Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
ALICE'S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND
Lewis Carroll
CHAPTER I
Down the Rabbit-Hole
Alice was beginning to get very tired of
sitting by her sister
on the bank, and of having nothing to do: once
or twice she had
peeped into the book her sister was reading, but
it had no
pictures or conversations in it, `and what is
the use of a book,'
thought Alice `without pictures or conversation?'
So she was considering in her own mind (as
well as she could,
for the hot day made her feel very sleepy and
stupid), whether
the pleasure of making a daisy-chain would be
worth the trouble
of getting up and picking the daisies, when suddenly
a White
Rabbit with pink eyes ran close by her.
There was nothing so VERY remarkable in that;
nor did Alice
think it so VERY much out of the way to hear the
Rabbit say to
itself, `Oh dear! Oh dear! I shall be late!'
(when she thought
it over afterwards, it occurred to her that she
ought to have
wondered at this, but at the time it all seemed
quite natural);
but when the Rabbit actually TOOK A WATCH OUT
OF ITS WAISTCOAT-
POCKET, and looked at it, and then hurried on,
Alice started to
her feet, for it flashed across her mind that
she had never
before seen a rabbit with either a waistcoat-pocket,
or a watch to
take out of it, and burning with curiosity, she
ran across the
field after it, and fortunately was just in time
to see it pop
down a large rabbit-hole under the hedge.
In another moment down went Alice after it,
never once
considering how in the world she was to get out
again.
The rabbit-hole went straight on like a tunnel
for some way,
and then dipped suddenly down, so suddenly that
Alice had not a
moment to think about stopping herself before
she found herself
falling down a very deep well.
Either the well was very deep, or she fell
very slowly, for she
had plenty of time as she went down to look about
her and to
wonder what was going to happen next. First,
she tried to look
down and make out what she was coming to, but
it was too dark to
see anything; then she looked at the sides of
the well, and
noticed that they were filled with cupboards and
book-shelves;
here and there she saw maps and pictures hung
upon pegs. She
took down a jar from one of the shelves as she
passed; it was
labelled `ORANGE MARMALADE', but to her great
disappointment it
was empty: she did not like to drop the jar for
fear of killing
somebody, so managed to put it into one of the
cupboards as she
fell past it.
`Well!' thought Alice to herself, `after
such a fall as this, I
shall think nothing of tumbling down stairs!
How brave they'll
all think me at home! Why, I wouldn't say anything
about it,
even if I fell off the top of the house!' (Which
was very likely
true.)
Down, down, down. Would the fall NEVER come
to an end! `I
wonder how many miles I've fallen by this time?'
she said aloud.
`I must be getting somewhere near the centre of
the earth. Let
me see: that would be four thousand miles down,
I think--' (for,
you see, Alice had learnt several things of this
sort in her
lessons in the schoolroom, and though this was
not a VERY good
opportunity for showing off her knowledge, as
there was no one to
listen to her, still it was good practice to say
it over) `--yes,
that's about the right distance--but then I wonder
what Latitude
or Longitude I've got to?' (Alice had no idea
what Latitude was,
or Longitude either, but thought they were nice
grand words to
say.)
Presently she began again. `I wonder if
I shall fall right
THROUGH the earth! How funny it'll seem to come
out among the
people that walk with their heads downward! The
Antipathies, I
think--' (she was rather glad there WAS no one
listening, this
time, as it didn't sound at all the right word)
`--but I shall
have to ask them what the name of the country
is, you know.
Please, Ma'am, is this New Zealand or Australia?'
(and she tried
to curtsey as she spoke--fancy CURTSEYING as you're
falling
through the air! Do you think you could manage
it?) `And what
an ignorant little girl she'll think me for asking!
No, it'll
never do to ask: perhaps I shall see it written
up somewhere.'
Down, down, down. There was nothing else
to do, so Alice soon
began talking again. `Dinah'll miss me very much
to-night, I
should think!' (Dinah was the cat.) `I hope
they'll remember
her saucer of milk at tea-time. Dinah my dear!
I wish you were
down here with me! There are no mice in the air,
I'm afraid, but
you might catch a bat, and that's very like a
mouse, you know.
But do cats eat bats, I wonder?' And here Alice
began to get
rather sleepy, and went on saying to herself,
in a dreamy sort of
way, `Do cats eat bats? Do cats eat bats?' and
sometimes, `Do
bats eat cats?' for, you see, as she couldn't
answer either
question, it didn't much matter which way she
put it. She felt
that she was dozing off, and had just begun to
dream that she
was walking hand in hand with Dinah, and saying
to her very
earnestly, `Now, Dinah, tell me the truth: did
you ever eat a
bat?' when suddenly, thump! thump! down she came
upon a heap of
sticks and dry leaves, and the fall was over.
Alice was not a bit hurt, and she jumped
up on to her feet in a
moment: she looked up, but it was all dark overhead;
before her
was another long passage, and the White Rabbit
was still in
sight, hurrying down it. There was not a moment
to be lost:
away went Alice like the wind, and was just in
time to hear it
say, as it turned a corner, `Oh my ears and whiskers,
how late
it's getting!' She was close behind it when she
turned the
corner, but the Rabbit was no longer to be seen:
she found
herself in a long, low hall, which was lit up
by a row of lamps
hanging from the roof.
There were doors all round the hall, but
they were all locked;
and when Alice had been all the way down one side
and up the
other, trying every door, she walked sadly down
the middle,
wondering how she was ever to get out again.
Suddenly she came upon a little three-legged
table, all made of
solid glass; there was nothing on it except a
tiny golden key,
and Alice's first thought was that it might belong
to one of the
doors of the hall; but, alas! either the locks
were too large, or
the key was too small, but at any rate it would
not open any of
them. However, on the second time round, she
came upon a low
curtain she had not noticed before, and behind
it was a little
door about fifteen inches high: she tried the
little golden key
in the lock, and to her great delight it fitted!
Alice opened the door and found that it led
into a small
passage, not much larger than a rat-hole: she
knelt down and
looked along the passage into the loveliest garden
you ever saw.
How she longed to get out of that dark hall, and
wander about
among those beds of bright flowers and those cool
fountains, but
she could not even get her head though the doorway;
`and even if
my head would go through,' thought poor Alice,
`it would be of
very little use without my shoulders. Oh, how
I wish
I could shut up like a telescope! I think I could,
if I only
know how to begin.' For, you see, so many out-of-the-way
things
had happened lately, that Alice had begun to think
that very few
things indeed were really impossible.
There seemed to be no use in waiting by the
little door, so she
went back to the table, half hoping she might
find another key on
it, or at any rate a book of rules for shutting
people up like
telescopes: this time she found a little bottle
on it, (`which
certainly was not here before,' said Alice,) and
round the neck
of the bottle was a paper label, with the words
`DRINK ME'
beautifully printed on it in large letters.
It was all very well to say `Drink me,' but
the wise little
Alice was not going to do THAT in a hurry. `No,
I'll look
first,' she said, `and see whether it's marked
"poison" or not';
for she had read several nice little histories
about children who
had got burnt, and eaten up by wild beasts and
other unpleasant
things, all because they WOULD not remember the
simple rules
their friends had taught them: such as, that
a red-hot poker
will burn you if you hold it too long; and that
if you cut your
finger VERY deeply with a knife, it usually bleeds;
and she had
never forgotten that, if you drink much from a
bottle marked
`poison,' it is almost certain to disagree with
you, sooner or
later.
However, this bottle was NOT marked `poison,'
so Alice ventured
to taste it, and finding it very nice, (it had,
in fact, a sort
of mixed flavour of cherry-tart, custard, pine-apple,
roast
turkey, toffee, and hot buttered toast,) she very
soon finished
it off.
* * * * *
* *
* * * * *
*
* * * * *
* *
`What a curious feeling!' said Alice; `I
must be shutting up
like a telescope.'
And so it was indeed: she was now only ten
inches high, and
her face brightened up at the thought that she
was now the right
size for going through the little door into that
lovely garden.
First, however, she waited for a few minutes to
see if she was
going to shrink any further: she felt a little
nervous about
this; `for it might end, you know,' said Alice
to herself, `in my
going out altogether, like a candle. I wonder
what I should be
like then?' And she tried to fancy what the flame
of a candle is
like after the candle is blown out, for she could
not remember
ever having seen such a thing.
After a while, finding that nothing more
happened, she decided
on going into the garden at once; but, alas for
poor Alice!
when she got to the door, she found she had forgotten
the
little golden key, and when she went back to the
table for it,
she found she could not possibly reach it: she
could see it
quite plainly through the glass, and she tried
her best to climb
up one of the legs of the table, but it was too
slippery;
and when she had tired herself out with trying,
the poor little thing sat down and cried.
`Come, there's no use in crying like that!'
said Alice to
herself, rather sharply; `I advise you to leave
off this minute!'
She generally gave herself very good advice, (though
she very
seldom followed it), and sometimes she scolded
herself so
severely as to bring tears into her eyes; and
once she remembered
trying to box her own ears for having cheated
herself in a game
of croquet she was playing against herself, for
this curious
child was very fond of pretending to be two people.
`But it's no
use now,' thought poor Alice, `to pretend to be
two people! Why,
there's hardly enough of me left to make ONE respectable
person!'
Soon her eye fell on a little glass box that
was lying under
the table: she opened it, and found in it a very
small cake, on
which the words `EAT ME' were beautifully marked
in currants.
`Well, I'll eat it,' said Alice, `and if it makes
me grow larger,
I can reach the key; and if it makes me grow smaller,
I can creep
under the door; so either way I'll get into the
garden, and I
don't care which happens!'
She ate a little bit, and said anxiously
to herself, `Which
way? Which way?', holding her hand on the top
of her head to
feel which way it was growing, and she was quite
surprised to
find that she remained the same size: to be sure,
this generally
happens when one eats cake, but Alice had got
so much into the
way of expecting nothing but out-of-the-way things
to happen,
that it seemed quite dull and stupid for life
to go on in the
common way.
So she set to work, and very soon finished
off the cake.
* * * * *
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* * * * *
*
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* *
CHAPTER II
The Pool of Tears
`Curiouser and curiouser!' cried Alice (she
was so much
surprised, that for the moment she quite forgot
how to speak good
English); `now I'm opening out like the largest
telescope that
ever was! Good-bye, feet!' (for when she looked
down at her
feet, they seemed to be almost out of sight, they
were getting so
far off). `Oh, my poor little feet, I wonder
who will put on
your shoes and stockings for you now, dears?
I'm sure _I_ shan't
be able! I shall be a great deal too far off
to trouble myself
about you: you must manage the best way you can;
--but I must be
kind to them,' thought Alice, `or perhaps they
won't walk the
way I want to go! Let me see: I'll give them
a new pair of
boots every Christmas.'
And she went on planning to herself how she
would manage it.
`They must go by the carrier,' she thought; `and
how funny it'll
seem, sending presents to one's own feet! And
how odd the
directions will look!
ALICE'S RIGHT FOOT, ESQ.
HEARTHRUG,
NEAR THE FENDER,
(WITH ALICE'S LOVE).
Oh dear, what nonsense I'm talking!'
Just then her head struck against the roof
of the hall: in
fact she was now more than nine feet high, and
she at once took
up the little golden key and hurried off to the
garden door.
Poor Alice! It was as much as she could
do, lying down on one
side, to look through into the garden with one
eye; but to get
through was more hopeless than ever: she sat
down and began to
cry again.
`You ought to be ashamed of yourself,' said
Alice, `a great
girl like you,' (she might well say this), `to
go on crying in
this way! Stop this moment, I tell you!' But
she went on all
the same, shedding gallons of tears, until there
was a large pool
all round her, about four inches deep and reaching
half down the
hall.
After a time she heard a little pattering
of feet in the
distance, and she hastily dried her eyes to see
what was coming.
It was the White Rabbit returning, splendidly
dressed, with a
pair of white kid gloves in one hand and a large
fan in the
other: he came trotting along in a great hurry,
muttering to
himself as he came, `Oh! the Duchess, the Duchess!
Oh! won't she
be savage if I've kept her waiting!' Alice felt
so desperate
that she was ready to ask help of any one; so,
when the Rabbit
came near her, she began, in a low, timid voice,
`If you please,
sir--' The Rabbit started violently, dropped
the white kid
gloves and the fan, and skurried away into the
darkness as hard
as he could go.
Alice took up the fan and gloves, and, as
the hall was very
hot, she kept fanning herself all the time she
went on talking:
`Dear, dear! How queer everything is to-day!
And yesterday
things went on just as usual. I wonder if I've
been changed in
the night? Let me think: was I the same when
I got up this
morning? I almost think I can remember feeling
a little
different. But if I'm not the same, the next
question is, Who in
the world am I? Ah, THAT'S the great puzzle!'
And she began
thinking over all the children she knew that were
of the same age
as herself, to see if she could have been changed
for any of
them.
`I'm sure I'm not Ada,' she said, `for her
hair goes in such
long ringlets, and mine doesn't go in ringlets
at all; and I'm
sure I can't be Mabel, for I know all sorts of
things, and she,
oh! she knows such a very little! Besides, SHE'S
she, and I'm I,
and--oh dear, how puzzling it all is! I'll try
if I know all the
things I used to know. Let me see: four times
five is twelve,
and four times six is thirteen, and four times
seven is--oh dear!
I shall never get to twenty at that rate! However,
the
Multiplication Table doesn't signify: let's try
Geography.
London is the capital of Paris, and Paris is the
capital of Rome,
and Rome--no, THAT'S all wrong, I'm certain!
I must have been
changed for Mabel! I'll try and say "How
doth the little--"'
and she crossed her hands on her lap as if she
were saying lessons,
and began to repeat it, but her voice sounded
hoarse and
strange, and the words did not come the same as
they used to do:--
`How doth the little crocodile
Improve his shining tail,
And pour the waters of the Nile
On every golden scale!
`How cheerfully he seems to grin,
How neatly spread his claws,
And welcome little fishes in
With gently smiling jaws!'
`I'm sure those are not the right words,'
said poor Alice, and
her eyes filled with tears again as she went on,
`I must be Mabel
after all, and I shall have to go and live in
that poky little
house, and have next to no toys to play with,
and oh! ever so
many lessons to learn! No, I've made up my mind
about it; if I'm
Mabel, I'll stay down here! It'll be no use their
putting their
heads down and saying "Come up again, dear!"
I shall only look
up and say "Who am I then? Tell me that
first, and then, if I
like being that person, I'll come up: if not,
I'll stay down
here till I'm somebody else"--but, oh dear!'
cried Alice, with a
sudden burst of tears, `I do wish they WOULD put
their heads
down! I am so VERY tired of being all alone here!'
As she said this she looked down at her hands,
and was
surprised to see that she had put on one of the
Rabbit's little
white kid gloves while she was talking. `How
CAN I have done
that?' she thought. `I must be growing small
again.' She got up
and went to the table to measure herself by it,
and found that,
as nearly as she could guess, she was now about
two feet high,
and was going on shrinking rapidly: she soon
found out that the
cause of this was the fan she was holding, and
she dropped it
hastily, just in time to avoid shrinking away
altogether.
`That WAS a narrow escape!' said Alice, a good
deal frightened at
the sudden change, but very glad to find herself
still in
existence; `and now for the garden!' and she ran
with all speed
back to the little door: but, alas! the little
door was shut
again, and the little golden key was lying on
the glass table as
before, `and things are worse than ever,' thought
the poor child,
`for I never was so small as this before, never!
And I declare
it's too bad, that it is!'
As she said these words her foot slipped,
and in another
moment, splash! she was up to her chin in salt
water. Her first
idea was that she had somehow fallen into the
sea, `and in that
case I can go back by railway,' she said to herself.
(Alice had
been to the seaside once in her life, and had
come to the general
conclusion, that wherever you go to on the English
coast you find
a number of bathing machines in the sea, some
children digging in
the sand with wooden spades, then a row of lodging
houses, and
behind them a railway station.) However, she
soon made out that
she was in the pool of tears which she had wept
when she was nine
feet high.
`I wish I hadn't cried so much!' said Alice,
as she swam about,
trying to find her way out. `I shall be punished
for it now, I
suppose, by being drowned in my own tears! That
WILL be a queer
thing, to be sure! However, everything is queer
to-day.'
Just then she heard something splashing about
in the pool a
little way off, and she swam nearer to make out
what it was: at
first she thought it must be a walrus or hippopotamus,
but then
she remembered how small she was now, and she
soon made out that
it was only a mouse that had slipped in like herself.
