A New Alice in the Old Wonderland
Author: Anna Matlack Richards
Date: 1894-12-31T22:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Children's literature; Fantasy
Description: “A New Alice” features Alice Lee, an American girl with a coincidental name, visiting Wonderland and meeting all the characters she knows from “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” and “Through the Looking-Glass”. The book was “an expanded version of the stories the author had invented for her young children, to whom the novel is dedicated, about their favorite storybook world.”
Publisher: MobileRead.com
Rights: Public Domain worldwide

CONTENTS

… Cover

… Titlepage

… About this Ebook

… Preface

A  NEW  ALICE

1 … Peggy the Pig
2 … The Duchess and Her House
3 … The Tea-Table
4 … Humpty Dumpty
5 … The White Knight
6 … The Red Queen and the Duchess
7 … The Bishops
8 … The Kindergarten
9 … The Mock Turtle
10 … The Great LOccasion
11 … The Tweedles
12 … The Pageant

ABOUT THIS EBOOK

A NEW ALICE
IN THE OLD WONDERLAND

BY
ANNA MATLACK RICHARDS
(1835–1900)

A New Alice features Alice Lee, an American girl with a coincidental name, visiting Wonderland and meeting all the characters she knows from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass. The book was “an expanded version of the stories the author had invented for her young children, to whom the novel is dedicated, about their favorite storybook world.”

* * * *

Anna Matlack Richards (1835–1900) was already known as a poet and playwright by age 20 or 21. In the 1890s she wrote comic poems that were published in American children’s magazines. 1895 saw publication of A New Alice in the Old Wonderland. According to Carolyn Sigler (ed. Alternative Alices, 1997), it is one of the more important “Alice imitations”, or novels inspired by Lewis Carroll’s Alice books.

This ebook was created by ECM for MobileRead.com, January 2021, and may be freely distributed for non-commercial purposes.

Illustrations by the author’s daughter, Anna Richards Brewster (1870–1952), have been omitted due to copyright restrictions.

First published in 1895. This ebook is in the public domain worldwide.

PREFACE

So well they loved the Wonderland of Alice,

Once, those unreasonable children three,

No other land would do; no fairy palace,

No brownie-peopled realms of mystery.

And so, long time ago, this tale was told them,—

Adventures in the land they liked the best,

Woven with many a simple charm to hold them,

Of far-fetched incident and harmless jest.

Now they have all grown up—a charm perennial

In the old nonsense one of them did find,

And made these pictures; and, though Messrs. Tenniel

And Carroll criticise, they will not mind.

We’re not original, nor wise, nor witty;

But, since to amuse the children is our plan,

To weigh us in your balance were a pity;

So spare us, gentle Critic, if you can.

A. M. R., Sr.

(Note: the pictures referred to here have been omitted due to copyright restrictions.)

CHAPTER I

PEGGY THE PIG

Alice Lee was sitting by the window with her chin resting on her hand, looking out, although there was nothing much to see.

It was a cold, rainy day, and she could not go out; neither did anything very interesting occur to her to do in the house. She was thinking, rather unconsciously, that there were a great many children who had a better time than she had.

“Mother,” she said, at last, “you know the little girl we saw at Aunt Lucy’s yesterday – her name was May Selwyn, she said. Well, they’re all going over to France next week; and she says she is going to live in the most beautiful house and have a lovely white pony, all her own.”

Her mother did not say anything, and Alice went on,

“And Nanny Grey is going away, too, next Monday. It’s the most charming place that ever was, that she is going to. It’s on an island in the sea, she says, and the roses grow there all winter. I wish we were going somewhere.”

Mrs. Lee knew that Alice was not usually a discontented little girl, and she did not begin by telling her – what was nevertheless quite true – that, while there were really only a very few children who were “going somewhere,” there must be a great many who would be delighted to live in the home where Alice was at that moment.

She knew, too, that even grown people sometimes have moods in which they wish something more interesting than usual would happen; so she said, at last—

“Well, yes. I think myself it would be delightful to be ‘going somewhere;’ I should be glad if we were packing up our things to go there this very minute. As to France, it’s rather late to be on the sea just now; the end of November isn’t a very pleasant time to be traveling anywhere.

“And then,” she continued, “I’m quite sure you wouldn’t wish to be going South for the reason the Greys have to go. Nanny’s mother has been very ill, you remember.”

“Well, but, mother, of course I didn’t mean that exactly,” said Alice. “I only meant having some kind of adventure, you know.”

“I don’t see exactly what I can do about it,” said her mother, smiling. “I can promise that if I happen to come across any adventure I will be sure to let you have it. I suppose you are getting rather too old to make them up for yourself, as you used to do not so very long ago. What has become of all the plays you acted once, that were so much fun? Don’t you remember?”

Alice did remember very well, although it had been some time since she had taken her old interest in “pretending” things. Once she could be happy for days together in imagining herself a fairy, or a powerful old witch in disguise, or a proud, beautiful princess stolen from her father’s palace, or else Cinderella.

Cinderella really was fascinating. First of all you fastened on to one of your ordinary frocks – it ought to be a white frock – all the odds and ends of adornment that you could beg or borrow or find for yourself. This took a great while; it was better to begin the day before; and the getting ready was quite as much fun as the play itself. Then you put on over all this some old gown that you could easily find in the garret; it must be very worn and faded, and so large that it would slip off at the least touch of the fairy’s wand; and then, if you took the precaution to be standing very near a sofa, this could be easily pushed under out of sight with your foot. It was great fun, too, to dance in the hall, even with an imaginary prince, when her brother did not happen to be in the humor to play. He sometimes did join in these “private theatricals,” as he called them, and very often her mother, too, would help a little: she made a capital fairy grandmother, with a yardstick for a wand.

Then her thoughts wandered into the Wonderland of the Alice books, with their little world of people so much more real than the ones in ordinary Wonder books. She recalled the hot summer afternoon that she was lying on the seat under the old tree in the garden, and was so sure she was wide awake, when she saw the Duchess and the White Queen walking together in the path before her, talking in a low whisper. But just then her brother Tom came whistling along, and of course they straightway vanished.

“Oh, dear!” she said to herself; “how I did use to wish I could get into Wonderland then! – that very same Wonderland, of course; for all the other books about some other kind were perfect nonsense.”

Then she smiled to think of the time when the maids complained that there were sometimes mysterious finger-marks on the large looking-glass over the mantel-piece. The truth had been that Alice used to rub the glass with her fingers sometimes, when she found that the fire in the grate was hotter than usual, in order to see whether it ever showed any sign of melting, so that she could climb through into the room on the other side. She could see this mysterious room just as plainly in their house as the other Alice did in hers; and to go through the looking-glass, provided you could, seemed to her a much pleasanter way of getting into Wonderland than falling down a deep rabbit-hole. Besides, though she was always on the watch every time she took a walk in the country, she never saw anything that looked at all like a rabbit-hole, and even confessed to herself that she did not know what a rabbit-hole ought to look like. She had almost succeeded in persuading herself in those old days that she really believed there was such a place as Wonderland.

It had grown quite dark while Alice was thinking of these old times, and she was saying to herself that it would be fun to read the Alice books over again that very evening, for it had been at least six months since the last time, when there was a ring at the doorbell. A parcel was left at the door with Alice’s name written on it. When the numerous papers were taken off, it proved to be a charming white box containing a generous slice of wedding-cake, sent by a cousin of hers from a distant city, whose wedding her father and mother had attended the week before.

She felt herself to be a very distinguished person; this was almost an adventure in its way, and the whole family gratified her by looking at it with the proper degree of interest, her brother Tom with some added feeling of envy as well.

When she announced her intention of not eating any of it until the next morning, Tom advised her to keep it all night under her pillow – “Just under the edge of your pillow, you know, so that it won’t get all smashed” – and to try and dream upon it. He admitted that he did not know exactly what would happen in consequence.

“I believe it makes your dreams come true,” he said.

“But suppose,” said Alice, “that you didn’t want your dream to come true.”

“Well, then, of course it wouldn’t,” he said; “it’s bound to come right somehow.”

“Oh, yes,” he added, after a short pause, “now I know what happens. It makes you dream exactly the thing you want to. And then you’re sure to get it.”

This was not very lucid, but Alice thought she remembered having once heard something of the kind herself; and although, of course, neither of them was the least in earnest about any such nonsense, they decided that it would be rather fun to try the experiment for once.

“At any rate,” said Alice, “it is a very safe place to keep it in, you know.”

“I’m not a bit sure of that,” said Tom. “You might get hungry in the night and eat it all up without knowing it. You’d much better let me have it to put under my pillow. I say! what do you suppose makes it smell so good? I expect you’ll chop it up into hundreds of pieces and give it to everybody.”

“No,” said Alice; “mother said she didn’t think that was fair. She said it was just about big enough for us two.”

“Mother’s a duck!” said Tom; “she knows just the right thing. Fred Brown has to give the whole lot of them some of everything he gets, and there’s precious little left for him sometimes. That’s to make him generous.”

“Is he generous?” Alice asked.

“Well, he mostly eats up everything he can out of doors, if you call that generous,” said Tom

“Oh, how dreadfully greedy!” said Alice.

“But he has to, you know,” Tom insisted; “he isn’t greedy at all. One day he gave me a lot of candy over the fence, and I wasn’t looking at him eating it, either.”

Alice now shut the box and tied its white ribbon, and then took it upstairs into her room. She had no lessons that evening, so she brought down the Alice books, and was soon as deeply interested as though she did not almost know them by heart. She had chosen “Through the Looking-glass” to begin with this time; and Tom, neglecting his Latin exercise, was speedily absorbed in the other one. He had formerly despised them both, but in his older and presumably wiser years he had been obliged to confess that they were not such “awful stuff as they used to be,” after all.

