in a corner of the great
arm-chair, half talking to herself and half
asleep, the kitten had been
having a grand game of romps with the ball
of worsted Alice had been
trying to wind up, and had been rolling it
up and down till it had all
come undone again; and there it was, spread
over the hearth-rug, all
knots and tangles, with the kitten running
after its own tail in the
middle.
'Oh, you wicked little thing!' cried Alice,
catching up the kitten, and
giving it a little kiss to make it understand
that it was in disgrace.
'Really, Dinah ought to have taught you better
manners! You OUGHT,
Dinah, you know you ought!' she added, looking
reproachfully at the old
cat, and speaking in as cross a voice as she
could manage--and then she
scrambled back into the arm-chair, taking
the kitten and the worsted
with her, and began winding up the ball again.
But she didn't get on
very fast, as she was talking all the time,
sometimes to the kitten, and
sometimes to herself. Kitty sat very demurely
on her knee, pretending to
watch the progress of the winding, and now
and then putting out one
paw and gently touching the ball, as if it
would be glad to help, if it
might.
'Do you know what to-morrow is, Kitty?' Alice
began. 'You'd have guessed
if you'd been up in the window with me--only
Dinah was making you tidy,
so you couldn't. I was watching the boys getting
in sticks for the
bonfire--and it wants plenty of sticks, Kitty!
Only it got so cold, and
it snowed so, they had to leave off. Never
mind, Kitty, we'll go and
see the bonfire to-morrow.' Here Alice wound
two or three turns of the
worsted round the kitten's neck, just to see
how it would look: this led
to a scramble, in which the ball rolled down
upon the floor, and yards
and yards of it got unwound again.
'Do you know, I was so angry, Kitty,' Alice
went on as soon as they were
comfortably settled again, 'when I saw all
the mischief you had been
doing, I was very nearly opening the window,
and putting you out into
the snow! And you'd have deserved it, you
little mischievous darling!
What have you got to say for yourself? Now
don't interrupt me!' she
went on, holding up one finger. 'I'm going
to tell you all your faults.
Number one: you squeaked twice while Dinah
was washing your face this
morning. Now you can't deny it, Kitty: I heard
you! What's that you
say?' (pretending that the kitten was speaking.)
'Her paw went into your
eye? Well, that's YOUR fault, for keeping
your eyes open--if you'd
shut them tight up, it wouldn't have happened.
Now don't make any more
excuses, but listen! Number two: you pulled
Snowdrop away by the tail
just as I had put down the saucer of milk
before her! What, you were
thirsty, were you? How do you know she wasn't
thirsty too? Now for
number three: you unwound every bit of the
worsted while I wasn't
looking!
'That's three faults, Kitty, and you've not
been punished for any of
them yet. You know I'm saving up all your
punishments for Wednesday
week--Suppose they had saved up all MY punishments!'
she went on,
talking more to herself than the kitten. 'What
WOULD they do at the end
of a year? I should be sent to prison, I suppose,
when the day came.
Or--let me see--suppose each punishment was
to be going without a
dinner: then, when the miserable day came,
I should have to go without
fifty dinners at once! Well, I shouldn't mind
THAT much! I'd far rather
go without them than eat them!
'Do you hear the snow against the window-panes,
Kitty? How nice and soft
it sounds! Just as if some one was kissing
the window all over outside.
I wonder if the snow LOVES the trees and fields,
that it kisses them so
gently? And then it covers them up snug, you
know, with a white quilt;
and perhaps it says, "Go to sleep, darlings,
till the summer comes
again." And when they wake up in the summer,
Kitty, they dress
themselves all in green, and dance about--whenever
the wind blows--oh,
that's very pretty!' cried Alice, dropping
the ball of worsted to clap
her hands. 'And I do so WISH it was true!
I'm sure the woods look sleepy
in the autumn, when the leaves are getting
brown.
'Kitty, can you play chess? Now, don't smile,
my dear, I'm asking it
seriously. Because, when we were playing just
now, you watched just as
if you understood it: and when I said "Check!"
you purred! Well, it WAS
a nice check, Kitty, and really I might have
won, if it hadn't been for
that nasty Knight, that came wiggling down
among my pieces. Kitty, dear,
let's pretend--' And here I wish I could tell
you half the things Alice
used to say, beginning with her favourite
phrase 'Let's pretend.' She
had had quite a long argument with her sister
only the day before--all
because Alice had begun with 'Let's pretend
we're kings and queens;' and
her sister, who liked being very exact, had
argued that they couldn't,
because there were only two of them, and Alice
had been reduced at last
to say, 'Well, YOU can be one of them then,
and I'LL be all the rest.'
And once she had really frightened her old
nurse by shouting suddenly in
her ear, 'Nurse! Do let's pretend that I'm
a hungry hyaena, and you're a
bone.'
But this is taking us away from Alice's speech
to the kitten. 'Let's
pretend that you're the Red Queen, Kitty!
Do you know, I think if you
sat up and folded your arms, you'd look exactly
like her. Now do try,
there's a dear!' And Alice got the Red Queen
off the table, and set it
up before the kitten as a model for it to
imitate: however, the thing
didn't succeed, principally, Alice said, because
the kitten wouldn't
fold its arms properly. So, to punish it,
she held it up to the
Looking-glass, that it might see how sulky
it was--'and if you're not
good directly,' she added, 'I'll put you through
into Looking-glass
House. How would you like THAT?'
'Now, if you'll only attend, Kitty, and not
talk so much, I'll tell you
all my ideas about Looking-glass House. First,
there's the room you can
see through the glass--that's just the same
as our drawing room, only
the things go the other way. I can see all
of it when I get upon a
chair--all but the bit behind the fireplace.
Oh! I do so wish I could
see THAT bit! I want so much to know whether
they've a fire in the
winter: you never CAN tell, you know, unless
our fire smokes, and then
smoke comes up in that room too--but that
may be only pretence, just to
make it look as if they had a fire. Well then,
the books are something
like our books, only the words go the wrong
way; I know that, because
I've held up one of our books to the glass,
and then they hold up one in
the other room.
'How would you like to live in Looking-glass
House, Kitty? I wonder if
they'd give you milk in there? Perhaps Looking-glass
milk isn't good
to drink--But oh, Kitty! now we come to the
passage. You can just see a
little PEEP of the passage in Looking-glass
House, if you leave the door
of our drawing-room wide open: and it's very
like our passage as far
as you can see, only you know it may be quite
different on beyond.
Oh, Kitty! how nice it would be if we could
only get through into
Looking-glass House! I'm sure it's got, oh!
such beautiful things in it!
Let's pretend there's a way of getting through
into it, somehow, Kitty.
Let's pretend the glass has got all soft like
gauze, so that we can get
through. Why, it's turning into a sort of
mist now, I declare! It'll be
easy enough to get through--' She was up on
the chimney-piece while she
said this, though she hardly knew how she
had got there. And certainly
the glass WAS beginning to melt away, just
like a bright silvery mist.
In another moment Alice was through the glass,
and had jumped lightly
down into the Looking-glass room. The very
first thing she did was
to look whether there was a fire in the fireplace,
and she was quite
pleased to find that there was a real one,
blazing away as brightly as
the one she had left behind. 'So I shall be
as warm here as I was in the
old room,' thought Alice: 'warmer, in fact,
because there'll be no one
here to scold me away from the fire. Oh, what
fun it'll be, when they
see me through the glass in here, and can't
get at me!'
Then she began looking about, and noticed
that what could be seen from
the old room was quite common and uninteresting,
but that all the rest
was as different as possible. For instance,
the pictures on the
wall next the fire seemed to be all alive,
and the very clock on
the chimney-piece (you know you can only see
the back of it in the
Looking-glass) had got the face of a little
old man, and grinned at her.
'They don't keep this room so tidy as the
other,' Alice thought to
herself, as she noticed several of the chessmen
down in the hearth among
the cinders: but in another moment, with a
little 'Oh!' of surprise, she
was down on her hands and knees watching them.
The chessmen were walking
about, two and two!
'Here are the Red King and the Red Queen,'
Alice said (in a whisper, for
fear of frightening them), 'and there are
the White King and the White
Queen sitting on the edge of the shovel--and
here are two castles
walking arm in arm--I don't think they can
hear me,' she went on, as she
put her head closer down, 'and I'm nearly
sure they can't see me. I feel
somehow as if I were invisible--'
Here something began squeaking on the table
behind Alice, and made her
turn her head just in time to see one of the
White Pawns roll over and
begin kicking: she watched it with great curiosity
to see what would
happen next.
'It is the voice of my child!' the White Queen
cried out as she rushed
past the King, so violently that she knocked
him over among the cinders.
'My precious Lily! My imperial kitten!' and
she began scrambling wildly
up the side of the fender.
'Imperial fiddlestick!' said the King, rubbing
his nose, which had been
hurt by the fall. He had a right to be a LITTLE
annoyed with the Queen,
for he was covered with ashes from head to
foot.
Alice was very anxious to be of use, and,
as the poor little Lily was
nearly screaming herself into a fit, she hastily
picked up the Queen and
set her on the table by the side of her noisy
little daughter.
The Queen gasped, and sat down: the rapid
journey through the air had
quite taken away her breath and for a minute
or two she could do nothing
but hug the little Lily in silence. As soon
as she had recovered her
breath a little, she called out to the White
King, who was sitting
sulkily among the ashes, 'Mind the volcano!'
'What volcano?' said the King, looking up
anxiously into the fire, as if
he thought that was the most likely place
to find one.
'Blew--me--up,' panted the Queen, who was
still a little out of breath.
'Mind you come up--the regular way--don't
get blown up!'
Alice watched the White King as he slowly
struggled up from bar to bar,
till at last she said, 'Why, you'll be hours
and hours getting to the
table, at that rate. I'd far better help you,
hadn't I?' But the King
took no notice of the question: it was quite
clear that he could neither
hear her nor see her.
So Alice picked him up very gently, and lifted
him across more slowly
than she had lifted the Queen, that she mightn't
take his breath away:
but, before she put him on the table, she
thought she might as well dust
him a little, he was so covered with ashes.
She said afterwards that she had never seen
in all her life such a face
as the King made, when he found himself held
in the air by an invisible
hand, and being dusted: he was far too much
astonished to cry out, but
his eyes and his mouth went on getting larger
and larger, and rounder
and rounder, till her hand shook so with laughing
that she nearly let
him drop upon the floor.
'Oh! PLEASE don't make such faces, my dear!'
she cried out, quite
forgetting that the King couldn't hear her.
'You make me laugh so that
I can hardly hold you! And don't keep your
mouth so wide open! All the
ashes will get into it--there, now I think
you're tidy enough!' she
added, as she smoothed his hair, and set him
upon the table near the
Queen.
The King immediately fell flat on his back,
and lay perfectly still: and
Alice was a little alarmed at what she had
done, and went round the room
to see if she could find any water to throw
over him. However, she could
find nothing but a bottle of ink, and when
she got back with it she
found he had recovered, and he and the Queen
were talking together in a
frightened whisper--so low, that Alice could
hardly hear what they said.
The King was saying, 'I assure, you my dear,
I turned cold to the very
ends of my whiskers!'
To which the Queen replied, 'You haven't got
any whiskers.'
'The horror of that moment,' the King went
on, 'I shall never, NEVER
forget!'
'You will, though,' the Queen said, 'if you
don't make a memorandum of
it.'
Alice looked on with great interest as the
King took an enormous
memorandum-book out of his pocket, and began
writing. A sudden thought
struck her, and she took hold of the end of
the pencil, which came some
way over his shoulder, and began writing for
him.
The poor King looked puzzled and unhappy,
and struggled with the pencil
for some time without saying anything; but
Alice was too strong for him,
and at last he panted out, 'My dear! I really
MUST get a thinner pencil.
I can't manage this one a bit; it writes all
manner of things that I
don't intend--'
'What manner of things?' said the Queen, looking
over the book (in which
Alice had put 'THE WHITE KNIGHT IS SLIDING
DOWN THE POKER. HE BALANCES
VERY BADLY') 'That's not a memorandum of YOUR
feelings!'
There was a book lying near Alice on the table,
and while she sat
watching the White King (for she was still
a little anxious about him,
and had the ink all ready to throw over him,
in case he fainted again),
she turned over the leaves, to find some part
that she could read,
'--for it's all in some language I don't know,'
she said to herself.
It was like this.
YKCOWREBBAJ
sevot yhtils eht dna,gillirb sawT'
ebaw eht ni elbmig dna eryg diD
,sevogorob eht erew ysmim llA
.ebargtuo shtar emom eht dnA
She puzzled over this for some time, but at
last a bright thought struck
her. 'Why, it's a Looking-glass book, of course!
And if I hold it up to
a glass, the words will all go the right way
again.'
This was the poem that Alice read.
JABBERWOCKY
'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
'Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!'
He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought--
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.
And as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!
One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.
'And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!'
He chortled in his joy.
'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
'It seems very pretty,' she said when she
had finished it, 'but it's
RATHER hard to understand!' (You see she didn't
like to confess, even
to herself, that she couldn't make it out
at all.) 'Somehow it seems
to fill my head with ideas--only I don't exactly
know what they are!
However, SOMEBODY killed SOMETHING: that's
clear, at any rate--'
'But oh!' thought Alice, suddenly jumping
up, 'if I don't make haste I
shall have to go back through the Looking-glass,
before I've seen what
the rest of the house is like! Let's have
a look at the garden first!'
She was out of the room in a moment, and ran
down stairs--or, at least,
it wasn't exactly running, but a new invention
of hers for getting down
stairs quickly and easily, as Alice said to
herself. She just kept the
tips of her fingers on the hand-rail, and
floated gently down without
even touching the stairs with her feet; then
she floated on through the
hall, and would have gone straight out at
the door in the same way, if
she hadn't caught hold of the door-post. She
was getting a little giddy
with so much floating in the air, and was
rather glad to find herself
walking again in the natural way.
End of Chapter 1
CHAPTER II. The Garden of Live Flowers
'I should see the garden far better,' said
Alice to herself, 'if I could
get to the top of that hill: and here's a
path that leads straight to
it--at least, no, it doesn't do that--' (after
going a few yards along
the path, and turning several sharp corners),
'but I suppose it will
at last. But how curiously it twists! It's
more like a corkscrew than a
path! Well, THIS turn goes to the hill, I
suppose--no, it doesn't! This
goes straight back to the house! Well then,
I'll try it the other way.'
And so she did: wandering up and down, and
trying turn after turn, but
always coming back to the house, do what she
would. Indeed, once, when
she turned a corner rather more quickly than
usual, she ran against it
before she could stop herself.
'It's no use talking about it,' Alice said,
looking up at the house and
pretending it was arguing with her. 'I'm NOT
going in again yet. I know
I should have to get through the Looking-glass
again--back into the old
room--and there'd be an end of all my adventures!'
So, resolutely turning her back upon the house,
she set out once more
down the path, determined to keep straight
on till she got to the hill.
For a few minutes all went on well, and she
was just saying, 'I really
SHALL do it this time--' when the path gave
a sudden twist and shook
itself (as she described it afterwards), and
the next moment she found
herself actually walking in at the door.
'Oh, it's too bad!' she cried. 'I never saw
such a house for getting in
the way! Never!'
However, there was the hill full in sight,
so there was nothing to be
done but start again. This time she came upon
a large flower-bed, with a
border of daisies, and a willow-tree growing
in the middle.
'O Tiger-lily,' said Alice, addressing herself
to one that was waving
gracefully about in the wind, 'I WISH you
could talk!'
'We CAN talk,' said the Tiger-lily: 'when
there's anybody worth talking
to.'
Alice was so astonished that she could not
speak for a minute: it quite
seemed to take her breath away. At length,
as the Tiger-lily only went
on waving about, she spoke again, in a timid
voice--almost in a whisper.
'And can ALL the flowers talk?'
'As well as YOU can,' said the Tiger-lily.
'And a great deal louder.'
'It isn't manners for us to begin, you know,'
said the Rose, 'and I
really was wondering when you'd speak! Said
I to myself, "Her face has
got SOME sense in it, though it's not a clever
one!" Still, you're the
right colour, and that goes a long way.'
'I don't care about the colour,' the Tiger-lily
remarked. 'If only her
petals curled up a little more, she'd be all
right.'
Alice didn't like being criticised, so she
began asking questions.
'Aren't you sometimes frightened at being
planted out here, with nobody
to take care of you?'
'There's the tree in the middle,' said the
Rose: 'what else is it good
for?'
'But what could it do, if any danger came?'
Alice asked.
'It says "Bough-wough!"' cried a Daisy: 'that's
why its branches are
called boughs!'
'Didn't you know THAT?' cried another Daisy,
and here they all began
shouting together, till the air seemed quite
full of little shrill
voices. 'Silence, every one of you!' cried
the Tiger-lily, waving itself
passionately from side to side, and trembling
with excitement. 'They
know I can't get at them!' it panted, bending
its quivering head towards
Alice, 'or they wouldn't dare to do it!'
'Never mind!' Alice said in a soothing tone,
and stooping down to the
daisies, who were just beginning again, she
whispered, 'If you don't
hold your tongues, I'll pick you!'
There was silence in a moment, and several
of the pink daisies turned
white.
'That's right!' said the Tiger-lily. 'The
daisies are worst of all. When
one speaks, they all begin together, and it's
enough to make one wither
to hear the way they go on!'
'How is it you can all talk so nicely?' Alice
said, hoping to get it
into a better temper by a compliment. 'I've
been in many gardens before,
but none of the flowers could talk.'
'Put your hand down, and feel the ground,'
said the Tiger-lily. 'Then
you'll know why.'
Alice did so. 'It's very hard,' she said,
'but I don't see what that has
to do with it.'
'In most gardens,' the Tiger-lily said, 'they
make the beds too soft--so
that the flowers are always asleep.'
This sounded a very good reason, and Alice
was quite pleased to know it.
'I never thought of that before!' she said.
'It's MY opinion that you never think AT ALL,'
the Rose said in a rather
severe tone.
'I never saw anybody that looked stupider,'
a Violet said, so suddenly,
that Alice quite jumped; for it hadn't spoken
before.
'Hold YOUR tongue!' cried the Tiger-lily.
'As if YOU ever saw anybody!
You keep your head under the leaves, and snore
away there, till you know
no more what's going on in the world, than
if you were a bud!'
'Are there any more people in the garden besides
me?' Alice said, not
choosing to notice the Rose's last remark.