`Would it be of any use, now,' thought Alice,
`to speak to this
mouse? Everything is so out-of-the-way down here,
that I should
think very likely it can talk: at any rate, there's
no harm in
trying.' So she began: `O Mouse, do you know
the way out of
this pool? I am very tired of swimming about
here, O Mouse!'
(Alice thought this must be the right way of speaking
to a mouse:
she had never done such a thing before, but she
remembered having
seen in her brother's Latin Grammar, `A mouse--of
a mouse--to a
mouse--a mouse--O mouse!' The Mouse looked at
her rather
inquisitively, and seemed to her to wink with
one of its little
eyes, but it said nothing.
`Perhaps it doesn't understand English,'
thought Alice; `I
daresay it's a French mouse, come over with William
the
Conqueror.' (For, with all her knowledge of history,
Alice had
no very clear notion how long ago anything had
happened.) So she
began again: `Ou est ma chatte?' which was the
first sentence in
her French lesson-book. The Mouse gave a sudden
leap out of the
water, and seemed to quiver all over with fright.
`Oh, I beg
your pardon!' cried Alice hastily, afraid that
she had hurt the
poor animal's feelings. `I quite forgot you didn't
like cats.'
`Not like cats!' cried the Mouse, in a shrill,
passionate
voice. `Would YOU like cats if you were me?'
`Well, perhaps not,' said Alice in a soothing
tone: `don't be
angry about it. And yet I wish I could show you
our cat Dinah:
I think you'd take a fancy to cats if you could
only see her.
She is such a dear quiet thing,' Alice went on,
half to herself,
as she swam lazily about in the pool, `and she
sits purring so
nicely by the fire, licking her paws and washing
her face--and
she is such a nice soft thing to nurse--and she's
such a capital
one for catching mice--oh, I beg your pardon!'
cried Alice again,
for this time the Mouse was bristling all over,
and she felt
certain it must be really offended. `We won't
talk about her any
more if you'd rather not.'
`We indeed!' cried the Mouse, who was trembling
down to the end
of his tail. `As if I would talk on such a subject!
Our family
always HATED cats: nasty, low, vulgar things!
Don't let me hear
the name again!'
`I won't indeed!' said Alice, in a great
hurry to change the
subject of conversation. `Are you--are you fond--of--of
dogs?'
The Mouse did not answer, so Alice went on eagerly:
`There is
such a nice little dog near our house I should
like to show you!
A little bright-eyed terrier, you know, with oh,
such long curly
brown hair! And it'll fetch things when you throw
them, and
it'll sit up and beg for its dinner, and all sorts
of things--I
can't remember half of them--and it belongs to
a farmer, you
know, and he says it's so useful, it's worth a
hundred pounds!
He says it kills all the rats and--oh dear!' cried
Alice in a
sorrowful tone, `I'm afraid I've offended it again!'
For the
Mouse was swimming away from her as hard as it
could go, and
making quite a commotion in the pool as it went.
So she called softly after it, `Mouse dear!
Do come back
again, and we won't talk about cats or dogs either,
if you don't
like them!' When the Mouse heard this, it turned
round and swam
slowly back to her: its face was quite pale (with
passion, Alice
thought), and it said in a low trembling voice,
`Let us get to
the shore, and then I'll tell you my history,
and you'll
understand why it is I hate cats and dogs.'
It was high time to go, for the pool was
getting quite crowded
with the birds and animals that had fallen into
it: there were a
Duck and a Dodo, a Lory and an Eaglet, and several
other curious
creatures. Alice led the way, and the whole party
swam to the
shore.
CHAPTER III
A Caucus-Race and a Long
Tale
They were indeed a queer-looking party that
assembled on the
bank--the birds with draggled feathers, the animals
with their
fur clinging close to them, and all dripping wet,
cross, and
uncomfortable.
The first question of course was, how to
get dry again: they
had a consultation about this, and after a few
minutes it seemed
quite natural to Alice to find herself talking
familiarly with
them, as if she had known them all her life.
Indeed, she had
quite a long argument with the Lory, who at last
turned sulky,
and would only say, `I am older than you, and
must know better';
and this Alice would not allow without knowing
how old it was,
and, as the Lory positively refused to tell its
age, there was no
more to be said.
At last the Mouse, who seemed to be a person
of authority among
them, called out, `Sit down, all of you, and listen
to me! I'LL
soon make you dry enough!' They all sat down
at once, in a large
ring, with the Mouse in the middle. Alice kept
her eyes
anxiously fixed on it, for she felt sure she would
catch a bad
cold if she did not get dry very soon.
`Ahem!' said the Mouse with an important
air, `are you all ready?
This is the driest thing I know. Silence all
round, if you please!
"William the Conqueror, whose cause was favoured
by the pope, was
soon submitted to by the English, who wanted leaders,
and had been
of late much accustomed to usurpation and conquest.
Edwin and
Morcar, the earls of Mercia and Northumbria--"'
`Ugh!' said the Lory, with a shiver.
`I beg your pardon!' said the Mouse, frowning,
but very
politely: `Did you speak?'
`Not I!' said the Lory hastily.
`I thought you did,' said the Mouse. `--I
proceed. "Edwin and
Morcar, the earls of Mercia and Northumbria, declared
for him:
and even Stigand, the patriotic archbishop of
Canterbury, found
it advisable--"'
`Found WHAT?' said the Duck.
`Found IT,' the Mouse replied rather crossly:
`of course you
know what "it" means.'
`I know what "it" means well enough,
when I find a thing,' said
the Duck: `it's generally a frog or a worm.
The question is,
what did the archbishop find?'
The Mouse did not notice this question, but
hurriedly went on,
`"--found it advisable to go with Edgar Atheling
to meet William
and offer him the crown. William's conduct at
first was
moderate. But the insolence of his Normans--"
How are you
getting on now, my dear?' it continued, turning
to Alice as it
spoke.
`As wet as ever,' said Alice in a melancholy
tone: `it doesn't
seem to dry me at all.'
`In that case,' said the Dodo solemnly, rising
to its feet, `I
move that the meeting adjourn, for the immediate
adoption of more
energetic remedies--'
`Speak English!' said the Eaglet. `I don't
know the meaning of
half those long words, and, what's more, I don't
believe you do
either!' And the Eaglet bent down its head to
hide a smile:
some of the other birds tittered audibly.
`What I was going to say,' said the Dodo
in an offended tone,
`was, that the best thing to get us dry would
be a Caucus-race.'
`What IS a Caucus-race?' said Alice; not
that she wanted much
to know, but the Dodo had paused as if it thought
that SOMEBODY
ought to speak, and no one else seemed inclined
to say anything.
`Why,' said the Dodo, `the best way to explain
it is to do it.'
(And, as you might like to try the thing yourself,
some winter
day, I will tell you how the Dodo managed it.)
First it marked out a race-course, in a sort
of circle, (`the
exact shape doesn't matter,' it said,) and then
all the party
were placed along the course, here and there.
There was no `One,
two, three, and away,' but they began running
when they liked,
and left off when they liked, so that it was not
easy to know
when the race was over. However, when they had
been running half
an hour or so, and were quite dry again, the Dodo
suddenly called
out `The race is over!' and they all crowded round
it, panting,
and asking, `But who has won?'
This question the Dodo could not answer without
a great deal of
thought, and it sat for a long time with one finger
pressed upon
its forehead (the position in which you usually
see Shakespeare,
in the pictures of him), while the rest waited
in silence. At
last the Dodo said, `EVERYBODY has won, and all
must have
prizes.'
`But who is to give the prizes?' quite a
chorus of voices
asked.
`Why, SHE, of course,' said the Dodo, pointing
to Alice with
one finger; and the whole party at once crowded
round her,
calling out in a confused way, `Prizes! Prizes!'
Alice had no idea what to do, and in despair
she put her hand
in her pocket, and pulled out a box of comfits,
(luckily the salt
water had not got into it), and handed them round
as prizes.
There was exactly one a-piece all round.
`But she must have a prize herself, you know,'
said the Mouse.
`Of course,' the Dodo replied very gravely.
`What else have
you got in your pocket?' he went on, turning to
Alice.
`Only a thimble,' said Alice sadly.
`Hand it over here,' said the Dodo.
Then they all crowded round her once more,
while the Dodo
solemnly presented the thimble, saying `We beg
your acceptance of
this elegant thimble'; and, when it had finished
this short
speech, they all cheered.
Alice thought the whole thing very absurd,
but they all looked
so grave that she did not dare to laugh; and,
as she could not
think of anything to say, she simply bowed, and
took the thimble,
looking as solemn as she could.
The next thing was to eat the comfits: this
caused some noise
and confusion, as the large birds complained that
they could not
taste theirs, and the small ones choked and had
to be patted on
the back. However, it was over at last, and they
sat down again
in a ring, and begged the Mouse to tell them something
more.
`You promised to tell me your history, you
know,' said Alice,
`and why it is you hate--C and D,' she added in
a whisper, half
afraid that it would be offended again.
`Mine is a long and a sad tale!' said the
Mouse, turning to
Alice, and sighing.
`It IS a long tail, certainly,' said Alice,
looking down with
wonder at the Mouse's tail; `but why do you call
it sad?' And
she kept on puzzling about it while the Mouse
was speaking, so
that her idea of the tale was something like this:--
`Fury said to a
mouse, That he
met in the
house,
"Let us
both go to
law: I will
prosecute
YOU. --Come,
I'll take no
denial; We
must have a
trial: For
really this
morning I've
nothing
to do."
Said the
mouse to the
cur, "Such
a trial,
dear Sir,
With
no jury
or judge,
would be
wasting
our
breath."
"I'll be
judge, I'll
be jury,"
Said
cunning
old Fury:
"I'll
try the
whole
cause,
and
condemn
you
to
death."'
`You are not attending!' said the Mouse to
Alice severely.
`What are you thinking of?'
`I beg your pardon,' said Alice very humbly:
`you had got to
the fifth bend, I think?'
`I had NOT!' cried the Mouse, sharply and
very angrily.
`A knot!' said Alice, always ready to make
herself useful, and
looking anxiously about her. `Oh, do let me help
to undo it!'
`I shall do nothing of the sort,' said the
Mouse, getting up
and walking away. `You insult me by talking such
nonsense!'
`I didn't mean it!' pleaded poor Alice.
`But you're so easily
offended, you know!'
The Mouse only growled in reply.
`Please come back and finish your story!'
Alice called after
it; and the others all joined in chorus, `Yes,
please do!' but
the Mouse only shook its head impatiently, and
walked a little
quicker.
`What a pity it wouldn't stay!' sighed the
Lory, as soon as it
was quite out of sight; and an old Crab took the
opportunity of
saying to her daughter `Ah, my dear! Let this
be a lesson to you
never to lose YOUR temper!' `Hold your tongue,
Ma!' said the
young Crab, a little snappishly. `You're enough
to try the
patience of an oyster!'
`I wish I had our Dinah here, I know I do!'
said Alice aloud,
addressing nobody in particular. `She'd soon
fetch it back!'
`And who is Dinah, if I might venture to
ask the question?'
said the Lory.
Alice replied eagerly, for she was always
ready to talk about
her pet: `Dinah's our cat. And she's such a
capital one for
catching mice you can't think! And oh, I wish
you could see her
after the birds! Why, she'll eat a little bird
as soon as look
at it!'
This speech caused a remarkable sensation
among the party.
Some of the birds hurried off at once: one old
Magpie began
wrapping itself up very carefully, remarking,
`I really must be
getting home; the night-air doesn't suit my throat!'
and a Canary
called out in a trembling voice to its children,
`Come away, my
dears! It's high time you were all in bed!'
On various pretexts
they all moved off, and Alice was soon left alone.
`I wish I hadn't mentioned Dinah!' she said
to herself in a
melancholy tone. `Nobody seems to like her, down
here, and I'm
sure she's the best cat in the world! Oh, my
dear Dinah! I
wonder if I shall ever see you any more!' And
here poor Alice
began to cry again, for she felt very lonely and
low-spirited.
In a little while, however, she again heard a
little pattering of
footsteps in the distance, and she looked up eagerly,
half hoping
that the Mouse had changed his mind, and was coming
back to
finish his story.
CHAPTER IV
The Rabbit Sends in a Little
Bill
It was the White Rabbit, trotting slowly
back again, and
looking anxiously about as it went, as if it had
lost something;
and she heard it muttering to itself `The Duchess!
The Duchess!
Oh my dear paws! Oh my fur and whiskers! She'll
get me
executed, as sure as ferrets are ferrets! Where
CAN I have
dropped them, I wonder?' Alice guessed in a moment
that it was
looking for the fan and the pair of white kid
gloves, and she
very good-naturedly began hunting about for them,
but they were
nowhere to be seen--everything seemed to have
changed since her
swim in the pool, and the great hall, with the
glass table and
the little door, had vanished completely.
Very soon the Rabbit noticed Alice, as she
went hunting about,
and called out to her in an angry tone, `Why,
Mary Ann, what ARE
you doing out here? Run home this moment, and
fetch me a pair of
gloves and a fan! Quick, now!' And Alice was
so much frightened
that she ran off at once in the direction it pointed
to, without
trying to explain the mistake it had made.
`He took me for his housemaid,' she said
to herself as she ran.
`How surprised he'll be when he finds out who
I am! But I'd
better take him his fan and gloves--that is, if
I can find them.'
As she said this, she came upon a neat little
house, on the door
of which was a bright brass plate with the name
`W. RABBIT'
engraved upon it. She went in without knocking,
and hurried
upstairs, in great fear lest she should meet the
real Mary Ann,
and be turned out of the house before she had
found the fan and
gloves.
`How queer it seems,' Alice said to herself,
`to be going
messages for a rabbit! I suppose Dinah'll be
sending me on
messages next!' And she began fancying the sort
of thing that
would happen: `"Miss Alice! Come here directly,
and get ready
for your walk!" "Coming in a minute,
nurse! But I've got to see
that the mouse doesn't get out." Only I
don't think,' Alice went
on, `that they'd let Dinah stop in the house if
it began ordering
people about like that!'
By this time she had found her way into a
tidy little room with
a table in the window, and on it (as she had hoped)
a fan and two
or three pairs of tiny white kid gloves: she
took up the fan and
a pair of the gloves, and was just going to leave
the room, when
her eye fell upon a little bottle that stood near
the looking-
glass. There was no label this time with the
words `DRINK ME,'
but nevertheless she uncorked it and put it to
her lips. `I know
SOMETHING interesting is sure to happen,' she
said to herself,
`whenever I eat or drink anything; so I'll just
see what this
bottle does. I do hope it'll make me grow large
again, for
really I'm quite tired of being such a tiny little
thing!'
It did so indeed, and much sooner than she
had expected:
before she had drunk half the bottle, she found
her head pressing
against the ceiling, and had to stoop to save
her neck from being
broken. She hastily put down the bottle, saying
to herself
`That's quite enough--I hope I shan't grow any
more--As it is, I
can't get out at the door--I do wish I hadn't
drunk quite so
much!'
Alas! it was too late to wish that! She
went on growing, and
growing, and very soon had to kneel down on the
floor: in
another minute there was not even room for this,
and she tried
the effect of lying down with one elbow against
the door, and the
other arm curled round her head. Still she went
on growing, and,
as a last resource, she put one arm out of the
window, and one
foot up the chimney, and said to herself `Now
I can do no more,
whatever happens. What WILL become of me?'
Luckily for Alice, the little magic bottle
had now had its full
effect, and she grew no larger: still it was
very uncomfortable,
and, as there seemed to be no sort of chance of
her ever getting
out of the room again, no wonder she felt unhappy.
`It was much pleasanter at home,' thought
poor Alice, `when one
wasn't always growing larger and smaller, and
being ordered about
by mice and rabbits. I almost wish I hadn't gone
down that
rabbit-hole--and yet--and yet--it's rather curious,
you know,
this sort of life! I do wonder what CAN have
happened to me!
When I used to read fairy-tales, I fancied that
kind of thing
never happened, and now here I am in the middle
of one! There
ought to be a book written about me, that there
ought! And when
I grow up, I'll write one--but I'm grown up now,'
she added in a
sorrowful tone; `at least there's no room to grow
up any more
HERE.'
`But then,' thought Alice, `shall I NEVER
get any older than I
am now? That'll be a comfort, one way--never
to be an old woman--
but then--always to have lessons to learn! Oh,
I shouldn't like THAT!'
`Oh, you foolish Alice!' she answered herself.
`How can you
learn lessons in here? Why, there's hardly room
for YOU, and no
room at all for any lesson-books!'