The striking of nine o’clock reminded them both that it was bedtime. Tom said that he was sleepy, and would do his Latin in the morning; but Alice, although she was rather more willing to go than usual, did not feel the least bit sleepy, she said.

The moon was shining on the wall of her room in a great square of light, and after her mother, who had looked in to say “good-night,” had shut the door, Alice sat up in bed, thinking how very bright the room was. She saw the box just under the edge of her pillow, and thought she would open it, so as to be perfectly sure that the cake was there. This was a very unwise thing to do. The cake had been there safe enough, of course, until this very moment, but now it was safe no longer. It looked so uncommonly good to eat, that she really could not put it back under the pillow without taking the least little bite, and then afterwards just one more. The end of it was that there was only about half of it left to go into the box again; and with this restored to its place, she lay down and tried to go to sleep, although still not feeling at all sleepy. She was just beginning to be rather sorry for more than one reason that she had eaten so much cake, and glad that there was at least plenty left for Tom, who need never know the whole story, when a very strange thing happened.

She saw on the moonlit wall opposite that there was a door between the washstand and the table, where there had never been a door before. She sat up in bed again and looked earnestly at the wall for some minutes, and then, feeling perfectly sure of it, she jumped quickly out of bed and crept over very cautiously to see if the door would open.

It was a real door, there was no mistake about it. And it had a knob like any other door, that seemed to turn of itself somehow, for hardly had she touched it when the door flew open, and she found herself going out into a very long and narrow dark entry with clear daylight shining at the end.

A moment more and she was out of doors, standing on a flight of marble steps that overlooked a wonderful old-fashioned garden; there were long alleys going off into the distance, bordered on each side by high box-tree hedges. It was exactly like being in the midst of a painted picture; the sky was almost too blue and the leaves too green to be real. On the bushes were flowers of the most brilliant colors; the ones nearest to Alice she stooped down to examine, and they came off in her hand at the least touch. They were dry, scentless things, and she found that they were really only paper flowers – and not very well made ones, either – no better than the ones she had just been making herself a few days before.

She walked slowly down one of the alleys. The hedges were so high that she could not see over the tops, but very soon she found that this alley branched off here and there into others, which in their turn led into others still, and that, in fact, the whole garden was a perfect maze, where it was impossible to help getting lost almost as soon as you entered.

She went on, however, turning corners now and then, always into paths exactly similar to each other, and getting more and more mixed up all the time, but not once wondering how she was ever to get back. Several times she thought she heard a slight rustling noise under the hedges, and she stopped at last to listen, when a little pig – a very pink and clean little pig – with a blue silk cap on its head struggled out through the leaves of the box-trees where they grew close down to the ground and ran with all its might down the path.

Alice jumped up and down for joy. “I believe,” she said, “I really and truly believe that this is Wonderland, for I am sure that is the Duchess’s little pig-baby.” She had lost so much time in jumping for joy, however, that although she ran after the little pig as soon as possible, she could not catch it. Giving little squeals of fright as it went along, it kept just a few steps too far ahead to be overtaken, and at last it crowded itself under the gate of a pig-pen, or at least of a place that sounded like one, for Alice could hear the pigs squealing and grunting in several different-sized voices.

She stood on tiptoe to peep over the top, and was just in time to see the pig-baby carefully take off its little blue bonnet and, standing on its hind legs, hang it on a nail that was almost out of its reach. Then it climbed on a chair, and from that jumped on to a small table apparently laid for dinner, but with a very dirty cloth. There were two or three old plates and a rusty tin pan full of apples on the table, and the little pig at once set greedily to work at eating the apples, making a great noise about it as she did so.

The place was rather tidy considering that it was a pig-pen: it had even been swept after a fashion, for the sweepings were to be seen in one corner, only half hidden by an old broom placed over them. Several other pigs were rooting about, and Alice soon found out that what sounds so much like grunting when you are outside of a pig-pen, is only conversation when you lean over and listen.

“Is that you, Peggy?” she heard one of them say; but Peggy, if it were she, went on munching the apples without making any answer. The other pig then went up to a sort of cupboard in the corner and began scratching with his forefeet on the wire netting of the door.

“Peggy, I say,” he went on; “I say, Peggy! There’s roast beef in here; come help me get it!” Peggy, however, was still occupied with the apples; but another pig came up at this invitation. He was a thin, sly-looking fellow, with a cricket cap over one ear. Both together they continued to scratch at the door, trying to push the wires far enough apart to get at the roast beef.

“Look out, boys! here’s Jem and mother coming home from market!” called Peggy. She had her feet on the top of the pen now, and could see down the road. But just then the wire net had given way, and the sly-looking pig snatched a bone that still had a little meat on it and ran off as hard as he could go, followed by the other one in hot pursuit. They crowded under the gate, Peggy watching them evidently with great delight, and Alice saw them disappear behind some bushes. There was still another small pig in the corner of the pen, tied by the tail, evidently to keep him from getting out; he peeped under the gate with a melancholy air of resignation.

“That is meant to be the pig that stayed at home,” she said to herself, with sudden conviction, “and I do believe they are all of them here. One got the roast beef, and one didn’t; and Peggy is the one that cried ‘wee! wee! wee!’ all the way home, for that is just what you did, Peggy.” There was a road a short distance off, on the other side of the pen, and Jem and his mother could be seen coming home from market with baskets in their mouths. Although Alice was much interested, she was rather afraid of very large pigs, so she withdrew behind one of the trees near by until they had both come up, and greeted by a chorus of squeals inside, had gone in and shut the gate.

CHAPTER II

THE DUCHESS
AND HER HOUSE

Alice now saw that she had left the garden far behind while she was running after the pig; for nothing more was to be seen of it anywhere. She was perfectly sure by this time that she was in Wonderland, and she thought the best plan would be to keep along the road, where something interesting would be the most sure to turn up. It was a very pleasant-looking road; there was a thick woodland on the other side of it, and a little farther down was a curious sort of house among the trees, with an open space in front. She took one more look at the pigs, which were now all lying on the ground asleep, and then, climbing down a rather steep bank into the road, she set off on her journey, quite sure that she was going to have some real adventures.

The house in the woods was quite small, not very much higher, indeed, than Alice herself; but she was not at all concerned, as the other Alice had been, by remembering that she was too big. The door was wide open, and with great curiosity she immediately crossed over and went to look in. Nobody was there; the hall was empty and silent, excepting for a few great flies that were buzzing about on the ceiling.

Presently she noticed that there were two white doors in the side of the hall, and that one of them, which seemed to be the door of a closet, kept slowly opening of itself a very little way and then immediately shutting up again. This happened several times, until at last it opened a little wider and the frog-footman stuck out his head sideways. He said nothing, but he winked at Alice, and then quickly shut himself in again, and this time he locked the door. She could hear him flopping about inside and sneezing dreadfully. This reminded her that the hall was delightfully smoky and full of pepper; there could be no mistake about it, this must be the house of the Duchess. She went softly down the hall, and ventured to open a door at the other end that she was certain must go directly into the kitchen.

Sure enough, it did; there was the kitchen, but no one was in it, and everything was arranged in the best of order. There was, of course, a great smell of pepper in the air, but there was no soup cooking on the grate, nor was there even any fire in it. Evidently it was the cook’s afternoon out, Alice thought; her apron and ugly old cap, both looking very much like her, were hanging in a corner.

“I’m glad she isn’t here herself, though,” said Alice, who was beginning to feel delightfully at home, “for now I shall have some fun. How I wish Tom were here I I mean to climb up and look into every one of the shelves and drawers in that dresser.”

The kitchen, when she entered it, was a light and rather cheerful-looking place, furnished with a table against the wall, a few chairs, and a dresser with rows of plates on it, looking, indeed, like any other kitchen. But to her great bewilderment, as soon as she began her investigations it all changed at once and became the most mixed-up place in the world. She could not remember how the change began, but suddenly there seemed to be countless rows of dark shelves and mysterious corners crowded with all sorts of indescribable things surrounding her on every side. She began to examine the things before her, but as soon as she took the lid off what seemed to be a jar, the jar turned into a box, and then disappeared altogether when she tried to put the lid on again. And then she found that the thing in her hand was not a lid after all, but a paper bag full of something like seeds. In trying to put this back as carefully as possible she disturbed everything else on the shelf, and all sorts of objects began tumbling down on the floor; she plainly heard something break as it fell, but it was so dark beneath her that she could not see what it was.

She looked round her, and saw that the whole room had turned itself into a place that reminded her of that curious old shop in the Alice books, where the old Sheep was sitting with her hands full of knitting-needles. Very soon the walls began to crowd together more and more, and the place became smaller, and had grown so very dark that she lost all interest in what was on the shelves. She climbed down with some difficulty, and as soon as her feet touched the floor everything changed back again. The kitchen looked just as it did at first, only there seemed to be another door in it; there was a door, at least, which she had not noticed at first. It was wide open and led out into a dismal little yard, fenced in, which was all overgrown with weeds and half full of rubbish. Among the miscellaneous collection were conspicuous a great many empty tin boxes with red labels on them. Alice read on one of them

PETER PIPER,

MANUFACTURER OF

PIP-PEP-PEPPER.

Of course she would not have thought of wasting a moment’s time over such a place as this in her own country, but here everything was interesting; even the old broken kettles and frying-pans which she was sure must be the ones that the cook used to throw at the Duchess.

“I wish, after all, I could see somebody, even if it was only the ugly old cook.”

Alice thought she said this to herself, but she must have spoken aloud, for a squeaky little voice answered, “You needn’t be wanting for to see her, missy.” It was the sly-looking little pig with the cricket cap who had run off with the roast beef; he had apparently brought it there to enjoy all by himself.