'There's one other flower in the garden that
can move about like you,'
said the Rose. 'I wonder how you do it--'
('You're always wondering,'
said the Tiger-lily), 'but she's more bushy
than you are.'
'Is she like me?' Alice asked eagerly, for
the thought crossed her mind,
'There's another little girl in the garden,
somewhere!'
'Well, she has the same awkward shape as you,'
the Rose said, 'but she's
redder--and her petals are shorter, I think.'
'Her petals are done up close, almost like
a dahlia,' the Tiger-lily
interrupted: 'not tumbled about anyhow, like
yours.'
'But that's not YOUR fault,' the Rose added
kindly: 'you're beginning
to fade, you know--and then one can't help
one's petals getting a little
untidy.'
Alice didn't like this idea at all: so, to
change the subject, she asked
'Does she ever come out here?'
'I daresay you'll see her soon,' said the
Rose. 'She's one of the thorny
kind.'
'Where does she wear the thorns?' Alice asked
with some curiosity.
'Why all round her head, of course,' the Rose
replied. 'I was wondering
YOU hadn't got some too. I thought it was
the regular rule.'
'She's coming!' cried the Larkspur. 'I hear
her footstep, thump, thump,
thump, along the gravel-walk!'
Alice looked round eagerly, and found that
it was the Red Queen. 'She's
grown a good deal!' was her first remark.
She had indeed: when Alice
first found her in the ashes, she had been
only three inches high--and
here she was, half a head taller than Alice
herself!
'It's the fresh air that does it,' said the
Rose: 'wonderfully fine air
it is, out here.'
'I think I'll go and meet her,' said Alice,
for, though the flowers were
interesting enough, she felt that it would
be far grander to have a talk
with a real Queen.
'You can't possibly do that,' said the Rose:
'_I_ should advise you to
walk the other way.'
This sounded nonsense to Alice, so she said
nothing, but set off at
once towards the Red Queen. To her surprise,
she lost sight of her in a
moment, and found herself walking in at the
front-door again.
A little provoked, she drew back, and after
looking everywhere for the
queen (whom she spied out at last, a long
way off), she thought she
would try the plan, this time, of walking
in the opposite direction.
It succeeded beautifully. She had not been
walking a minute before she
found herself face to face with the Red Queen,
and full in sight of the
hill she had been so long aiming at.
'Where do you come from?' said the Red Queen.
'And where are you going?
Look up, speak nicely, and don't twiddle your
fingers all the time.'
Alice attended to all these directions, and
explained, as well as she
could, that she had lost her way.
'I don't know what you mean by YOUR way,'
said the Queen: 'all the ways
about here belong to ME--but why did you come
out here at all?' she
added in a kinder tone. 'Curtsey while you're
thinking what to say, it
saves time.'
Alice wondered a little at this, but she was
too much in awe of the
Queen to disbelieve it. 'I'll try it when
I go home,' she thought to
herself, 'the next time I'm a little late
for dinner.'
'It's time for you to answer now,' the Queen
said, looking at her watch:
'open your mouth a LITTLE wider when you speak,
and always say "your
Majesty."'
'I only wanted to see what the garden was
like, your Majesty--'
'That's right,' said the Queen, patting her
on the head, which Alice
didn't like at all, 'though, when you say
"garden,"--I'VE seen gardens,
compared with which this would be a wilderness.'
Alice didn't dare to argue the point, but
went on: '--and I thought I'd
try and find my way to the top of that hill--'
'When you say "hill,"' the Queen interrupted,
'_I_ could show you hills,
in comparison with which you'd call that a
valley.'
'No, I shouldn't,' said Alice, surprised into
contradicting her at last:
'a hill CAN'T be a valley, you know. That
would be nonsense--'
The Red Queen shook her head, 'You may call
it "nonsense" if you like,'
she said, 'but I'VE heard nonsense, compared
with which that would be as
sensible as a dictionary!'
Alice curtseyed again, as she was afraid from
the Queen's tone that she
was a LITTLE offended: and they walked on
in silence till they got to
the top of the little hill.
For some minutes Alice stood without speaking,
looking out in all
directions over the country--and a most curious
country it was. There
were a number of tiny little brooks running
straight across it from side
to side, and the ground between was divided
up into squares by a number
of little green hedges, that reached from
brook to brook.
'I declare it's marked out just like a large
chessboard!' Alice said at
last. 'There ought to be some men moving about
somewhere--and so there
are!' She added in a tone of delight, and
her heart began to beat quick
with excitement as she went on. 'It's a great
huge game of chess that's
being played--all over the world--if this
IS the world at all, you know.
Oh, what fun it is! How I WISH I was one of
them! I wouldn't mind being
a Pawn, if only I might join--though of course
I should LIKE to be a
Queen, best.'
She glanced rather shyly at the real Queen
as she said this, but her
companion only smiled pleasantly, and said,
'That's easily managed. You
can be the White Queen's Pawn, if you like,
as Lily's too young to
play; and you're in the Second Square to begin
with: when you get to
the Eighth Square you'll be a Queen--' Just
at this moment, somehow or
other, they began to run.
Alice never could quite make out, in thinking
it over afterwards, how it
was that they began: all she remembers is,
that they were running hand
in hand, and the Queen went so fast that it
was all she could do to keep
up with her: and still the Queen kept crying
'Faster! Faster!' but Alice
felt she COULD NOT go faster, though she had
not breath left to say so.
The most curious part of the thing was, that
the trees and the other
things round them never changed their places
at all: however fast they
went, they never seemed to pass anything.
'I wonder if all the things
move along with us?' thought poor puzzled
Alice. And the Queen seemed to
guess her thoughts, for she cried, 'Faster!
Don't try to talk!'
Not that Alice had any idea of doing THAT.
She felt as if she would
never be able to talk again, she was getting
so much out of breath: and
still the Queen cried 'Faster! Faster!' and
dragged her along. 'Are we
nearly there?' Alice managed to pant out at
last.
'Nearly there!' the Queen repeated. 'Why,
we passed it ten minutes ago!
Faster!' And they ran on for a time in silence,
with the wind whistling
in Alice's ears, and almost blowing her hair
off her head, she fancied.
'Now! Now!' cried the Queen. 'Faster! Faster!'
And they went so fast
that at last they seemed to skim through the
air, hardly touching the
ground with their feet, till suddenly, just
as Alice was getting quite
exhausted, they stopped, and she found herself
sitting on the ground,
breathless and giddy.
The Queen propped her up against a tree, and
said kindly, 'You may rest
a little now.'
Alice looked round her in great surprise.
'Why, I do believe we've been
under this tree the whole time! Everything's
just as it was!'
'Of course it is,' said the Queen, 'what would
you have it?'
'Well, in OUR country,' said Alice, still
panting a little, 'you'd
generally get to somewhere else--if you ran
very fast for a long time,
as we've been doing.'
'A slow sort of country!' said the Queen.
'Now, HERE, you see, it takes
all the running YOU can do, to keep in the
same place. If you want to
get somewhere else, you must run at least
twice as fast as that!'
'I'd rather not try, please!' said Alice.
'I'm quite content to stay
here--only I AM so hot and thirsty!'
'I know what YOU'D like!' the Queen said good-naturedly,
taking a little
box out of her pocket. 'Have a biscuit?'
Alice thought it would not be civil to say
'No,' though it wasn't at all
what she wanted. So she took it, and ate it
as well as she could: and it
was VERY dry; and she thought she had never
been so nearly choked in all
her life.
'While you're refreshing yourself,' said the
Queen, 'I'll just take
the measurements.' And she took a ribbon out
of her pocket, marked in
inches, and began measuring the ground, and
sticking little pegs in here
and there.
'At the end of two yards,' she said, putting
in a peg to mark the
distance, 'I shall give you your directions--have
another biscuit?'
'No, thank you,' said Alice: 'one's QUITE
enough!'
'Thirst quenched, I hope?' said the Queen.
Alice did not know what to say to this, but
luckily the Queen did not
wait for an answer, but went on. 'At the end
of THREE yards I shall
repeat them--for fear of your forgetting them.
At the end of FOUR, I
shall say good-bye. And at the end of FIVE,
I shall go!'
She had got all the pegs put in by this time,
and Alice looked on
with great interest as she returned to the
tree, and then began slowly
walking down the row.
At the two-yard peg she faced round, and said,
'A pawn goes two squares
in its first move, you know. So you'll go
VERY quickly through the Third
Square--by railway, I should think--and you'll
find yourself in the
Fourth Square in no time. Well, THAT square
belongs to Tweedledum and
Tweedledee--the Fifth is mostly water--the
Sixth belongs to Humpty
Dumpty--But you make no remark?'
'I--I didn't know I had to make one--just
then,' Alice faltered out.
'You SHOULD have said, "It's extremely kind
of you to tell me all
this"--however, we'll suppose it said--the
Seventh Square is all
forest--however, one of the Knights will show
you the way--and in the
Eighth Square we shall be Queens together,
and it's all feasting and
fun!' Alice got up and curtseyed, and sat
down again.
At the next peg the Queen turned again, and
this time she said, 'Speak
in French when you can't think of the English
for a thing--turn out your
toes as you walk--and remember who you are!'
She did not wait for Alice
to curtsey this time, but walked on quickly
to the next peg, where she
turned for a moment to say 'good-bye,' and
then hurried on to the last.
How it happened, Alice never knew, but exactly
as she came to the last
peg, she was gone. Whether she vanished into
the air, or whether she
ran quickly into the wood ('and she CAN run
very fast!' thought Alice),
there was no way of guessing, but she was
gone, and Alice began to
remember that she was a Pawn, and that it
would soon be time for her to
move.
End of Chapter 2
CHAPTER 3
Looking-Glass Insects
Of course the first thing to do was to make
a grand survey of the
country she was going to travel through. 'It's
something very like
learning geography,' thought Alice, as she
stood on tiptoe in hopes of
being able to see a little further. 'Principal
rivers--there ARE none.
Principal mountains--I'm on the only one,
but I don't think it's got any
name. Principal towns--why, what ARE those
creatures, making honey down
there? They can't be bees--nobody ever saw
bees a mile off, you know--'
and for some time she stood silent, watching
one of them that was
bustling about among the flowers, poking its
proboscis into them, 'just
as if it was a regular bee,' thought Alice.
However, this was anything but a regular bee:
in fact it was an
elephant--as Alice soon found out, though
the idea quite took her breath
away at first. 'And what enormous flowers
they must be!' was her next
idea. 'Something like cottages with the roofs
taken off, and stalks put
to them--and what quantities of honey they
must make! I think I'll go
down and--no, I won't JUST yet,' she went
on, checking herself just as
she was beginning to run down the hill, and
trying to find some excuse
for turning shy so suddenly. 'It'll never
do to go down among them
without a good long branch to brush them away--and
what fun it'll be
when they ask me how I like my walk. I shall
say--"Oh, I like it well
enough--"' (here came the favourite little
toss of the head), '"only it
was so dusty and hot, and the elephants did
tease so!"'
'I think I'll go down the other way,' she
said after a pause: 'and
perhaps I may visit the elephants later on.
Besides, I do so want to get
into the Third Square!'
So with this excuse she ran down the hill
and jumped over the first of
the six little brooks.
'Tickets, please!' said the Guard, putting
his head in at the window.
In a moment everybody was holding out a ticket:
they were about the same
size as the people, and quite seemed to fill
the carriage.
'Now then! Show your ticket, child!' the Guard
went on, looking angrily
at Alice. And a great many voices all said
together ('like the chorus of
a song,' thought Alice), 'Don't keep him waiting,
child! Why, his time
is worth a thousand pounds a minute!'
'I'm afraid I haven't got one,' Alice said
in a frightened tone: 'there
wasn't a ticket-office where I came from.'
And again the chorus of
voices went on. 'There wasn't room for one
where she came from. The land
there is worth a thousand pounds an inch!'
'Don't make excuses,' said the Guard: 'you
should have bought one from
the engine-driver.' And once more the chorus
of voices went on with 'The
man that drives the engine. Why, the smoke
alone is worth a thousand
pounds a puff!'
Alice thought to herself, 'Then there's no
use in speaking.' The
voices didn't join in this time, as she hadn't
spoken, but to her
great surprise, they all THOUGHT in chorus
(I hope you understand what
THINKING IN CHORUS means--for I must confess
that _I_ don't), 'Better
say nothing at all. Language is worth a thousand
pounds a word!'
'I shall dream about a thousand pounds tonight,
I know I shall!' thought
Alice.
All this time the Guard was looking at her,
first through a telescope,
then through a microscope, and then through
an opera-glass. At last he
said, 'You're travelling the wrong way,' and
shut up the window and went
away.
'So young a child,' said the gentleman sitting
opposite to her (he was
dressed in white paper), 'ought to know which
way she's going, even if
she doesn't know her own name!'
A Goat, that was sitting next to the gentleman
in white, shut his
eyes and said in a loud voice, 'She ought
to know her way to the
ticket-office, even if she doesn't know her
alphabet!'
There was a Beetle sitting next to the Goat
(it was a very queer
carriage-full of passengers altogether), and,
as the rule seemed to be
that they should all speak in turn, HE went
on with 'She'll have to go
back from here as luggage!'
Alice couldn't see who was sitting beyond
the Beetle, but a hoarse voice
spoke next. 'Change engines--' it said, and
was obliged to leave off.
'It sounds like a horse,' Alice thought to
herself. And an extremely
small voice, close to her ear, said, 'You
might make a joke on
that--something about "horse" and "hoarse,"
you know.'
Then a very gentle voice in the distance said,
'She must be labelled
"Lass, with care," you know--'
And after that other voices went on ('What
a number of people there are
in the carriage!' thought Alice), saying,
'She must go by post, as she's
got a head on her--' 'She must be sent as
a message by the telegraph--'
'She must draw the train herself the rest
of the way--' and so on.
But the gentleman dressed in white paper leaned
forwards and whispered
in her ear, 'Never mind what they all say,
my dear, but take a
return-ticket every time the train stops.'
'Indeed I shan't!' Alice said rather impatiently.
'I don't belong to
this railway journey at all--I was in a wood
just now--and I wish I
could get back there.'
'You might make a joke on THAT,' said the
little voice close to her ear:
'something about "you WOULD if you could,"
you know.'
'Don't tease so,' said Alice, looking about
in vain to see where the
voice came from; 'if you're so anxious to
have a joke made, why don't
you make one yourself?'
The little voice sighed deeply: it was VERY
unhappy, evidently, and
Alice would have said something pitying to
comfort it, 'If it would only
sigh like other people!' she thought. But
this was such a wonderfully
small sigh, that she wouldn't have heard it
at all, if it hadn't come
QUITE close to her ear. The consequence of
this was that it tickled her
ear very much, and quite took off her thoughts
from the unhappiness of
the poor little creature.
'I know you are a friend,' the little voice
went on; 'a dear friend, and
an old friend. And you won't hurt me, though
I AM an insect.'
'What kind of insect?' Alice inquired a little
anxiously. What she
really wanted to know was, whether it could
sting or not, but she
thought this wouldn't be quite a civil question
to ask.
'What, then you don't--' the little voice
began, when it was drowned by
a shrill scream from the engine, and everybody
jumped up in alarm, Alice
among the rest.
The Horse, who had put his head out of the
window, quietly drew it in
and said, 'It's only a brook we have to jump
over.' Everybody seemed
satisfied with this, though Alice felt a little
nervous at the idea of
trains jumping at all. 'However, it'll take
us into the Fourth Square,
that's some comfort!' she said to herself.
In another moment she felt
the carriage rise straight up into the air,
and in her fright she caught
at the thing nearest to her hand, which happened
to be the Goat's beard.
But the beard seemed to melt away as she touched
it, and she found
herself sitting quietly under a tree--while
the Gnat (for that was the
insect she had been talking to) was balancing
itself on a twig just over
her head, and fanning her with its wings.
It certainly was a VERY large Gnat: 'about
the size of a chicken,' Alice
thought. Still, she couldn't feel nervous
with it, after they had been
talking together so long.
'--then you don't like all insects?' the Gnat
went on, as quietly as if
nothing had happened.
'I like them when they can talk,' Alice said.
'None of them ever talk,
where _I_ come from.'
'What sort of insects do you rejoice in, where
YOU come from?' the Gnat
inquired.
'I don't REJOICE in insects at all,' Alice
explained, 'because I'm
rather afraid of them--at least the large
kinds. But I can tell you the
names of some of them.'
'Of course they answer to their names?' the
Gnat remarked carelessly.
'I never knew them to do it.'
'What's the use of their having names,' the
Gnat said, 'if they won't
answer to them?'
'No use to THEM,' said Alice; 'but it's useful
to the people who name
them, I suppose. If not, why do things have
names at all?'
'I can't say,' the Gnat replied. 'Further
on, in the wood down there,
they've got no names--however, go on with
your list of insects: you're
wasting time.'
'Well, there's the Horse-fly,' Alice began,
counting off the names on
her fingers.
'All right,' said the Gnat: 'half way up that
bush, you'll see a
Rocking-horse-fly, if you look. It's made
entirely of wood, and gets
about by swinging itself from branch to branch.'
'What does it live on?' Alice asked, with
great curiosity.
'Sap and sawdust,' said the Gnat. 'Go on with
the list.'
Alice looked up at the Rocking-horse-fly with
great interest, and made
up her mind that it must have been just repainted,
it looked so bright
and sticky; and then she went on.
'And there's the Dragon-fly.'
'Look on the branch above your head,' said
the Gnat, 'and there you'll
find a snap-dragon-fly. Its body is made of
plum-pudding, its wings of
holly-leaves, and its head is a raisin burning
in brandy.'
'And what does it live on?'
'Frumenty and mince pie,' the Gnat replied;
'and it makes its nest in a
Christmas box.'
'And then there's the Butterfly,' Alice went
on, after she had taken
a good look at the insect with its head on
fire, and had thought to
herself, 'I wonder if that's the reason insects
are so fond of flying
into candles--because they want to turn into
Snap-dragon-flies!'
'Crawling at your feet,' said the Gnat (Alice
drew her feet back in
some alarm), 'you may observe a Bread-and-Butterfly.
Its wings are thin
slices of Bread-and-butter, its body is a
crust, and its head is a lump
of sugar.'
'And what does IT live on?'
'Weak tea with cream in it.'
A new difficulty came into Alice's head. 'Supposing
it couldn't find
any?' she suggested.