And so she went on, taking first one side
and then the other,
and making quite a conversation of it altogether;
but after a few
minutes she heard a voice outside, and stopped
to listen.
`Mary Ann! Mary Ann!' said the voice. `Fetch
me my gloves
this moment!' Then came a little pattering of
feet on the
stairs. Alice knew it was the Rabbit coming to
look for her, and
she trembled till she shook the house, quite forgetting
that she
was now about a thousand times as large as the
Rabbit, and had no
reason to be afraid of it.
Presently the Rabbit came up to the door,
and tried to open it;
but, as the door opened inwards, and Alice's elbow
was pressed
hard against it, that attempt proved a failure.
Alice heard it
say to itself `Then I'll go round and get in at
the window.'
`THAT you won't' thought Alice, and, after
waiting till she
fancied she heard the Rabbit just under the window,
she suddenly
spread out her hand, and made a snatch in the
air. She did not
get hold of anything, but she heard a little shriek
and a fall,
and a crash of broken glass, from which she concluded
that it was
just possible it had fallen into a cucumber-frame,
or something
of the sort.
Next came an angry voice--the Rabbit's--`Pat!
Pat! Where are
you?' And then a voice she had never heard before,
`Sure then
I'm here! Digging for apples, yer honour!'
`Digging for apples, indeed!' said the Rabbit
angrily. `Here!
Come and help me out of THIS!' (Sounds of more
broken glass.)
`Now tell me, Pat, what's that in the window?'
`Sure, it's an arm, yer honour!' (He pronounced
it `arrum.')
`An arm, you goose! Who ever saw one that
size? Why, it
fills the whole window!'
`Sure, it does, yer honour: but it's an
arm for all that.'
`Well, it's got no business there, at any
rate: go and take it
away!'
There was a long silence after this, and
Alice could only hear
whispers now and then; such as, `Sure, I don't
like it, yer
honour, at all, at all!' `Do as I tell you, you
coward!' and at
last she spread out her hand again, and made another
snatch in
the air. This time there were TWO little shrieks,
and more
sounds of broken glass. `What a number of cucumber-frames
there
must be!' thought Alice. `I wonder what they'll
do next! As for
pulling me out of the window, I only wish they
COULD! I'm sure I
don't want to stay in here any longer!'
She waited for some time without hearing
anything more: at
last came a rumbling of little cartwheels, and
the sound of a
good many voices all talking together: she made
out the words:
`Where's the other ladder?--Why, I hadn't to bring
but one;
Bill's got the other--Bill! fetch it here, lad!--Here,
put 'em up
at this corner--No, tie 'em together first--they
don't reach half
high enough yet--Oh! they'll do well enough; don't
be particular--
Here, Bill! catch hold of this rope--Will the
roof bear?--Mind
that loose slate--Oh, it's coming down! Heads
below!' (a loud
crash)--`Now, who did that?--It was Bill, I fancy--Who's
to go
down the chimney?--Nay, I shan't! YOU do it!--That
I won't,
then!--Bill's to go down--Here, Bill! the master
says you're to
go down the chimney!'
`Oh! So Bill's got to come down the chimney,
has he?' said
Alice to herself. `Shy, they seem to put everything
upon Bill!
I wouldn't be in Bill's place for a good deal:
this fireplace is
narrow, to be sure; but I THINK I can kick a little!'
She drew her foot as far down the chimney
as she could, and
waited till she heard a little animal (she couldn't
guess of what
sort it was) scratching and scrambling about in
the chimney close
above her: then, saying to herself `This is Bill,'
she gave one
sharp kick, and waited to see what would happen
next.
The first thing she heard was a general chorus
of `There goes
Bill!' then the Rabbit's voice along--`Catch him,
you by the
hedge!' then silence, and then another confusion
of voices--`Hold
up his head--Brandy now--Don't choke him--How
was it, old fellow?
What happened to you? Tell us all about it!'
Last came a little feeble, squeaking voice,
(`That's Bill,'
thought Alice,) `Well, I hardly know--No more,
thank ye; I'm
better now--but I'm a deal too flustered to tell
you--all I know
is, something comes at me like a Jack-in-the-box,
and up I goes
like a sky-rocket!'
`So you did, old fellow!' said the others.
`We must burn the house down!' said the Rabbit's
voice; and
Alice called out as loud as she could, `If you
do. I'll set
Dinah at you!'
There was a dead silence instantly, and Alice
thought to
herself, `I wonder what they WILL do next! If
they had any
sense, they'd take the roof off.' After a minute
or two, they
began moving about again, and Alice heard the
Rabbit say, `A
barrowful will do, to begin with.'
`A barrowful of WHAT?' thought Alice; but
she had not long to
doubt, for the next moment a shower of little
pebbles came
rattling in at the window, and some of them hit
her in the face.
`I'll put a stop to this,' she said to herself,
and shouted out,
`You'd better not do that again!' which produced
another dead
silence.
Alice noticed with some surprise that the
pebbles were all
turning into little cakes as they lay on the floor,
and a bright
idea came into her head. `If I eat one of these
cakes,' she
thought, `it's sure to make SOME change in my
size; and as it
can't possibly make me larger, it must make me
smaller, I
suppose.'
So she swallowed one of the cakes, and was
delighted to find
that she began shrinking directly. As soon as
she was small
enough to get through the door, she ran out of
the house, and
found quite a crowd of little animals and birds
waiting outside.
The poor little Lizard, Bill, was in the middle,
being held up by
two guinea-pigs, who were giving it something
out of a bottle.
They all made a rush at Alice the moment she appeared;
but she
ran off as hard as she could, and soon found herself
safe in a
thick wood.
`The first thing I've got to do,' said Alice
to herself, as she
wandered about in the wood, `is to grow to my
right size again;
and the second thing is to find my way into that
lovely garden.
I think that will be the best plan.'
It sounded an excellent plan, no doubt, and
very neatly and
simply arranged; the only difficulty was, that
she had not the
smallest idea how to set about it; and while she
was peering
about anxiously among the trees, a little sharp
bark just over
her head made her look up in a great hurry.
An enormous puppy was looking down at her
with large round
eyes, and feebly stretching out one paw, trying
to touch her.
`Poor little thing!' said Alice, in a coaxing
tone, and she tried
hard to whistle to it; but she was terribly frightened
all the
time at the thought that it might be hungry, in
which case it
would be very likely to eat her up in spite of
all her coaxing.
Hardly knowing what she did, she picked up
a little bit of
stick, and held it out to the puppy; whereupon
the puppy jumped
into the air off all its feet at once, with a
yelp of delight,
and rushed at the stick, and made believe to worry
it; then Alice
dodged behind a great thistle, to keep herself
from being run
over; and the moment she appeared on the other
side, the puppy
made another rush at the stick, and tumbled head
over heels in
its hurry to get hold of it; then Alice, thinking
it was very
like having a game of play with a cart-horse,
and expecting every
moment to be trampled under its feet, ran round
the thistle
again; then the puppy began a series of short
charges at the
stick, running a very little way forwards each
time and a long
way back, and barking hoarsely all the while,
till at last it sat
down a good way off, panting, with its tongue
hanging out of its
mouth, and its great eyes half shut.
This seemed to Alice a good opportunity for
making her escape;
so she set off at once, and ran till she was quite
tired and out
of breath, and till the puppy's bark sounded quite
faint in the
distance.
`And yet what a dear little puppy it was!'
said Alice, as she
leant against a buttercup to rest herself, and
fanned herself
with one of the leaves: `I should have liked
teaching it tricks
very much, if--if I'd only been the right size
to do it! Oh
dear! I'd nearly forgotten that I've got to grow
up again! Let
me see--how IS it to be managed? I suppose I
ought to eat or
drink something or other; but the great question
is, what?'
The great question certainly was, what?
Alice looked all round
her at the flowers and the blades of grass, but
she did not see
anything that looked like the right thing to eat
or drink under
the circumstances. There was a large mushroom
growing near her,
about the same height as herself; and when she
had looked under
it, and on both sides of it, and behind it, it
occurred to her
that she might as well look and see what was on
the top of it.
She stretched herself up on tiptoe, and peeped
over the edge of
the mushroom, and her eyes immediately met those
of a large
caterpillar, that was sitting on the top with
its arms folded,
quietly smoking a long hookah, and taking not
the smallest notice
of her or of anything else.
CHAPTER V
Advice from a Caterpillar
The Caterpillar and Alice looked at each
other for some time in
silence: at last the Caterpillar took the hookah
out of its
mouth, and addressed her in a languid, sleepy
voice.
`Who are YOU?' said the Caterpillar.
This was not an encouraging opening for a
conversation. Alice
replied, rather shyly, `I--I hardly know, sir,
just at present--
at least I know who I WAS when I got up this morning,
but I think
I must have been changed several times since then.'
`What do you mean by that?' said the Caterpillar
sternly.
`Explain yourself!'
`I can't explain MYSELF, I'm afraid, sir'
said Alice, `because
I'm not myself, you see.'
`I don't see,' said the Caterpillar.
`I'm afraid I can't put it more clearly,'
Alice replied very
politely, `for I can't understand it myself to
begin with; and
being so many different sizes in a day is very
confusing.'
`It isn't,' said the Caterpillar.
`Well, perhaps you haven't found it so yet,'
said Alice; `but
when you have to turn into a chrysalis--you will
some day, you
know--and then after that into a butterfly, I
should think you'll
feel it a little queer, won't you?'
`Not a bit,' said the Caterpillar.
`Well, perhaps your feelings may be different,'
said Alice;
`all I know is, it would feel very queer to ME.'
`You!' said the Caterpillar contemptuously.
`Who are YOU?'
Which brought them back again to the beginning
of the
conversation. Alice felt a little irritated at
the Caterpillar's
making such VERY short remarks, and she drew herself
up and said,
very gravely, `I think, you ought to tell me who
YOU are, first.'
`Why?' said the Caterpillar.
Here was another puzzling question; and as
Alice could not
think of any good reason, and as the Caterpillar
seemed to be in
a VERY unpleasant state of mind, she turned away.
`Come back!' the Caterpillar called after
her. `I've something
important to say!'
This sounded promising, certainly: Alice
turned and came back
again.
`Keep your temper,' said the Caterpillar.
`Is that all?' said Alice, swallowing down
her anger as well as
she could.
`No,' said the Caterpillar.
Alice thought she might as well wait, as
she had nothing else
to do, and perhaps after all it might tell her
something worth
hearing. For some minutes it puffed away without
speaking, but
at last it unfolded its arms, took the hookah
out of its mouth
again, and said, `So you think you're changed,
do you?'
`I'm afraid I am, sir,' said Alice; `I can't
remember things as
I used--and I don't keep the same size for ten
minutes together!'
`Can't remember WHAT things?' said the Caterpillar.
`Well, I've tried to say "HOW DOTH THE
LITTLE BUSY BEE," but it
all came different!' Alice replied in a very melancholy
voice.
`Repeat, "YOU ARE OLD, FATHER WILLIAM,"'
said the Caterpillar.
Alice folded her hands, and began:--
`You are old, Father William,' the young
man said,
`And your hair has become very white;
And yet you incessantly stand on your head--
Do you think, at your age, it is right?'
`In my youth,' Father William replied to
his son,
`I feared it might injure the brain;
But, now that I'm perfectly sure I have none,
Why, I do it again and again.'
`You are old,' said the youth, `as I mentioned
before,
And have grown most uncommonly fat;
Yet you turned a back-somersault in at the
door--
Pray, what is the reason of that?'
`In my youth,' said the sage, as he shook
his grey locks,
`I kept all my limbs very supple
By the use of this ointment--one shilling
the box--
Allow me to sell you a couple?'
`You are old,' said the youth, `and your
jaws are too weak
For anything tougher than suet;
Yet you finished the goose, with the bones
and the beak--
Pray how did you manage to do it?'
`In my youth,' said his father, `I took
to the law,
And argued each case with my wife;
And the muscular strength, which it gave to
my jaw,
Has lasted the rest of my life.'
`You are old,' said the youth, `one would
hardly suppose
That your eye was as steady as ever;
Yet you balanced an eel on the end of your
nose--
What made you so awfully clever?'
`I have answered three questions, and that
is enough,'
Said his father; `don't give yourself airs!
Do you think I can listen all day to such
stuff?
Be off, or I'll kick you down stairs!'
`That is not said right,' said the Caterpillar.
`Not QUITE right, I'm afraid,' said Alice,
timidly; `some of the
words have got altered.'
`It is wrong from beginning to end,' said
the Caterpillar
decidedly, and there was silence for some minutes.
The Caterpillar was the first to speak.
`What size do you want to be?' it asked.
`Oh, I'm not particular as to size,' Alice
hastily replied;
`only one doesn't like changing so often, you
know.'
`I DON'T know,' said the Caterpillar.
Alice said nothing: she had never been so
much contradicted in
her life before, and she felt that she was losing
her temper.
`Are you content now?' said the Caterpillar.
`Well, I should like to be a LITTLE larger,
sir, if you
wouldn't mind,' said Alice: `three inches is
such a wretched
height to be.'
`It is a very good height indeed!' said the
Caterpillar
angrily, rearing itself upright as it spoke (it
was exactly three
inches high).
`But I'm not used to it!' pleaded poor Alice
in a piteous tone.
And she thought of herself, `I wish the creatures
wouldn't be so
easily offended!'
`You'll get used to it in time,' said the
Caterpillar; and it
put the hookah into its mouth and began smoking
again.
This time Alice waited patiently until it
chose to speak again.
In a minute or two the Caterpillar took the hookah
out of its
mouth and yawned once or twice, and shook itself.
Then it got
down off the mushroom, and crawled away in the
grass, merely
remarking as it went, `One side will make you
grow taller, and
the other side will make you grow shorter.'
`One side of WHAT? The other side of WHAT?'
thought Alice to
herself.
`Of the mushroom,' said the Caterpillar,
just as if she had
asked it aloud; and in another moment it was out
of sight.
Alice remained looking thoughtfully at the
mushroom for a
minute, trying to make out which were the two
sides of it; and as
it was perfectly round, she found this a very
difficult question.
However, at last she stretched her arms round
it as far as they
would go, and broke off a bit of the edge with
each hand.
`And now which is which?' she said to herself,
and nibbled a
little of the right-hand bit to try the effect:
the next moment
she felt a violent blow underneath her chin:
it had struck her
foot!
She was a good deal frightened by this very
sudden change, but
she felt that there was no time to be lost, as
she was shrinking
rapidly; so she set to work at once to eat some
of the other bit.
Her chin was pressed so closely against her foot,
that there was
hardly room to open her mouth; but she did it
at last, and
managed to swallow a morsel of the lefthand bit.
* * * * *
* *
* * * * *
*
* * * * *
* *
`Come, my head's free at last!' said Alice
in a tone of
delight, which changed into alarm in another moment,
when she
found that her shoulders were nowhere to be found:
all she could
see, when she looked down, was an immense length
of neck, which
seemed to rise like a stalk out of a sea of green
leaves that lay
far below her.
`What CAN all that green stuff be?' said
Alice. `And where
HAVE my shoulders got to? And oh, my poor hands,
how is it I
can't see you?' She was moving them about as
she spoke, but no
result seemed to follow, except a little shaking
among the
distant green leaves.
As there seemed to be no chance of getting
her hands up to her
head, she tried to get her head down to them,
and was delighted
to find that her neck would bend about easily
in any direction,
like a serpent. She had just succeeded in curving
it down into a
graceful zigzag, and was going to dive in among
the leaves, which
she found to be nothing but the tops of the trees
under which she
had been wandering, when a sharp hiss made her
draw back in a
hurry: a large pigeon had flown into her face,
and was beating
her violently with its wings.
`Serpent!' screamed the Pigeon.
`I'm NOT a serpent!' said Alice indignantly.
`Let me alone!'
`Serpent, I say again!' repeated the Pigeon,
but in a more
subdued tone, and added with a kind of sob, `I've
tried every
way, and nothing seems to suit them!'
`I haven't the least idea what you're talking
about,' said
Alice.
`I've tried the roots of trees, and I've
tried banks, and I've
tried hedges,' the Pigeon went on, without attending
to her; `but
those serpents! There's no pleasing them!'
Alice was more and more puzzled, but she
thought there was no
use in saying anything more till the Pigeon had
finished.
`As if it wasn't trouble enough hatching
the eggs,' said the
Pigeon; `but I must be on the look-out for serpents
night and
day! Why, I haven't had a wink of sleep these
three weeks!'
`I'm very sorry you've been annoyed,' said
Alice, who was
beginning to see its meaning.