Just then she thought she heard a little mewing noise behind her that sounded like kittens, and she found that it came from a corner of the kitchen, where some tea-towels were hanging to dry which she had not noticed before. There, to her great delight, was actually the old Cheshire cat curled up affectionately on the floor, purring over three little Cheshire kittens; that is, Alice was sure they must be Cheshire kittens, though she could only see their little backs. The old cat looked up with the same delightful grin on its face that she knew so well, and said, as if it guessed what Alice was thinking of—

“Take one of them up and see, if you’ve a mind to; but don’t swing it round the room by its tail.”

Alice thought there was not much danger of that. “Oh, thank you!” she said, and carefully taking up one of the little furry things, she tried to see its face, but it sneezed so terribly that it did not seem to have any face at all; and directly, to her utter dismay, it began to grow very thin, and then thinner and thinner, until there was nothing left of it but a soft little piece of fur. What must have been its head looked like a tiny round ball of cotton-wool, but she could see that there was a feeble smile upon the side of it, something like its mother’s in expression.

“There’s nothing at all the matter with the child; it’s only just vanishing, as you’d call it,” said the cat. “It’s trying to vanish, that is, and it don’t quite succeed yet. It’ll soon learn. Just throw it down here to me.”

Alice laid the little bit of for carefully down on the floor, and was much relieved to see that in a moment it grew as round and fat as ever. It went skipping up to its mother, who immediately began to smooth them all with her great tongue so unmercifully that Alice wondered they did not try to vanish, especially as they did not seem to like it much. She fancied as she watched them that they did seem to be growing rather thinner.

“They’re more trouble than they’re worth,” the cat stopped to observe. “Fur always gets in a mess with trying to vanish. I do hope they’ll go for good some day, and never get back!”

“Oh, could they do that?” said Alice. But the old cat had now begun to wash her own face, and did not seem to think the question worth answering.

“Has the cook gone out?” Alice asked, presently.

“The cook! The fire, you mean,” said the cat. “Can’t you see it’s gone out? But you can talk about fires and things, when you haven’t said so much as a word about my precious children that I’ve been showing you. The sweetest little cherubs you ever did see, too, unless you’ve seen the Duchess’s pig, and that’s only a very little handsomer. And it’s all in the family, besides, so it don’t count.”

The kittens were now all looking up at Alice with the funniest little grin on their faces. She did not honestly think they were as nice as common kittens.

“I thought you said just this minute that you wanted them to vanish and never get back,” she answered. “I’m sure I think your children are a great deal handsomer than that pig – that is, I mean the baby. But was it a baby or was it a pig? I wish you would tell me.”

“Oh, it’s six of one and half a dozen of the other,” answered the cat.

“But you don’t mean,” Alice contradicted, “that a pig is the same thing as a baby?”

“Whatever I do mean,” said the cat, “I mean that a baby is the same thing as a pig.”

These last words were spoken in a very low voice, and it added something in a whisper that Alice could not hear. Then she noticed that the cat had grown very much paler; soon the stripes on its back were all that was left of its body, and at last only its head was left, which continued to purr complacently until that too was gone. Alice hoped it would appear again. She stood for some minutes looking at the kittens, which she did not venture to take up again, however, and suddenly, as if somebody had frightened them, they all three set off and scurried across the kitchen, sneezing as they went, and growing thinner and thinner all the time, so that by the time they reached the other side they were thin enough to slip through a rather large crack in the floor, which they did with the greatest ease. She knelt down and was trying to peep through this crack, when suddenly she heard a great racket behind her.

It was the cook, who had come in evidently in the very worst of humors. She was banging at the grate with the poker and tongs, upsetting the coal-scuttle, and flinging kettles and frying-pans about with furious energy. Then she dragged the kitchen table into the middle of the room, managing to upset all the chairs as she did so; then she proceeded to pull out the drawer with such violence that she dragged it out altogether, and it fell to the floor with an immense clatter of iron spoons and ladles. Alice would have been very glad to escape, but as the cook had not yet seen her, she was afraid to call attention to herself by the least movement. So she stood as close to the wall as possible and waited for a convenient chance to slip out unobserved. Presently, however, the cook perceived her, and snatching a broom in one hand and a poker in the other, she stood looking as if she did not know which to use first. Fortunately, the table which she had dragged out was in her way, and served as a protection to Alice, who managed to get on the other side, and so reached the door safely, the cook following, only in time to slam it behind her so hard that it made the whole house rattle.

If Alice had been at home all this would have been a very unpleasant experience, but by the time she was safely out in the hall again, the old cook seemed rather fun than otherwise. The hall looked somehow rather different: there were two more doors in it now than there were before; they were opposite to each other and both painted green. There did not seem to be any harm in peeping through keyholes in Wonderland; and, indeed, Alice did not stop to think much whether there was or not.

Through one of these keyholes she could see a steep flight of stairs winding up, full of dust and cobwebs, and through the other nothing but darkness, as she said. One of the white doors that she had seen at first was ajar, leaving a very small crack open, and by going close to this she could see into a curious little three-cornered room, where the old Duchess herself, as ugly as ever, was sitting sound asleep in an armchair near the fire. A tea-kettle was boiling furiously on the grate, and a sort of five-o’clock-tea table was spread by her side, on which was an immense plate of bread and butter and a great bowl of eggs. It looked as though she were going to have a comfortable meal when she woke up, or at least Alice thought she would if her nap did not last too long; for just then the Cheshire cat suddenly made its appearance and immediately began upon the bread and butter. If its appetite were anything like in proportion to the size of its mouth there was no saying how much would be left for the Duchess.

However, Alice thought it was no concern of hers, so she went out to the front door, where she was surprised to see the Cheshire cat again sitting calmly on the step cleaning its whiskers. Presently the door of the Duchess’s room opened behind her and a shower of china cups and saucers came flying into the hall.

“Pray, don’t mind that,” said the cat, as Alice got quickly out of the way; “it’s not meant for you, you know: it’s me she’s after.”

Soon the sugar-bowl came, full of lumps of sugar that were scattered all over the steps when it broke, for everything broke, of course. At last the Duchess threw out some of the eggs, which, strange to say, did not break, but rolled noisily about in every direction.

“Why, they’re nothing but china eggs,” said Alice, when she had examined one of them; “just like the nest-eggs that they had on the farm last summer.”

“What nonsense you are talking!” said the cat.“Those eggs were made to match the egg-cups, and a very good idea, too.”

Alice could not help thinking so herself, if this was the sort of usage they generally had. There was nothing more coming now, and she heard the Duchess slam her door and turn the key sharply in the lock.

Suddenly the frog footman came round the corner of the house. “The doctor says a little of that’s temper,” he said, and kept alternately swelling himself out and then shrinking up to almost nothing, all the while fixing his eyes on Alice. “Say, would you mind going in and seeing what she wants?”

“Why, I don’t quite know,” Alice hesitated. “Is she always like this?”

“Most generally when the cook’s gone out she is. And she’s just the same when the cook’s come in. And when the cook’s gone out again – lackaday! You just ought to see her!” he said, stretching out his hand to stroke the Cheshire cat’s fur the wrong way. “You’d better go straight in at once and have done with it.”

“Why should I go?” Alice asked. “Why don’t you go yourself?”

“Why, you see, you’re the nearest the door, and that counts; and then you’ve called on her – through the crack of the door – and you know she’s in, and that makes a difference; and then it’s your turn, and that—”

“Oh, just go right in,” interrupted the cat; “she’s no end of fun.”

“Yes; so she is,” said the footman. “So she is.”

Thus encouraged, Alice, who really thought it would be fun to see something more of the Duchess, concluded that she might venture. The door was very slightly ajar again as at first, and she was about to knock, when the cat, who had followed her into the house, pushed the door wide open and then disappeared.

The Duchess woke up with a start, and Alice was about to explain that it was not she who had opened the door, but she perceived that the Duchess did not seem to notice the intrusion. She began immediately to eat her eggs, crunching them up, shells and all.

Alice happened to be looking at the plate of bread and butter, and to her amazement she saw a slice lift itself up from the pile and disappear in the air; then another slice did the same thing, and then another. The last time, however, she observed the faint outline of a smile in the air just as the bread and butter was vanishing. “That rogue of a cat,” she thought, “can eat just the same when it’s invisible!”

The Duchess did not seem to perceive that anything was amiss until Alice spoke.

“I thought your eggs were made of china?” she ventured to say, at last.

“China!” screamed the Duchess. “Why, I declare you’ve been at my bread and butter!”

“Oh, I beg your pardon,” Alice began; “I saw—”

“Don’t say you saw the cat,” she interrupted. “I suppose, while you were about it, you thought my bread and butter was made of china too, hey?”

“If you’ll just watch the bread-plate,” Alice said, “you’ll see what becomes of it;” for at that moment she saw another slice vanish in the air.

“If you’ll just watch me, you’ll see what becomes of you!” cried the Duchess, reaching out her hand for a large jug of milk that stood on the table. Alice, who knew that her Grace was not very particular as to the things she threw at people, concluded that her visit had lasted long enough, and she quickly took her leave, shutting the door after her. She listened for a minute outside; she could hear the Duchess going on with her eggs.

The frog footman was waiting outside; he looked at Alice with a foolish smile on his face.

“Bon jour! An revoir!” he said. “Did she say what she wanted?”

“No,” Alice replied, “she didn’t.”

“I thought she wouldn’t. She waswas in a pepper-jig, wasn’t she, though?” he said. “Drop in again tomorrow and try pot-luck.”

Then he winked, and began to dance a hornpipe with both hands in his pockets. Alice passed by him without a word, quite offended at his behavior, and went out into the road again. It ran uphill a little farther along, with hedges on each side, looking very mysterious and tempting; and she walked on, wondering what would happen next. “If I only don’t meet with anything to make my neck grow so long!” she said to herself; for this seemed to her the only unpleasant part of the other Alice’s adventures. She concluded not to eat or drink anything at all whilst she was in Wonderland.