'Then it would die, of course.'
'But that must happen very often,' Alice remarked
thoughtfully.
'It always happens,' said the Gnat.
After this, Alice was silent for a minute
or two, pondering. The Gnat
amused itself meanwhile by humming round and
round her head: at last
it settled again and remarked, 'I suppose
you don't want to lose your
name?'
'No, indeed,' Alice said, a little anxiously.
'And yet I don't know,' the Gnat went on in
a careless tone: 'only think
how convenient it would be if you could manage
to go home without it!
For instance, if the governess wanted to call
you to your lessons, she
would call out "come here--," and there she
would have to leave off,
because there wouldn't be any name for her
to call, and of course you
wouldn't have to go, you know.'
'That would never do, I'm sure,' said Alice:
'the governess would never
think of excusing me lessons for that. If
she couldn't remember my name,
she'd call me "Miss!" as the servants do.'
'Well, if she said "Miss," and didn't say
anything more,' the Gnat
remarked, 'of course you'd miss your lessons.
That's a joke. I wish YOU
had made it.'
'Why do you wish _I_ had made it?' Alice asked.
'It's a very bad one.'
But the Gnat only sighed deeply, while two
large tears came rolling down
its cheeks.
'You shouldn't make jokes,' Alice said, 'if
it makes you so unhappy.'
Then came another of those melancholy little
sighs, and this time the
poor Gnat really seemed to have sighed itself
away, for, when Alice
looked up, there was nothing whatever to be
seen on the twig, and, as
she was getting quite chilly with sitting
still so long, she got up and
walked on.
She very soon came to an open field, with
a wood on the other side of
it: it looked much darker than the last wood,
and Alice felt a LITTLE
timid about going into it. However, on second
thoughts, she made up her
mind to go on: 'for I certainly won't go BACK,'
she thought to herself,
and this was the only way to the Eighth Square.
'This must be the wood,' she said thoughtfully
to herself, 'where
things have no names. I wonder what'll become
of MY name when I go in?
I shouldn't like to lose it at all--because
they'd have to give me
another, and it would be almost certain to
be an ugly one. But then
the fun would be trying to find the creature
that had got my old
name! That's just like the advertisements,
you know, when people lose
dogs--"ANSWERS TO THE NAME OF 'DASH:' HAD
ON A BRASS COLLAR"--just fancy
calling everything you met "Alice," till one
of them answered! Only they
wouldn't answer at all, if they were wise.'
She was rambling on in this way when she reached
the wood: it looked
very cool and shady. 'Well, at any rate it's
a great comfort,' she
said as she stepped under the trees, 'after
being so hot, to get into
the--into WHAT?' she went on, rather surprised
at not being able to
think of the word. 'I mean to get under the--under
the--under THIS, you
know!' putting her hand on the trunk of the
tree. 'What DOES it call
itself, I wonder? I do believe it's got no
name--why, to be sure it
hasn't!'
She stood silent for a minute, thinking: then
she suddenly began again.
'Then it really HAS happened, after all! And
now, who am I? I WILL
remember, if I can! I'm determined to do it!'
But being determined
didn't help much, and all she could say, after
a great deal of puzzling,
was, 'L, I KNOW it begins with L!'
Just then a Fawn came wandering by: it looked
at Alice with its large
gentle eyes, but didn't seem at all frightened.
'Here then! Here then!'
Alice said, as she held out her hand and tried
to stroke it; but it only
started back a little, and then stood looking
at her again.
'What do you call yourself?' the Fawn said
at last. Such a soft sweet
voice it had!
'I wish I knew!' thought poor Alice. She answered,
rather sadly,
'Nothing, just now.'
'Think again,' it said: 'that won't do.'
Alice thought, but nothing came of it. 'Please,
would you tell me
what YOU call yourself?' she said timidly.
'I think that might help a
little.'
'I'll tell you, if you'll move a little further
on,' the Fawn said. 'I
can't remember here.'
So they walked on together though the wood,
Alice with her arms clasped
lovingly round the soft neck of the Fawn,
till they came out into
another open field, and here the Fawn gave
a sudden bound into the air,
and shook itself free from Alice's arms. 'I'm
a Fawn!' it cried out in a
voice of delight, 'and, dear me! you're a
human child!' A sudden look of
alarm came into its beautiful brown eyes,
and in another moment it had
darted away at full speed.
Alice stood looking after it, almost ready
to cry with vexation at
having lost her dear little fellow-traveller
so suddenly. 'However, I
know my name now.' she said, 'that's SOME
comfort. Alice--Alice--I won't
forget it again. And now, which of these finger-posts
ought I to follow,
I wonder?'
It was not a very difficult question to answer,
as there was only one
road through the wood, and the two finger-posts
both pointed along it.
'I'll settle it,' Alice said to herself, 'when
the road divides and they
point different ways.'
But this did not seem likely to happen. She
went on and on, a long way,
but wherever the road divided there were sure
to be two finger-posts
pointing the same way, one marked 'TO TWEEDLEDUM'S
HOUSE' and the other
'TO THE HOUSE OF TWEEDLEDEE.'
'I do believe,' said Alice at last, 'that
they live in the same house! I
wonder I never thought of that before--But
I can't stay there long. I'll
just call and say "how d'you do?" and ask
them the way out of the wood.
If I could only get to the Eighth Square before
it gets dark!' So she
wandered on, talking to herself as she went,
till, on turning a sharp
corner, she came upon two fat little men,
so suddenly that she could not
help starting back, but in another moment
she recovered herself, feeling
sure that they must be.
End of Chapter 3
CHAPTER 4.
Tweedledum And Tweedledee
They were standing under a tree, each with
an arm round the other's
neck, and Alice knew which was which in a
moment, because one of them
had 'DUM' embroidered on his collar, and the
other 'DEE.' 'I suppose
they've each got "TWEEDLE" round at the back
of the collar,' she said to
herself.
They stood so still that she quite forgot
they were alive, and she was
just looking round to see if the word "TWEEDLE"
was written at the back
of each collar, when she was startled by a
voice coming from the one
marked 'DUM.'
'If you think we're wax-works,' he said, 'you
ought to pay, you know.
Wax-works weren't made to be looked at for
nothing, nohow!'
'Contrariwise,' added the one marked 'DEE,'
'if you think we're alive,
you ought to speak.'
'I'm sure I'm very sorry,' was all Alice could
say; for the words of the
old song kept ringing through her head like
the ticking of a clock, and
she could hardly help saying them out loud:--
'Tweedledum and Tweedledee
Agreed to have a battle;
For Tweedledum said Tweedledee
Had spoiled his nice new rattle.
Just then flew down a monstrous crow,
As black as a tar-barrel;
Which frightened both the heroes so,
They quite forgot their quarrel.'
'I know what you're thinking about,' said
Tweedledum: 'but it isn't so,
nohow.'
'Contrariwise,' continued Tweedledee, 'if
it was so, it might be; and if
it were so, it would be; but as it isn't,
it ain't. That's logic.'
'I was thinking,' Alice said very politely,
'which is the best way out
of this wood: it's getting so dark. Would
you tell me, please?'
But the little men only looked at each other
and grinned.
They looked so exactly like a couple of great
schoolboys, that Alice
couldn't help pointing her finger at Tweedledum,
and saying 'First Boy!'
'Nohow!' Tweedledum cried out briskly, and
shut his mouth up again with
a snap.
'Next Boy!' said Alice, passing on to Tweedledee,
though she felt quite
certain he would only shout out 'Contrariwise!'
and so he did.
'You've been wrong!' cried Tweedledum. 'The
first thing in a visit is to
say "How d'ye do?" and shake hands!' And here
the two brothers gave each
other a hug, and then they held out the two
hands that were free, to
shake hands with her.
Alice did not like shaking hands with either
of them first, for fear
of hurting the other one's feelings; so, as
the best way out of the
difficulty, she took hold of both hands at
once: the next moment they
were dancing round in a ring. This seemed
quite natural (she remembered
afterwards), and she was not even surprised
to hear music playing: it
seemed to come from the tree under which they
were dancing, and it was
done (as well as she could make it out) by
the branches rubbing one
across the other, like fiddles and fiddle-sticks.
'But it certainly WAS funny,' (Alice said
afterwards, when she was
telling her sister the history of all this,)
'to find myself singing
"HERE WE GO ROUND THE MULBERRY BUSH." I don't
know when I began it, but
somehow I felt as if I'd been singing it a
long long time!'
The other two dancers were fat, and very soon
out of breath. 'Four times
round is enough for one dance,' Tweedledum
panted out, and they left
off dancing as suddenly as they had begun:
the music stopped at the same
moment.
Then they let go of Alice's hands, and stood
looking at her for a
minute: there was a rather awkward pause,
as Alice didn't know how to
begin a conversation with people she had just
been dancing with. 'It
would never do to say "How d'ye do?" NOW,'
she said to herself: 'we seem
to have got beyond that, somehow!'
'I hope you're not much tired?' she said at
last.
'Nohow. And thank you VERY much for asking,'
said Tweedledum.
'So much obliged!' added Tweedledee. 'You
like poetry?'
'Ye-es, pretty well--SOME poetry,' Alice said
doubtfully. 'Would you
tell me which road leads out of the wood?'
'What shall I repeat to her?' said Tweedledee,
looking round at
Tweedledum with great solemn eyes, and not
noticing Alice's question.
'"THE WALRUS AND THE CARPENTER" is the longest,'
Tweedledum replied,
giving his brother an affectionate hug.
Tweedledee began instantly:
'The sun was shining--'
Here Alice ventured to interrupt him. 'If
it's VERY long,' she said, as
politely as she could, 'would you please tell
me first which road--'
Tweedledee smiled gently, and began again:
'The sun was shining on the sea,
Shining with all his might:
He did his very best to make
The billows smooth and bright--
And this was odd, because it was
The middle of the night.
The moon was shining sulkily,
Because she thought the sun
Had got no business to be there
After the day was done--
"It's very rude of him," she said,
"To come and spoil the fun!"
The sea was wet as wet could be,
The sands were dry as dry.
You could not see a cloud, because
No cloud was in the sky:
No birds were flying over head--
There were no birds to fly.
The Walrus and the Carpenter
Were walking close at hand;
They wept like anything to see
Such quantities of sand:
"If this were only cleared away,"
They said, "it WOULD be grand!"
"If seven maids with seven mops
Swept it for half a year,
Do you suppose," the Walrus said,
"That they could get it clear?"
"I doubt it," said the Carpenter,
And shed a bitter tear.
"O Oysters, come and walk with us!"
The Walrus did beseech.
"A pleasant walk, a pleasant talk,
Along the briny beach:
We cannot do with more than four,
To give a hand to each."
The eldest Oyster looked at him.
But never a word he said:
The eldest Oyster winked his eye,
And shook his heavy head--
Meaning to say he did not choose
To leave the oyster-bed.
But four young oysters hurried up,
All eager for the treat:
Their coats were brushed, their faces washed,
Their shoes were clean and neat--
And this was odd, because, you know,
They hadn't any feet.
Four other Oysters followed them,
And yet another four;
And thick and fast they came at last,
And more, and more, and more--
All hopping through the frothy waves,
And scrambling to the shore.
The Walrus and the Carpenter
Walked on a mile or so,
And then they rested on a rock
Conveniently low:
And all the little Oysters stood
And waited in a row.
"The time has come," the Walrus said,
"To talk of many things:
Of shoes--and ships--and sealing-wax--
Of cabbages--and kings--
And why the sea is boiling hot--
And whether pigs have wings."
"But wait a bit," the Oysters cried,
"Before we have our chat;
For some of us are out of breath,
And all of us are fat!"
"No hurry!" said the Carpenter.
They thanked him much for that.
"A loaf of bread," the Walrus said,
"Is what we chiefly need:
Pepper and vinegar besides
Are very good indeed--
Now if you're ready Oysters dear,
We can begin to feed."
"But not on us!" the Oysters cried,
Turning a little blue,
"After such kindness, that would be
A dismal thing to do!"
"The night is fine," the Walrus said
"Do you admire the view?
"It was so kind of you to come!
And you are very nice!"
The Carpenter said nothing but
"Cut us another slice:
I wish you were not quite so deaf--
I've had to ask you twice!"
"It seems a shame," the Walrus said,
"To play them such a trick,
After we've brought them out so far,
And made them trot so quick!"
The Carpenter said nothing but
"The butter's spread too thick!"
"I weep for you," the Walrus said.
"I deeply sympathize."
With sobs and tears he sorted out
Those of the largest size.
Holding his pocket handkerchief
Before his streaming eyes.
"O Oysters," said the Carpenter.
"You've had a pleasant run!
Shall we be trotting home again?"
But answer came there none--
And that was scarcely odd, because
They'd eaten every one.'
'I like the Walrus best,' said Alice: 'because
you see he was a LITTLE
sorry for the poor oysters.'
'He ate more than the Carpenter, though,'
said Tweedledee. 'You see he
held his handkerchief in front, so that the
Carpenter couldn't count how
many he took: contrariwise.'
'That was mean!' Alice said indignantly. 'Then
I like the Carpenter
best--if he didn't eat so many as the Walrus.'
'But he ate as many as he could get,' said
Tweedledum.
This was a puzzler. After a pause, Alice began,
'Well! They were BOTH
very unpleasant characters--' Here she checked
herself in some alarm,
at hearing something that sounded to her like
the puffing of a large
steam-engine in the wood near them, though
she feared it was more likely
to be a wild beast. 'Are there any lions or
tigers about here?' she
asked timidly.
'It's only the Red King snoring,' said Tweedledee.
'Come and look at him!' the brothers cried,
and they each took one of
Alice's hands, and led her up to where the
King was sleeping.
'Isn't he a LOVELY sight?' said Tweedledum.
Alice couldn't say honestly that he was. He
had a tall red night-cap on,
with a tassel, and he was lying crumpled up
into a sort of untidy heap,
and snoring loud--'fit to snore his head off!'
as Tweedledum remarked.
'I'm afraid he'll catch cold with lying on
the damp grass,' said Alice,
who was a very thoughtful little girl.
'He's dreaming now,' said Tweedledee: 'and
what do you think he's
dreaming about?'
Alice said 'Nobody can guess that.'
'Why, about YOU!' Tweedledee exclaimed, clapping
his hands triumphantly.
'And if he left off dreaming about you, where
do you suppose you'd be?'
'Where I am now, of course,' said Alice.
'Not you!' Tweedledee retorted contemptuously.
'You'd be nowhere. Why,
you're only a sort of thing in his dream!'
'If that there King was to wake,' added Tweedledum,
'you'd go
out--bang!--just like a candle!'
'I shouldn't!' Alice exclaimed indignantly.
'Besides, if I'M only a sort
of thing in his dream, what are YOU, I should
like to know?'
'Ditto' said Tweedledum.
'Ditto, ditto' cried Tweedledee.
He shouted this so loud that Alice couldn't
help saying, 'Hush! You'll
be waking him, I'm afraid, if you make so
much noise.'
'Well, it no use YOUR talking about waking
him,' said Tweedledum, 'when
you're only one of the things in his dream.
You know very well you're
not real.'
'I AM real!' said Alice and began to cry.
'You won't make yourself a bit realler by
crying,' Tweedledee remarked:
'there's nothing to cry about.'
'If I wasn't real,' Alice said--half-laughing
through her tears, it all
seemed so ridiculous--'I shouldn't be able
to cry.'
'I hope you don't suppose those are real tears?'
Tweedledum interrupted
in a tone of great contempt.
'I know they're talking nonsense,' Alice thought
to herself: 'and it's
foolish to cry about it.' So she brushed away
her tears, and went on as
cheerfully as she could. 'At any rate I'd
better be getting out of the
wood, for really it's coming on very dark.
Do you think it's going to
rain?'
Tweedledum spread a large umbrella over himself
and his brother, and
looked up into it. 'No, I don't think it is,'
he said: 'at least--not
under HERE. Nohow.'
'But it may rain OUTSIDE?'
'It may--if it chooses,' said Tweedledee:
'we've no objection.
Contrariwise.'
'Selfish things!' thought Alice, and she was
just going to say
'Good-night' and leave them, when Tweedledum
sprang out from under the
umbrella and seized her by the wrist.
'Do you see THAT?' he said, in a voice choking
with passion, and
his eyes grew large and yellow all in a moment,
as he pointed with a
trembling finger at a small white thing lying
under the tree.
'It's only a rattle,' Alice said, after a
careful examination of the
little white thing. 'Not a rattleSNAKE, you
know,' she added hastily,
thinking that he was frightened: 'only an
old rattle--quite old and
broken.'
'I knew it was!' cried Tweedledum, beginning
to stamp about wildly and
tear his hair. 'It's spoilt, of course!' Here
he looked at Tweedledee,
who immediately sat down on the ground, and
tried to hide himself under
the umbrella.
Alice laid her hand upon his arm, and said
in a soothing tone, 'You
needn't be so angry about an old rattle.'
'But it isn't old!' Tweedledum cried, in a
greater fury than ever. 'It's
new, I tell you--I bought it yesterday--my
nice new RATTLE!' and his
voice rose to a perfect scream.
All this time Tweedledee was trying his best
to fold up the umbrella,
with himself in it: which was such an extraordinary
thing to do, that it
quite took off Alice's attention from the
angry brother. But he couldn't
quite succeed, and it ended in his rolling
over, bundled up in the
umbrella, with only his head out: and there
he lay, opening and shutting
his mouth and his large eyes--'looking more
like a fish than anything
else,' Alice thought.
'Of course you agree to have a battle?' Tweedledum
said in a calmer
tone.
'I suppose so,' the other sulkily replied,
as he crawled out of the
umbrella: 'only SHE must help us to dress
up, you know.'
So the two brothers went off hand-in-hand
into the wood, and returned
in a minute with their arms full of things--such
as bolsters, blankets,
hearth-rugs, table-cloths, dish-covers and
coal-scuttles. 'I hope you're
a good hand at pinning and tying strings?'
Tweedledum remarked. 'Every
one of these things has got to go on, somehow
or other.'
Alice said afterwards she had never seen such
a fuss made about anything
in all her life--the way those two bustled
about--and the quantity of
things they put on--and the trouble they gave
her in tying strings and
fastening buttons--'Really they'll be more
like bundles of old clothes
than anything else, by the time they're ready!'
she said to herself, as
she arranged a bolster round the neck of Tweedledee,
'to keep his head
from being cut off,' as he said.