`And just as I'd taken the highest tree in
the wood,' continued
the Pigeon, raising its voice to a shriek, `and
just as I was
thinking I should be free of them at last, they
must needs come
wriggling down from the sky! Ugh, Serpent!'
`But I'm NOT a serpent, I tell you!' said
Alice. `I'm a--I'm
a--'
`Well! WHAT are you?' said the Pigeon.
`I can see you're
trying to invent something!'
`I--I'm a little girl,' said Alice, rather
doubtfully, as she
remembered the number of changes she had gone
through that day.
`A likely story indeed!' said the Pigeon
in a tone of the
deepest contempt. `I've seen a good many little
girls in my
time, but never ONE with such a neck as that!
No, no! You're a
serpent; and there's no use denying it. I suppose
you'll be
telling me next that you never tasted an egg!'
`I HAVE tasted eggs, certainly,' said Alice,
who was a very
truthful child; `but little girls eat eggs quite
as much as
serpents do, you know.'
`I don't believe it,' said the Pigeon; `but
if they do, why
then they're a kind of serpent, that's all I can
say.'
This was such a new idea to Alice, that she
was quite silent
for a minute or two, which gave the Pigeon the
opportunity of
adding, `You're looking for eggs, I know THAT
well enough; and
what does it matter to me whether you're a little
girl or a
serpent?'
`It matters a good deal to ME,' said Alice
hastily; `but I'm
not looking for eggs, as it happens; and if I
was, I shouldn't
want YOURS: I don't like them raw.'
`Well, be off, then!' said the Pigeon in
a sulky tone, as it
settled down again into its nest. Alice crouched
down among the
trees as well as she could, for her neck kept
getting entangled
among the branches, and every now and then she
had to stop and
untwist it. After a while she remembered that
she still held the
pieces of mushroom in her hands, and she set to
work very
carefully, nibbling first at one and then at the
other, and
growing sometimes taller and sometimes shorter,
until she had
succeeded in bringing herself down to her usual
height.
It was so long since she had been anything
near the right size,
that it felt quite strange at first; but she got
used to it in a
few minutes, and began talking to herself, as
usual. `Come,
there's half my plan done now! How puzzling all
these changes
are! I'm never sure what I'm going to be, from
one minute to
another! However, I've got back to my right size:
the next
thing is, to get into that beautiful garden--how
IS that to be
done, I wonder?' As she said this, she came suddenly
upon an
open place, with a little house in it about four
feet high.
`Whoever lives there,' thought Alice, `it'll never
do to come
upon them THIS size: why, I should frighten them
out of their
wits!' So she began nibbling at the righthand
bit again, and did
not venture to go near the house till she had
brought herself
down to nine inches high.
CHAPTER VI
Pig and Pepper
For a minute or two she stood looking at
the house, and
wondering what to do next, when suddenly a footman
in livery came
running out of the wood--(she considered him to
be a footman
because he was in livery: otherwise, judging
by his face only,
she would have called him a fish)--and rapped
loudly at the door
with his knuckles. It was opened by another footman
in livery,
with a round face, and large eyes like a frog;
and both footmen,
Alice noticed, had powdered hair that curled all
over their
heads. She felt very curious to know what it
was all about, and
crept a little way out of the wood to listen.
The Fish-Footman began by producing from
under his arm a great
letter, nearly as large as himself, and this he
handed over to
the other, saying, in a solemn tone, `For the
Duchess. An
invitation from the Queen to play croquet.' The
Frog-Footman
repeated, in the same solemn tone, only changing
the order of the
words a little, `From the Queen. An invitation
for the Duchess
to play croquet.'
Then they both bowed low, and their curls
got entangled
together.
Alice laughed so much at this, that she had
to run back into
the wood for fear of their hearing her; and when
she next peeped
out the Fish-Footman was gone, and the other was
sitting on the
ground near the door, staring stupidly up into
the sky.
Alice went timidly up to the door, and knocked.
`There's no sort of use in knocking,' said
the Footman, `and
that for two reasons. First, because I'm on the
same side of the
door as you are; secondly, because they're making
such a noise
inside, no one could possibly hear you.' And
certainly there was
a most extraordinary noise going on within--a
constant howling
and sneezing, and every now and then a great crash,
as if a dish
or kettle had been broken to pieces.
`Please, then,' said Alice, `how am I to
get in?'
`There might be some sense in your knocking,'
the Footman went
on without attending to her, `if we had the door
between us. For
instance, if you were INSIDE, you might knock,
and I could let
you out, you know.' He was looking up into the
sky all the time
he was speaking, and this Alice thought decidedly
uncivil. `But
perhaps he can't help it,' she said to herself;
`his eyes are so
VERY nearly at the top of his head. But at any
rate he might
answer questions.--How am I to get in?' she repeated,
aloud.
`I shall sit here,' the Footman remarked,
`till tomorrow--'
At this moment the door of the house opened,
and a large plate
came skimming out, straight at the Footman's head:
it just
grazed his nose, and broke to pieces against one
of the trees
behind him.
`--or next day, maybe,' the Footman continued
in the same tone,
exactly as if nothing had happened.
`How am I to get in?' asked Alice again,
in a louder tone.
`ARE you to get in at all?' said the Footman.
`That's the
first question, you know.'
It was, no doubt: only Alice did not like
to be told so.
`It's really dreadful,' she muttered to herself,
`the way all the
creatures argue. It's enough to drive one crazy!'
The Footman seemed to think this a good opportunity
for
repeating his remark, with variations. `I shall
sit here,' he
said, `on and off, for days and days.'
`But what am I to do?' said Alice.
`Anything you like,' said the Footman, and
began whistling.
`Oh, there's no use in talking to him,' said
Alice desperately:
`he's perfectly idiotic!' And she opened the
door and went in.
The door led right into a large kitchen,
which was full of
smoke from one end to the other: the Duchess
was sitting on a
three-legged stool in the middle, nursing a baby;
the cook was
leaning over the fire, stirring a large cauldron
which seemed to
be full of soup.
`There's certainly too much pepper in that
soup!' Alice said to
herself, as well as she could for sneezing.
There was certainly too much of it in the
air. Even the
Duchess sneezed occasionally; and as for the baby,
it was
sneezing and howling alternately without a moment's
pause. The
only things in the kitchen that did not sneeze,
were the cook,
and a large cat which was sitting on the hearth
and grinning from
ear to ear.
`Please would you tell me,' said Alice, a
little timidly, for
she was not quite sure whether it was good manners
for her to
speak first, `why your cat grins like that?'
`It's a Cheshire cat,' said the Duchess,
`and that's why. Pig!'
She said the last word with such sudden violence
that Alice
quite jumped; but she saw in another moment that
it was addressed
to the baby, and not to her, so she took courage,
and went on
again:--
`I didn't know that Cheshire cats always
grinned; in fact, I
didn't know that cats COULD grin.'
`They all can,' said the Duchess; `and most
of 'em do.'
`I don't know of any that do,' Alice said
very politely,
feeling quite pleased to have got into a conversation.
`You don't know much,' said the Duchess;
`and that's a fact.'
Alice did not at all like the tone of this
remark, and thought
it would be as well to introduce some other subject
of
conversation. While she was trying to fix on
one, the cook took
the cauldron of soup off the fire, and at once
set to work
throwing everything within her reach at the Duchess
and the baby
--the fire-irons came first; then followed a shower
of saucepans,
plates, and dishes. The Duchess took no notice
of them even when
they hit her; and the baby was howling so much
already, that it
was quite impossible to say whether the blows
hurt it or not.
`Oh, PLEASE mind what you're doing!' cried
Alice, jumping up
and down in an agony of terror. `Oh, there goes
his PRECIOUS
nose'; as an unusually large saucepan flew close
by it, and very
nearly carried it off.
`If everybody minded their own business,'
the Duchess said in a
hoarse growl, `the world would go round a deal
faster than it
does.'
`Which would NOT be an advantage,' said Alice,
who felt very
glad to get an opportunity of showing off a little
of her
knowledge. `Just think of what work it would
make with the day
and night! You see the earth takes twenty-four
hours to turn
round on its axis--'
`Talking of axes,' said the Duchess, `chop
off her head!'
Alice glanced rather anxiously at the cook,
to see if she meant
to take the hint; but the cook was busily stirring
the soup, and
seemed not to be listening, so she went on again:
`Twenty-four
hours, I THINK; or is it twelve? I--'
`Oh, don't bother ME,' said the Duchess;
`I never could abide
figures!' And with that she began nursing her
child again,
singing a sort of lullaby to it as she did so,
and giving it a
violent shake at the end of every line:
`Speak roughly to your little boy,
And beat him when he sneezes:
He only does it to annoy,
Because he knows it teases.'
CHORUS.
(In which the cook and the baby joined):--
`Wow! wow! wow!'
While the Duchess sang the second verse of
the song, she kept
tossing the baby violently up and down, and the
poor little thing
howled so, that Alice could hardly hear the words:--
`I speak severely to my boy,
I beat him when he sneezes;
For he can thoroughly enjoy
The pepper when he pleases!'
CHORUS.
`Wow! wow! wow!'
`Here! you may nurse it a bit, if you like!'
the Duchess said
to Alice, flinging the baby at her as she spoke.
`I must go and
get ready to play croquet with the Queen,' and
she hurried out of
the room. The cook threw a frying-pan after her
as she went out,
but it just missed her.
Alice caught the baby with some difficulty,
as it was a queer-
shaped little creature, and held out its arms
and legs in all
directions, `just like a star-fish,' thought Alice.
The poor
little thing was snorting like a steam-engine
when she caught it,
and kept doubling itself up and straightening
itself out again,
so that altogether, for the first minute or two,
it was as much
as she could do to hold it.
As soon as she had made out the proper way
of nursing it,
(which was to twist it up into a sort of knot,
and then keep
tight hold of its right ear and left foot, so
as to prevent its
undoing itself,) she carried it out into the open
air. `IF I
don't take this child away with me,' thought Alice,
`they're sure
to kill it in a day or two: wouldn't it be murder
to leave it
behind?' She said the last words out loud, and
the little thing
grunted in reply (it had left off sneezing by
this time). `Don't
grunt,' said Alice; `that's not at all a proper
way of expressing
yourself.'
The baby grunted again, and Alice looked
very anxiously into
its face to see what was the matter with it.
There could be no
doubt that it had a VERY turn-up nose, much more
like a snout
than a real nose; also its eyes were getting extremely
small for
a baby: altogether Alice did not like the look
of the thing at
all. `But perhaps it was only sobbing,' she thought,
and looked
into its eyes again, to see if there were any
tears.
No, there were no tears. `If you're going
to turn into a pig,
my dear,' said Alice, seriously, `I'll have nothing
more to do
with you. Mind now!' The poor little thing sobbed
again (or
grunted, it was impossible to say which), and
they went on for
some while in silence.
Alice was just beginning to think to herself,
`Now, what am I
to do with this creature when I get it home?'
when it grunted
again, so violently, that she looked down into
its face in some
alarm. This time there could be NO mistake about
it: it was
neither more nor less than a pig, and she felt
that it would be
quite absurd for her to carry it further.
So she set the little creature down, and
felt quite relieved to
see it trot away quietly into the wood. `If it
had grown up,'
she said to herself, `it would have made a dreadfully
ugly child:
but it makes rather a handsome pig, I think.'
And she began
thinking over other children she knew, who might
do very well as
pigs, and was just saying to herself, `if one
only knew the right
way to change them--' when she was a little startled
by seeing
the Cheshire Cat sitting on a bough of a tree
a few yards off.
The Cat only grinned when it saw Alice.
It looked good-
natured, she thought: still it had VERY long
claws and a great
many teeth, so she felt that it ought to be treated
with respect.
`Cheshire Puss,' she began, rather timidly,
as she did not at
all know whether it would like the name: however,
it only
grinned a little wider. `Come, it's pleased so
far,' thought
Alice, and she went on. `Would you tell me, please,
which way I
ought to go from here?'
`That depends a good deal on where you want
to get to,' said
the Cat.
`I don't much care where--' said Alice.
`Then it doesn't matter which way you go,'
said the Cat.
`--so long as I get SOMEWHERE,' Alice added
as an explanation.
`Oh, you're sure to do that,' said the Cat,
`if you only walk
long enough.'
Alice felt that this could not be denied,
so she tried another
question. `What sort of people live about here?'
`In THAT direction,' the Cat said, waving
its right paw round,
`lives a Hatter: and in THAT direction,' waving
the other paw,
`lives a March Hare. Visit either you like:
they're both mad.'
`But I don't want to go among mad people,'
Alice remarked.
`Oh, you can't help that,' said the Cat:
`we're all mad here.
I'm mad. You're mad.'
`How do you know I'm mad?' said Alice.
`You must be,' said the Cat, `or you wouldn't
have come here.'
Alice didn't think that proved it at all;
however, she went on
`And how do you know that you're mad?'
`To begin with,' said the Cat, `a dog's not
mad. You grant
that?'
`I suppose so,' said Alice.
`Well, then,' the Cat went on, `you see,
a dog growls when it's
angry, and wags its tail when it's pleased. Now
I growl when I'm
pleased, and wag my tail when I'm angry. Therefore
I'm mad.'
`I call it purring, not growling,' said Alice.
`Call it what you like,' said the Cat. `Do
you play croquet
with the Queen to-day?'
`I should like it very much,' said Alice,
`but I haven't been
invited yet.'
`You'll see me there,' said the Cat, and
vanished.
Alice was not much surprised at this, she
was getting so used
to queer things happening. While she was looking
at the place
where it had been, it suddenly appeared again.
`By-the-bye, what became of the baby?' said
the Cat. `I'd
nearly forgotten to ask.'
`It turned into a pig,' Alice quietly said,
just as if it had
come back in a natural way.
`I thought it would,' said the Cat, and vanished
again.
Alice waited a little, half expecting to
see it again, but it
did not appear, and after a minute or two she
walked on in the
direction in which the March Hare was said to
live. `I've seen
hatters before,' she said to herself; `the March
Hare will be
much the most interesting, and perhaps as this
is May it won't be
raving mad--at least not so mad as it was in March.'
As she said
this, she looked up, and there was the Cat again,
sitting on a
branch of a tree.
`Did you say pig, or fig?' said the Cat.
`I said pig,' replied Alice; `and I wish
you wouldn't keep
appearing and vanishing so suddenly: you make
one quite giddy.'
`All right,' said the Cat; and this time
it vanished quite slowly,
beginning with the end of the tail, and ending
with the grin,
which remained some time after the rest of it
had gone.
`Well! I've often seen a cat without a grin,'
thought Alice;
`but a grin without a cat! It's the most curious
thing I ever
saw in my life!'
She had not gone much farther before she
came in sight of the
house of the March Hare: she thought it must
be the right house,
because the chimneys were shaped like ears and
the roof was
thatched with fur. It was so large a house, that
she did not
like to go nearer till she had nibbled some more
of the lefthand
bit of mushroom, and raised herself to about two
feet high: even
then she walked up towards it rather timidly,
saying to herself
`Suppose it should be raving mad after all! I
almost wish I'd
gone to see the Hatter instead!'
CHAPTER VII
A Mad Tea-Party
There was a table set out under a tree in
front of the house,
and the March Hare and the Hatter were having
tea at it: a
Dormouse was sitting between them, fast asleep,
and the other two
were using it as a cushion, resting their elbows
on it, and talking
over its head. `Very uncomfortable for the Dormouse,'
thought Alice;
`only, as it's asleep, I suppose it doesn't mind.'
The table was a large one, but the three
were all crowded
together at one corner of it: `No room! No room!'
they cried
out when they saw Alice coming. `There's PLENTY
of room!' said
Alice indignantly, and she sat down in a large
arm-chair at one
end of the table.
`Have some wine,' the March Hare said in
an encouraging tone.
Alice looked all round the table, but there
was nothing on it
but tea. `I don't see any wine,' she remarked.
`There isn't any,' said the March Hare.
`Then it wasn't very civil of you to offer
it,' said Alice
angrily.
`It wasn't very civil of you to sit down
without being
invited,' said the March Hare.
`I didn't know it was YOUR table,' said Alice;
`it's laid for a
great many more than three.'
`Your hair wants cutting,' said the Hatter.
He had been
looking at Alice for some time with great curiosity,
and this was
his first speech.
`You should learn not to make personal remarks,'
Alice said
with some severity; `it's very rude.'
The Hatter opened his eyes very wide on hearing
this; but all
he SAID was, `Why is a raven like a writing-desk?'