CHAPTER III

THE TEA-TABLE

There was a break in the hedge on one side, after a while, which opened to view a pleasant shady lawn, with a glimpse of something white stretching out under the trees at a short distance from the road. When Alice went in, she found that it was a long table spread out in the open air; and not very far from it, on the other side, was the March Hare’s cottage. She knew it at once, because of the description in the book: “The chimneys were shaped like ears and the roof was thatched with fur.” The table was the identical table of the “Mad Tea Party,” but words can hardly describe the state it was in. The Hatter, the Dormouse, and the March Hare were not there, and the house seemed to be shut up; but the tea-table stood just as they had left it. They had apparently moved from one place to another until they had gone all round the table; it looked, indeed, as if they might have gone round more than once. The plates were all full of tea-leaves and crusts, there was sugar spilt over everything, and swarms of insects were skipping and buzzing about over the tablecloth. The milk-jug had been upset, and the sugar-bowl was full of ants.

In spite of her dismay, Alice stood looking at the scene with much interest. It was evident that something ought to be done about it; and as she had the greatest delight in being useful, the idea occurred to her of making a sort of brush out of a handful of leafy twigs, bound together with some of the long grass that grew about. This was quite successful; she brushed off most of the crumbs and tea-leaves, as well as the dead insects, and made all the others hop away. Then she very carefully proceeded to pile up all the plates and cups and saucers on one end of the table; and after that she stopped to consider what ought to be done next.

She went over to the house and walked cautiously all round it; there were doors on all the four sides, every one of them shut tight. Nobody seemed to be at home, for she knocked again and again on every one of the doors in turn without any answer, and then she tried to open them.

They were all locked, excepting one, which she found, however, could only be opened a very little, on account of something in the way on the floor of the room behind it. She gave one determined push at last to that door, and, with a sound of rattling and crashing crockery-ware, it opened far enough for her to look inside. There she saw an immense pile of china things on the floor, heaped up in the greatest confusion, all covered with dust and leaves, and most of them broken.

“Oh, how horrid!” she said, as if there were somebody to hear; “I believe you’ve just flung all these things in here to save the trouble of washing them!”

Then she tried to shut the door again, but some of the china had rolled down in the way, and the harder she pulled, the more it kept coming down; so that, although she was very sorry to do so, she had to leave the door just as it was. And then, on walking round past another side of the house again, she found to her surprise that the door on that side was now wide open. It was only an empty room into which it opened, entirely bare of furniture; there was not even a window to be seen in it, nor a door in the wall going into any other part of the house.

“How do you like this room?” said a squeaky little voice that came from the corner behind the door. It was the Dormouse, standing there on his hind legs. Alice had a great mind to ask him whether he was called a Dormouse because he stayed behind doors; but while she was thinking about it, he asked her again how she liked that room.

“Why, there isn’t anything in it to like!” said Alice.

“I heard you making a great fuss outside there,” he said. “The noise woke me up, so it did! What were you doing out there in our laundry?”

“If that’s your laundry where all those tea things are in such a mess, I don’t like that at all,” said Alice, without answering his question. “I never saw such disorder in my life.”

“It’s all your fault that you saw it,” he said, “because there’s enough order in here for you, isn’t there?”

“No, there isn’t,” she contradicted. “I don’t call this order at all. Order means keeping your things in order.”

“But we keep our things in one room and our order in another, so that they don’t get mixed up together all the time,” he persisted, “and that’s a great deal better than your way. Because then this room’s always tidy.”

Alice laughed, for there was really no use in arguing with such a view of things as that; and at last, with a friendly wish to help the droll little fellow, she said—

“Suppose you and I take all those china things out of your laundry and throw away all the broken ones?”

“The reason why they break so is because they’re made out of such bad stuff!” he said, in a sobbing voice.

“Yes, I dare say,” she said, consolingly; “but you see, some of them aren’t broken, and we can take out all the whole ones and perhaps wash them up.”

“Was she mup?” repeated the Dormouse. “What’s that like?”

There was no use; he was not even listening now: he was scratching with his claws on the plaster and putting his head close to the wall, apparently for the pleasure of listening to the disagreeable noise it made.

“I only wonder,” Alice said to herself, as she turned away, “how they manage to get so many tea things.”

“They come in a bag, so they do,” said the Dormouse, as if he knew what she was thinking about; “and that just puts me in mind of it – I’ve got to have the table all ready for them by the time they get back.” And then he hurried off to the tea-table. He appeared to be much struck when he saw the disposition Alice had made of the things.

“Who could have done that?” he asked, in a bewildered tone.

“Why, I did it,” said Alice, “so that they would be all ready to carry away.”

“You’ve given me a great deal of trouble, so you have,” he said, dolefully; and he immediately began to set all the things back in their old places on the table. He began with the cups and saucers, taking one of each at a time; and as soon as Alice saw what he was trying to do she came to help him.

“I can’t think what he wants to do it for, though,” she thought. She worked much more quickly than he did, and before long the table was all covered with the tea things again; and then the Dormouse went a little way off, as if to get the general effect. He did this several times, going back after each time to make some trifling alteration, until finally he seemed to think it would do. Then he immediately set to work at taking all the things off the table again and throwing them into what he had called the laundry through a little square window, the shutter of which he opened on purpose.

Alice had not noticed this window before; she went over to look in, and found it was no wonder she could not get in at the door. She could see the door, still a little way open, as she had left it, with the great heap of china piled up against it, and there were all sorts of old broken things on the floor besides. There were old rusty pans and trays and tin boxes and tea-kettles, while an empty dresser stood in one corner, and there were rows and rows of convenient-looking shelves besides, without a single thing on any of them.

“I’m not going to help you do anything so foolish as that,” said Alice, as the Dormouse still went on throwing in the china. “What are they going to do with all those things in the end? If you keep on like this, the place will soon be full.”

“I don’t know, I’m sure,” he said, and then, as he had just thrown in the very last cup, he shut the window again and remarked, as he went over and took a seat at the empty table, that now everything was as nice and tidy as could be.

“But I’m sure the tablecloth isn’t tidy! Why don’t you take that off, too?” she asked.

The Dormouse made no reply; he had fallen sound asleep at once, with his nose resting on the table. Alice had a great mind to pull off the tablecloth herself, but she did not like to disturb him, as she certainly would; so she sat down near him, wondering what strange thing was going to happen next. She tried to imagine what the March Hare would say if he came and found her sitting at his table; and very soon, looking round at the Dormouse again, she was hardly surprised to see that the March Hare had taken a seat at his other side. He did not seem to perceive Alice. He had a pot of tea before him – or, at least, it was a steaming tea-pot full of boiling water – and he was busily engaged in trying to cram tea into the spout with a small stick. “The spout wants oiling a little, I think,” he said, looking round at Alice without seeming at all surprised to see her there.

“Why don’t you put the tea in at the top?” she asked him. “The lid will come off, won’t it?”

“That’s where they put the water in,” said the March Hare; “and they’ve crammed the water in up to the very top,” he continued, taking off the lid to look in. “There’s no room for the tea at all.”

“But you can easily pour out some of the water,” she began; “and, besides—”

“Oh, dear! I wish you’d let me alone,” said he. “They’ll all be here in a second. Here they come now.”

Alice heard a confused sound of laughing and talking, and presently she was surrounded by a crowd of strange creatures, who were all taking seats at the table with great noise and confusion. Although it was in broad daylight, Alice could not exactly tell what sort of personages they were. She thought at first that they were all of them animals dressed in clothes, until she recognized the Duchess in a figure that was sitting at the head of the table; there was a lion on one side of her, and something that was certainly a great owl sitting next to the lion. Presently she was quite sure about the Hatter, who rushed up to the table in a breathless condition and took a seat next to the March Hare. He seemed unable to speak, but kept making frantic motions that expressed great exhaustion and despair.

“There ain’t no more tea things. That’s what ails him, I expect,” said the Gryphon, who had quietly taken a seat next to Alice. She turned to look at him; at first sight he was certainly rather an alarming neighbor, so she tried to move her seat a little farther off.

“I don’t think they ought to have any more tea things,” she said; “there are enough over there in that house to set a dozen tables.”

“Hear! hear!” shouted the Gryphon, rapping loudly on the table and nodding his head at Alice.

“Never mind! Never mind, I say!” Alice cried, as he would go on trying to make himself heard.

But he would not stop, and everybody looked angrily towards him.

“This here young missy,” he persisted in saying, pointing to Alice, “she have something for to say, she have.”

“Bother!” said the Duchess, and everybody else shouted something; but Alice was relieved to see that they were paying no attention to what he said and would not be still themselves for a moment. Just then the Hatter, in a desperate attempt to speak, lost his breath entirely and leaned back in his chair with his mouth wide open. “Tea’ll fetch him round!” said the March Hare, taking up the tea-pot and pouring a hot stream directly into the Hatter’s mouth. This heroic treatment had the effect of “fetching him round” at once. He sat upright in his chair and looked about at the company with an amiable smile and said—

“Beg pardon!”

“Don’t mention it!” said the Gryphon.

Something like silence now seemed to fall upon the company, and just as Alice was wondering what it meant the Gryphon said, “We’re all waitin’ to hear this young lady read a piece out of her book, I fancy.” Then she suddenly perceived that there was a book on the table before her.

“Read! read! read!” she heard everybody call out in all sorts of voices.

“I’m afraid I don’t read very well,” she said, as she opened the book.

“You weren’t asked to read well,” said the March Hare. “You were asked here to read the book, and you’ve done nothing yet but brandish words about and disturb everybody.”

“I wasn’t asked here at all!” Alice cried, indignantly.

“Then how could you have got here?” he said. “That’s a sort of a riddle for you, since you’re so fond of ’em.”

“I hate riddles,” the Dormouse said to himself, in a very low tone. “They never come true.”

“She can’t deny she had to get here somehow,” said the Hatter, “riddles or no riddles, you know.”