'You know,' he added very gravely, 'it's one
of the most serious things
that can possibly happen to one in a battle--to
get one's head cut off.'
Alice laughed aloud: but she managed to turn
it into a cough, for fear
of hurting his feelings.
'Do I look very pale?' said Tweedledum, coming
up to have his helmet
tied on. (He CALLED it a helmet, though it
certainly looked much more
like a saucepan.)
'Well--yes--a LITTLE,' Alice replied gently.
'I'm very brave generally,' he went on in
a low voice: 'only to-day I
happen to have a headache.'
'And I'VE got a toothache!' said Tweedledee,
who had overheard the
remark. 'I'm far worse off than you!'
'Then you'd better not fight to-day,' said
Alice, thinking it a good
opportunity to make peace.
'We MUST have a bit of a fight, but I don't
care about going on long,'
said Tweedledum. 'What's the time now?'
Tweedledee looked at his watch, and said 'Half-past
four.'
'Let's fight till six, and then have dinner,'
said Tweedledum.
'Very well,' the other said, rather sadly:
'and SHE can watch us--only
you'd better not come VERY close,' he added:
'I generally hit everything
I can see--when I get really excited.'
'And _I_ hit everything within reach,' cried
Tweedledum, 'whether I can
see it or not!'
Alice laughed. 'You must hit the TREES pretty
often, I should think,'
she said.
Tweedledum looked round him with a satisfied
smile. 'I don't suppose,'
he said, 'there'll be a tree left standing,
for ever so far round, by
the time we've finished!'
'And all about a rattle!' said Alice, still
hoping to make them a LITTLE
ashamed of fighting for such a trifle.
'I shouldn't have minded it so much,' said
Tweedledum, 'if it hadn't
been a new one.'
'I wish the monstrous crow would come!' thought
Alice.
'There's only one sword, you know,' Tweedledum
said to his brother:
'but you can have the umbrella--it's quite
as sharp. Only we must begin
quick. It's getting as dark as it can.'
'And darker,' said Tweedledee.
It was getting dark so suddenly that Alice
thought there must be a
thunderstorm coming on. 'What a thick black
cloud that is!' she said.
'And how fast it comes! Why, I do believe
it's got wings!'
'It's the crow!' Tweedledum cried out in a
shrill voice of alarm: and
the two brothers took to their heels and were
out of sight in a moment.
Alice ran a little way into the wood, and
stopped under a large tree.
'It can never get at me HERE,' she thought:
'it's far too large to
squeeze itself in among the trees. But I wish
it wouldn't flap its wings
so--it makes quite a hurricane in the wood--here's
somebody's shawl
being blown away!'
End of Chapter 4
CHAPTER 5
Wool and Water
She caught the shawl as she spoke, and looked
about for the owner: in
another moment the White Queen came running
wildly through the wood,
with both arms stretched out wide, as if she
were flying, and Alice very
civilly went to meet her with the shawl.
'I'm very glad I happened to be in the way,'
Alice said, as she helped
her to put on her shawl again.
The White Queen only looked at her in a helpless
frightened sort of way,
and kept repeating something in a whisper
to herself that sounded like
'bread-and-butter, bread-and-butter,' and
Alice felt that if there was
to be any conversation at all, she must manage
it herself. So she began
rather timidly: 'Am I addressing the White
Queen?'
'Well, yes, if you call that a-dressing,'
The Queen said. 'It isn't MY
notion of the thing, at all.'
Alice thought it would never do to have an
argument at the very
beginning of their conversation, so she smiled
and said, 'If your
Majesty will only tell me the right way to
begin, I'll do it as well as
I can.'
'But I don't want it done at all!' groaned
the poor Queen. 'I've been
a-dressing myself for the last two hours.'
It would have been all the better, as it seemed
to Alice, if she had got
some one else to dress her, she was so dreadfully
untidy. 'Every
single thing's crooked,' Alice thought to
herself, 'and she's all over
pins!--may I put your shawl straight for you?'
she added aloud.
'I don't know what's the matter with it!'
the Queen said, in a
melancholy voice. 'It's out of temper, I think.
I've pinned it here, and
I've pinned it there, but there's no pleasing
it!'
'It CAN'T go straight, you know, if you pin
it all on one side,' Alice
said, as she gently put it right for her;
'and, dear me, what a state
your hair is in!'
'The brush has got entangled in it!' the Queen
said with a sigh. 'And I
lost the comb yesterday.'
Alice carefully released the brush, and did
her best to get the hair
into order. 'Come, you look rather better
now!' she said, after altering
most of the pins. 'But really you should have
a lady's maid!'
'I'm sure I'll take you with pleasure!' the
Queen said. 'Twopence a
week, and jam every other day.'
Alice couldn't help laughing, as she said,
'I don't want you to hire
ME--and I don't care for jam.'
'It's very good jam,' said the Queen.
'Well, I don't want any TO-DAY, at any rate.'
'You couldn't have it if you DID want it,'
the Queen said. 'The rule is,
jam to-morrow and jam yesterday--but never
jam to-day.'
'It MUST come sometimes to "jam to-day,"'
Alice objected.
'No, it can't,' said the Queen. 'It's jam
every OTHER day: to-day isn't
any OTHER day, you know.'
'I don't understand you,' said Alice. 'It's
dreadfully confusing!'
'That's the effect of living backwards,' the
Queen said kindly: 'it
always makes one a little giddy at first--'
'Living backwards!' Alice repeated in great
astonishment. 'I never heard
of such a thing!'
'--but there's one great advantage in it,
that one's memory works both
ways.'
'I'm sure MINE only works one way,' Alice
remarked. 'I can't remember
things before they happen.'
'It's a poor sort of memory that only works
backwards,' the Queen
remarked.
'What sort of things do YOU remember best?'
Alice ventured to ask.
'Oh, things that happened the week after next,'
the Queen replied in a
careless tone. 'For instance, now,' she went
on, sticking a large piece
of plaster [band-aid] on her finger as she
spoke, 'there's the King's
Messenger. He's in prison now, being punished:
and the trial doesn't
even begin till next Wednesday: and of course
the crime comes last of
all.'
'Suppose he never commits the crime?' said
Alice.
'That would be all the better, wouldn't it?'
the Queen said, as she
bound the plaster round her finger with a
bit of ribbon.
Alice felt there was no denying THAT. 'Of
course it would be all
the better,' she said: 'but it wouldn't be
all the better his being
punished.'
'You're wrong THERE, at any rate,' said the
Queen: 'were YOU ever
punished?'
'Only for faults,' said Alice.
'And you were all the better for it, I know!'
the Queen said
triumphantly.
'Yes, but then I HAD done the things I was
punished for,' said Alice:
'that makes all the difference.'
'But if you HADN'T done them,' the Queen said,
'that would have been
better still; better, and better, and better!'
Her voice went higher
with each 'better,' till it got quite to a
squeak at last.
Alice was just beginning to say 'There's a
mistake somewhere--,' when
the Queen began screaming so loud that she
had to leave the sentence
unfinished. 'Oh, oh, oh!' shouted the Queen,
shaking her hand about as
if she wanted to shake it off. 'My finger's
bleeding! Oh, oh, oh, oh!'
Her screams were so exactly like the whistle
of a steam-engine, that
Alice had to hold both her hands over her
ears.
'What IS the matter?' she said, as soon as
there was a chance of making
herself heard. 'Have you pricked your finger?'
'I haven't pricked it YET,' the Queen said,
'but I soon shall--oh, oh,
oh!'
'When do you expect to do it?' Alice asked,
feeling very much inclined
to laugh.
'When I fasten my shawl again,' the poor Queen
groaned out: 'the brooch
will come undone directly. Oh, oh!' As she
said the words the brooch
flew open, and the Queen clutched wildly at
it, and tried to clasp it
again.
'Take care!' cried Alice. 'You're holding
it all crooked!' And she
caught at the brooch; but it was too late:
the pin had slipped, and the
Queen had pricked her finger.
'That accounts for the bleeding, you see,'
she said to Alice with a
smile. 'Now you understand the way things
happen here.'
'But why don't you scream now?' Alice asked,
holding her hands ready to
put over her ears again.
'Why, I've done all the screaming already,'
said the Queen. 'What would
be the good of having it all over again?'
By this time it was getting light. 'The crow
must have flown away, I
think,' said Alice: 'I'm so glad it's gone.
I thought it was the night
coming on.'
'I wish _I_ could manage to be glad!' the
Queen said. 'Only I never
can remember the rule. You must be very happy,
living in this wood, and
being glad whenever you like!'
'Only it is so VERY lonely here!' Alice said
in a melancholy voice; and
at the thought of her loneliness two large
tears came rolling down her
cheeks.
'Oh, don't go on like that!' cried the poor
Queen, wringing her hands in
despair. 'Consider what a great girl you are.
Consider what a long way
you've come to-day. Consider what o'clock
it is. Consider anything, only
don't cry!'
Alice could not help laughing at this, even
in the midst of her tears.
'Can YOU keep from crying by considering things?'
she asked.
'That's the way it's done,' the Queen said
with great decision: 'nobody
can do two things at once, you know. Let's
consider your age to begin
with--how old are you?'
'I'm seven and a half exactly.'
'You needn't say "exactually,"' the Queen
remarked: 'I can believe
it without that. Now I'll give YOU something
to believe. I'm just one
hundred and one, five months and a day.'
'I can't believe THAT!' said Alice.
'Can't you?' the Queen said in a pitying tone.
'Try again: draw a long
breath, and shut your eyes.'
Alice laughed. 'There's no use trying,' she
said: 'one CAN'T believe
impossible things.'
'I daresay you haven't had much practice,'
said the Queen. 'When I was
your age, I always did it for half-an-hour
a day. Why, sometimes I've
believed as many as six impossible things
before breakfast. There goes
the shawl again!'
The brooch had come undone as she spoke, and
a sudden gust of wind blew
the Queen's shawl across a little brook. The
Queen spread out her arms
again, and went flying after it, and this
time she succeeded in catching
it for herself. 'I've got it!' she cried in
a triumphant tone. 'Now you
shall see me pin it on again, all by myself!'
'Then I hope your finger is better now?' Alice
said very politely, as
she crossed the little brook after the Queen.
'Oh, much better!' cried the Queen, her voice
rising to a squeak as she
went on. 'Much be-etter! Be-etter! Be-e-e-etter!
Be-e-ehh!' The last
word ended in a long bleat, so like a sheep
that Alice quite started.
She looked at the Queen, who seemed to have
suddenly wrapped herself up
in wool. Alice rubbed her eyes, and looked
again. She couldn't make out
what had happened at all. Was she in a shop?
And was that really--was it
really a SHEEP that was sitting on the other
side of the counter? Rub as
she could, she could make nothing more of
it: she was in a little dark
shop, leaning with her elbows on the counter,
and opposite to her was
an old Sheep, sitting in an arm-chair knitting,
and every now and then
leaving off to look at her through a great
pair of spectacles.
'What is it you want to buy?' the Sheep said
at last, looking up for a
moment from her knitting.
'I don't QUITE know yet,' Alice said, very
gently. 'I should like to
look all round me first, if I might.'
'You may look in front of you, and on both
sides, if you like,' said the
Sheep: 'but you can't look ALL round you--unless
you've got eyes at the
back of your head.'
But these, as it happened, Alice had NOT got:
so she contented herself
with turning round, looking at the shelves
as she came to them.
The shop seemed to be full of all manner of
curious things--but the
oddest part of it all was, that whenever she
looked hard at any shelf,
to make out exactly what it had on it, that
particular shelf was always
quite empty: though the others round it were
crowded as full as they
could hold.
'Things flow about so here!' she said at last
in a plaintive tone, after
she had spent a minute or so in vainly pursuing
a large bright thing,
that looked sometimes like a doll and sometimes
like a work-box, and was
always in the shelf next above the one she
was looking at. 'And this one
is the most provoking of all--but I'll tell
you what--' she added, as a
sudden thought struck her, 'I'll follow it
up to the very top shelf of
all. It'll puzzle it to go through the ceiling,
I expect!'
But even this plan failed: the 'thing' went
through the ceiling as
quietly as possible, as if it were quite used
to it.
'Are you a child or a teetotum?' the Sheep
said, as she took up another
pair of needles. 'You'll make me giddy soon,
if you go on turning round
like that.' She was now working with fourteen
pairs at once, and Alice
couldn't help looking at her in great astonishment.
'How CAN she knit with so many?' the puzzled
child thought to herself.
'She gets more and more like a porcupine every
minute!'
'Can you row?' the Sheep asked, handing her
a pair of knitting-needles
as she spoke.
'Yes, a little--but not on land--and not with
needles--' Alice was
beginning to say, when suddenly the needles
turned into oars in her
hands, and she found they were in a little
boat, gliding along between
banks: so there was nothing for it but to
do her best.
'Feather!' cried the Sheep, as she took up
another pair of needles.
This didn't sound like a remark that needed
any answer, so Alice said
nothing, but pulled away. There was something
very queer about the
water, she thought, as every now and then
the oars got fast in it, and
would hardly come out again.
'Feather! Feather!' the Sheep cried again,
taking more needles. 'You'll
be catching a crab directly.'
'A dear little crab!' thought Alice. 'I should
like that.'
'Didn't you hear me say "Feather"?' the Sheep
cried angrily, taking up
quite a bunch of needles.
'Indeed I did,' said Alice: 'you've said it
very often--and very loud.
Please, where ARE the crabs?'
'In the water, of course!' said the Sheep,
sticking some of the needles
into her hair, as her hands were full. 'Feather,
I say!'
'WHY do you say "feather" so often?' Alice
asked at last, rather vexed.
'I'm not a bird!'
'You are,' said the Sheep: 'you're a little
goose.'
This offended Alice a little, so there was
no more conversation for a
minute or two, while the boat glided gently
on, sometimes among beds of
weeds (which made the oars stick fast in the
water, worse then ever),
and sometimes under trees, but always with
the same tall river-banks
frowning over their heads.
'Oh, please! There are some scented rushes!'
Alice cried in a sudden
transport of delight. 'There really are--and
SUCH beauties!'
'You needn't say "please" to ME about 'em,'
the Sheep said, without
looking up from her knitting: 'I didn't put
'em there, and I'm not going
to take 'em away.'
'No, but I meant--please, may we wait and
pick some?' Alice pleaded. 'If
you don't mind stopping the boat for a minute.'
'How am _I_ to stop it?' said the Sheep. 'If
you leave off rowing, it'll
stop of itself.'
So the boat was left to drift down the stream
as it would, till it
glided gently in among the waving rushes.
And then the little sleeves
were carefully rolled up, and the little arms
were plunged in elbow-deep
to get the rushes a good long way down before
breaking them off--and for
a while Alice forgot all about the Sheep and
the knitting, as she
bent over the side of the boat, with just
the ends of her tangled hair
dipping into the water--while with bright
eager eyes she caught at one
bunch after another of the darling scented
rushes.
'I only hope the boat won't tipple over!'
she said to herself. 'Oh, WHAT
a lovely one! Only I couldn't quite reach
it.' 'And it certainly DID
seem a little provoking ('almost as if it
happened on purpose,' she
thought) that, though she managed to pick
plenty of beautiful rushes as
the boat glided by, there was always a more
lovely one that she couldn't
reach.
'The prettiest are always further!' she said
at last, with a sigh at the
obstinacy of the rushes in growing so far
off, as, with flushed cheeks
and dripping hair and hands, she scrambled
back into her place, and
began to arrange her new-found treasures.
What mattered it to her just then that the
rushes had begun to fade, and
to lose all their scent and beauty, from the
very moment that she
picked them? Even real scented rushes, you
know, last only a very little
while--and these, being dream-rushes, melted
away almost like snow, as
they lay in heaps at her feet--but Alice hardly
noticed this, there were
so many other curious things to think about.
They hadn't gone much farther before the blade
of one of the oars got
fast in the water and WOULDN'T come out again
(so Alice explained it
afterwards), and the consequence was that
the handle of it caught her
under the chin, and, in spite of a series
of little shrieks of 'Oh, oh,
oh!' from poor Alice, it swept her straight
off the seat, and down among
the heap of rushes.
However, she wasn't hurt, and was soon up
again: the Sheep went on with
her knitting all the while, just as if nothing
had happened. 'That was
a nice crab you caught!' she remarked, as
Alice got back into her place,
very much relieved to find herself still in
the boat.
'Was it? I didn't see it,' Said Alice, peeping
cautiously over the side
of the boat into the dark water. 'I wish it
hadn't let go--I should
so like to see a little crab to take home
with me!' But the Sheep only
laughed scornfully, and went on with her knitting.
'Are there many crabs here?' said Alice.
'Crabs, and all sorts of things,' said the
Sheep: 'plenty of choice,
only make up your mind. Now, what DO you want
to buy?'
'To buy!' Alice echoed in a tone that was
half astonished and half
frightened--for the oars, and the boat, and
the river, had vanished all
in a moment, and she was back again in the
little dark shop.
'I should like to buy an egg, please,' she
said timidly. 'How do you
sell them?'
'Fivepence farthing for one--Twopence for
two,' the Sheep replied.
'Then two are cheaper than one?' Alice said
in a surprised tone, taking
out her purse.
'Only you MUST eat them both, if you buy two,'
said the Sheep.
'Then I'll have ONE, please,' said Alice,
as she put the money down on
the counter. For she thought to herself, 'They
mightn't be at all nice,
you know.'
The Sheep took the money, and put it away
in a box: then she said 'I
never put things into people's hands--that
would never do--you must get
it for yourself.' And so saying, she went
off to the other end of the
shop, and set the egg upright on a shelf.
'I wonder WHY it wouldn't do?' thought Alice,
as she groped her way
among the tables and chairs, for the shop
was very dark towards the end.
'The egg seems to get further away the more
I walk towards it. Let me
see, is this a chair? Why, it's got branches,
I declare! How very odd to
find trees growing here! And actually here's
a little brook! Well, this
is the very queerest shop I ever saw!'
So she went on, wondering more and more at
every step, as everything
turned into a tree the moment she came up
to it, and she quite expected
the egg to do the same.
End of Chapter 5
CHAPTER 6
Humpty Dumpty
However, the egg only got larger and larger,
and more and more human:
when she had come within a few yards of it,
she saw that it had eyes
and a nose and mouth; and when she had come
close to it, she saw clearly
that it was HUMPTY DUMPTY himself. 'It can't
be anybody else!' she said
to herself. 'I'm as certain of it, as if his
name were written all over
his face.'