`Come, we shall have some fun now!' thought
Alice. `I'm glad
they've begun asking riddles.--I believe I can
guess that,' she
added aloud.
`Do you mean that you think you can find
out the answer to it?'
said the March Hare.
`Exactly so,' said Alice.
`Then you should say what you mean,' the
March Hare went on.
`I do,' Alice hastily replied; `at least--at
least I mean what
I say--that's the same thing, you know.'
`Not the same thing a bit!' said the Hatter.
`You might just
as well say that "I see what I eat"
is the same thing as "I eat
what I see"!'
`You might just as well say,' added the March
Hare, `that "I
like what I get" is the same thing as "I
get what I like"!'
`You might just as well say,' added the Dormouse,
who seemed to
be talking in his sleep, `that "I breathe
when I sleep" is the
same thing as "I sleep when I breathe"!'
`It IS the same thing with you,' said the
Hatter, and here the
conversation dropped, and the party sat silent
for a minute,
while Alice thought over all she could remember
about ravens and
writing-desks, which wasn't much.
The Hatter was the first to break the silence.
`What day of
the month is it?' he said, turning to Alice:
he had taken his
watch out of his pocket, and was looking at it
uneasily, shaking
it every now and then, and holding it to his ear.
Alice considered a little, and then said
`The fourth.'
`Two days wrong!' sighed the Hatter. `I
told you butter
wouldn't suit the works!' he added looking angrily
at the March
Hare.
`It was the BEST butter,' the March Hare
meekly replied.
`Yes, but some crumbs must have got in as
well,' the Hatter
grumbled: `you shouldn't have put it in with
the bread-knife.'
The March Hare took the watch and looked
at it gloomily: then
he dipped it into his cup of tea, and looked at
it again: but he
could think of nothing better to say than his
first remark, `It
was the BEST butter, you know.'
Alice had been looking over his shoulder
with some curiosity.
`What a funny watch!' she remarked. `It tells
the day of the
month, and doesn't tell what o'clock it is!'
`Why should it?' muttered the Hatter. `Does
YOUR watch tell
you what year it is?'
`Of course not,' Alice replied very readily:
`but that's
because it stays the same year for such a long
time together.'
`Which is just the case with MINE,' said
the Hatter.
Alice felt dreadfully puzzled. The Hatter's
remark seemed to
have no sort of meaning in it, and yet it was
certainly English.
`I don't quite understand you,' she said, as politely
as she
could.
`The Dormouse is asleep again,' said the
Hatter, and he poured
a little hot tea upon its nose.
The Dormouse shook its head impatiently,
and said, without
opening its eyes, `Of course, of course; just
what I was going to
remark myself.'
`Have you guessed the riddle yet?' the Hatter
said, turning to
Alice again.
`No, I give it up,' Alice replied: `what's
the answer?'
`I haven't the slightest idea,' said the
Hatter.
`Nor I,' said the March Hare.
Alice sighed wearily. `I think you might
do something better
with the time,' she said, `than waste it in asking
riddles that
have no answers.'
`If you knew Time as well as I do,' said
the Hatter, `you
wouldn't talk about wasting IT. It's HIM.'
`I don't know what you mean,' said Alice.
`Of course you don't!' the Hatter said, tossing
his head
contemptuously. `I dare say you never even spoke
to Time!'
`Perhaps not,' Alice cautiously replied:
`but I know I have to
beat time when I learn music.'
`Ah! that accounts for it,' said the Hatter.
`He won't stand
beating. Now, if you only kept on good terms
with him, he'd do
almost anything you liked with the clock. For
instance, suppose
it were nine o'clock in the morning, just time
to begin lessons:
you'd only have to whisper a hint to Time, and
round goes the
clock in a twinkling! Half-past one, time for
dinner!'
(`I only wish it was,' the March Hare said
to itself in a
whisper.)
`That would be grand, certainly,' said Alice
thoughtfully:
`but then--I shouldn't be hungry for it, you know.'
`Not at first, perhaps,' said the Hatter:
`but you could keep
it to half-past one as long as you liked.'
`Is that the way YOU manage?' Alice asked.
The Hatter shook his head mournfully. `Not
I!' he replied.
`We quarrelled last March--just before HE went
mad, you know--'
(pointing with his tea spoon at the March Hare,)
`--it was at the
great concert given by the Queen of Hearts, and
I had to sing
"Twinkle, twinkle, little
bat!
How I wonder what you're at!"
You know the song, perhaps?'
`I've heard something like it,' said Alice.
`It goes on, you know,' the Hatter continued,
`in this way:--
"Up above the world you fly,
Like a tea-tray in the sky.
Twinkle, twinkle--"'
Here the Dormouse shook itself, and began singing
in its sleep
`Twinkle, twinkle, twinkle, twinkle--' and went
on so long that
they had to pinch it to make it stop.
`Well, I'd hardly finished the first verse,'
said the Hatter,
`when the Queen jumped up and bawled out, "He's
murdering the
time! Off with his head!"'
`How dreadfully savage!' exclaimed Alice.
`And ever since that,' the Hatter went on
in a mournful tone,
`he won't do a thing I ask! It's always six o'clock
now.'
A bright idea came into Alice's head. `Is
that the reason so
many tea-things are put out here?' she asked.
`Yes, that's it,' said the Hatter with a
sigh: `it's always
tea-time, and we've no time to wash the things
between whiles.'
`Then you keep moving round, I suppose?'
said Alice.
`Exactly so,' said the Hatter: `as the things
get used up.'
`But what happens when you come to the beginning
again?' Alice
ventured to ask.
`Suppose we change the subject,' the March
Hare interrupted,
yawning. `I'm getting tired of this. I vote
the young lady
tells us a story.'
`I'm afraid I don't know one,' said Alice,
rather alarmed at
the proposal.
`Then the Dormouse shall!' they both cried.
`Wake up,
Dormouse!' And they pinched it on both sides
at once.
The Dormouse slowly opened his eyes. `I
wasn't asleep,' he
said in a hoarse, feeble voice: `I heard every
word you fellows
were saying.'
`Tell us a story!' said the March Hare.
`Yes, please do!' pleaded Alice.
`And be quick about it,' added the Hatter,
`or you'll be asleep
again before it's done.'
`Once upon a time there were three little
sisters,' the
Dormouse began in a great hurry; `and their names
were Elsie,
Lacie, and Tillie; and they lived at the bottom
of a well--'
`What did they live on?' said Alice, who
always took a great
interest in questions of eating and drinking.
`They lived on treacle,' said the Dormouse,
after thinking a
minute or two.
`They couldn't have done that, you know,'
Alice gently
remarked; `they'd have been ill.'
`So they were,' said the Dormouse; `VERY
ill.'
Alice tried to fancy to herself what such
an extraordinary ways
of living would be like, but it puzzled her too
much, so she went
on: `But why did they live at the bottom of a
well?'
`Take some more tea,' the March Hare said
to Alice, very
earnestly.
`I've had nothing yet,' Alice replied in
an offended tone, `so
I can't take more.'
`You mean you can't take LESS,' said the
Hatter: `it's very
easy to take MORE than nothing.'
`Nobody asked YOUR opinion,' said Alice.
`Who's making personal remarks now?' the
Hatter asked
triumphantly.
Alice did not quite know what to say to this:
so she helped
herself to some tea and bread-and-butter, and
then turned to the
Dormouse, and repeated her question. `Why did
they live at the
bottom of a well?'
The Dormouse again took a minute or two to
think about it, and
then said, `It was a treacle-well.'
`There's no such thing!' Alice was beginning
very angrily, but
the Hatter and the March Hare went `Sh! sh!' and
the Dormouse
sulkily remarked, `If you can't be civil, you'd
better finish the
story for yourself.'
`No, please go on!' Alice said very humbly;
`I won't interrupt
again. I dare say there may be ONE.'
`One, indeed!' said the Dormouse indignantly.
However, he
consented to go on. `And so these three little
sisters--they
were learning to draw, you know--'
`What did they draw?' said Alice, quite forgetting
her promise.
`Treacle,' said the Dormouse, without considering
at all this
time.
`I want a clean cup,' interrupted the Hatter:
`let's all move
one place on.'
He moved on as he spoke, and the Dormouse
followed him: the
March Hare moved into the Dormouse's place, and
Alice rather
unwillingly took the place of the March Hare.
The Hatter was the
only one who got any advantage from the change:
and Alice was a
good deal worse off than before, as the March
Hare had just upset
the milk-jug into his plate.
Alice did not wish to offend the Dormouse
again, so she began
very cautiously: `But I don't understand. Where
did they draw
the treacle from?'
`You can draw water out of a water-well,'
said the Hatter; `so
I should think you could draw treacle out of a
treacle-well--eh,
stupid?'
`But they were IN the well,' Alice said to
the Dormouse, not
choosing to notice this last remark.
`Of course they were', said the Dormouse;
`--well in.'
This answer so confused poor Alice, that
she let the Dormouse
go on for some time without interrupting it.
`They were learning to draw,' the Dormouse
went on, yawning and
rubbing its eyes, for it was getting very sleepy;
`and they drew
all manner of things--everything that begins with
an M--'
`Why with an M?' said Alice.
`Why not?' said the March Hare.
Alice was silent.
The Dormouse had closed its eyes by this
time, and was going
off into a doze; but, on being pinched by the
Hatter, it woke up
again with a little shriek, and went on: `--that
begins with an
M, such as mouse-traps, and the moon, and memory,
and muchness--
you know you say things are "much of a muchness"--did
you ever
see such a thing as a drawing of a muchness?'
`Really, now you ask me,' said Alice, very
much confused, `I
don't think--'
`Then you shouldn't talk,' said the Hatter.
This piece of rudeness was more than Alice
could bear: she got
up in great disgust, and walked off; the Dormouse
fell asleep
instantly, and neither of the others took the
least notice of her
going, though she looked back once or twice, half
hoping that
they would call after her: the last time she
saw them, they were
trying to put the Dormouse into the teapot.
`At any rate I'll never go THERE again!'
said Alice as she
picked her way through the wood. `It's the stupidest
tea-party I
ever was at in all my life!'
Just as she said this, she noticed that one
of the trees had a
door leading right into it. `That's very curious!'
she thought.
`But everything's curious today. I think I may
as well go in at once.'
And in she went.
Once more she found herself in the long hall,
and close to the
little glass table. `Now, I'll manage better
this time,'
she said to herself, and began by taking the little
golden key,
and unlocking the door that led into the garden.
Then she went
to work nibbling at the mushroom (she had kept
a piece of it
in her pocket) till she was about a foot high:
then she walked down
the little passage: and THEN--she found herself
at last in the
beautiful garden, among the bright flower-beds
and the cool fountains.
CHAPTER VIII
The Queen's Croquet-Ground
A large rose-tree stood near the entrance
of the garden: the
roses growing on it were white, but there were
three gardeners at
it, busily painting them red. Alice thought this
a very curious
thing, and she went nearer to watch them, and
just as she came up
to them she heard one of them say, `Look out now,
Five! Don't go
splashing paint over me like that!'
`I couldn't help it,' said Five, in a sulky
tone; `Seven jogged
my elbow.'
On which Seven looked up and said, `That's
right, Five! Always
lay the blame on others!'
`YOU'D better not talk!' said Five. `I heard
the Queen say only
yesterday you deserved to be beheaded!'
`What for?' said the one who had spoken first.
`That's none of YOUR business, Two!' said
Seven.
`Yes, it IS his business!' said Five, `and
I'll tell him--it
was for bringing the cook tulip-roots instead
of onions.'
Seven flung down his brush, and had just
begun `Well, of all
the unjust things--' when his eye chanced to fall
upon Alice, as
she stood watching them, and he checked himself
suddenly: the
others looked round also, and all of them bowed
low.
`Would you tell me,' said Alice, a little
timidly, `why you are
painting those roses?'
Five and Seven said nothing, but looked at
Two. Two began in a
low voice, `Why the fact is, you see, Miss, this
here ought to
have been a RED rose-tree, and we put a white
one in by mistake;
and if the Queen was to find it out, we should
all have our heads
cut off, you know. So you see, Miss, we're doing
our best, afore
she comes, to--' At this moment Five, who had
been anxiously
looking across the garden, called out `The Queen!
The Queen!'
and the three gardeners instantly threw themselves
flat upon
their faces. There was a sound of many footsteps,
and Alice
looked round, eager to see the Queen.
First came ten soldiers carrying clubs; these
were all shaped
like the three gardeners, oblong and flat, with
their hands and
feet at the corners: next the ten courtiers;
these were
ornamented all over with diamonds, and walked
two and two, as the
soldiers did. After these came the royal children;
there were
ten of them, and the little dears came jumping
merrily along hand
in hand, in couples: they were all ornamented
with hearts. Next
came the guests, mostly Kings and Queens, and
among them Alice
recognised the White Rabbit: it was talking in
a hurried nervous
manner, smiling at everything that was said, and
went by without
noticing her. Then followed the Knave of Hearts,
carrying the
King's crown on a crimson velvet cushion; and,
last of all this
grand procession, came THE KING AND QUEEN OF HEARTS.
Alice was rather doubtful whether she ought
not to lie down on
her face like the three gardeners, but she could
not remember
ever having heard of such a rule at processions;
`and besides,
what would be the use of a procession,' thought
she, `if people
had all to lie down upon their faces, so that
they couldn't see it?'
So she stood still where she was, and waited.
When the procession came opposite to Alice,
they all stopped
and looked at her, and the Queen said severely
`Who is this?'
She said it to the Knave of Hearts, who only bowed
and smiled in reply.
`Idiot!' said the Queen, tossing her head
impatiently; and,
turning to Alice, she went on, `What's your name,
child?'
`My name is Alice, so please your Majesty,'
said Alice very
politely; but she added, to herself, `Why, they're
only a pack of
cards, after all. I needn't be afraid of them!'
`And who are THESE?' said the Queen, pointing
to the three
gardeners who were lying round the rosetree; for,
you see, as
they were lying on their faces, and the pattern
on their backs
was the same as the rest of the pack, she could
not tell whether
they were gardeners, or soldiers, or courtiers,
or three of her
own children.
`How should I know?' said Alice, surprised
at her own courage.
`It's no business of MINE.'
The Queen turned crimson with fury, and,
after glaring at her
for a moment like a wild beast, screamed `Off
with her head!
Off--'
`Nonsense!' said Alice, very loudly and decidedly,
and the
Queen was silent.
The King laid his hand upon her arm, and
timidly said
`Consider, my dear: she is only a child!'
The Queen turned angrily away from him, and
said to the Knave
`Turn them over!'
The Knave did so, very carefully, with one
foot.
`Get up!' said the Queen, in a shrill, loud
voice, and the
three gardeners instantly jumped up, and began
bowing to the
King, the Queen, the royal children, and everybody
else.
`Leave off that!' screamed the Queen. `You
make me giddy.'
And then, turning to the rose-tree, she went on,
`What HAVE you
been doing here?'
`May it please your Majesty,' said Two, in
a very humble tone,
going down on one knee as he spoke, `we were trying--'
`I see!' said the Queen, who had meanwhile
been examining the
roses. `Off with their heads!' and the procession
moved on,
three of the soldiers remaining behind to execute
the unfortunate
gardeners, who ran to Alice for protection.
`You shan't be beheaded!' said Alice, and
she put them into a
large flower-pot that stood near. The three soldiers
wandered
about for a minute or two, looking for them, and
then quietly
marched off after the others.
`Are their heads off?' shouted the Queen.
`Their heads are gone, if it please your
Majesty!' the soldiers
shouted in reply.
`That's right!' shouted the Queen. `Can
you play croquet?'
The soldiers were silent, and looked at Alice,
as the question
was evidently meant for her.
`Yes!' shouted Alice.
`Come on, then!' roared the Queen, and Alice
joined the
procession, wondering very much what would happen
next.
`It's--it's a very fine day!' said a timid
voice at her side.
She was walking by the White Rabbit, who was peeping
anxiously
into her face.
`Very,' said Alice: `--where's the Duchess?'
`Hush! Hush!' said the Rabbit in a low,
hurried tone. He
looked anxiously over his shoulder as he spoke,
and then raised
himself upon tiptoe, put his mouth close to her
ear, and
whispered `She's under sentence of execution.'
`What for?' said Alice.
`Did you say "What a pity!"?' the
Rabbit asked.
`No, I didn't,' said Alice: `I don't think
it's at all a pity.
I said "What for?"'