Alice said nothing, and indeed was not even listening, so deeply absorbed was she in looking over the book, which she found, to her great surprise, to be her mother’s “Cookery Book.” It was the very same one she had been reading with Tom only a few evenings before, and they had had a great deal of fun over some of the preposterous dishes to be found in all such books. There were two or three cooking receipts in their mother’s writing on the flyleaves at the end, so that she knew it was the same book; it was the strangest thing how it could ever have got there.

“Everybody up here’s going to sleep!” called out the Duchess from her end of the table. “Can’t some of you down there make that what’s-her-name read?”

“I’ll pour a little of this hot water on her, your Grace,” said the March Hare. “That’ll get her started.”

“You’d better not,” said Alice, turning to the March Hare; and then, speaking so loud that they could all hear, she said—

“If you really want me to read, you’ll have to find me a better book. This is only a cookery book, that tells how to cook things for dinner, you know. There’s nothing at all in it to read.”

“That’s your notion of ‘nothing at all,’ hey?” said the Duchess. “There’s something wrong about you, that’s plain. It’s you yourself that’s the matter, not the book.”

“Yes,” said the Hatter, “every man expects England to do his duty.”

“I didn’t ask your opinion,” said the Duchess.

“When you come to think of it,” said the Gryphon, “p’raps she can’t read. There’s some won’t and there’s some can’t. That old owl up there, he won’t. He’s read every book in the world, he says, and he ain’t going to bother himself reading ’em over again.”

“He hasn’t read this book, I’m sure,” said Alice. “Why can’t you get him to read it now?”

“Oh, he won’t, he won’t, I tell you! That’s worse than can’t, because if you could, you might,” said the Gryphon.

“You’re as full of pro’s and con’s as plums stuck in a pudding,” said the Duchess, severely. “If you really can’t read, then you must learn this minute. Learn to read decently, too, while you’re about it, and don’t go mumbling and jumbling along, as I know you will. Come, now, mind your P’s and Q’s. I’ll give you five minutes.” And she took out an enormous watch and

Alice laughed, but she did not say a word. She was rather glad to have the five minutes’ time to see if she could find anything in the book to read. She recollected that there had been a chapter of “Advice to Young Housekeepers” in the beginning that might do perhaps, as it had seemed on the whole rather amusing than otherwise. But, strange to say, there was nothing of the kind to be found there now. So, although it seemed absurd, even in Wonderland, to read cooking receipts to such a company, it began to look as though it would have to come to that if they still continued to insist.

“Five minutes up!” cried the Duchess, shutting her watch with a loud snap.

Alice had not even yet decided what to read, for just as she was on the point of beginning something, so many of the words suddenly seemed unfamiliar to her and without a particle of meaning, that she kept on turning over the leaves, hoping to find something better.

“What’s the matter now?” said the Duchess, severely. “What have you been about all this time? Can’t you read yet?”

“She didn’t have quite five minutes,” pleaded the Gryphon.

“She didn’t have quite five wits, is what you mean,” said the Duchess. “If the Queen of Hearts were only here, off would go her head, and she’d have to read then, I fancy, whether she could or not!”

“The reason—” Alice began.

“Oh, you’ve got reasons, I dare say, as plenty as blackbirds – I mean blackberries – but the Queen won’t listen to any of ’em.”

The table was beginning to get noisy again. There was an impatient chorus of voices shouting—

“Be still!”

“Read!”

“Hush!”

“Go on!”

“Don’t read!”

“Begin!”

“Stop!”

A voice near the end of the table that Alice thought was the Lion’s roared, “Silence! Silence!” Then they all stopped, and in sheer despair Alice began at the first page she opened upon.

“TO MAKE SHERRY BLIFFINS.

“Take your blifflns while not so tough as they otherwise would be, for they are apt to drone and spindle at the edges. Pare them for an hour; in warm weather rather longer – an inch longer will do. Then quickly stir into a thick pan of batter-wax that has previously been made frosky by large shirring-pins. If you have no shirring-pins, a shuttle-fork mil do nearly as well. Allow to cool, then return to fire and let slowly simper. Try from time to time until the bliffins grow chucky and turn on the fork; then take up and fringle slightly. Sugar, if preferred, must be soaked in several waters, as it is liable to become plimsy when cooling. Send to table immediately.”

This all seemed to Alice very much as though it might have come out of Mr. Edward Lear’s book of Nonsense Cookery. She made no remark, however; but on looking round at her audience she saw that they were much impressed.

“‘Send to table immediately!’” repeated the March Hare: “but supposin’ it wasn’t dinnertime?”

“Oh, it would be! it would be!” said the Hatter. “Seems as if you could taste it! What’s next?”

“‘Stewed Chorkeys’ comes next,” she said, rather pleased with her success in entertaining the company, who seemed to be all waiting eagerly to hear more. So Alice went on—

“STEWED CHORKEYS.

“Pat the chorkeys in an egg-sifter, one at a time, and try with a small tuning-fork before skimbling them. If they chutter, try them again. Splice well and bumble in chicken-crumbs. Have ready a pint of sugar-tips and a pound and a half of pepper—”

Here Alice was interrupted by a loud sob, and, looking round the table, she saw that most of the guests were sitting with handkerchiefs to their eyes and noses, and some of them were weeping bitterly. The Hatter had fainted, though Alice thought he was only asleep.

“Reading about all those good things has been too much for ’em,” said the March Hare, reproachfully. “It’s a shame, that’s what it is!”

“Yes, it’s regular fetched ’em,” said the Gryphon. “’Tain’t her fault, though.”

“But I told them—” Alice began.

“Well, it does make a body feel lonesome now,” the March Hare interrupted, “those things does. Seems like you never had a thing fit to eat in your life, and couldn’t ever get anything.”

“That’s the same thing my mother says about the fashion magazines!” exclaimed Alice. “They make her feel as if she’d never had anything fit to wear in her life, and couldn’t ever have. So there’s no use in trying, she says.”

“It’s not the same thing, at all,” said the March Hare. “Your mother don’t have dresses for dinner.”

“Yes, she has,” said Alice, laughing at her own joke, which the others, however, did not appreciate.

“She don’t when she’s hungry, then,” said the March Hare.

“Not a bit of it,” said the Dormouse, suddenly; and just then chancing to look under the table, he immediately jumped up on the neat of his chair and leaned over the top with hit* back to the table,

“What was it that you saw under the table?” Alice whispered. The Dormouse shivered from head to foot, but said nothing.

“You might as well say,” grumbled the March Hare, “that if I read a book about’ Manners/ it makes me feel as if I hadn’t any manners.”

“Well, so it ought to,” said the Gryphon, “because you haven’t any!”

“Say that again!” said the March Hare, rising angrily, and, snatching the book out of Alice’s hand, he held it all ready to throw at the Gryphon’s head,

“None of ’em have any manners,” the Gryphon said to Alice, as he quietly reached over and seized the book, and then pushed the March Hare back into his seat. “I was learned different to this when I was a youngster, let me tell you. We had nice manners even if we was poor, and we had nice tea-cups even if they was cracked, and we had a nice tablecloth even if it had holes in it.”

“Oh, I’m so glad to hear you speak of this tablecloth,” said Alice. “Isn’t it disgraceful? Don’t they ever have a clean one?”

“Well, for the matter of that, it’s this way,” he said. “You see, it’s hard enough to get the plates and things; they’ve not come yet. The Queen of Diamonds is the one; and you know diamonds ain’t always trumps. You follow me, don’t you?”

“Why, no,” said Alice, “I don’t. I don’t understand a word you say.”

This answer discouraged the Gryphon very much; he leaned back in his seat and said no more.

“Your head has been completely turned by the fashions!” said the Duchess, who had been for some time looking at Alice through a long-handled eye-glass.

“So it has!” said half a dozen voices, in a tone of sudden conviction, and Alice saw that the company had stopped weeping and were all looking at her. Some of them had glasses perched on their noses that fell off when they laughed. They all seemed to be laughing at her, and she began to feel rather uncomfortable. It was a very unpleasant tea-party altogether, and she thought that, since she had not been invited, she was not obliged to stay until the end. “I should like to see the new tea things,” she thought; “but just as likely as not they won’t come, after all. I’ve a great mind to go.”

Presently she rose softly, and, as nobody seemed to notice, she left her seat and went away, walking backward slowly, so that she could still see what was going on at the table.

It is rather an unsafe thing to walk and not look where you are going, even in Wonderland; although this time Alice encountered no obstacle in her path more dangerous than the White Rabbit, who gave a little squeal as she trod on his toe.

“Oh, how sorry I am!” she said, as soon as she saw him. “Please forgive me.”

“Is that the way you walk generally?” he said, rubbing his toe, “or do you think you’re in Looking-glass Land? For that doesn’t begin until you get over the bridge.”

“Oh, do they walk backward there?” said Alice.

“Sometimes,” he said. “You’ve got to expect it, anyhow; but they never do here, excepting the old gentleman, Sammy Crab, and he’s a most unpleasant old thing.”

Here a great uproar at the table made them both look round. The company all seemed to be quarreling, and screamed at each other with most alarming gestures. She saw the Hatter get up and cuff the March Hare unmercifully, and the Gryphon reach over and try to snatch off his great hat. The Hatter held on to it so tightly with both hands that he drew it down entirely over his face.

“Oh, it don’t amount to anything!” said the Rabbit; “they’re always going on like that.”

Alice then saw that the Cheshire Cat was coming towards them, walking with its tail in the air like any other cat.

“Well, pussy-cat,” she said, in a patronizing tone, “so you were at the party. I didn’t see you.”

“I was under the table,” said the Cat, with dignity.

“Ah, that explains the Dormouse,” she thought. “And why didn’t you sit up to the table? there was plenty of room.”

“I preferred to sit under the table,” said the Cat, in a lofty manner; “and I was a little surprised that you didn’t, too.” Then it instantly vanished.