It might have been written a hundred times,
easily, on that enormous
face. Humpty Dumpty was sitting with his legs
crossed, like a Turk, on
the top of a high wall--such a narrow one
that Alice quite wondered how
he could keep his balance--and, as his eyes
were steadily fixed in the
opposite direction, and he didn't take the
least notice of her, she
thought he must be a stuffed figure after
all.
'And how exactly like an egg he is!' she said
aloud, standing with her
hands ready to catch him, for she was every
moment expecting him to
fall.
'It's VERY provoking,' Humpty Dumpty said
after a long silence, looking
away from Alice as he spoke, 'to be called
an egg--VERY!'
'I said you LOOKED like an egg, Sir,' Alice
gently explained. 'And some
eggs are very pretty, you know' she added,
hoping to turn her remark
into a sort of a compliment.
'Some people,' said Humpty Dumpty, looking
away from her as usual, 'have
no more sense than a baby!'
Alice didn't know what to say to this: it
wasn't at all like
conversation, she thought, as he never said
anything to HER; in fact,
his last remark was evidently addressed to
a tree--so she stood and
softly repeated to herself:--
'Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall:
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All the King's horses and all the King's men
Couldn't put Humpty Dumpty in his place again.'
'That last line is much too long for the poetry,'
she added, almost out
loud, forgetting that Humpty Dumpty would
hear her.
'Don't stand there chattering to yourself
like that,' Humpty Dumpty
said, looking at her for the first time, 'but
tell me your name and your
business.'
'My NAME is Alice, but--'
'It's a stupid enough name!' Humpty Dumpty
interrupted impatiently.
'What does it mean?'
'MUST a name mean something?' Alice asked
doubtfully.
'Of course it must,' Humpty Dumpty said with
a short laugh: 'MY name
means the shape I am--and a good handsome
shape it is, too. With a name
like yours, you might be any shape, almost.'
'Why do you sit out here all alone?' said
Alice, not wishing to begin an
argument.
'Why, because there's nobody with me!' cried
Humpty Dumpty. 'Did you
think I didn't know the answer to THAT? Ask
another.'
'Don't you think you'd be safer down on the
ground?' Alice went on, not
with any idea of making another riddle, but
simply in her good-natured
anxiety for the queer creature. 'That wall
is so VERY narrow!'
'What tremendously easy riddles you ask!'
Humpty Dumpty growled out. 'Of
course I don't think so! Why, if ever I DID
fall off--which there's no
chance of--but IF I did--' Here he pursed
up his lips and looked so solemn
and grand that Alice could hardly help laughing.
'IF I did fall,' he
went on, 'THE KING HAS PROMISED ME--ah, you
may turn pale, if you like!
You didn't think I was going to say that,
did you? THE KING HAS PROMISED ME--
WITH HIS VERY OWN MOUTH--to--to--'
'To send all his horses and all his men,'
Alice interrupted, rather
unwisely.
'Now I declare that's too bad!' Humpty Dumpty
cried, breaking into a
sudden passion. 'You've been listening at
doors--and behind trees--and
down chimneys--or you couldn't have known
it!'
'I haven't, indeed!' Alice said very gently.
'It's in a book.'
'Ah, well! They may write such things in a
BOOK,' Humpty Dumpty said in
a calmer tone. 'That's what you call a History
of England, that is.
Now, take a good look at me! I'm one that
has spoken to a King, _I_ am:
mayhap you'll never see such another: and
to show you I'm not proud, you
may shake hands with me!' And he grinned almost
from ear to ear, as he
leant forwards (and as nearly as possible
fell off the wall in doing so)
and offered Alice his hand. She watched him
a little anxiously as she
took it. 'If he smiled much more, the ends
of his mouth might meet
behind,' she thought: 'and then I don't know
what would happen to his
head! I'm afraid it would come off!'
'Yes, all his horses and all his men,' Humpty
Dumpty went on. 'They'd
pick me up again in a minute, THEY would!
However, this conversation is
going on a little too fast: let's go back
to the last remark but one.'
'I'm afraid I can't quite remember it,' Alice
said very politely.
'In that case we start fresh,' said Humpty
Dumpty, 'and it's my turn
to choose a subject--' ('He talks about it
just as if it was a game!'
thought Alice.) 'So here's a question for
you. How old did you say you
were?'
Alice made a short calculation, and said 'Seven
years and six months.'
'Wrong!' Humpty Dumpty exclaimed triumphantly.
'You never said a word
like it!'
'I though you meant "How old ARE you?"' Alice
explained.
'If I'd meant that, I'd have said it,' said
Humpty Dumpty.
Alice didn't want to begin another argument,
so she said nothing.
'Seven years and six months!' Humpty Dumpty
repeated thoughtfully. 'An
uncomfortable sort of age. Now if you'd asked
MY advice, I'd have said
"Leave off at seven"--but it's too late now.'
'I never ask advice about growing,' Alice
said indignantly.
'Too proud?' the other inquired.
Alice felt even more indignant at this suggestion.
'I mean,' she said,
'that one can't help growing older.'
'ONE can't, perhaps,' said Humpty Dumpty,
'but TWO can. With proper
assistance, you might have left off at seven.'
'What a beautiful belt you've got on!' Alice
suddenly remarked.
(They had had quite enough of the subject
of age, she thought: and if
they really were to take turns in choosing
subjects, it was her turn
now.) 'At least,' she corrected herself on
second thoughts, 'a beautiful
cravat, I should have said--no, a belt, I
mean--I beg your pardon!' she
added in dismay, for Humpty Dumpty looked
thoroughly offended, and she
began to wish she hadn't chosen that subject.
'If I only knew,' she
thought to herself, 'which was neck and which
was waist!'
Evidently Humpty Dumpty was very angry, though
he said nothing for a
minute or two. When he DID speak again, it
was in a deep growl.
'It is a--MOST--PROVOKING--thing,' he said
at last, 'when a person
doesn't know a cravat from a belt!'
'I know it's very ignorant of me,' Alice said,
in so humble a tone that
Humpty Dumpty relented.
'It's a cravat, child, and a beautiful one,
as you say. It's a present
from the White King and Queen. There now!'
'Is it really?' said Alice, quite pleased
to find that she HAD chosen a
good subject, after all.
'They gave it me,' Humpty Dumpty continued
thoughtfully, as he crossed
one knee over the other and clasped his hands
round it, 'they gave it
me--for an un-birthday present.'
'I beg your pardon?' Alice said with a puzzled
air.
'I'm not offended,' said Humpty Dumpty.
'I mean, what IS an un-birthday present?'
'A present given when it isn't your birthday,
of course.'
Alice considered a little. 'I like birthday
presents best,' she said at
last.
'You don't know what you're talking about!'
cried Humpty Dumpty. 'How
many days are there in a year?'
'Three hundred and sixty-five,' said Alice.
'And how many birthdays have you?'
'One.'
'And if you take one from three hundred and
sixty-five, what remains?'
'Three hundred and sixty-four, of course.'
Humpty Dumpty looked doubtful. 'I'd rather
see that done on paper,' he
said.
Alice couldn't help smiling as she took out
her memorandum-book, and
worked the sum for him:
365 - 1 = 364
Humpty Dumpty took the book, and looked at
it carefully. 'That seems to
be done right--' he began.
'You're holding it upside down!' Alice interrupted.
'To be sure I was!' Humpty Dumpty said gaily,
as she turned it round for
him. 'I thought it looked a little queer.
As I was saying, that SEEMS
to be done right--though I haven't time to
look it over thoroughly just
now--and that shows that there are three hundred
and sixty-four days
when you might get un-birthday presents--'
'Certainly,' said Alice.
'And only ONE for birthday presents, you know.
There's glory for you!'
'I don't know what you mean by "glory,"' Alice
said.
Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. 'Of course
you don't--till I tell
you. I meant "there's a nice knock-down argument
for you!"'
'But "glory" doesn't mean "a nice knock-down
argument,"' Alice objected.
'When _I_ use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said
in rather a scornful tone, 'it
means just what I choose it to mean--neither
more nor less.'
'The question is,' said Alice, 'whether you
CAN make words mean so many
different things.'
'The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'which
is to be master--that's
all.'
Alice was too much puzzled to say anything,
so after a minute Humpty
Dumpty began again. 'They've a temper, some
of them--particularly verbs,
they're the proudest--adjectives you can do
anything with, but not
verbs--however, _I_ can manage the whole lot
of them! Impenetrability!
That's what _I_ say!'
'Would you tell me, please,' said Alice 'what
that means?'
'Now you talk like a reasonable child,' said
Humpty Dumpty, looking very
much pleased. 'I meant by "impenetrability"
that we've had enough of
that subject, and it would be just as well
if you'd mention what you
mean to do next, as I suppose you don't mean
to stop here all the rest
of your life.'
'That's a great deal to make one word mean,'
Alice said in a thoughtful
tone.
'When I make a word do a lot of work like
that,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'I
always pay it extra.'
'Oh!' said Alice. She was too much puzzled
to make any other remark.
'Ah, you should see 'em come round me of a
Saturday night,' Humpty
Dumpty went on, wagging his head gravely from
side to side: 'for to get
their wages, you know.'
(Alice didn't venture to ask what he paid
them with; and so you see I
can't tell YOU.)
'You seem very clever at explaining words,
Sir,' said Alice. 'Would you
kindly tell me the meaning of the poem called
"Jabberwocky"?'
'Let's hear it,' said Humpty Dumpty. 'I can
explain all the poems that
were ever invented--and a good many that haven't
been invented just
yet.'
This sounded very hopeful, so Alice repeated
the first verse:
'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
'That's enough to begin with,' Humpty Dumpty
interrupted: 'there
are plenty of hard words there. "BRILLIG"
means four o'clock in the
afternoon--the time when you begin BROILING
things for dinner.'
'That'll do very well,' said Alice: 'and "SLITHY"?'
'Well, "SLITHY" means "lithe and slimy." "Lithe"
is the same as
"active." You see it's like a portmanteau--there
are two meanings packed
up into one word.'
'I see it now,' Alice remarked thoughtfully:
'and what are "TOVES"?'
'Well, "TOVES" are something like badgers--they're
something like
lizards--and they're something like corkscrews.'
'They must be very curious looking creatures.'
'They are that,' said Humpty Dumpty: 'also
they make their nests under
sun-dials--also they live on cheese.'
'And what's the "GYRE" and to "GIMBLE"?'
'To "GYRE" is to go round and round like a
gyroscope. To "GIMBLE" is to
make holes like a gimlet.'
'And "THE WABE" is the grass-plot round a
sun-dial, I suppose?' said
Alice, surprised at her own ingenuity.
'Of course it is. It's called "WABE," you
know, because it goes a long
way before it, and a long way behind it--'
'And a long way beyond it on each side,' Alice
added.
'Exactly so. Well, then, "MIMSY" is "flimsy
and miserable" (there's
another portmanteau for you). And a "BOROGOVE"
is a thin shabby-looking
bird with its feathers sticking out all round--something
like a live
mop.'
'And then "MOME RATHS"?' said Alice. 'I'm
afraid I'm giving you a great
deal of trouble.'
'Well, a "RATH" is a sort of green pig: but
"MOME" I'm not certain
about. I think it's short for "from home"--meaning
that they'd lost
their way, you know.'
'And what does "OUTGRABE" mean?'
'Well, "OUTGRABING" is something between bellowing
and whistling, with a
kind of sneeze in the middle: however, you'll
hear it done, maybe--down
in the wood yonder--and when you've once heard
it you'll be QUITE
content. Who's been repeating all that hard
stuff to you?'
'I read it in a book,' said Alice. 'But I
had some poetry repeated to
me, much easier than that, by--Tweedledee,
I think it was.'
'As to poetry, you know,' said Humpty Dumpty,
stretching out one of his
great hands, '_I_ can repeat poetry as well
as other folk, if it comes
to that--'
'Oh, it needn't come to that!' Alice hastily
said, hoping to keep him
from beginning.
'The piece I'm going to repeat,' he went on
without noticing her remark,
'was written entirely for your amusement.'
Alice felt that in that case she really OUGHT
to listen to it, so she
sat down, and said 'Thank you' rather sadly.
'In winter, when the fields are white,
I sing this song for your delight--
only I don't sing it,' he added, as an explanation.
'I see you don't,' said Alice.
'If you can SEE whether I'm singing or not,
you've sharper eyes than
most.' Humpty Dumpty remarked severely. Alice
was silent.
'In spring, when woods are getting green,
I'll try and tell you what I mean.'
'Thank you very much,' said Alice.
'In summer, when the days are long,
Perhaps you'll understand the song:
In autumn, when the leaves are brown,
Take pen and ink, and write it down.'
'I will, if I can remember it so long,' said
Alice.
'You needn't go on making remarks like that,'
Humpty Dumpty said:
'they're not sensible, and they put me out.'
'I sent a message to the fish:
I told them "This is what I wish."
The little fishes of the sea,
They sent an answer back to me.
The little fishes' answer was
"We cannot do it, Sir, because--"'
'I'm afraid I don't quite understand,' said
Alice.
'It gets easier further on,' Humpty Dumpty
replied.
'I sent to them again to say
"It will be better to obey."
The fishes answered with a grin,
"Why, what a temper you are in!"
I told them once, I told them twice:
They would not listen to advice.
I took a kettle large and new,
Fit for the deed I had to do.
My heart went hop, my heart went thump;
I filled the kettle at the pump.
Then some one came to me and said,
"The little fishes are in bed."
I said to him, I said it plain,
"Then you must wake them up again."
I said it very loud and clear;
I went and shouted in his ear.'
Humpty Dumpty raised his voice almost to a
scream as he repeated this
verse, and Alice thought with a shudder, 'I
wouldn't have been the
messenger for ANYTHING!'
'But he was very stiff and proud;
He said "You needn't shout so loud!"
And he was very proud and stiff;
He said "I'd go and wake them, if--"
I took a corkscrew from the shelf:
I went to wake them up myself.
And when I found the door was locked,
I pulled and pushed and kicked and knocked.
And when I found the door was shut,
I tried to turn the handle, but--'
There was a long pause.
'Is that all?' Alice timidly asked.
'That's all,' said Humpty Dumpty. 'Good-bye.'
This was rather sudden, Alice thought: but,
after such a VERY strong
hint that she ought to be going, she felt
that it would hardly be civil
to stay. So she got up, and held out her hand.
'Good-bye, till we meet
again!' she said as cheerfully as she could.
'I shouldn't know you again if we DID meet,'
Humpty Dumpty replied in
a discontented tone, giving her one of his
fingers to shake; 'you're so
exactly like other people.'
'The face is what one goes by, generally,'
Alice remarked in a
thoughtful tone.
'That's just what I complain of,' said Humpty
Dumpty. 'Your face is the
same as everybody has--the two eyes, so--'
(marking their places in the
air with this thumb) 'nose in the middle,
mouth under. It's always the
same. Now if you had the two eyes on the same
side of the nose, for
instance--or the mouth at the top--that would
be SOME help.'
'It wouldn't look nice,' Alice objected. But
Humpty Dumpty only shut his
eyes and said 'Wait till you've tried.'
Alice waited a minute to see if he would speak
again, but as he never
opened his eyes or took any further notice
of her, she said 'Good-bye!'
once more, and, getting no answer to this,
she quietly walked away:
but she couldn't help saying to herself as
she went, 'Of all the
unsatisfactory--' (she repeated this aloud,
as it was a great comfort to
have such a long word to say) 'of all the
unsatisfactory people I EVER
met--' She never finished the sentence, for
at this moment a heavy crash
shook the forest from end to end.
End of Chapter 6
CHAPTER 7
The Lion and the Unicorn
The next moment soldiers came running through
the wood, at first in twos
and threes, then ten or twenty together, and
at last in such crowds that
they seemed to fill the whole forest. Alice
got behind a tree, for fear
of being run over, and watched them go by.
She thought that in all her life she had never
seen soldiers so
uncertain on their feet: they were always
tripping over something or
other, and whenever one went down, several
more always fell over him, so
that the ground was soon covered with little
heaps of men.
Then came the horses. Having four feet, these
managed rather better than
the foot-soldiers: but even THEY stumbled
now and then; and it seemed
to be a regular rule that, whenever a horse
stumbled the rider fell off
instantly. The confusion got worse every moment,
and Alice was very glad
to get out of the wood into an open place,
where she found the White
King seated on the ground, busily writing
in his memorandum-book.
'I've sent them all!' the King cried in a
tone of delight, on seeing
Alice. 'Did you happen to meet any soldiers,
my dear, as you came
through the wood?'
'Yes, I did,' said Alice: 'several thousand,
I should think.'
'Four thousand two hundred and seven, that's
the exact number,' the King
said, referring to his book. 'I couldn't send
all the horses, you know,
because two of them are wanted in the game.
And I haven't sent the two
Messengers, either. They're both gone to the
town. Just look along the
road, and tell me if you can see either of
them.'
'I see nobody on the road,' said Alice.
'I only wish _I_ had such eyes,' the King
remarked in a fretful tone.
'To be able to see Nobody! And at that distance,
too! Why, it's as much
as _I_ can do to see real people, by this
light!'
All this was lost on Alice, who was still
looking intently along
the road, shading her eyes with one hand.
'I see somebody now!' she
exclaimed at last. 'But he's coming very slowly--and
what curious
attitudes he goes into!' (For the messenger
kept skipping up and down,
and wriggling like an eel, as he came along,
with his great hands spread
out like fans on each side.)
'Not at all,' said the King. 'He's an Anglo-Saxon
Messenger--and those
are Anglo-Saxon attitudes. He only does them
when he's happy. His name
is Haigha.' (He pronounced it so as to rhyme
with 'mayor.')
'I love my love with an H,' Alice couldn't
help beginning, 'because
he is Happy. I hate him with an H, because
he is Hideous. I fed him
with--with--with Ham-sandwiches and Hay. His
name is Haigha, and he
lives--'
'He lives on the Hill,' the King remarked
simply, without the least idea
that he was joining in the game, while Alice
was still hesitating for
the name of a town beginning with H. 'The
other Messenger's called
Hatta. I must have TWO, you know--to come
and go. One to come, and one
to go.'
'I beg your pardon?' said Alice.
'It isn't respectable to beg,' said the King.