`She boxed the Queen's ears--' the Rabbit
began. Alice gave a
little scream of laughter. `Oh, hush!' the Rabbit
whispered in a
frightened tone. `The Queen will hear you! You
see, she came
rather late, and the Queen said--'
`Get to your places!' shouted the Queen in
a voice of thunder,
and people began running about in all directions,
tumbling up
against each other; however, they got settled
down in a minute or
two, and the game began. Alice thought she had
never seen such a
curious croquet-ground in her life; it was all
ridges and
furrows; the balls were live hedgehogs, the mallets
live
flamingoes, and the soldiers had to double themselves
up and to
stand on their hands and feet, to make the arches.
The chief difficulty Alice found at first
was in managing her
flamingo: she succeeded in getting its body tucked
away,
comfortably enough, under her arm, with its legs
hanging down,
but generally, just as she had got its neck nicely
straightened
out, and was going to give the hedgehog a blow
with its head, it
WOULD twist itself round and look up in her face,
with such a
puzzled expression that she could not help bursting
out laughing:
and when she had got its head down, and was going
to begin again,
it was very provoking to find that the hedgehog
had unrolled
itself, and was in the act of crawling away:
besides all this,
there was generally a ridge or furrow in the way
wherever she
wanted to send the hedgehog to, and, as the doubled-up
soldiers
were always getting up and walking off to other
parts of the
ground, Alice soon came to the conclusion that
it was a very
difficult game indeed.
The players all played at once without waiting
for turns,
quarrelling all the while, and fighting for the
hedgehogs; and in
a very short time the Queen was in a furious passion,
and went
stamping about, and shouting `Off with his head!'
or `Off with
her head!' about once in a minute.
Alice began to feel very uneasy: to be sure,
she had not as
yet had any dispute with the Queen, but she knew
that it might
happen any minute, `and then,' thought she, `what
would become of
me? They're dreadfully fond of beheading people
here; the great
wonder is, that there's any one left alive!'
She was looking about for some way of escape,
and wondering
whether she could get away without being seen,
when she noticed a
curious appearance in the air: it puzzled her
very much at
first, but, after watching it a minute or two,
she made it out to
be a grin, and she said to herself `It's the Cheshire
Cat: now I
shall have somebody to talk to.'
`How are you getting on?' said the Cat, as
soon as there was
mouth enough for it to speak with.
Alice waited till the eyes appeared, and
then nodded. `It's no
use speaking to it,' she thought, `till its ears
have come, or at
least one of them.' In another minute the whole
head appeared,
and then Alice put down her flamingo, and began
an account of the
game, feeling very glad she had someone to listen
to her. The
Cat seemed to think that there was enough of it
now in sight, and
no more of it appeared.
`I don't think they play at all fairly,'
Alice began, in rather
a complaining tone, `and they all quarrel so dreadfully
one can't
hear oneself speak--and they don't seem to have
any rules in
particular; at least, if there are, nobody attends
to them--and
you've no idea how confusing it is all the things
being alive;
for instance, there's the arch I've got to go
through next
walking about at the other end of the ground--and
I should have
croqueted the Queen's hedgehog just now, only
it ran away when it
saw mine coming!'
`How do you like the Queen?' said the Cat
in a low voice.
`Not at all,' said Alice: `she's so extremely--'
Just then
she noticed that the Queen was close behind her,
listening: so
she went on, `--likely to win, that it's hardly
worth while
finishing the game.'
The Queen smiled and passed on.
`Who ARE you talking to?' said the King,
going up to Alice, and
looking at the Cat's head with great curiosity.
`It's a friend of mine--a Cheshire Cat,'
said Alice: `allow me
to introduce it.'
`I don't like the look of it at all,' said
the King:
`however, it may kiss my hand if it likes.'
`I'd rather not,' the Cat remarked.
`Don't be impertinent,' said the King, `and
don't look at me
like that!' He got behind Alice as he spoke.
`A cat may look at a king,' said Alice.
`I've read that in
some book, but I don't remember where.'
`Well, it must be removed,' said the King
very decidedly, and
he called the Queen, who was passing at the moment,
`My dear! I
wish you would have this cat removed!'
The Queen had only one way of settling all
difficulties, great
or small. `Off with his head!' she said, without
even looking
round.
`I'll fetch the executioner myself,' said
the King eagerly, and
he hurried off.
Alice thought she might as well go back,
and see how the game
was going on, as she heard the Queen's voice in
the distance,
screaming with passion. She had already heard
her sentence three
of the players to be executed for having missed
their turns, and
she did not like the look of things at all, as
the game was in
such confusion that she never knew whether it
was her turn or
not. So she went in search of her hedgehog.
The hedgehog was engaged in a fight with
another hedgehog,
which seemed to Alice an excellent opportunity
for croqueting one
of them with the other: the only difficulty was,
that her
flamingo was gone across to the other side of
the garden, where
Alice could see it trying in a helpless sort of
way to fly up
into a tree.
By the time she had caught the flamingo and
brought it back,
the fight was over, and both the hedgehogs were
out of sight:
`but it doesn't matter much,' thought Alice, `as
all the arches
are gone from this side of the ground.' So she
tucked it away
under her arm, that it might not escape again,
and went back for
a little more conversation with her friend.
When she got back to the Cheshire Cat, she
was surprised to
find quite a large crowd collected round it:
there was a dispute
going on between the executioner, the King, and
the Queen, who
were all talking at once, while all the rest were
quite silent,
and looked very uncomfortable.
The moment Alice appeared, she was appealed
to by all three to
settle the question, and they repeated their arguments
to her,
though, as they all spoke at once, she found it
very hard indeed
to make out exactly what they said.
The executioner's argument was, that you
couldn't cut off a
head unless there was a body to cut it off from:
that he had
never had to do such a thing before, and he wasn't
going to begin
at HIS time of life.
The King's argument was, that anything that
had a head could be
beheaded, and that you weren't to talk nonsense.
The Queen's argument was, that if something
wasn't done about
it in less than no time she'd have everybody executed,
all round.
(It was this last remark that had made the whole
party look so
grave and anxious.)
Alice could think of nothing else to say
but `It belongs to the
Duchess: you'd better ask HER about it.'
`She's in prison,' the Queen said to the
executioner: `fetch
her here.' And the executioner went off like
an arrow.
The Cat's head began fading away the moment
he was gone, and,
by the time he had come back with the Dutchess,
it had entirely
disappeared; so the King and the executioner ran
wildly up and down
looking for it, while the rest of the party went
back to the game.
CHAPTER IX
The Mock Turtle's Story
`You can't think how glad I am to see you
again, you dear old
thing!' said the Duchess, as she tucked her arm
affectionately
into Alice's, and they walked off together.
Alice was very glad to find her in such a
pleasant temper, and
thought to herself that perhaps it was only the
pepper that had
made her so savage when they met in the kitchen.
`When I'M a Duchess,' she said to herself,
(not in a very
hopeful tone though), `I won't have any pepper
in my kitchen AT
ALL. Soup does very well without--Maybe it's
always pepper that
makes people hot-tempered,' she went on, very
much pleased at
having found out a new kind of rule, `and vinegar
that makes them
sour--and camomile that makes them bitter--and--and
barley-sugar
and such things that make children sweet-tempered.
I only wish
people knew that: then they wouldn't be so stingy
about it, you
know--'
She had quite forgotten the Duchess by this
time, and was a
little startled when she heard her voice close
to her ear.
`You're thinking about something, my dear, and
that makes you
forget to talk. I can't tell you just now what
the moral of that
is, but I shall remember it in a bit.'
`Perhaps it hasn't one,' Alice ventured to
remark.
`Tut, tut, child!' said the Duchess. `Everything's
got a
moral, if only you can find it.' And she squeezed
herself up
closer to Alice's side as she spoke.
Alice did not much like keeping so close
to her: first,
because the Duchess was VERY ugly; and secondly,
because she was
exactly the right height to rest her chin upon
Alice's shoulder,
and it was an uncomfortably sharp chin. However,
she did not
like to be rude, so she bore it as well as she
could.
`The game's going on rather better now,'
she said, by way of
keeping up the conversation a little.
`'Tis so,' said the Duchess: `and the moral
of that is--"Oh,
'tis love, 'tis love, that makes the world go
round!"'
`Somebody said,' Alice whispered, `that it's
done by everybody
minding their own business!'
`Ah, well! It means much the same thing,'
said the Duchess,
digging her sharp little chin into Alice's shoulder
as she added,
`and the moral of THAT is--"Take care of
the sense, and the
sounds will take care of themselves."'
`How fond she is of finding morals in things!'
Alice thought to
herself.
`I dare say you're wondering why I don't
put my arm round your
waist,' the Duchess said after a pause: `the
reason is, that I'm
doubtful about the temper of your flamingo. Shall
I try the
experiment?'
`HE might bite,' Alice cautiously replied,
not feeling at all
anxious to have the experiment tried.
`Very true,' said the Duchess: `flamingoes
and mustard both
bite. And the moral of that is--"Birds of
a feather flock
together."'
`Only mustard isn't a bird,' Alice remarked.
`Right, as usual,' said the Duchess: `what
a clear way you
have of putting things!'
`It's a mineral, I THINK,' said Alice.
`Of course it is,' said the Duchess, who
seemed ready to agree
to everything that Alice said; `there's a large
mustard-mine near
here. And the moral of that is--"The more
there is of mine, the
less there is of yours."'
`Oh, I know!' exclaimed Alice, who had not
attended to this
last remark, `it's a vegetable. It doesn't look
like one, but it
is.'
`I quite agree with you,' said the Duchess;
`and the moral of
that is--"Be what you would seem to be"--or
if you'd like it put
more simply--"Never imagine yourself not
to be otherwise than
what it might appear to others that what you were
or might have
been was not otherwise than what you had been
would have appeared
to them to be otherwise."'
`I think I should understand that better,'
Alice said very
politely, `if I had it written down: but I can't
quite follow it
as you say it.'
`That's nothing to what I could say if I
chose,' the Duchess
replied, in a pleased tone.
`Pray don't trouble yourself to say it any
longer than that,'
said Alice.
`Oh, don't talk about trouble!' said the
Duchess. `I make you
a present of everything I've said as yet.'
`A cheap sort of present!' thought Alice.
`I'm glad they don't
give birthday presents like that!' But she did
not venture to
say it out loud.
`Thinking again?' the Duchess asked, with
another dig of her
sharp little chin.
`I've a right to think,' said Alice sharply,
for she was
beginning to feel a little worried.
`Just about as much right,' said the Duchess,
`as pigs have to fly;
and the m--'
But here, to Alice's great surprise, the
Duchess's voice died
away, even in the middle of her favourite word
`moral,' and the
arm that was linked into hers began to tremble.
Alice looked up,
and there stood the Queen in front of them, with
her arms folded,
frowning like a thunderstorm.
`A fine day, your Majesty!' the Duchess began
in a low, weak
voice.
`Now, I give you fair warning,' shouted the
Queen, stamping on
the ground as she spoke; `either you or your head
must be off,
and that in about half no time! Take your choice!'
The Duchess took her choice, and was gone
in a moment.
`Let's go on with the game,' the Queen said
to Alice; and Alice
was too much frightened to say a word, but slowly
followed her
back to the croquet-ground.
The other guests had taken advantage of the
Queen's absence,
and were resting in the shade: however, the moment
they saw her,
they hurried back to the game, the Queen merely
remarking that a
moment's delay would cost them their lives.
All the time they were playing the Queen
never left off
quarrelling with the other players, and shouting
`Off with his
head!' or `Off with her head!' Those whom she
sentenced were
taken into custody by the soldiers, who of course
had to leave
off being arches to do this, so that by the end
of half an hour
or so there were no arches left, and all the players,
except the
King, the Queen, and Alice, were in custody and
under sentence of
execution.
Then the Queen left off, quite out of breath,
and said to
Alice, `Have you seen the Mock Turtle yet?'
`No,' said Alice. `I don't even know what
a Mock Turtle is.'
`It's the thing Mock Turtle Soup is made
from,' said the Queen.
`I never saw one, or heard of one,' said
Alice.
`Come on, then,' said the Queen, `and he
shall tell you his
history,'
As they walked off together, Alice heard
the King say in a low
voice, to the company generally, `You are all
pardoned.' `Come,
THAT'S a good thing!' she said to herself, for
she had felt quite
unhappy at the number of executions the Queen
had ordered.
They very soon came upon a Gryphon, lying
fast asleep in the
sun. (IF you don't know what a Gryphon is, look
at the picture.)
`Up, lazy thing!' said the Queen, `and take this
young lady to
see the Mock Turtle, and to hear his history.
I must go back and
see after some executions I have ordered'; and
she walked off,
leaving Alice alone with the Gryphon. Alice did
not quite like
the look of the creature, but on the whole she
thought it would
be quite as safe to stay with it as to go after
that savage
Queen: so she waited.
The Gryphon sat up and rubbed its eyes:
then it watched the
Queen till she was out of sight: then it chuckled.
`What fun!'
said the Gryphon, half to itself, half to Alice.
`What IS the fun?' said Alice.
`Why, SHE,' said the Gryphon. `It's all
her fancy, that: they
never executes nobody, you know. Come on!'
`Everybody says "come on!" here,'
thought Alice, as she went
slowly after it: `I never was so ordered about
in all my life,
never!'
They had not gone far before they saw the
Mock Turtle in the
distance, sitting sad and lonely on a little ledge
of rock, and,
as they came nearer, Alice could hear him sighing
as if his heart
would break. She pitied him deeply. `What is
his sorrow?' she
asked the Gryphon, and the Gryphon answered, very
nearly in the
same words as before, `It's all his fancy, that:
he hasn't got
no sorrow, you know. Come on!'
So they went up to the Mock Turtle, who looked
at them with
large eyes full of tears, but said nothing.
`This here young lady,' said the Gryphon,
`she wants for to
know your history, she do.'
`I'll tell it her,' said the Mock Turtle
in a deep, hollow
tone: `sit down, both of you, and don't speak
a word till I've
finished.'
So they sat down, and nobody spoke for some
minutes. Alice
thought to herself, `I don't see how he can EVEN
finish, if he
doesn't begin.' But she waited patiently.
`Once,' said the Mock Turtle at last, with
a deep sigh, `I was
a real Turtle.'
These words were followed by a very long
silence, broken only
by an occasional exclamation of `Hjckrrh!' from
the Gryphon, and
the constant heavy sobbing of the Mock Turtle.
Alice was very
nearly getting up and saying, `Thank you, sir,
for your
interesting story,' but she could not help thinking
there MUST be
more to come, so she sat still and said nothing.
`When we were little,' the Mock Turtle went
on at last, more
calmly, though still sobbing a little now and
then, `we went to
school in the sea. The master was an old Turtle--we
used to call
him Tortoise--'
`Why did you call him Tortoise, if he wasn't
one?' Alice asked.
`We called him Tortoise because he taught
us,' said the Mock
Turtle angrily: `really you are very dull!'
`You ought to be ashamed of yourself for
asking such a simple
question,' added the Gryphon; and then they both
sat silent and
looked at poor Alice, who felt ready to sink into
the earth. At
last the Gryphon said to the Mock Turtle, `Drive
on, old fellow!
Don't be all day about it!' and he went on in
these words:
`Yes, we went to school in the sea, though
you mayn't believe
it--'
`I never said I didn't!' interrupted Alice.
`You did,' said the Mock Turtle.
`Hold your tongue!' added the Gryphon, before
Alice could speak
again. The Mock Turtle went on.
`We had the best of educations--in fact,
we went to school
every day--'
`I'VE been to a day-school, too,' said Alice;
`you needn't be
so proud as all that.'
`With extras?' asked the Mock Turtle a little
anxiously.
`Yes,' said Alice, `we learned French and
music.'
`And washing?' said the Mock Turtle.
`Certainly not!' said Alice indignantly.
`Ah! then yours wasn't a really good school,'
said the Mock
Turtle in a tone of great relief. `Now at OURS
they had at the
end of the bill, "French, music, AND WASHING--extra."'
`You couldn't have wanted it much,' said
Alice; `living at the
bottom of the sea.'
`I couldn't afford to learn it.' said the
Mock Turtle with a
sigh. `I only took the regular course.'
`What was that?' inquired Alice.
`Reeling and Writhing, of course, to begin
with,' the Mock
Turtle replied; `and then the different branches
of Arithmetic--
Ambition, Distraction, Uglification, and Derision.'
`I never heard of "Uglification,"'
Alice ventured to say. `What is it?'
The Gryphon lifted up both its paws in surprise.
`What! Never
heard of uglifying!' it exclaimed. `You know
what to beautify is,
I suppose?'
`Yes,' said Alice doubtfully: `it means--to--make--anything--prettier.'