“I’m glad of that!” said the Rabbit. “I hate cats, and especially that one.

“What foolish things they are over there!” he continued, in a meditative tone, looking at the table.

“Aren’t they!” said Alice. “You are the very first person that has any sense that I have seen yet. Why do they all sit there when there’s nothing to eat?”

“Oh, they’ll have something after a while,” he said. “That’s the way it is here. I suppose where you live they get the dinner ready first and then call the people?”

“Yes, of course,” said Alice.

“But here it’s just opposite. They call the people first, and then they get dinner afterwards. I was in your country once; I came up through a rabbit-hole.”

“Oh, did you?” she said. “I wish you would come up and see me when I get back.”

The White Rabbit smiled, and, looking at his watch, declared that he must go.

“I wish you could stay,” said Alice; “but do tell me first, please, where their dinner comes from? And what is it they have for dinner?”

“They’re cooking it now,” said the Rabbit. “The kitchen is in one of those rooms you tried to open a while ago. I was behind a tree and I saw you all the time. They always have hash for dinner.”

And, buttoning up his coat, the Rabbit vanished upon all-fours as quickly almost as the Cat did in the air.

Alice’s mind was now divided for a few minutes between her curiosity to see what the dinner would be like and her desire to explore further the tempting road that lay before her; for she was now standing at the gateway in the hedge, through which she had entered. A little way down the road she could see a high stone wall with a gate that had a huge knocker, and this looked so interesting that she decided at last to go on.

CHAPTER IV

HUMPTY DUMPTY

The knocker was just like the face of Mr. Punch, and his great nose was fastened on with a hinge. You lifted up the nose for a knocker; it almost took a little courage to do it. Alice knocked two or three times, and at last a muffled voice from inside said, “You’ll have to climb over the wall!” This was not so difficult a matter as it seemed to be at first, for the stonework was rough, and a few of the stones projecting here and there afforded a foothold. From the top of the wall there was a stepladder leading down into a grassy yard with a little wooden house in one corner; there were a few garden tools lying about and some bundles of straw. It was evident at once why there was a difficulty about opening the gate. An object was lying just in the way that Alice would have thought was an immense egg, such as she had once seen in a shop-window at Easter, dressed up to represent a man, if she had not seen at a glance that it was neither more nor less than Humpty Dumpty himself. His clothes were all covered with dust, and his once handsome cravat – the gift of the White King and Queen – was now limp and faded. He was lying down, and seemed at first to be asleep; but as Alice came towards him he rolled slowly from side to side, and finally set himself up on end against the wall with a sudden jerk. His arms and legs, fastened on like the limbs of puppets, flew about loosely and seemed to be of no use to him. Although his features were rather uncertain, she could see that he was staring at her with all his might.

“Thanks; very good of you, I’m sure. You’ve heard of my accident, I suppose?” he said, in a hoarse voice. “It was a good bit exaggerated in the papers, as everything is, you know.”

Alice had not read the papers, but she guessed that the accident must have been a fall he had evidently had from the wall above his head.

“I should think it would have broken your shell – that is, bones, I mean,” she added, quickly,

“Call it which you like; both are correct,” said he, smiling. “Yes, I may say I’ve had an escape. Take a seat.”

As there was nothing to sit upon excepting the ground, where, to be sure, Humpty himself was seated, Alice said, “Oh, thank you, I’m not at all tired. But weren’t you hurt a good deal?”

“A few bruises, more or less,” he answered; “but how should you say I was looking, on the whole?”

“You are only very little cracked, indeed,” said Alice, as politely as possible.

“Cracked, forsooth! I don’t know anybody that isn’t – more or less,” retorted Humpty Dumpty; “but I’ve yet to learn that it’s manners to tell ’em so. So you find me cracked, do you?”

“Oh, the crack really doesn’t matter in the least,” she said, quite grieved that she had not been more thoughtful; “it hardly shows at all, and I didn’t notice it a bit at first. The wonder is that you weren’t killed.”

“So I should have been if I hadn’t ’a’ had my life insured,” he said.

Alice had often heard of life insurance, but her ideas as to what it meant were exceedingly vague. “Did that—” she asked, “was that to keep you alive always?”

“Well, no. Perhaps not always,” said Humpty, who seemed decidedly in doubt about the matter himself. “But, anyhow, I should ’a’ been this time if I hadn’t ’a’ had it done.

“And perhaps next time, too,” he added, after a pause.

“How did you do it?” Alice asked.

“Why, you see, I was looking over the wall to watch a funny little pig that was going along, when I leaned over just a little too far—”

“But I meant how did you have your life insured?” Alice interrupted.

“Oh, that,” said Humpty. “That was simple enough. I had myself hard-boiled – I think that’s what they call it.”

Here Alice laughed heartily; but she stopped as soon as she could, for she saw that Humpty was much offended. “I don’t see the joke myself,” was what he said.

“I’m sure I was not laughing at you,” she said. “I only thought it was such an excellent plan. Did you invent it yourself?”

“Not exactly,” he replied; “I’d seen it done up in the country, though not for the same reason I did it.”

“But didn’t it hurt you?” Alice asked.

“Well, no, not much. But I did get rather overheated; and the worst of it was, I got such a cold afterwards that I’ve been a little stiff ever since. I think it will wear off in time. Then my voice isn’t so clear. I used to sing and accompany myself on the jewsharp.”

Alice was trying to think how this feat could have been accomplished, from what she knew of that instrument.

“I used to play for Patty, too; she would begin to sing the very moment she heard my jewsharp.”

“Patti?” said Alice. “Do you mean the great singer?”

“You may call her as great as you like,” he said. “She was only a little thing herself, but she made a great noise. Why, you could hear her all over the house; and to think that the cat should have got her, after all!”

“The cat!” exclaimed Alice, in amazement. “How in the world did the cat get her?”

“Usual way,” answered Humpty, waving one of his limp arms. “Carelessness! Cage door left open! Sorry, of course!”

“Oh, you are talking about a bird,” Alice said. “I thought it was a lady you meant.”

“A lady, indeed!” said Humpty. “Pray, how could I keep a lady in a cage? Mine was a canary-bird, and her name was Pattypan. Besides, I don’t know any ladies.”

“The Queen is a lady, and so is the Duchess,” said Alice.

“If the Queens and Duchesses I know of are ladies, the fewer I have round the better I’ll like ’em. Mention another.”

“My mother is a lady,” said Alice.

“Well I shouldn’t like your mother, for I don’t like you” he said. “Though, to be sure, I’m not the least like my mother,” he added, in a lower tone; “and that’s a fact.”

“You were so fond of poetry once,” said Alice, after a pause; “do you remember any of it now?”

“No, not much,” said Humpty. “I got tired of it; and then playing on the jewsharp is so much better.”

“But there is one thing that I should like to ask you very much,” said Alice. “Is there any more of the song you used to know, that was not finished?”

“What song, pray?” he asked, rather gruffly. “I used to know lots of songs.”

“Well,” said Alice, “this was a song about fishes that didn’t seem to end rightly.”

“Hadn’t the fishes any tails?” he asked, with a laugh that sounded like a croak.

Alice laughed too. “I didn’t mean that the fishes didn’t end rightly,” she said. “It was the song about the fishes that didn’t.”

“Well,” said Humpty, “I know at least eleven songs about fishes that don’t end rightly. Sometimes it’s the fishes don’t, and sometimes it’s the songs. Now, which is it?”

Alice was a little disconcerted, for she saw that he was laughing at her; so there was an awkward pause. Presently he said, a little more graciously, “What was the last word of this one you’re a-talking about?”

“Why,” said Alice, “it was ‘but.’”

“But – but – but,” he repeated to himself slowly. “You’re sure it wasn’t butter?”

“No,” said Alice, laughing; “I’m sure it wasn’t. There was something about a door that you said you couldn’t open, and the last line was, – ‘I tried to turn the handle, but – ’”

“I can’t tell anything, I’m sure, from such a little scrap as that,” Humpty Dumpty said. “Don’t you know any more of it?”

“No,” said Alice; “but I’ll try to tell you what it was about. Though it was very much mixed up.”

“Was it very much mixed up?” he asked.

“Yes, very much,” she answered, smiling.

“Well, then,” said Humpty, “in that case you’ll have to speak very loud, for I am quite hard of hearing, now that I’m hard myself.”

“Well,” Alice began, “I believe you sent a sort of messenger to some little fishes, to tell them they must come up to your house. You had a great new kettle all ready. So then they wouldn’t come, and they sent word they were asleep in bed. And the man did not like to wake them up again; so you had to go yourself. And when you got there, the door was fastened tight, and you pounded and knocked, but you couldn’t get in.”

“Dear me!” said Humpty. “Did I really do all that?”

“I suppose so,” Alice replied. “It says in the book that you did.”

“Well, go on,” said he.

“That’s all,” said Alice; “the last line was this, you know – ‘I tried to turn the handle, but – ’”

“That don’t seem to end very well, does it?” he said. “I think I can find out what’s the matter, though.” Then he shut his eyes and fell into a deep revery.

Alice waited patiently, and at last he said, “This was the way of it. You see, that last verse you said, was down at the bottom of the page, and I thought there was no more of it. Or else I forgot to turn over the leaf; or maybe I turned over two leaves at once.”

“Perhaps the leaves weren’t cut,” Alice suggested, recalling some experience of her own with uncut magazines.

“There were more reasons than one, no doubt,” said Humpty, gravely. “But years and years after that I found the rest of the song at the top of the next page; it had been there all that time. But you’re not listening.”

“Indeed I am!” cried Alice. “What makes you think so? I’m very much interested.”

“Well, this is the rest of it, then:

The door flew open at a touch,

I said, ‘I thank you very much.’

The door flew open of itself,

There were no fishes on the shelf

There were no little fishes there!

And that was more than I could bear.”