'I only meant that I didn't understand,' said
Alice. 'Why one to come
and one to go?'
'Didn't I tell you?' the King repeated impatiently.
'I must have Two--to
fetch and carry. One to fetch, and one to
carry.'
At this moment the Messenger arrived: he was
far too much out of breath
to say a word, and could only wave his hands
about, and make the most
fearful faces at the poor King.
'This young lady loves you with an H,' the
King said, introducing Alice
in the hope of turning off the Messenger's
attention from himself--but
it was no use--the Anglo-Saxon attitudes only
got more extraordinary
every moment, while the great eyes rolled
wildly from side to side.
'You alarm me!' said the King. 'I feel faint--Give
me a ham sandwich!'
On which the Messenger, to Alice's great amusement,
opened a bag that
hung round his neck, and handed a sandwich
to the King, who devoured it
greedily.
'Another sandwich!' said the King.
'There's nothing but hay left now,' the Messenger
said, peeping into the
bag.
'Hay, then,' the King murmured in a faint
whisper.
Alice was glad to see that it revived him
a good deal. 'There's nothing
like eating hay when you're faint,' he remarked
to her, as he munched
away.
'I should think throwing cold water over you
would be better,' Alice
suggested: 'or some sal-volatile.'
'I didn't say there was nothing BETTER,' the
King replied. 'I said there
was nothing LIKE it.' Which Alice did not
venture to deny.
'Who did you pass on the road?' the King went
on, holding out his hand
to the Messenger for some more hay.
'Nobody,' said the Messenger.
'Quite right,' said the King: 'this young
lady saw him too. So of course
Nobody walks slower than you.'
'I do my best,' the Messenger said in a sulky
tone. 'I'm sure nobody
walks much faster than I do!'
'He can't do that,' said the King, 'or else
he'd have been here first.
However, now you've got your breath, you may
tell us what's happened in
the town.'
'I'll whisper it,' said the Messenger, putting
his hands to his mouth
in the shape of a trumpet, and stooping so
as to get close to the King's
ear. Alice was sorry for this, as she wanted
to hear the news too.
However, instead of whispering, he simply
shouted at the top of his
voice 'They're at it again!'
'Do you call THAT a whisper?' cried the poor
King, jumping up and
shaking himself. 'If you do such a thing again,
I'll have you buttered!
It went through and through my head like an
earthquake!'
'It would have to be a very tiny earthquake!'
thought Alice. 'Who are at
it again?' she ventured to ask.
'Why the Lion and the Unicorn, of course,'
said the King.
'Fighting for the crown?'
'Yes, to be sure,' said the King: 'and the
best of the joke is, that
it's MY crown all the while! Let's run and
see them.' And they trotted
off, Alice repeating to herself, as she ran,
the words of the old
song:--
'The Lion and the Unicorn were fighting for
the crown:
The Lion beat the Unicorn all round the town.
Some gave them white bread, some gave them
brown;
Some gave them plum-cake and drummed them
out of town.'
'Does--the one--that wins--get the crown?'
she asked, as well as she
could, for the run was putting her quite out
of breath.
'Dear me, no!' said the King. 'What an idea!'
'Would you--be good enough,' Alice panted
out, after running a little
further, 'to stop a minute--just to get--one's
breath again?'
'I'm GOOD enough,' the King said, 'only I'm
not strong enough. You see,
a minute goes by so fearfully quick. You might
as well try to stop a
Bandersnatch!'
Alice had no more breath for talking, so they
trotted on in silence,
till they came in sight of a great crowd,
in the middle of which the
Lion and Unicorn were fighting. They were
in such a cloud of dust, that
at first Alice could not make out which was
which: but she soon managed
to distinguish the Unicorn by his horn.
They placed themselves close to where Hatta,
the other messenger, was
standing watching the fight, with a cup of
tea in one hand and a piece
of bread-and-butter in the other.
'He's only just out of prison, and he hadn't
finished his tea when
he was sent in,' Haigha whispered to Alice:
'and they only give them
oyster-shells in there--so you see he's very
hungry and thirsty. How
are you, dear child?' he went on, putting
his arm affectionately round
Hatta's neck.
Hatta looked round and nodded, and went on
with his bread and butter.
'Were you happy in prison, dear child?' said
Haigha.
Hatta looked round once more, and this time
a tear or two trickled down
his cheek: but not a word would he say.
'Speak, can't you!' Haigha cried impatiently.
But Hatta only munched
away, and drank some more tea.
'Speak, won't you!' cried the King. 'How are
they getting on with the
fight?'
Hatta made a desperate effort, and swallowed
a large piece of
bread-and-butter. 'They're getting on very
well,' he said in a choking
voice: 'each of them has been down about eighty-seven
times.'
'Then I suppose they'll soon bring the white
bread and the brown?' Alice
ventured to remark.
'It's waiting for 'em now,' said Hatta: 'this
is a bit of it as I'm
eating.'
There was a pause in the fight just then,
and the Lion and the Unicorn
sat down, panting, while the King called out
'Ten minutes allowed for
refreshments!' Haigha and Hatta set to work
at once, carrying rough
trays of white and brown bread. Alice took
a piece to taste, but it was
VERY dry.
'I don't think they'll fight any more to-day,'
the King said to Hatta:
'go and order the drums to begin.' And Hatta
went bounding away like a
grasshopper.
For a minute or two Alice stood silent, watching
him. Suddenly she
brightened up. 'Look, look!' she cried, pointing
eagerly. 'There's the
White Queen running across the country! She
came flying out of the wood
over yonder--How fast those Queens CAN run!'
'There's some enemy after her, no doubt,'
the King said, without even
looking round. 'That wood's full of them.'
'But aren't you going to run and help her?'
Alice asked, very much
surprised at his taking it so quietly.
'No use, no use!' said the King. 'She runs
so fearfully quick. You might
as well try to catch a Bandersnatch! But I'll
make a memorandum about
her, if you like--She's a dear good creature,'
he repeated softly to
himself, as he opened his memorandum-book.
'Do you spell "creature" with
a double "e"?'
At this moment the Unicorn sauntered by them,
with his hands in his
pockets. 'I had the best of it this time?'
he said to the King, just
glancing at him as he passed.
'A little--a little,' the King replied, rather
nervously. 'You shouldn't
have run him through with your horn, you know.'
'It didn't hurt him,' the Unicorn said carelessly,
and he was going
on, when his eye happened to fall upon Alice:
he turned round rather
instantly, and stood for some time looking
at her with an air of the
deepest disgust.
'What--is--this?' he said at last.
'This is a child!' Haigha replied eagerly,
coming in front of Alice
to introduce her, and spreading out both his
hands towards her in an
Anglo-Saxon attitude. 'We only found it to-day.
It's as large as life,
and twice as natural!'
'I always thought they were fabulous monsters!'
said the Unicorn. 'Is it
alive?'
'It can talk,' said Haigha, solemnly.
The Unicorn looked dreamily at Alice, and
said 'Talk, child.'
Alice could not help her lips curling up into
a smile as she began: 'Do
you know, I always thought Unicorns were fabulous
monsters, too! I never
saw one alive before!'
'Well, now that we HAVE seen each other,'
said the Unicorn, 'if you'll
believe in me, I'll believe in you. Is that
a bargain?'
'Yes, if you like,' said Alice.
'Come, fetch out the plum-cake, old man!'
the Unicorn went on, turning
from her to the King. 'None of your brown
bread for me!'
'Certainly--certainly!' the King muttered,
and beckoned to Haigha. 'Open
the bag!' he whispered. 'Quick! Not that one--that's
full of hay!'
Haigha took a large cake out of the bag, and
gave it to Alice to hold,
while he got out a dish and carving-knife.
How they all came out of it
Alice couldn't guess. It was just like a conjuring-trick,
she thought.
The Lion had joined them while this was going
on: he looked very
tired and sleepy, and his eyes were half shut.
'What's this!' he said,
blinking lazily at Alice, and speaking in
a deep hollow tone that
sounded like the tolling of a great bell.
'Ah, what IS it, now?' the Unicorn cried eagerly.
'You'll never guess!
_I_ couldn't.'
The Lion looked at Alice wearily. 'Are you
animal--vegetable--or
mineral?' he said, yawning at every other
word.
'It's a fabulous monster!' the Unicorn cried
out, before Alice could
reply.
'Then hand round the plum-cake, Monster,'
the Lion said, lying down and
putting his chin on this paws. 'And sit down,
both of you,' (to the King
and the Unicorn): 'fair play with the cake,
you know!'
The King was evidently very uncomfortable
at having to sit down between
the two great creatures; but there was no
other place for him.
'What a fight we might have for the crown,
NOW!' the Unicorn said,
looking slyly up at the crown, which the poor
King was nearly shaking
off his head, he trembled so much.
'I should win easy,' said the Lion.
'I'm not so sure of that,' said the Unicorn.
'Why, I beat you all round the town, you chicken!'
the Lion replied
angrily, half getting up as he spoke.
Here the King interrupted, to prevent the
quarrel going on: he was very
nervous, and his voice quite quivered. 'All
round the town?' he
said. 'That's a good long way. Did you go
by the old bridge, or the
market-place? You get the best view by the
old bridge.'
'I'm sure I don't know,' the Lion growled
out as he lay down again.
'There was too much dust to see anything.
What a time the Monster is,
cutting up that cake!'
Alice had seated herself on the bank of a
little brook, with the great
dish on her knees, and was sawing away diligently
with the knife. 'It's
very provoking!' she said, in reply to the
Lion (she was getting quite
used to being called 'the Monster'). 'I've
cut several slices already,
but they always join on again!'
'You don't know how to manage Looking-glass
cakes,' the Unicorn
remarked. 'Hand it round first, and cut it
afterwards.'
This sounded nonsense, but Alice very obediently
got up, and carried the
dish round, and the cake divided itself into
three pieces as she did so.
'NOW cut it up,' said the Lion, as she returned
to her place with the
empty dish.
'I say, this isn't fair!' cried the Unicorn,
as Alice sat with the knife
in her hand, very much puzzled how to begin.
'The Monster has given the
Lion twice as much as me!'
'She's kept none for herself, anyhow,' said
the Lion. 'Do you like
plum-cake, Monster?'
But before Alice could answer him, the drums
began.
Where the noise came from, she couldn't make
out: the air seemed full
of it, and it rang through and through her
head till she felt quite
deafened. She started to her feet and sprang
across the little brook in
her terror,
and had just time to see the Lion and the
Unicorn rise to their feet,
with angry looks at being interrupted in their
feast, before she dropped
to her knees, and put her hands over her ears,
vainly trying to shut out
the dreadful uproar.
'If THAT doesn't "drum them out of town,"'
she thought to herself,
'nothing ever will!'
End of Chapter 7
CHAPTER 8
'It's my own Invention'
After a while the noise seemed gradually to
die away, till all was dead
silence, and Alice lifted up her head in some
alarm. There was no one
to be seen, and her first thought was that
she must have been dreaming
about the Lion and the Unicorn and those queer
Anglo-Saxon Messengers.
However, there was the great dish still lying
at her feet, on which she
had tried to cut the plum-cake, 'So I wasn't
dreaming, after all,' she
said to herself, 'unless--unless we're all
part of the same dream. Only
I do hope it's MY dream, and not the Red King's!
I don't like belonging
to another person's dream,' she went on in
a rather complaining tone:
'I've a great mind to go and wake him, and
see what happens!'
At this moment her thoughts were interrupted
by a loud shouting of
'Ahoy! Ahoy! Check!' and a Knight dressed
in crimson armour came
galloping down upon her, brandishing a great
club. Just as he reached
her, the horse stopped suddenly: 'You're my
prisoner!' the Knight cried,
as he tumbled off his horse.
Startled as she was, Alice was more frightened
for him than for herself
at the moment, and watched him with some anxiety
as he mounted again.
As soon as he was comfortably in the saddle,
he began once more 'You're
my--' but here another voice broke in 'Ahoy!
Ahoy! Check!' and Alice
looked round in some surprise for the new
enemy.
This time it was a White Knight. He drew up
at Alice's side, and tumbled
off his horse just as the Red Knight had done:
then he got on again,
and the two Knights sat and looked at each
other for some time without
speaking. Alice looked from one to the other
in some bewilderment.
'She's MY prisoner, you know!' the Red Knight
said at last.
'Yes, but then _I_ came and rescued her!'
the White Knight replied.
'Well, we must fight for her, then,' said
the Red Knight, as he took up
his helmet (which hung from the saddle, and
was something the shape of a
horse's head), and put it on.
'You will observe the Rules of Battle, of
course?' the White Knight
remarked, putting on his helmet too.
'I always do,' said the Red Knight, and they
began banging away at each
other with such fury that Alice got behind
a tree to be out of the way
of the blows.
'I wonder, now, what the Rules of Battle are,'
she said to herself, as
she watched the fight, timidly peeping out
from her hiding-place: 'one
Rule seems to be, that if one Knight hits
the other, he knocks him off
his horse, and if he misses, he tumbles off
himself--and another Rule
seems to be that they hold their clubs with
their arms, as if they were
Punch and Judy--What a noise they make when
they tumble! Just like
a whole set of fire-irons falling into the
fender! And how quiet the
horses are! They let them get on and off them
just as if they were
tables!'
Another Rule of Battle, that Alice had not
noticed, seemed to be that
they always fell on their heads, and the battle
ended with their both
falling off in this way, side by side: when
they got up again, they
shook hands, and then the Red Knight mounted
and galloped off.
'It was a glorious victory, wasn't it?' said
the White Knight, as he
came up panting.
'I don't know,' Alice said doubtfully. 'I
don't want to be anybody's
prisoner. I want to be a Queen.'
'So you will, when you've crossed the next
brook,' said the White
Knight. 'I'll see you safe to the end of the
wood--and then I must go
back, you know. That's the end of my move.'
'Thank you very much,' said Alice. 'May I
help you off with your
helmet?' It was evidently more than he could
manage by himself; however,
she managed to shake him out of it at last.
'Now one can breathe more easily,' said the
Knight, putting back his
shaggy hair with both hands, and turning his
gentle face and large mild
eyes to Alice. She thought she had never seen
such a strange-looking
soldier in all her life.
He was dressed in tin armour, which seemed
to fit him very badly, and
he had a queer-shaped little deal box fastened
across his shoulder,
upside-down, and with the lid hanging open.
Alice looked at it with
great curiosity.
'I see you're admiring my little box.' the
Knight said in a friendly
tone. 'It's my own invention--to keep clothes
and sandwiches in. You see
I carry it upside-down, so that the rain can't
get in.'
'But the things can get OUT,' Alice gently
remarked. 'Do you know the
lid's open?'
'I didn't know it,' the Knight said, a shade
of vexation passing over
his face. 'Then all the things must have fallen
out! And the box is no
use without them.' He unfastened it as he
spoke, and was just going to
throw it into the bushes, when a sudden thought
seemed to strike him,
and he hung it carefully on a tree. 'Can you
guess why I did that?' he
said to Alice.
Alice shook her head.
'In hopes some bees may make a nest in it--then
I should get the honey.'
'But you've got a bee-hive--or something like
one--fastened to the
saddle,' said Alice.
'Yes, it's a very good bee-hive,' the Knight
said in a discontented
tone, 'one of the best kind. But not a single
bee has come near it yet.
And the other thing is a mouse-trap. I suppose
the mice keep the bees
out--or the bees keep the mice out, I don't
know which.'
'I was wondering what the mouse-trap was for,'
said Alice. 'It isn't
very likely there would be any mice on the
horse's back.'
'Not very likely, perhaps,' said the Knight:
'but if they DO come, I
don't choose to have them running all about.'
'You see,' he went on after a pause, 'it's
as well to be provided for
EVERYTHING. That's the reason the horse has
all those anklets round his
feet.'
'But what are they for?' Alice asked in a
tone of great curiosity.
'To guard against the bites of sharks,' the
Knight replied. 'It's an
invention of my own. And now help me on. I'll
go with you to the end of
the wood--What's the dish for?'
'It's meant for plum-cake,' said Alice.
'We'd better take it with us,' the Knight
said. 'It'll come in handy if
we find any plum-cake. Help me to get it into
this bag.'
This took a very long time to manage, though
Alice held the bag open
very carefully, because the Knight was so
VERY awkward in putting in
the dish: the first two or three times that
he tried he fell in himself
instead. 'It's rather a tight fit, you see,'
he said, as they got it in
a last; 'There are so many candlesticks in
the bag.' And he hung it
to the saddle, which was already loaded with
bunches of carrots, and
fire-irons, and many other things.
'I hope you've got your hair well fastened
on?' he continued, as they
set off.
'Only in the usual way,' Alice said, smiling.
'That's hardly enough,' he said, anxiously.
'You see the wind is so VERY
strong here. It's as strong as soup.'
'Have you invented a plan for keeping the
hair from being blown off?'
Alice enquired.
'Not yet,' said the Knight. 'But I've got
a plan for keeping it from
FALLING off.'
'I should like to hear it, very much.'
'First you take an upright stick,' said the
Knight. 'Then you make your
hair creep up it, like a fruit-tree. Now the
reason hair falls off is
because it hangs DOWN--things never fall UPWARDS,
you know. It's a plan
of my own invention. You may try it if you
like.'
It didn't sound a comfortable plan, Alice
thought, and for a few minutes
she walked on in silence, puzzling over the
idea, and every now and then
stopping to help the poor Knight, who certainly
was NOT a good rider.
Whenever the horse stopped (which it did very
often), he fell off in
front; and whenever it went on again (which
it generally did rather
suddenly), he fell off behind. Otherwise he
kept on pretty well, except
that he had a habit of now and then falling
off sideways; and as he
generally did this on the side on which Alice
was walking, she soon
found that it was the best plan not to walk
QUITE close to the horse.
'I'm afraid you've not had much practice in
riding,' she ventured to
say, as she was helping him up from his fifth
tumble.
The Knight looked very much surprised, and
a little offended at the
remark. 'What makes you say that?' he asked,
as he scrambled back into
the saddle, keeping hold of Alice's hair with
one hand, to save himself
from falling over on the other side.
'Because people don't fall off quite so often,
when they've had much
practice.'
'I've had plenty of practice,' the Knight
said very gravely: 'plenty of
practice!'
Alice could think of nothing better to say
than 'Indeed?' but she said
it as heartily as she could. They went on
a little way in silence after
this, the Knight with his eyes shut, muttering
to himself, and Alice
watching anxiously for the next tumble.