`Well, then,' the Gryphon went on, `if you
don't know what to
uglify is, you ARE a simpleton.'
Alice did not feel encouraged to ask any
more questions about
it, so she turned to the Mock Turtle, and said
`What else had you
to learn?'
`Well, there was Mystery,' the Mock Turtle
replied, counting
off the subjects on his flappers, `--Mystery,
ancient and modern,
with Seaography: then Drawling--the Drawling-master
was an old
conger-eel, that used to come once a week: HE
taught us
Drawling, Stretching, and Fainting in Coils.'
`What was THAT like?' said Alice.
`Well, I can't show it you myself,' the Mock
Turtle said: `I'm
too stiff. And the Gryphon never learnt it.'
`Hadn't time,' said the Gryphon: `I went
to the Classics
master, though. He was an old crab, HE was.'
`I never went to him,' the Mock Turtle said
with a sigh: `he
taught Laughing and Grief, they used to say.'
`So he did, so he did,' said the Gryphon,
sighing in his turn;
and both creatures hid their faces in their paws.
`And how many hours a day did you do lessons?'
said Alice, in a
hurry to change the subject.
`Ten hours the first day,' said the Mock
Turtle: `nine the
next, and so on.'
`What a curious plan!' exclaimed Alice.
`That's the reason they're called lessons,'
the Gryphon
remarked: `because they lessen from day to day.'
This was quite a new idea to Alice, and she
thought it over a
little before she made her next remark. `Then
the eleventh day
must have been a holiday?'
`Of course it was,' said the Mock Turtle.
`And how did you manage on the twelfth?'
Alice went on eagerly.
`That's enough about lessons,' the Gryphon
interrupted in a
very decided tone: `tell her something about
the games now.'
CHAPTER X
The Lobster Quadrille
The Mock Turtle sighed deeply, and drew the
back of one flapper
across his eyes. He looked at Alice, and tried
to speak, but for
a minute or two sobs choked his voice. `Same
as if he had a bone
in his throat,' said the Gryphon: and it set
to work shaking him
and punching him in the back. At last the Mock
Turtle recovered
his voice, and, with tears running down his cheeks,
he went on
again:--
`You may not have lived much under the sea--'
(`I haven't,' said Alice)--
`and perhaps you were never even introduced to
a lobster--'
(Alice began to say `I once tasted--' but checked
herself hastily,
and said `No, never') `--so you can have no idea
what a delightful
thing a Lobster Quadrille is!'
`No, indeed,' said Alice. `What sort of
a dance is it?'
`Why,' said the Gryphon, `you first form
into a line along the sea-shore--'
`Two lines!' cried the Mock Turtle. `Seals,
turtles, salmon, and so on;
then, when you've cleared all the jelly-fish out
of the way--'
`THAT generally takes some time,' interrupted
the Gryphon.
`--you advance twice--'
`Each with a lobster as a partner!' cried
the Gryphon.
`Of course,' the Mock Turtle said: `advance
twice, set to
partners--'
`--change lobsters, and retire in same order,'
continued the
Gryphon.
`Then, you know,' the Mock Turtle went on,
`you throw the--'
`The lobsters!' shouted the Gryphon, with
a bound into the air.
`--as far out to sea as you can--'
`Swim after them!' screamed the Gryphon.
`Turn a somersault in the sea!' cried the
Mock Turtle,
capering wildly about.
`Change lobster's again!' yelled the Gryphon
at the top of its voice.
`Back to land again, and that's all the first
figure,' said the
Mock Turtle, suddenly dropping his voice; and
the two creatures,
who had been jumping about like mad things all
this time, sat
down again very sadly and quietly, and looked
at Alice.
`It must be a very pretty dance,' said Alice
timidly.
`Would you like to see a little of it?' said
the Mock Turtle.
`Very much indeed,' said Alice.
`Come, let's try the first figure!' said
the Mock Turtle to the
Gryphon. `We can do without lobsters, you know.
Which shall
sing?'
`Oh, YOU sing,' said the Gryphon. `I've
forgotten the words.'
So they began solemnly dancing round and
round Alice, every now
and then treading on her toes when they passed
too close, and
waving their forepaws to mark the time, while
the Mock Turtle
sang this, very slowly and sadly:--
`"Will you walk a little faster?"
said a whiting to a snail.
"There's a porpoise close behind us, and
he's treading on my
tail.
See how eagerly the lobsters and the turtles all
advance!
They are waiting on the shingle--will you come
and join the
dance?
Will you, won't you, will you, won't you, will
you join the
dance?
Will you, won't you, will you, won't you, won't
you join the
dance?
"You can really have no notion how delightful
it will be
When they take us up and throw us, with the lobsters,
out to
sea!"
But the snail replied "Too far, too far!"
and gave a look
askance--
Said he thanked the whiting kindly, but he would
not join the
dance.
Would not, could not, would not, could not,
would not join
the dance.
Would not, could not, would not, could not,
could not join
the dance.
`"What matters it how far we go?"
his scaly friend replied.
"There is another shore, you know, upon the
other side.
The further off from England the nearer is to
France--
Then turn not pale, beloved snail, but come and
join the dance.
Will you, won't you, will you, won't you,
will you join the
dance?
Will you, won't you, will you, won't you,
won't you join the
dance?"'
`Thank you, it's a very interesting dance
to watch,' said
Alice, feeling very glad that it was over at last:
`and I do so
like that curious song about the whiting!'
`Oh, as to the whiting,' said the Mock Turtle,
`they--you've
seen them, of course?'
`Yes,' said Alice, `I've often seen them
at dinn--' she
checked herself hastily.
`I don't know where Dinn may be,' said the
Mock Turtle, `but
if you've seen them so often, of course you know
what they're
like.'
`I believe so,' Alice replied thoughtfully.
`They have their
tails in their mouths--and they're all over crumbs.'
`You're wrong about the crumbs,' said the
Mock Turtle:
`crumbs would all wash off in the sea. But they
HAVE their tails
in their mouths; and the reason is--' here the
Mock Turtle
yawned and shut his eyes.--`Tell her about the
reason and all
that,' he said to the Gryphon.
`The reason is,' said the Gryphon, `that
they WOULD go with
the lobsters to the dance. So they got thrown
out to sea. So
they had to fall a long way. So they got their
tails fast in
their mouths. So they couldn't get them out again.
That's all.'
`Thank you,' said Alice, `it's very interesting.
I never knew
so much about a whiting before.'
`I can tell you more than that, if you like,'
said the
Gryphon. `Do you know why it's called a whiting?'
`I never thought about it,' said Alice.
`Why?'
`IT DOES THE BOOTS AND SHOES.' the Gryphon
replied very
solemnly.
Alice was thoroughly puzzled. `Does the
boots and shoes!' she
repeated in a wondering tone.
`Why, what are YOUR shoes done with?' said
the Gryphon. `I
mean, what makes them so shiny?'
Alice looked down at them, and considered
a little before she
gave her answer. `They're done with blacking,
I believe.'
`Boots and shoes under the sea,' the Gryphon
went on in a deep
voice, `are done with a whiting. Now you know.'
`And what are they made of?' Alice asked
in a tone of great
curiosity.
`Soles and eels, of course,' the Gryphon
replied rather
impatiently: `any shrimp could have told you
that.'
`If I'd been the whiting,' said Alice, whose
thoughts were
still running on the song, `I'd have said to the
porpoise, "Keep
back, please: we don't want YOU with us!"'
`They were obliged to have him with them,'
the Mock Turtle
said: `no wise fish would go anywhere without
a porpoise.'
`Wouldn't it really?' said Alice in a tone
of great surprise.
`Of course not,' said the Mock Turtle: `why,
if a fish came
to ME, and told me he was going a journey, I should
say "With
what porpoise?"'
`Don't you mean "purpose"?' said
Alice.
`I mean what I say,' the Mock Turtle replied
in an offended
tone. And the Gryphon added `Come, let's hear
some of YOUR
adventures.'
`I could tell you my adventures--beginning
from this morning,'
said Alice a little timidly: `but it's no use
going back to
yesterday, because I was a different person then.'
`Explain all that,' said the Mock Turtle.
`No, no! The adventures first,' said the
Gryphon in an
impatient tone: `explanations take such a dreadful
time.'
So Alice began telling them her adventures
from the time when
she first saw the White Rabbit. She was a little
nervous about
it just at first, the two creatures got so close
to her, one on
each side, and opened their eyes and mouths so
VERY wide, but she
gained courage as she went on. Her listeners
were perfectly
quiet till she got to the part about her repeating
`YOU ARE OLD,
FATHER WILLIAM,' to the Caterpillar, and the words
all coming
different, and then the Mock Turtle drew a long
breath, and said
`That's very curious.'
`It's all about as curious as it can be,'
said the Gryphon.
`It all came different!' the Mock Turtle
repeated
thoughtfully. `I should like to hear her try
and repeat
something now. Tell her to begin.' He looked
at the Gryphon as
if he thought it had some kind of authority over
Alice.
`Stand up and repeat "'TIS THE VOICE
OF THE SLUGGARD,"' said
the Gryphon.
`How the creatures order one about, and make
one repeat
lessons!' thought Alice; `I might as well be at
school at once.'
However, she got up, and began to repeat it, but
her head was so
full of the Lobster Quadrille, that she hardly
knew what she was
saying, and the words came very queer indeed:--
`'Tis the voice of the Lobster; I heard
him declare,
"You have baked me too brown, I must
sugar my hair."
As a duck with its eyelids, so he with his
nose
Trims his belt and his buttons, and turns
out his toes.'
[later editions continued as
follows
When the sands are all dry, he is gay as a
lark,
And will talk in contemptuous tones of the
Shark,
But, when the tide rises and sharks are around,
His voice has a timid and tremulous sound.]
`That's different from what I used to say
when I was a child,'
said the Gryphon.
`Well, I never heard it before,' said the
Mock Turtle; `but it
sounds uncommon nonsense.'
Alice said nothing; she had sat down with
her face in her
hands, wondering if anything would EVER happen
in a natural way
again.
`I should like to have it explained,' said
the Mock Turtle.
`She can't explain it,' said the Gryphon
hastily. `Go on with
the next verse.'
`But about his toes?' the Mock Turtle persisted.
`How COULD
he turn them out with his nose, you know?'
`It's the first position in dancing.' Alice
said; but was
dreadfully puzzled by the whole thing, and longed
to change the
subject.
`Go on with the next verse,' the Gryphon
repeated impatiently:
`it begins "I passed by his garden."'
Alice did not dare to disobey, though she
felt sure it would
all come wrong, and she went on in a trembling
voice:--
`I passed by his garden, and marked, with
one eye,
How the Owl and the Panther were sharing a
pie--'
[later editions continued as follows
The Panther took pie-crust, and gravy, and
meat,
While the Owl had the dish as its share of
the treat.
When the pie was all finished, the Owl, as
a boon,
Was kindly permitted to pocket the spoon:
While the Panther received knife and fork
with a growl,
And concluded the banquet--]
`What IS the use of repeating all that stuff,'
the Mock Turtle
interrupted, `if you don't explain it as you go
on? It's by far
the most confusing thing I ever heard!'
`Yes, I think you'd better leave off,' said
the Gryphon: and
Alice was only too glad to do so.
`Shall we try another figure of the Lobster
Quadrille?' the
Gryphon went on. `Or would you like the Mock
Turtle to sing you
a song?'
`Oh, a song, please, if the Mock Turtle would
be so kind,'
Alice replied, so eagerly that the Gryphon said,
in a rather
offended tone, `Hm! No accounting for tastes!
Sing her
"Turtle Soup," will you, old fellow?'
The Mock Turtle sighed deeply, and began,
in a voice sometimes
choked with sobs, to sing this:--
`Beautiful Soup, so rich and green,
Waiting in a hot tureen!
Who for such dainties would not stoop?
Soup of the evening, beautiful Soup!
Soup of the evening, beautiful Soup!
Beau--ootiful Soo--oop!
Beau--ootiful Soo--oop!
Soo--oop of the e--e--evening,
Beautiful, beautiful Soup!
`Beautiful Soup! Who cares for fish,
Game, or any other dish?
Who would not give all else for two p
ennyworth only of beautiful Soup?
Pennyworth only of beautiful Soup?
Beau--ootiful Soo--oop!
Beau--ootiful Soo--oop!
Soo--oop of the e--e--evening,
Beautiful, beauti--FUL SOUP!'
`Chorus again!' cried the Gryphon, and the
Mock Turtle had
just begun to repeat it, when a cry of `The trial's
beginning!'
was heard in the distance.
`Come on!' cried the Gryphon, and, taking
Alice by the hand,
it hurried off, without waiting for the end of
the song.
`What trial is it?' Alice panted as she ran;
but the Gryphon
only answered `Come on!' and ran the faster, while
more and more
faintly came, carried on the breeze that followed
them, the
melancholy words:--
`Soo--oop of the e--e--evening,
Beautiful, beautiful Soup!'
CHAPTER XI
Who Stole the Tarts?
The King and Queen of Hearts were seated
on their throne when
they arrived, with a great crowd assembled about
them--all sorts
of little birds and beasts, as well as the whole
pack of cards:
the Knave was standing before them, in chains,
with a soldier on
each side to guard him; and near the King was
the White Rabbit,
with a trumpet in one hand, and a scroll of parchment
in the
other. In the very middle of the court was a
table, with a large
dish of tarts upon it: they looked so good, that
it made Alice
quite hungry to look at them--`I wish they'd get
the trial done,'
she thought, `and hand round the refreshments!'
But there seemed
to be no chance of this, so she began looking
at everything about
her, to pass away the time.
Alice had never been in a court of justice
before, but she had
read about them in books, and she was quite pleased
to find that
she knew the name of nearly everything there.
`That's the
judge,' she said to herself, `because of his great
wig.'
The judge, by the way, was the King; and
as he wore his crown
over the wig, (look at the frontispiece if you
want to see how he
did it,) he did not look at all comfortable, and
it was certainly
not becoming.
`And that's the jury-box,' thought Alice,
`and those twelve
creatures,' (she was obliged to say `creatures,'
you see, because
some of them were animals, and some were birds,)
`I suppose they
are the jurors.' She said this last word two
or three times over
to herself, being rather proud of it: for she
thought, and
rightly too, that very few little girls of her
age knew the
meaning of it at all. However, `jury-men' would
have done just
as well.
The twelve jurors were all writing very busily
on slates.
`What are they doing?' Alice whispered to the
Gryphon. `They
can't have anything to put down yet, before the
trial's begun.'
`They're putting down their names,' the Gryphon
whispered in
reply, `for fear they should forget them before
the end of the
trial.'
`Stupid things!' Alice began in a loud, indignant
voice, but
she stopped hastily, for the White Rabbit cried
out, `Silence in
the court!' and the King put on his spectacles
and looked
anxiously round, to make out who was talking.
Alice could see, as well as if she were looking
over their
shoulders, that all the jurors were writing down
`stupid things!'
on their slates, and she could even make out that
one of them
didn't know how to spell `stupid,' and that he
had to ask his
neighbour to tell him. `A nice muddle their slates'll
be in
before the trial's over!' thought Alice.
One of the jurors had a pencil that squeaked.
This of course,
Alice could not stand, and she went round the
court and got
behind him, and very soon found an opportunity
of taking it
away. She did it so quickly that the poor little
juror (it was
Bill, the Lizard) could not make out at all what
had become of
it; so, after hunting all about for it, he was
obliged to write
with one finger for the rest of the day; and this
was of very
little use, as it left no mark on the slate.
`Herald, read the accusation!' said the King.
On this the White Rabbit blew three blasts
on the trumpet, and
then unrolled the parchment scroll, and read as
follows:--
`The Queen of Hearts, she made some tarts,
All on a summer day:
The Knave of Hearts, he stole those tarts,
And took them quite away!'
`Consider your verdict,' the King said to
the jury.
`Not yet, not yet!' the Rabbit hastily interrupted.
`There's
a great deal to come before that!'
`Call the first witness,' said the King;
and the White Rabbit
blew three blasts on the trumpet, and called out,
`First
witness!'
The first witness was the Hatter. He came
in with a teacup in
one hand and a piece of bread-and-butter in the
other. `I beg
pardon, your Majesty,' he began, `for bringing
these in: but I
hadn't quite finished my tea when I was sent for.'
`You ought to have finished,' said the King.
`When did you
begin?'
The Hatter looked at the March Hare, who
had followed him into
the court, arm-in-arm with the Dormouse. `Fourteenth
of March, I
think it was,' he said.