“Oh, thank you!” said Alice, when he stopped. “Is that all of it?”

“That’s every bit there was,” he said. “I turned over every leaf in the book to be sure. What do you think of it?”

“I’m very glad the fishes weren’t there,” Alice replied. “But it seems as if there ought to be more still.”

“Nothing would satisfy you,” said Humpty. “Do you know how to play the jewsharp?”

“No,” said Alice; “I’ve tried, but I never could.”

“No wonder!” he returned, after looking at her intently for a few minutes. “Very few people have the right kind of an ear for music. I see you haven’t: look at mine.”

Humpty turned his head from side to side; his ears were nothing but lines traced on his head as if they were done with pen and ink. “You see,” he continued, “nobody could ever learn music with ears sticking out like yours!”

Alice laughed, and said, “Have you got your jewsharp? I should like to hear it.”

“It’s over there in my house,” he said. “I’m rather lame myself, but if you’ll go over there and get it, I’ll play for you a bit.”

She was curious to hear some of Humpty’s music, and very eager to see his house. “Don’t be afraid of my dog!” he called out after her. “And don’t go near Henny Penny; she’s cross.”

She smiled to see a toy woolly dog on wheels tied carefully to the door of the house. The doorway was only a square hole, not large enough to allow her to enter; but she knelt on her hands and knees, and looked in with great interest. There was a heap of hay in one corner, with a patchwork quilt neatly spread over it, that she supposed was Humpty’s bed. A little old woman, curiously dressed in feathers, was sitting on a rocking-chair knitting. She had a very sharp nose and bright little eyes that peered out from under her ruffled cap and were intently fixed on Alice, although she kept jerking her head about in every direction. Alice was afraid of her, so she asked very respectfully, “Will you please tell me, ma’am, where I shall find Mr. Dumpty’s jewsharp?” The old woman did not say a word, but kept jerking her head about worse than ever. Alice was considering what she should do, when she thought she heard Humpty calling her, and looking over she saw that he had somehow contrived to get himself up on the wall again.

“Oh, dear! what did you do that for?” she cried, running up to him. “You will certainly fall down.”

He stared at Alice as if he had never seen her before, and said nothing. “I should think you would never venture to sit on that wall again,” she said.

“Well, I’m going to sit on it,” he growled, in an angry voice. “I’m going to sit here till I snap my fingers, and my toes, too, if I choose, at all the King’s horses and all the King’s men. I hear ’em a-prancing along! Kings, indeed! Rubbish! I only wish I’d known the President of the United States!” He shut his eyes and began to rock very slowly to and fro, and in a few minutes seemed to have rocked himself to sleep, for he sat quite still with his eyes shut. Suddenly there was a great noise and commotion out in the road – drums and shrill trumpets and screaming voices. Humpty Dumpty woke up with a sudden start that threw him off his balance, and he fell over into the road. Alice, in dismay, climbed the wall to see what had become of him; he had fallen among some weeds that were growing there and lay on his back perfectly still.

But the King’s men had come in sight, and her attention was immediately turned to the extraordinary jumble of military characters that were crowding along the road. A glance showed that they were not very alarming, although they kept screaming and tumbling down and getting up again and laying about them wildly with all sorts of weapons; some of them with each other’s legs and arms that they had wrenched off. Every minute one of them would leap up and turn somersaults in the air and come (Town on the heads of the others. They sounded as if they were made of wood, and Alice could not help laughing at the way their arms and legs flew about in the air. Some of their heads had come off, too, but the owners of them seemed to be none the worse, and kept fighting on as valiantly as ever.

Suddenly, as if by a stroke of magic, they all vanished as quickly as they had come, and perfect silence reigned once more in the road.

“The King’s men!” thought Alice. “And they certainly didn’t even try to set Humpty Dumpty up again that time.”

She looked down at the place where he had fallen; somehow the road looked a great deal farther down than it was before, and she could not see him. She went back into the yard and opened the gate, hoping that Humpty would see her and would come in, but no Humpty was there, though she looked in the precise spot where he had fallen.

CHAPTER V

THE WHITE KNIGHT

There was a knight on horseback standing nearly opposite the gate singing to himself. At first Alice thought it was one of the King’s soldiers, but as he turned to look at her, she saw it was no other than her favorite, the old White Knight. She gave him a cordial smile of recognition, and, although his face wore an air of perplexity, he smiled at her in return. “I’m not quite so foolish as I used to be,” he said, dismounting. He seemed to take her for the other Alice.

“I never thought you were very foolish,” she replied.

“Yes, I’m afraid I was rather foolish,” he said; “but I’ve learned a good many things since then.”

“Can you ride any better?” she asked.

“Oh, dear, yes! a great deal better, only—”

He had been very busy with the bridle all the time he was speaking, and now he paused for a minute. “Only,” he continued, “the reins will come off so, and my horse is so spirited; I’m going to try a new plan. Have you got a hammer about you?”

“No,” said Alice, “I haven’t any hammer. I should think there ought to be one among all the useful things that are hanging on your horse.”

“Ah! those aren’t useful things that I have hanging there now,” said the Knight, though without much enthusiasm. “I threw that old rubbish away long ago. One of the things I’ve learned is that only beautiful things are really useful. But I used to have a hammer, that’s true. I wish I had kept that.”

The horse seemed to be even more heavily laden with things hanging about him than he was in the old picture, but she could not exactly make them out at first. “Those,” said the Knight, looking at them with complacency, “are almost all Japanese things, or Chinese. I don’t have anything but art objects now.”

He glanced at Alice with an appealing air when she came up to the horse, as if anxious to have her favorable opinion of his collection.

She saw that there were all sorts of boxes, and trays, and fans, and helmets, and tea-pots, and there were two or three monsters which she supposed were idols. “What are you going to do with them all?” she asked.

“Nothing just now,” replied the Knight; “but some of these days I am going to study Art, and then I shall need everything of this kind I can get.”

All this time he had been searching about for a hammer, apparently expecting to find one in the middle of the road, which, in fact, he did in the end. For he picked up a large stone, that he said would do nearly as well, and then he took some small nails out of his pocket.

“You see,” he said, “that I’ve always had a great bother with the reins, and I thought there was no way of helping it. But up the road I met a boy on a rocking-horse. I saw that his reins were nailed on to his horse’s mouth, and he hadn’t any trouble with them at all. It’s not my own invention, that’s true, but it’s a very good one. I thought I’d try it.”

“You don’t mean to say that you are going to—” “drive nails into the horse’s head,” was what Alice was about to say, but she stopped in amazement, for while she was speaking, the Knight had actually driven a nail into his horse’s mouth. The horse stood perfectly still, however, betraying no sign of annoyance.

“He has what they call a hard mouth, I believe,” said the Knight, calmly, regarding his work in a critical manner; “but I’m afraid, after all—”

He did not say what he was afraid of, for just then his horse started off on a gentle trot of his own accord, and was out of sight before they had considered what to do about it. Some of the Japanese things had come loose, and were falling off right and left as he went. The Knight, who made no attempt to recover his horse, stood looking in the direction it had taken, and then turning to Alice, with a smile, he said, “What a comfort it is to think his reins won’t come off, isn’t it?”

Then they walked on together, stopping here and there to collect the things which had fallen off in the road.

“They don’t make these things as well as they used to,” said the Knight, sorrowfully, examining something he had picked up which was broken; “and you see so many of them, all just alike, everywhere. It’s getting pretty hard to study Art, don’t you think so?”

Alice hardly knew what to say to this, so she opened a fan which she held in her hand, and said, “What a pretty fan!”

“You may have it,” said the Knight; “it only cost threepence.”

“Oh, no!” said Alice, politely; “I didn’t mean—”

“And you may have all these things we’ve been picking up,” he interrupted; “I can get plenty more like them.”

She tried to protest, and then to thank him, but she found it was really no use; and her attention, too, was taken up with the difficulty she had in holding all the thing*. They would keep falling one after another in spite of all her efforts. Afterwards she could not recollect what finally became of them all.

They had now come up with the horse, which they found quietly eating grass by the roadside, and it stood perfectly still while the Knight climbed to his seat again. He did not attempt to ride on, however, but allowed his horse to go on grazing, and looked at Alice as if he expected she would say something.

“I liked that song of yours very much,” she said, presently. “That one you know about the ‘Aged, Aged Man.’ Do you ever sing any more now?”

“Did you really like it?” said the Knight, looking much pleased.

“Yes, indeed,” said Alice; “very much. I should like to hear you sing it.”

“I hardly think I can now,” he replied; “it has been years and years since I’ve sung it.”

“Perhaps you know something else,” she said.

“Yes,” he said, “I do know another song. It’s about the ‘Aged, Aged Man’s Wife,’ but it isn’t nearly as good as the other one.”

“Oh, do please sing that,” Alice urged; “I’m sure I shall like it.”

“I don’t think you will like it,” said he. “It’s rather foolish I’m afraid; and it’s not as long as the other, and not half so beautiful.”

“Oh, no matter; please sing it,” she begged. “What is the name of it?”

“The name of the song is called ‘Mutton Bones,’” said the Knight.

“But what is the name itself?” she asked, recollecting what a distinction he made between the name of a song and what it was only called.

“The name” said the Knight, smiling, “is the ‘Little, Little Wife,’ but the song is called the ‘Missing Lunch.’”

Here he paused for some time, and Alice waited patiently. “The song really is ‘A-sitting on a Stile,’” he said, at last. “But I’m so much afraid you won’t like it that I hardly know whether to sing it or not. I wish I could remember the other. This one tells of things as they are, and not as one would wish them to be, you know; and that’s not pleasant.”

“Oh, never mind that, please,” said Alice, eagerly. “I’m sure—” But she stopped, for he had already begun to try the tune, and looked as if he were going to sing it.

“It’s the same tune,” he said; “it’s the only one I know.