'The great art of riding,' the Knight suddenly
began in a loud voice,
waving his right arm as he spoke, 'is to keep--'
Here the sentence ended
as suddenly as it had begun, as the Knight
fell heavily on the top of
his head exactly in the path where Alice was
walking. She was quite
frightened this time, and said in an anxious
tone, as she picked him up,
'I hope no bones are broken?'
'None to speak of,' the Knight said, as if
he didn't mind breaking two
or three of them. 'The great art of riding,
as I was saying, is--to keep
your balance properly. Like this, you know--'
He let go the bridle, and stretched out both
his arms to show Alice
what he meant, and this time he fell flat
on his back, right under the
horse's feet.
'Plenty of practice!' he went on repeating,
all the time that Alice was
getting him on his feet again. 'Plenty of
practice!'
'It's too ridiculous!' cried Alice, losing
all her patience this time.
'You ought to have a wooden horse on wheels,
that you ought!'
'Does that kind go smoothly?' the Knight asked
in a tone of great
interest, clasping his arms round the horse's
neck as he spoke, just in
time to save himself from tumbling off again.
'Much more smoothly than a live horse,' Alice
said, with a little scream
of laughter, in spite of all she could do
to prevent it.
'I'll get one,' the Knight said thoughtfully
to himself. 'One or
two--several.'
There was a short silence after this, and
then the Knight went on again.
'I'm a great hand at inventing things. Now,
I daresay you noticed, that
last time you picked me up, that I was looking
rather thoughtful?'
'You WERE a little grave,' said Alice.
'Well, just then I was inventing a new way
of getting over a gate--would
you like to hear it?'
'Very much indeed,' Alice said politely.
'I'll tell you how I came to think of it,'
said the Knight. 'You see, I
said to myself, "The only difficulty is with
the feet: the HEAD is high
enough already." Now, first I put my head
on the top of the gate--then I
stand on my head--then the feet are high enough,
you see--then I'm over,
you see.'
'Yes, I suppose you'd be over when that was
done,' Alice said
thoughtfully: 'but don't you think it would
be rather hard?'
'I haven't tried it yet,' the Knight said,
gravely: 'so I can't tell for
certain--but I'm afraid it WOULD be a little
hard.'
He looked so vexed at the idea, that Alice
changed the subject hastily.
'What a curious helmet you've got!' she said
cheerfully. 'Is that your
invention too?'
The Knight looked down proudly at his helmet,
which hung from the
saddle. 'Yes,' he said, 'but I've invented
a better one than that--like
a sugar loaf. When I used to wear it, if I
fell off the horse, it always
touched the ground directly. So I had a VERY
little way to fall, you
see--But there WAS the danger of falling INTO
it, to be sure. That
happened to me once--and the worst of it was,
before I could get out
again, the other White Knight came and put
it on. He thought it was his
own helmet.'
The knight looked so solemn about it that
Alice did not dare to laugh.
'I'm afraid you must have hurt him,' she said
in a trembling voice,
'being on the top of his head.'
'I had to kick him, of course,' the Knight
said, very seriously. 'And
then he took the helmet off again--but it
took hours and hours to get me
out. I was as fast as--as lightning, you know.'
'But that's a different kind of fastness,'
Alice objected.
The Knight shook his head. 'It was all kinds
of fastness with me, I can
assure you!' he said. He raised his hands
in some excitement as he said
this, and instantly rolled out of the saddle,
and fell headlong into a
deep ditch.
Alice ran to the side of the ditch to look
for him. She was rather
startled by the fall, as for some time he
had kept on very well, and she
was afraid that he really WAS hurt this time.
However, though she could
see nothing but the soles of his feet, she
was much relieved to hear
that he was talking on in his usual tone.
'All kinds of fastness,'
he repeated: 'but it was careless of him to
put another man's helmet
on--with the man in it, too.'
'How CAN you go on talking so quietly, head
downwards?' Alice asked, as
she dragged him out by the feet, and laid
him in a heap on the bank.
The Knight looked surprised at the question.
'What does it matter where
my body happens to be?' he said. 'My mind
goes on working all the same.
In fact, the more head downwards I am, the
more I keep inventing new
things.'
'Now the cleverest thing of the sort that
I ever did,' he went on after
a pause, 'was inventing a new pudding during
the meat-course.'
'In time to have it cooked for the next course?'
said Alice. 'Well,
not the NEXT course,' the Knight said in a
slow thoughtful tone: 'no,
certainly not the next COURSE.'
'Then it would have to be the next day. I
suppose you wouldn't have two
pudding-courses in one dinner?'
'Well, not the NEXT day,' the Knight repeated
as before: 'not the next
DAY. In fact,' he went on, holding his head
down, and his voice getting
lower and lower, 'I don't believe that pudding
ever WAS cooked! In fact,
I don't believe that pudding ever WILL be
cooked! And yet it was a very
clever pudding to invent.'
'What did you mean it to be made of?' Alice
asked, hoping to cheer him
up, for the poor Knight seemed quite low-spirited
about it.
'It began with blotting paper,' the Knight
answered with a groan.
'That wouldn't be very nice, I'm afraid--'
'Not very nice ALONE,' he interrupted, quite
eagerly: 'but you've no
idea what a difference it makes mixing it
with other things--such as
gunpowder and sealing-wax. And here I must
leave you.' They had just
come to the end of the wood.
Alice could only look puzzled: she was thinking
of the pudding.
'You are sad,' the Knight said in an anxious
tone: 'let me sing you a
song to comfort you.'
'Is it very long?' Alice asked, for she had
heard a good deal of poetry
that day.
'It's long,' said the Knight, 'but very, VERY
beautiful. Everybody that
hears me sing it--either it brings the TEARS
into their eyes, or else--'
'Or else what?' said Alice, for the Knight
had made a sudden pause.
'Or else it doesn't, you know. The name of
the song is called "HADDOCKS'
EYES."'
'Oh, that's the name of the song, is it?'
Alice said, trying to feel
interested.
'No, you don't understand,' the Knight said,
looking a little vexed.
'That's what the name is CALLED. The name
really IS "THE AGED AGED
MAN."'
'Then I ought to have said "That's what the
SONG is called"?' Alice
corrected herself.
'No, you oughtn't: that's quite another thing!
The SONG is called "WAYS
AND MEANS": but that's only what it's CALLED,
you know!'
'Well, what IS the song, then?' said Alice,
who was by this time
completely bewildered.
'I was coming to that,' the Knight said. 'The
song really IS "A-SITTING
ON A GATE": and the tune's my own invention.'
So saying, he stopped his horse and let the
reins fall on its neck:
then, slowly beating time with one hand, and
with a faint smile lighting
up his gentle foolish face, as if he enjoyed
the music of his song, he
began.
Of all the strange things that Alice saw in
her journey Through The
Looking-Glass, this was the one that she always
remembered most clearly.
Years afterwards she could bring the whole
scene back again, as if it
had been only yesterday--the mild blue eyes
and kindly smile of the
Knight--the setting sun gleaming through his
hair, and shining on his
armour in a blaze of light that quite dazzled
her--the horse quietly
moving about, with the reins hanging loose
on his neck, cropping the
grass at her feet--and the black shadows of
the forest behind--all this
she took in like a picture, as, with one hand
shading her eyes, she
leant against a tree, watching the strange
pair, and listening, in a
half dream, to the melancholy music of the
song.
'But the tune ISN'T his own invention,' she
said to herself: 'it's "I
GIVE THEE ALL, I CAN NO MORE."' She stood
and listened very attentively,
but no tears came into her eyes.
'I'll tell thee everything I can;
There's little to relate.
I saw an aged aged man,
A-sitting on a gate.
"Who are you, aged man?" I said,
"and how is it you live?"
And his answer trickled through my head
Like water through a sieve.
He said "I look for butterflies
That sleep among the wheat:
I make them into mutton-pies,
And sell them in the street.
I sell them unto men," he said,
"Who sail on stormy seas;
And that's the way I get my bread--
A trifle, if you please."
But I was thinking of a plan
To dye one's whiskers green,
And always use so large a fan
That they could not be seen.
So, having no reply to give
To what the old man said,
I cried, "Come, tell me how you live!"
And thumped him on the head.
His accents mild took up the tale:
He said "I go my ways,
And when I find a mountain-rill,
I set it in a blaze;
And thence they make a stuff they call
Rolands' Macassar Oil--
Yet twopence-halfpenny is all
They give me for my toil."
But I was thinking of a way
To feed oneself on batter,
And so go on from day to day
Getting a little fatter.
I shook him well from side to side,
Until his face was blue:
"Come, tell me how you live," I cried,
"And what it is you do!"
He said "I hunt for haddocks' eyes
Among the heather bright,
And work them into waistcoat-buttons
In the silent night.
And these I do not sell for gold
Or coin of silvery shine
But for a copper halfpenny,
And that will purchase nine.
"I sometimes dig for buttered rolls,
Or set limed twigs for crabs;
I sometimes search the grassy knolls
For wheels of Hansom-cabs.
And that's the way" (he gave a wink)
"By which I get my wealth--
And very gladly will I drink
Your Honour's noble health."
I heard him then, for I had just
Completed my design
To keep the Menai bridge from rust
By boiling it in wine.
I thanked him much for telling me
The way he got his wealth,
But chiefly for his wish that he
Might drink my noble health.
And now, if e'er by chance I put
My fingers into glue
Or madly squeeze a right-hand foot
Into a left-hand shoe,
Or if I drop upon my toe
A very heavy weight,
I weep, for it reminds me so,
Of that old man I used to know--
Whose look was mild, whose speech was slow,
Whose hair was whiter than the snow,
Whose face was very like a crow,
With eyes, like cinders, all aglow,
Who seemed distracted with his woe,
Who rocked his body to and fro,
And muttered mumblingly and low,
As if his mouth were full of dough,
Who snorted like a buffalo--
That summer evening, long ago,
A-sitting on a gate.'
As the Knight sang the last words of the ballad,
he gathered up the
reins, and turned his horse's head along the
road by which they had
come. 'You've only a few yards to go,' he
said, 'down the hill and over
that little brook, and then you'll be a Queen--But
you'll stay and
see me off first?' he added as Alice turned
with an eager look in the
direction to which he pointed. 'I shan't be
long. You'll wait and wave
your handkerchief when I get to that turn
in the road? I think it'll
encourage me, you see.'
'Of course I'll wait,' said Alice: 'and thank
you very much for coming
so far--and for the song--I liked it very
much.'
'I hope so,' the Knight said doubtfully: 'but
you didn't cry so much as
I thought you would.'
So they shook hands, and then the Knight rode
slowly away into the
forest. 'It won't take long to see him OFF,
I expect,' Alice said to
herself, as she stood watching him. 'There
he goes! Right on his head as
usual! However, he gets on again pretty easily--that
comes of having so
many things hung round the horse--' So she
went on talking to herself,
as she watched the horse walking leisurely
along the road, and the
Knight tumbling off, first on one side and
then on the other. After
the fourth or fifth tumble he reached the
turn, and then she waved her
handkerchief to him, and waited till he was
out of sight.
'I hope it encouraged him,' she said, as she
turned to run down the
hill: 'and now for the last brook, and to
be a Queen! How grand it
sounds!' A very few steps brought her to the
edge of the brook. 'The
Eighth Square at last!' she cried as she bounded
across,
and threw herself down to rest on a lawn as
soft as moss, with little
flower-beds dotted about it here and there.
'Oh, how glad I am to get
here! And what IS this on my head?' she exclaimed
in a tone of dismay,
as she put her hands up to something very
heavy, and fitted tight all
round her head.
'But how CAN it have got there without my
knowing it?' she said to
herself, as she lifted it off, and set it
on her lap to make out what it
could possibly be.
It was a golden crown.
End of Chapter 8
CHAPTER 9
Queen Alice
'Well, this IS grand!' said Alice. 'I never
expected I should be a Queen
so soon--and I'll tell you what it is, your
majesty,' she went on in
a severe tone (she was always rather fond
of scolding herself), 'it'll
never do for you to be lolling about on the
grass like that! Queens have
to be dignified, you know!'
So she got up and walked about--rather stiffly
just at first, as she was
afraid that the crown might come off: but
she comforted herself with the
thought that there was nobody to see her,
'and if I really am a Queen,'
she said as she sat down again, 'I shall be
able to manage it quite well
in time.'
Everything was happening so oddly that she
didn't feel a bit surprised
at finding the Red Queen and the White Queen
sitting close to her, one
on each side: she would have liked very much
to ask them how they came
there, but she feared it would not be quite
civil. However, there would
be no harm, she thought, in asking if the
game was over. 'Please, would
you tell me--' she began, looking timidly
at the Red Queen.
'Speak when you're spoken to!' The Queen sharply
interrupted her.
'But if everybody obeyed that rule,' said
Alice, who was always ready
for a little argument, 'and if you only spoke
when you were spoken to,
and the other person always waited for YOU
to begin, you see nobody
would ever say anything, so that--'
'Ridiculous!' cried the Queen. 'Why, don't
you see, child--' here she
broke off with a frown, and, after thinking
for a minute, suddenly
changed the subject of the conversation. 'What
do you mean by "If you
really are a Queen"? What right have you to
call yourself so? You can't
be a Queen, you know, till you've passed the
proper examination. And the
sooner we begin it, the better.'
'I only said "if"!' poor Alice pleaded in
a piteous tone.
The two Queens looked at each other, and the
Red Queen remarked, with a
little shudder, 'She SAYS she only said "if"--'
'But she said a great deal more than that!'
the White Queen moaned,
wringing her hands. 'Oh, ever so much more
than that!'
'So you did, you know,' the Red Queen said
to Alice. 'Always speak the
truth--think before you speak--and write it
down afterwards.'
'I'm sure I didn't mean--' Alice was beginning,
but the Red Queen
interrupted her impatiently.
'That's just what I complain of! You SHOULD
have meant! What do you
suppose is the use of child without any meaning?
Even a joke should
have some meaning--and a child's more important
than a joke, I hope. You
couldn't deny that, even if you tried with
both hands.'
'I don't deny things with my HANDS,' Alice
objected.
'Nobody said you did,' said the Red Queen.
'I said you couldn't if you
tried.'
'She's in that state of mind,' said the White
Queen, 'that she wants to
deny SOMETHING--only she doesn't know what
to deny!'
'A nasty, vicious temper,' the Red Queen remarked;
and then there was an
uncomfortable silence for a minute or two.
The Red Queen broke the silence by saying
to the White Queen, 'I invite
you to Alice's dinner-party this afternoon.'
The White Queen smiled feebly, and said 'And
I invite YOU.'
'I didn't know I was to have a party at all,'
said Alice; 'but if there
is to be one, I think _I_ ought to invite
the guests.'
'We gave you the opportunity of doing it,'
the Red Queen remarked: 'but
I daresay you've not had many lessons in manners
yet?'
'Manners are not taught in lessons,' said
Alice. 'Lessons teach you to
do sums, and things of that sort.'
'And you do Addition?' the White Queen asked.
'What's one and one and
one and one and one and one and one and one
and one and one?'
'I don't know,' said Alice. 'I lost count.'
'She can't do Addition,' the Red Queen interrupted.
'Can you do
Subtraction? Take nine from eight.'
'Nine from eight I can't, you know,' Alice
replied very readily: 'but--'
'She can't do Subtraction,' said the White
Queen. 'Can you do Division?
Divide a loaf by a knife--what's the answer
to that?'
'I suppose--' Alice was beginning, but the
Red Queen answered for her.
'Bread-and-butter, of course. Try another
Subtraction sum. Take a bone
from a dog: what remains?'
Alice considered. 'The bone wouldn't remain,
of course, if I took
it--and the dog wouldn't remain; it would
come to bite me--and I'm sure
I shouldn't remain!'
'Then you think nothing would remain?' said
the Red Queen.
'I think that's the answer.'
'Wrong, as usual,' said the Red Queen: 'the
dog's temper would remain.'
'But I don't see how--'
'Why, look here!' the Red Queen cried. 'The
dog would lose its temper,
wouldn't it?'
'Perhaps it would,' Alice replied cautiously.
'Then if the dog went away, its temper would
remain!' the Queen
exclaimed triumphantly.
Alice said, as gravely as she could, 'They
might go different ways.' But
she couldn't help thinking to herself, 'What
dreadful nonsense we ARE
talking!'
'She can't do sums a BIT!' the Queens said
together, with great
emphasis.
'Can YOU do sums?' Alice said, turning suddenly
on the White Queen, for
she didn't like being found fault with so
much.
The Queen gasped and shut her eyes. 'I can
do Addition, if you give me
time--but I can't do Subtraction, under ANY
circumstances!'
'Of course you know your A B C?' said the
Red Queen.
'To be sure I do.' said Alice.
'So do I,' the White Queen whispered: 'we'll
often say it over together,
dear. And I'll tell you a secret--I can read
words of one letter! Isn't
THAT grand! However, don't be discouraged.
You'll come to it in time.'
Here the Red Queen began again. 'Can you answer
useful questions?' she
said. 'How is bread made?'
'I know THAT!' Alice cried eagerly. 'You take
some flour--'
'Where do you pick the flower?' the White
Queen asked. 'In a garden, or
in the hedges?'
'Well, it isn't PICKED at all,' Alice explained:
'it's GROUND--'
'How many acres of ground?' said the White
Queen. 'You mustn't leave out
so many things.'
'Fan her head!' the Red Queen anxiously interrupted.
'She'll be feverish
after so much thinking.' So they set to work
and fanned her with bunches
of leaves, till she had to beg them to leave
off, it blew her hair about
so.
'She's all right again now,' said the Red
Queen. 'Do you know Languages?
What's the French for fiddle-de-dee?'
'Fiddle-de-dee's not English,' Alice replied
gravely.
'Who ever said it was?' said the Red Queen.
Alice thought she saw a way out of the difficulty
this time. 'If you'll
tell me what language "fiddle-de-dee" is,
I'll tell you the French for
it!' she exclaimed triumphantly.
But the Red Queen drew herself up rather stiffly,
and said 'Queens never
make bargains.'
'I wish Queens never asked questions,' Alice
thought to herself.
'Don't let us quarrel,' the White Queen said
in an anxious tone. 'What
is the cause of lightning?'
'The cause of lightning,' Alice said very
decidedly, for she felt quite
certain about this, 'is the thunder--no, no!'
she hastily corrected
herself. 'I meant the other way.'