`Fifteenth,' said the March Hare.
`Sixteenth,' added the Dormouse.
`Write that down,' the King said to the jury,
and the jury
eagerly wrote down all three dates on their slates,
and then
added them up, and reduced the answer to shillings
and pence.
`Take off your hat,' the King said to the
Hatter.
`It isn't mine,' said the Hatter.
`Stolen!' the King exclaimed, turning to
the jury, who
instantly made a memorandum of the fact.
`I keep them to sell,' the Hatter added as
an explanation;
`I've none of my own. I'm a hatter.'
Here the Queen put on her spectacles, and
began staring at the
Hatter, who turned pale and fidgeted.
`Give your evidence,' said the King; `and
don't be nervous, or
I'll have you executed on the spot.'
This did not seem to encourage the witness
at all: he kept
shifting from one foot to the other, looking uneasily
at the
Queen, and in his confusion he bit a large piece
out of his
teacup instead of the bread-and-butter.
Just at this moment Alice felt a very curious
sensation, which
puzzled her a good deal until she made out what
it was: she was
beginning to grow larger again, and she thought
at first she
would get up and leave the court; but on second
thoughts she
decided to remain where she was as long as there
was room for
her.
`I wish you wouldn't squeeze so.' said the
Dormouse, who was
sitting next to her. `I can hardly breathe.'
`I can't help it,' said Alice very meekly:
`I'm growing.'
`You've no right to grow here,' said the
Dormouse.
`Don't talk nonsense,' said Alice more boldly:
`you know
you're growing too.'
`Yes, but I grow at a reasonable pace,' said
the Dormouse:
`not in that ridiculous fashion.' And he got
up very sulkily
and crossed over to the other side of the court.
All this time the Queen had never left off
staring at the
Hatter, and, just as the Dormouse crossed the
court, she said to
one of the officers of the court, `Bring me the
list of the
singers in the last concert!' on which the wretched
Hatter
trembled so, that he shook both his shoes off.
`Give your evidence,' the King repeated angrily,
`or I'll have
you executed, whether you're nervous or not.'
`I'm a poor man, your Majesty,' the Hatter
began, in a
trembling voice, `--and I hadn't begun my tea--not
above a week
or so--and what with the bread-and-butter getting
so thin--and
the twinkling of the tea--'
`The twinkling of the what?' said the King.
`It began with the tea,' the Hatter replied.
`Of course twinkling begins with a T!' said
the King sharply.
`Do you take me for a dunce? Go on!'
`I'm a poor man,' the Hatter went on, `and
most things
twinkled after that--only the March Hare said--'
`I didn't!' the March Hare interrupted in
a great hurry.
`You did!' said the Hatter.
`I deny it!' said the March Hare.
`He denies it,' said the King: `leave out
that part.'
`Well, at any rate, the Dormouse said--'
the Hatter went on,
looking anxiously round to see if he would deny
it too: but the
Dormouse denied nothing, being fast asleep.
`After that,' continued the Hatter, `I cut
some more bread-
and-butter--'
`But what did the Dormouse say?' one of the
jury asked.
`That I can't remember,' said the Hatter.
`You MUST remember,' remarked the King, `or
I'll have you
executed.'
The miserable Hatter dropped his teacup and
bread-and-butter,
and went down on one knee. `I'm a poor man, your
Majesty,' he
began.
`You're a very poor speaker,' said the King.
Here one of the guinea-pigs cheered, and
was immediately
suppressed by the officers of the court. (As
that is rather a
hard word, I will just explain to you how it was
done. They had
a large canvas bag, which tied up at the mouth
with strings:
into this they slipped the guinea-pig, head first,
and then sat
upon it.)
`I'm glad I've seen that done,' thought Alice.
`I've so often
read in the newspapers, at the end of trials,
"There was some
attempts at applause, which was immediately suppressed
by the
officers of the court," and I never understood
what it meant
till now.'
`If that's all you know about it, you may
stand down,'
continued the King.
`I can't go no lower,' said the Hatter:
`I'm on the floor, as
it is.'
`Then you may SIT down,' the King replied.
Here the other guinea-pig cheered, and was
suppressed.
`Come, that finished the guinea-pigs!' thought
Alice. `Now we
shall get on better.'
`I'd rather finish my tea,' said the Hatter,
with an anxious
look at the Queen, who was reading the list of
singers.
`You may go,' said the King, and the Hatter
hurriedly left the
court, without even waiting to put his shoes on.
`--and just take his head off outside,' the
Queen added to one
of the officers: but the Hatter was out of sight
before the
officer could get to the door.
`Call the next witness!' said the King.
The next witness was the Duchess's cook.
She carried the
pepper-box in her hand, and Alice guessed who
it was, even before
she got into the court, by the way the people
near the door began
sneezing all at once.
`Give your evidence,' said the King.
`Shan't,' said the cook.
The King looked anxiously at the White Rabbit,
who said in a
low voice, `Your Majesty must cross-examine THIS
witness.'
`Well, if I must, I must,' the King said,
with a melancholy
air, and, after folding his arms and frowning
at the cook till
his eyes were nearly out of sight, he said in
a deep voice, `What
are tarts made of?'
`Pepper, mostly,' said the cook.
`Treacle,' said a sleepy voice behind her.
`Collar that Dormouse,' the Queen shrieked
out. `Behead that
Dormouse! Turn that Dormouse out of court! Suppress
him! Pinch
him! Off with his whiskers!'
For some minutes the whole court was in confusion,
getting the
Dormouse turned out, and, by the time they had
settled down
again, the cook had disappeared.
`Never mind!' said the King, with an air
of great relief.
`Call the next witness.' And he added in an undertone
to the
Queen, `Really, my dear, YOU must cross-examine
the next witness.
It quite makes my forehead ache!'
Alice watched the White Rabbit as he fumbled
over the list,
feeling very curious to see what the next witness
would be like,
`--for they haven't got much evidence YET,' she
said to herself.
Imagine her surprise, when the White Rabbit read
out, at the top
of his shrill little voice, the name `Alice!'
CHAPTER XII
Alice's Evidence
`Here!' cried Alice, quite forgetting in
the flurry of the
moment how large she had grown in the last few
minutes, and she
jumped up in such a hurry that she tipped over
the jury-box with
the edge of her skirt, upsetting all the jurymen
on to the heads
of the crowd below, and there they lay sprawling
about, reminding
her very much of a globe of goldfish she had accidentally
upset
the week before.
`Oh, I BEG your pardon!' she exclaimed in
a tone of great
dismay, and began picking them up again as quickly
as she could,
for the accident of the goldfish kept running
in her head, and
she had a vague sort of idea that they must be
collected at once
and put back into the jury-box, or they would
die.
`The trial cannot proceed,' said the King
in a very grave
voice, `until all the jurymen are back in their
proper places--
ALL,' he repeated with great emphasis, looking
hard at Alice as
he said do.
Alice looked at the jury-box, and saw that,
in her haste, she
had put the Lizard in head downwards, and the
poor little thing
was waving its tail about in a melancholy way,
being quite unable
to move. She soon got it out again, and put it
right; `not that
it signifies much,' she said to herself; `I should
think it
would be QUITE as much use in the trial one way
up as the other.'
As soon as the jury had a little recovered
from the shock of
being upset, and their slates and pencils had
been found and
handed back to them, they set to work very diligently
to write
out a history of the accident, all except the
Lizard, who seemed
too much overcome to do anything but sit with
its mouth open,
gazing up into the roof of the court.
`What do you know about this business?' the
King said to
Alice.
`Nothing,' said Alice.
`Nothing WHATEVER?' persisted the King.
`Nothing whatever,' said Alice.
`That's very important,' the King said, turning
to the jury.
They were just beginning to write this down on
their slates, when
the White Rabbit interrupted: `UNimportant, your
Majesty means,
of course,' he said in a very respectful tone,
but frowning and
making faces at him as he spoke.
`UNimportant, of course, I meant,' the King
hastily said, and
went on to himself in an undertone, `important--unimportant--
unimportant--important--' as if he were trying
which word
sounded best.
Some of the jury wrote it down `important,'
and some
`unimportant.' Alice could see this, as she was
near enough to
look over their slates; `but it doesn't matter
a bit,' she
thought to herself.
At this moment the King, who had been for
some time busily
writing in his note-book, cackled out `Silence!'
and read out
from his book, `Rule Forty-two. ALL PERSONS MORE
THAN A MILE
HIGH TO LEAVE THE COURT.'
Everybody looked at Alice.
`I'M not a mile high,' said Alice.
`You are,' said the King.
`Nearly two miles high,' added the Queen.
`Well, I shan't go, at any rate,' said Alice:
`besides,
that's not a regular rule: you invented it just
now.'
`It's the oldest rule in the book,' said
the King.
`Then it ought to be Number One,' said Alice.
The King turned pale, and shut his note-book
hastily.
`Consider your verdict,' he said to the jury,
in a low, trembling
voice.
`There's more evidence to come yet, please
your Majesty,' said
the White Rabbit, jumping up in a great hurry;
`this paper has
just been picked up.'
`What's in it?' said the Queen.
`I haven't opened it yet,' said the White
Rabbit, `but it seems
to be a letter, written by the prisoner to--to
somebody.'
`It must have been that,' said the King,
`unless it was
written to nobody, which isn't usual, you know.'
`Who is it directed to?' said one of the
jurymen.
`It isn't directed at all,' said the White
Rabbit; `in fact,
there's nothing written on the OUTSIDE.' He unfolded
the paper
as he spoke, and added `It isn't a letter, after
all: it's a set
of verses.'
`Are they in the prisoner's handwriting?'
asked another of
they jurymen.
`No, they're not,' said the White Rabbit,
`and that's the
queerest thing about it.' (The jury all looked
puzzled.)
`He must have imitated somebody else's hand,'
said the King.
(The jury all brightened up again.)
`Please your Majesty,' said the Knave, `I
didn't write it, and
they can't prove I did: there's no name signed
at the end.'
`If you didn't sign it,' said the King, `that
only makes the
matter worse. You MUST have meant some mischief,
or else you'd
have signed your name like an honest man.'
There was a general clapping of hands at
this: it was the
first really clever thing the King had said that
day.
`That PROVES his guilt,' said the Queen.
`It proves nothing of the sort!' said Alice.
`Why, you don't
even know what they're about!'
`Read them,' said the King.
The White Rabbit put on his spectacles.
`Where shall I begin,
please your Majesty?' he asked.
`Begin at the beginning,' the King said gravely,
`and go on
till you come to the end: then stop.'
These were the verses the White Rabbit read:--
`They told me you had been to her,
And mentioned me to him:
She gave me a good character,
But said I could not swim.
He sent them word I had not gone
(We know it to be true):
If she should push the matter on,
What would become of you?
I gave her one, they gave him two,
You gave us three or more;
They all returned from him to you,
Though they were mine before.
If I or she should chance to be
Involved in this affair,
He trusts to you to set them free,
Exactly as we were.
My notion was that you had been
(Before she had this fit)
An obstacle that came between
Him, and ourselves, and it.
Don't let him know she liked them best,
For this must ever be
A secret, kept from all the rest,
Between yourself and me.'
`That's the most important piece of evidence
we've heard yet,'
said the King, rubbing his hands; `so now let
the jury--'
`If any one of them can explain it,' said
Alice, (she had
grown so large in the last few minutes that she
wasn't a bit
afraid of interrupting him,) `I'll give him sixpence.
_I_ don't
believe there's an atom of meaning in it.'
The jury all wrote down on their slates,
`SHE doesn't believe
there's an atom of meaning in it,' but none of
them attempted to
explain the paper.
`If there's no meaning in it,' said the King,
`that saves a
world of trouble, you know, as we needn't try
to find any. And
yet I don't know,' he went on, spreading out the
verses on his
knee, and looking at them with one eye; `I seem
to see some
meaning in them, after all. "--SAID I COULD
NOT SWIM--" you
can't swim, can you?' he added, turning to the
Knave.
The Knave shook his head sadly. `Do I look
like it?' he said.
(Which he certainly did NOT, being made entirely
of cardboard.)
`All right, so far,' said the King, and he
went on muttering
over the verses to himself: `"WE KNOW IT
TO BE TRUE--" that's
the jury, of course-- "I GAVE HER ONE, THEY
GAVE HIM TWO--" why,
that must be what he did with the tarts, you know--'
`But, it goes on "THEY ALL RETURNED
FROM HIM TO YOU,"' said
Alice.
`Why, there they are!' said the King triumphantly,
pointing to
the tarts on the table. `Nothing can be clearer
than THAT.
Then again--"BEFORE SHE HAD THIS FIT--"
you never had fits, my
dear, I think?' he said to the Queen.
`Never!' said the Queen furiously, throwing
an inkstand at the
Lizard as she spoke. (The unfortunate little
Bill had left off
writing on his slate with one finger, as he found
it made no
mark; but he now hastily began again, using the
ink, that was
trickling down his face, as long as it lasted.)
`Then the words don't FIT you,' said the
King, looking round
the court with a smile. There was a dead silence.
`It's a pun!' the King added in an offended
tone, and
everybody laughed, `Let the jury consider their
verdict,' the
King said, for about the twentieth time that day.
`No, no!' said the Queen. `Sentence first--verdict
afterwards.'
`Stuff and nonsense!' said Alice loudly.
`The idea of having
the sentence first!'
`Hold your tongue!' said the Queen, turning
purple.
`I won't!' said Alice.
`Off with her head!' the Queen shouted at
the top of her voice.
Nobody moved.
`Who cares for you?' said Alice, (she had
grown to her full
size by this time.) `You're nothing but a pack
of cards!'
At this the whole pack rose up into the air,
and came flying
down upon her: she gave a little scream, half
of fright and half
of anger, and tried to beat them off, and found
herself lying on
the bank, with her head in the lap of her sister,
who was gently
brushing away some dead leaves that had fluttered
down from the
trees upon her face.
`Wake up, Alice dear!' said her sister; `Why,
what a long
sleep you've had!'
`Oh, I've had such a curious dream!' said
Alice, and she told
her sister, as well as she could remember them,
all these strange
Adventures of hers that you have just been reading
about; and
when she had finished, her sister kissed her,
and said, `It WAS a
curious dream, dear, certainly: but now run in
to your tea; it's
getting late.' So Alice got up and ran off, thinking
while she
ran, as well she might, what a wonderful dream
it had been.
But her sister sat still just as she left
her, leaning her
head on her hand, watching the setting sun, and
thinking of
little Alice and all her wonderful Adventures,
till she too began
dreaming after a fashion, and this was her dream:--
First, she dreamed of little Alice herself,
and once again the
tiny hands were clasped upon her knee, and the
bright eager eyes
were looking up into hers--she could hear the
very tones of her
voice, and see that queer little toss of her head
to keep back
the wandering hair that WOULD always get into
her eyes--and
still as she listened, or seemed to listen, the
whole place
around her became alive the strange creatures
of her little
sister's dream.
The long grass rustled at her feet as the
White Rabbit hurried
by--the frightened Mouse splashed his way through
the
neighbouring pool--she could hear the rattle of
the teacups as
the March Hare and his friends shared their never-ending
meal,
and the shrill voice of the Queen ordering off
her unfortunate
guests to execution--once more the pig-baby was
sneezing on the
Duchess's knee, while plates and dishes crashed
around it--once
more the shriek of the Gryphon, the squeaking
of the Lizard's
slate-pencil, and the choking of the suppressed
guinea-pigs,
filled the air, mixed up with the distant sobs
of the miserable
Mock Turtle.
So she sat on, with closed eyes, and half
believed herself in
Wonderland, though she knew she had but to open
them again, and
all would change to dull reality--the grass would
be only
rustling in the wind, and the pool rippling to
the waving of the
reeds--the rattling teacups would change to tinkling
sheep-
bells, and the Queen's shrill cries to the voice
of the shepherd
boy--and the sneeze of the baby, the shriek of
the Gryphon, and
all thy other queer noises, would change (she
knew) to the
confused clamour of the busy farm-yard--while
the lowing of the
cattle in the distance would take the place of
the Mock Turtle's
heavy sobs.
Lastly, she pictured to herself how this
same little sister of
hers would, in the after-time, be herself a grown
woman; and how
she would keep, through all her riper years, the
simple and
loving heart of her childhood: and how she would
gather about
her other little children, and make THEIR eyes
bright and eager
with many a strange tale, perhaps even with the
dream of
Wonderland of long ago: and how she would feel
with all their
simple sorrows, and find a pleasure in all their
simple joys,
remembering her own child-life, and the happy
summer days.
THE END
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