'It's too late to correct it,' said the Red
Queen: 'when you've once
said a thing, that fixes it, and you must
take the consequences.'
'Which reminds me--' the White Queen said,
looking down and nervously
clasping and unclasping her hands, 'we had
SUCH a thunderstorm last
Tuesday--I mean one of the last set of Tuesdays,
you know.'
Alice was puzzled. 'In OUR country,' she remarked,
'there's only one day
at a time.'
The Red Queen said, 'That's a poor thin way
of doing things. Now HERE,
we mostly have days and nights two or three
at a time, and sometimes
in the winter we take as many as five nights
together--for warmth, you
know.'
'Are five nights warmer than one night, then?'
Alice ventured to ask.
'Five times as warm, of course.'
'But they should be five times as COLD, by
the same rule--'
'Just so!' cried the Red Queen. 'Five times
as warm, AND five times
as cold--just as I'm five times as rich as
you are, AND five times as
clever!'
Alice sighed and gave it up. 'It's exactly
like a riddle with no
answer!' she thought.
'Humpty Dumpty saw it too,' the White Queen
went on in a low voice, more
as if she were talking to herself. 'He came
to the door with a corkscrew
in his hand--'
'What did he want?' said the Red Queen.
'He said he WOULD come in,' the White Queen
went on, 'because he was
looking for a hippopotamus. Now, as it happened,
there wasn't such a
thing in the house, that morning.'
'Is there generally?' Alice asked in an astonished
tone.
'Well, only on Thursdays,' said the Queen.
'I know what he came for,' said Alice: 'he
wanted to punish the fish,
because--'
Here the White Queen began again. 'It was
SUCH a thunderstorm, you can't
think!' ('She NEVER could, you know,' said
the Red Queen.) 'And part of
the roof came off, and ever so much thunder
got in--and it went
rolling round the room in great lumps--and
knocking over the tables and
things--till I was so frightened, I couldn't
remember my own name!'
Alice thought to herself, 'I never should
TRY to remember my name in the
middle of an accident! Where would be the
use of it?' but she did not
say this aloud, for fear of hurting the poor
Queen's feeling.
'Your Majesty must excuse her,' the Red Queen
said to Alice, taking
one of the White Queen's hands in her own,
and gently stroking it:
'she means well, but she can't help saying
foolish things, as a general
rule.'
The White Queen looked timidly at Alice, who
felt she OUGHT to say
something kind, but really couldn't think
of anything at the moment.
'She never was really well brought up,' the
Red Queen went on: 'but
it's amazing how good-tempered she is! Pat
her on the head, and see how
pleased she'll be!' But this was more than
Alice had courage to do.
'A little kindness--and putting her hair in
papers--would do wonders
with her--'
The White Queen gave a deep sigh, and laid
her head on Alice's shoulder.
'I AM so sleepy?' she moaned.
'She's tired, poor thing!' said the Red Queen.
'Smooth her hair--lend
her your nightcap--and sing her a soothing
lullaby.'
'I haven't got a nightcap with me,' said Alice,
as she tried to obey the
first direction: 'and I don't know any soothing
lullabies.'
'I must do it myself, then,' said the Red
Queen, and she began:
'Hush-a-by lady, in Alice's lap!
Till the feast's ready, we've time for a nap:
When the feast's over, we'll go to the ball--
Red Queen, and White Queen, and Alice, and
all!
'And now you know the words,' she added, as
she put her head down on
Alice's other shoulder, 'just sing it through
to ME. I'm getting sleepy,
too.' In another moment both Queens were fast
asleep, and snoring loud.
'What AM I to do?' exclaimed Alice, looking
about in great perplexity,
as first one round head, and then the other,
rolled down from her
shoulder, and lay like a heavy lump in her
lap. 'I don't think it EVER
happened before, that any one had to take
care of two Queens asleep
at once! No, not in all the History of England--it
couldn't, you know,
because there never was more than one Queen
at a time. Do wake up, you
heavy things!' she went on in an impatient
tone; but there was no answer
but a gentle snoring.
The snoring got more distinct every minute,
and sounded more like a
tune: at last she could even make out the
words, and she listened so
eagerly that, when the two great heads vanished
from her lap, she hardly
missed them.
She was standing before an arched doorway
over which were the words
QUEEN ALICE in large letters, and on each
side of the arch there was a
bell-handle; one was marked 'Visitors' Bell,'
and the other 'Servants'
Bell.'
'I'll wait till the song's over,' thought
Alice, 'and then I'll
ring--the--WHICH bell must I ring?' she went
on, very much puzzled by
the names. 'I'm not a visitor, and I'm not
a servant. There OUGHT to be
one marked "Queen," you know--'
Just then the door opened a little way, and
a creature with a long beak
put its head out for a moment and said 'No
admittance till the week
after next!' and shut the door again with
a bang.
Alice knocked and rang in vain for a long
time, but at last, a very old
Frog, who was sitting under a tree, got up
and hobbled slowly towards
her: he was dressed in bright yellow, and
had enormous boots on.
'What is it, now?' the Frog said in a deep
hoarse whisper.
Alice turned round, ready to find fault with
anybody. 'Where's the
servant whose business it is to answer the
door?' she began angrily.
'Which door?' said the Frog.
Alice almost stamped with irritation at the
slow drawl in which he
spoke. 'THIS door, of course!'
The Frog looked at the door with his large
dull eyes for a minute:
then he went nearer and rubbed it with his
thumb, as if he were trying
whether the paint would come off; then he
looked at Alice.
'To answer the door?' he said. 'What's it
been asking of?' He was so
hoarse that Alice could scarcely hear him.
'I don't know what you mean,' she said.
'I talks English, doesn't I?' the Frog went
on. 'Or are you deaf? What
did it ask you?'
'Nothing!' Alice said impatiently. 'I've been
knocking at it!'
'Shouldn't do that--shouldn't do that--' the
Frog muttered. 'Vexes it,
you know.' Then he went up and gave the door
a kick with one of his
great feet. 'You let IT alone,' he panted
out, as he hobbled back to his
tree, 'and it'll let YOU alone, you know.'
At this moment the door was flung open, and
a shrill voice was heard
singing:
'To the Looking-Glass world it was Alice that
said,
"I've a sceptre in hand, I've a crown on my
head;
Let the Looking-Glass creatures, whatever
they be,
Come and dine with the Red Queen, the White
Queen, and me."'
And hundreds of voices joined in the chorus:
'Then fill up the glasses as quick as you
can,
And sprinkle the table with buttons and bran:
Put cats in the coffee, and mice in the tea--
And welcome Queen Alice with thirty-times-three!'
Then followed a confused noise of cheering,
and Alice thought to
herself, 'Thirty times three makes ninety.
I wonder if any one's
counting?' In a minute there was silence again,
and the same shrill
voice sang another verse;
'"O Looking-Glass creatures," quoth Alice,
"draw near!
'Tis an honour to see me, a favour to hear:
'Tis a privilege high to have dinner and tea
Along with the Red Queen, the White Queen,
and me!"'
Then came the chorus again:--
'Then fill up the glasses with treacle and
ink,
Or anything else that is pleasant to drink:
Mix sand with the cider, and wool with the
wine--
And welcome Queen Alice with ninety-times-nine!'
'Ninety times nine!' Alice repeated in despair,
'Oh, that'll never
be done! I'd better go in at once--' and there
was a dead silence the
moment she appeared.
Alice glanced nervously along the table, as
she walked up the large
hall, and noticed that there were about fifty
guests, of all kinds: some
were animals, some birds, and there were even
a few flowers among them.
'I'm glad they've come without waiting to
be asked,' she thought: 'I
should never have known who were the right
people to invite!'
There were three chairs at the head of the
table; the Red and White
Queens had already taken two of them, but
the middle one was empty.
Alice sat down in it, rather uncomfortable
in the silence, and longing
for some one to speak.
At last the Red Queen began. 'You've missed
the soup and fish,' she
said. 'Put on the joint!' And the waiters
set a leg of mutton before
Alice, who looked at it rather anxiously,
as she had never had to carve
a joint before.
'You look a little shy; let me introduce you
to that leg of mutton,'
said the Red Queen. 'Alice--Mutton; Mutton--Alice.'
The leg of mutton
got up in the dish and made a little bow to
Alice; and Alice returned
the bow, not knowing whether to be frightened
or amused.
'May I give you a slice?' she said, taking
up the knife and fork, and
looking from one Queen to the other.
'Certainly not,' the Red Queen said, very
decidedly: 'it isn't etiquette
to cut any one you've been introduced to.
Remove the joint!' And the
waiters carried it off, and brought a large
plum-pudding in its place.
'I won't be introduced to the pudding, please,'
Alice said rather
hastily, 'or we shall get no dinner at all.
May I give you some?'
But the Red Queen looked sulky, and growled
'Pudding--Alice;
Alice--Pudding. Remove the pudding!' and the
waiters took it away so
quickly that Alice couldn't return its bow.
However, she didn't see why the Red Queen
should be the only one to give
orders, so, as an experiment, she called out
'Waiter! Bring back the
pudding!' and there it was again in a moment
like a conjuring-trick. It
was so large that she couldn't help feeling
a LITTLE shy with it, as she
had been with the mutton; however, she conquered
her shyness by a great
effort and cut a slice and handed it to the
Red Queen.
'What impertinence!' said the Pudding. 'I
wonder how you'd like it, if I
were to cut a slice out of YOU, you creature!'
It spoke in a thick, suety sort of voice,
and Alice hadn't a word to say
in reply: she could only sit and look at it
and gasp.
'Make a remark,' said the Red Queen: 'it's
ridiculous to leave all the
conversation to the pudding!'
'Do you know, I've had such a quantity of
poetry repeated to me to-day,'
Alice began, a little frightened at finding
that, the moment she opened
her lips, there was dead silence, and all
eyes were fixed upon her; 'and
it's a very curious thing, I think--every
poem was about fishes in some
way. Do you know why they're so fond of fishes,
all about here?'
She spoke to the Red Queen, whose answer was
a little wide of the mark.
'As to fishes,' she said, very slowly and
solemnly, putting her mouth
close to Alice's ear, 'her White Majesty knows
a lovely riddle--all in
poetry--all about fishes. Shall she repeat
it?'
'Her Red Majesty's very kind to mention it,'
the White Queen murmured
into Alice's other ear, in a voice like the
cooing of a pigeon. 'It
would be SUCH a treat! May I?'
'Please do,' Alice said very politely.
The White Queen laughed with delight, and
stroked Alice's cheek. Then
she began:
'"First, the fish must be caught."
That is easy: a baby, I think, could have
caught it.
"Next, the fish must be bought."
That is easy: a penny, I think, would have
bought it.
"Now cook me the fish!"
That is easy, and will not take more than
a minute.
"Let it lie in a dish!"
That is easy, because it already is in it.
"Bring it here! Let me sup!"
It is easy to set such a dish on the table.
"Take the dish-cover up!"
Ah, THAT is so hard that I fear I'm unable!
For it holds it like glue--
Holds the lid to the dish, while it lies in
the middle:
Which is easiest to do,
Un-dish-cover the fish, or dishcover the riddle?'
'Take a minute to think about it, and then
guess,' said the Red Queen.
'Meanwhile, we'll drink your health--Queen
Alice's health!' she screamed
at the top of her voice, and all the guests
began drinking it directly,
and very queerly they managed it: some of
them put their glasses upon
their heads like extinguishers, and drank
all that trickled down their
faces--others upset the decanters, and drank
the wine as it ran off
the edges of the table--and three of them
(who looked like kangaroos)
scrambled into the dish of roast mutton, and
began eagerly lapping up
the gravy, 'just like pigs in a trough!' thought
Alice.
'You ought to return thanks in a neat speech,'
the Red Queen said,
frowning at Alice as she spoke.
'We must support you, you know,' the White
Queen whispered, as Alice got
up to do it, very obediently, but a little
frightened.
'Thank you very much,' she whispered in reply,
'but I can do quite well
without.'
'That wouldn't be at all the thing,' the Red
Queen said very decidedly:
so Alice tried to submit to it with a good
grace.
('And they DID push so!' she said afterwards,
when she was telling her
sister the history of the feast. 'You would
have thought they wanted to
squeeze me flat!')
In fact it was rather difficult for her to
keep in her place while she
made her speech: the two Queens pushed her
so, one on each side, that
they nearly lifted her up into the air: 'I
rise to return thanks--'
Alice began: and she really DID rise as she
spoke, several inches; but
she got hold of the edge of the table, and
managed to pull herself down
again.
'Take care of yourself!' screamed the White
Queen, seizing Alice's hair
with both her hands. 'Something's going to
happen!'
And then (as Alice afterwards described it)
all sorts of things happened
in a moment. The candles all grew up to the
ceiling, looking something
like a bed of rushes with fireworks at the
top. As to the bottles, they
each took a pair of plates, which they hastily
fitted on as wings, and
so, with forks for legs, went fluttering about
in all directions: 'and
very like birds they look,' Alice thought
to herself, as well as she
could in the dreadful confusion that was beginning.
At this moment she heard a hoarse laugh at
her side, and turned to see
what was the matter with the White Queen;
but, instead of the Queen,
there was the leg of mutton sitting in the
chair. 'Here I am!' cried a
voice from the soup tureen, and Alice turned
again, just in time to see
the Queen's broad good-natured face grinning
at her for a moment over
the edge of the tureen, before she disappeared
into the soup.
There was not a moment to be lost. Already
several of the guests were
lying down in the dishes, and the soup ladle
was walking up the table
towards Alice's chair, and beckoning to her
impatiently to get out of
its way.
'I can't stand this any longer!' she cried
as she jumped up and seized
the table-cloth with both hands: one good
pull, and plates, dishes,
guests, and candles came crashing down together
in a heap on the floor.
'And as for YOU,' she went on, turning fiercely
upon the Red Queen, whom
she considered as the cause of all the mischief--but
the Queen was no
longer at her side--she had suddenly dwindled
down to the size of a
little doll, and was now on the table, merrily
running round and round
after her own shawl, which was trailing behind
her.
At any other time, Alice would have felt surprised
at this, but she was
far too much excited to be surprised at anything
NOW. 'As for YOU,'
she repeated, catching hold of the little
creature in the very act of
jumping over a bottle which had just lighted
upon the table, 'I'll shake
you into a kitten, that I will!'
CHAPTER 10
Shaking
She took her off the table as she spoke, and
shook her backwards and
forwards with all her might.
The Red Queen made no resistance whatever;
only her face grew very
small, and her eyes got large and green: and
still, as Alice went on
shaking her, she kept on growing shorter--and
fatter--and softer--and
rounder--and--
CHAPTER 11
Waking
--and it really WAS a kitten, after all.
End of Chapter 9 10 11
CHAPTER 12
Which Dreamed it?
'Your majesty shouldn't purr so loud,' Alice
said, rubbing her eyes, and
addressing the kitten, respectfully, yet with
some severity. 'You
woke me out of oh! such a nice dream! And
you've been along with me,
Kitty--all through the Looking-Glass world.
Did you know it, dear?'
It is a very inconvenient habit of kittens
(Alice had once made the
remark) that, whatever you say to them, they
ALWAYS purr. 'If they would
only purr for "yes" and mew for "no," or any
rule of that sort,' she had
said, 'so that one could keep up a conversation!
But how CAN you talk
with a person if they always say the same
thing?'
On this occasion the kitten only purred: and
it was impossible to guess
whether it meant 'yes' or 'no.'
So Alice hunted among the chessmen on the
table till she had found the
Red Queen: then she went down on her knees
on the hearth-rug, and put
the kitten and the Queen to look at each other.
'Now, Kitty!' she cried,
clapping her hands triumphantly. 'Confess
that was what you turned
into!'
('But it wouldn't look at it,' she said, when
she was explaining the
thing afterwards to her sister: 'it turned
away its head, and pretended
not to see it: but it looked a LITTLE ashamed
of itself, so I think it
MUST have been the Red Queen.')
'Sit up a little more stiffly, dear!' Alice
cried with a merry laugh.
'And curtsey while you're thinking what to--what
to purr. It saves time,
remember!' And she caught it up and gave it
one little kiss, 'just in
honour of having been a Red Queen.'
'Snowdrop, my pet!' she went on, looking over
her shoulder at the White
Kitten, which was still patiently undergoing
its toilet, 'when WILL
Dinah have finished with your White Majesty,
I wonder? That must be the
reason you were so untidy in my dream--Dinah!
do you know that you're
scrubbing a White Queen? Really, it's most
disrespectful of you!
'And what did DINAH turn to, I wonder?' she
prattled on, as she settled
comfortably down, with one elbow in the rug,
and her chin in her hand,
to watch the kittens. 'Tell me, Dinah, did
you turn to Humpty Dumpty? I
THINK you did--however, you'd better not mention
it to your friends just
yet, for I'm not sure.
'By the way, Kitty, if only you'd been really
with me in my dream, there
was one thing you WOULD have enjoyed--I had
such a quantity of poetry
said to me, all about fishes! To-morrow morning
you shall have a real
treat. All the time you're eating your breakfast,
I'll repeat "The
Walrus and the Carpenter" to you; and then
you can make believe it's
oysters, dear!
'Now, Kitty, let's consider who it was that
dreamed it all. This is a
serious question, my dear, and you should
NOT go on licking your paw
like that--as if Dinah hadn't washed you this
morning! You see, Kitty,
it MUST have been either me or the Red King.
He was part of my dream,
of course--but then I was part of his dream,
too! WAS it the Red King,
Kitty? You were his wife, my dear, so you
ought to know--Oh, Kitty, DO
help to settle it! I'm sure your paw can wait!'
But the provoking kitten
only began on the other paw, and pretended
it hadn't heard the question.
Which do YOU think it was?
----
A boat beneath a sunny sky,
Lingering onward dreamily
In an evening of July--
Children three that nestle near,
Eager eye and willing ear,
Pleased a simple tale to hear--
Long has paled that sunny sky:
Echoes fade and memories die.
Autumn frosts have slain July.
Still she haunts me, phantomwise,
Alice moving under skies
Never seen by waking eyes.
Children yet, the tale to hear,
Eager eye and willing ear,
Lovingly shall nestle near.
In a Wonderland they lie,
Dreaming as the days go by,
Dreaming as the summers die:
Ever drifting down the stream--
Lingering in the golden gleam--
Life, what is it but a dream?
THE END