“Ye lords and ladies, small and great,

And every size between,

The things that I will now relate

Are things that I have seen.!

saw a little, little wife

A-sitting on a stile,

A-cutting something with a knife

And eating all the while.

I said, ‘I hope you’re pretty well;

And what is that you’ve got?’

She said she wasn’t going to tell,

Because she’d rather not.

I flew at her with all my might

To see by hook or crook;

She only held her apron tight

And wouldn’t let me look.

She said, ‘’Tis cold pertaters, sir,

’Tis mutton bones, it is,

’Tis bits of bread an’ winegar,

And beer that doesn’t fizz,

’Tis sangwidges that’s dry and tough,

Made out of mouldy cheese—

I wisht I only had enough—

Go ’way, sir, if you please.’

But I was feeling rather blue,

With plasters on my head,

And so I wouldn’t listen to

A single word she said.

And I was getting sleepy then,

I should have been in bed,

And so I flew at her again

And asked her what she said.

She said, ‘I’m not afraid a bit;

I begs for what I’ve got.

Sometimes the things I gets is fit

To eat, and sometimes not.

And as to what I’m eating now,

I’m not a-going to say;

Your honor can’t expect as how

I’d give myself away.’

Now, I had lost my lunch that day,

For someone came along

And stole it while I went my way

A-singing of my song.

And since I hadn’t any doubt

’Twas; she had got the things,

I took my trusty scissors out

And snipped her apron-strings.

I saw it was my lunch, indeed!

And tears came to mine eyes;

My cakes with coriander seed,

My lovely buttered pies!

And when I called my woolly dog.

And gave the things to him,

She hopped about me like a frog,

And shook from limb to limb.

And when the days are blue and chill,

And when the fire is low,

And when my horse is standing still

Because he will not go;

And sometimes when I make them wait

And they begin to scold,

And sometimes when I come in late,

And find my dinner cold;

I never answer yes or no,

Nor say a single word to show

My wits are not so very slow;

I try to let my memory go

To valiant deeds of long ago

In which I overcame the foe.

That little woman filled with woe,

Who thought she could deceive me so;

Who hopped about both to and fro—

She was so very vexed, you know,

A-sitting on a stile.”

As soon as the Knight had come to the end of his song, they heard a sharp little voice close at hand that said, “What does all that stuff mean?” Alice looked about her, but could see nobody at all.

“I think I’d better be going,” said the Knight. And smiling rather sadly, he pulled up his horse’s head as if to ride on. This was so unexpected to the horse that he started suddenly, and the Knight fell off head foremost.

“I was thinking of something else just then,” he said; “something very important, too, or I shouldn’t have let him do that.” He seemed so much chagrined that Alice tried to look as though she had not noticed it.

“Do you know who it was that was speaking just now?” she asked. “I was very much vexed, for I was just going to tell you how much I liked your song.”

“Oh, yes, that was the important thing I was thinking about,” he said, without replying to her question. “Did you like it as much as the other one?”

“N-no, not quite, I think,” answered Alice; “but you know the other one was so very beautiful.”

“Well, you see,” he said, smiling, “I invented this one myself; the first one was invented by my brother. He’s the other White Knight, you know.”

“Oh, was it?” Alice said, suddenly recollecting that of course there were two White Knights. “I should like very much to see your brother.”

“He’s exactly like me,” said the Knight. “We are twins, you know, and you couldn’t tell the difference. We can’t ourselves, sometimes.”

“Well, but he doesn’t have Japanese things on his horse, does he?” said Alice, smiling, as she observed the Knight trying to fasten some of the things on more securely.

“Yes he does – the very same,” he replied. “But I’m going to propose to him that we should have only half of our things artistic after this. But I really must be going now.” He looked about him with some apprehension, she thought, and then pulling up the horse’s head again, and saying “Good-bye,” he set off on a brisk trot. He very nearly fell off once, but recovering his balance quite skilfully, he turned back to her with a smile of triumph.

CHAPTER VI

THE RED QUEEN
AND THE
DUCHESS

As soon as the White Knight had disappeared, Alice thought of the mysterious voice they had heard. He was so evidently disconcerted when she spoke of it at first that she had not referred to it afterwards. Very soon she heard the same voice again, apparently coming from overhead this time, and looking up she saw a head that could only be that of the Red Queen. She was standing behind the high hedge, supported on something apparently insecure, for she disappeared twice very suddenly while she was staring at Alice, and seemed to have some difficulty in getting up again. At last there was a scratching sound followed by some rather forcible expression of impatience. “Couldn’t I help you?” asked Alice, looking through a small gap in the hedge.

There was no answer, but presently the Red Queen rose before her, standing up very stiffly out of the weeds like a Jack-in-the-box. “Peepers never see any good of ’emselves,” she said, sharply.

“How do you do, your majesty?” said Alice, who could not think of anything else to say, although this seemed hardly adequate to the occasion.

“How do I do! Nonsense! There is no such thing! You mean, what do I do? And very deceitful of you, too, for you don’t care.”

Alice paused, trying to think of something pleasant and conciliating to say.

“And what do you do?” resumed the Queen. “Do you make your own frocks – the one you’ve got on, for instance?”

“No, your majesty; my mother made this one.”

“Ah, I thought as much,” said the Queen, smiling. “Just stand out of my light, will you?”

Alice saw that the Queen was knitting, but was quite sure she was not standing in her light.

“I’m sorry, your majesty—” she began.

“Oh, do stop saying ‘your majesty,’ ‘your majesty,’ ‘your majesty,’ all the time; it fairly makes me dizzy. And you needn’t be sorry unless it pleases you, for it doesn’t please me. Chatter, chatter, chatter! how can I count my stitches?”

Alice was rather annoyed at such unfairness, even from a Chess Queen, and she resolved not to say any more.

“And where did you come from, that you don’t speak when you’re spoken to, pray?” said the Queen at last.

“Why, your maj – that is, I mean, I thought you were counting stitches, ma’am.”

“No getting on with her, anyway, is there?” said the Cheshire Cat, suddenly making one of the party. It was sitting on top of the hedge, and winked at Alice, first with one eye and then with the other. The Red Queen did not look up from her knitting.

“I’ve got a piece of news,” said the Cat. “You remember the Duchess, don’t you?”

“Of course I do,” Alice said. “I shouldn’t think anybody could forget her.”

“Well, you’ll forget her fast enough now if you can,” answered the Cat. “She’s been turned into some kind of a Queen or something, and even I won’t stand her airs any more. Poor old Mounseer – he can’t get away.”

“Who’s Mounseer?” asked Alice.

“Mounseer? Why, you saw him – he’s the French footman,” replied the Cat.

“I don’t see how the Duchess could be much worse than she was,” said Alice.

“Recollect that I call the Duchess my aunt, you know, and be a trifle careful of what you say,” the Cat said, severely, beginning to vanish. “By the way, I shall tell her what you say of her,” it called out of the air.

“That’s the worst of a cat like that; it grins so all the time that you can’t tell whether it’s in a bad humor or not. I wish I could find out how it contrives to disappear that way.” Alice said this partly to herself and partly to the Queen; but she was answered by the Duchess, who had appeared almost as suddenly as if she were a Cheshire Cat. She seemed to be in quite a gracious mood.

“That cat has puzzled wiser heads than yours or mine,” she said.

Here the Cheshire Cat suddenly made its appearance again.

“The fact is,” it said, with a wider grin than ever, “I’m made out of India-rubber.”

“India-rubber!” exclaimed Alice. “Are you, really?”

“The very best, from top to toe,” it said, “And when I’ve a mind to I rub myself out.”

“What shocking nonsense, Chessy!” said the Duchess; “just like a newspaper joke. Get back to your kittens this minute.”

The Cat instantly vanished again, but they could hear it growling and spitting in the air. Alice thought it must be about the kittens.

“What’s the matter with you?” called the Duchess to her invisible niece.

“Nasty thing!” said the Red Queen. It was impossible to tell whether she meant the Duchess or the Cat. The Duchess turned and stared at her through her eye-glass. Alice thought that perhaps they had not the pleasure of each other’s acquaintance, and that she ought to introduce them. She said over to herself, “The Red Queen, – the Duchess.” But it did not sound quite right; neither did “Your Majesty, – her Grace.” She had just about decided on the proper form, when the Duchess said—

“That cat is a regular pepper-box of lies! What’s it been saying about me? Come – out with it!”

“Why, it said – that you had been made a Queen,” said Alice.

“Dear, dear! what a world!” cried the Duchess, shaking with laughter, and rolling about so that it seemed as if she would upset. “How things do get about! But I’ll tell you the whole story, from beginning to end. You know my cloak? It’s velvet, lined with ermine.”

“Rabbit-skins!” said the Red Queen, with a scornful sniff.

“I wasn’t referring to your cloak,” said the Duchess, with a withering smile. It was beginning to be evident that the coolness between the ladies was not owing to a lack of mutual acquaintanceship. “I have a cloak lined with ermine,” resumed the Duchess; “hers is, as she says, lined with rabbit-skins; but that’s neither here nor there. Well, last Monday, you know, it poured pitchforks, so I had to turn my cloak wrong side out, for velvet’s velvet, you know, in these days. And so the King of Spades said to me, ‘You look like a ten of spades, madam,’ – he meant, you see, those little black tails stuck all over the white fur; just his little joke, you know. He can’t count any more than ten, of course; but, bless me! I must have looked like a hundred of spades at the very least.”

Here the Duchess stopped to laugh immoderately. “But that’s not all,” she continued, giving Alice a little poke; “then says I, ‘Not the ten of spades, Sire; would I were like the Queen.’ ‘Madam,’ he said, ‘I trust that you may be one of these days a Queen in name as you are in nature.’ Those were his very words.” Here the Duchess simpered in the most ridiculous manner, and held a large fan up to her face. “And do you know,” she added, “I believe I am to be some day, perhaps.”

“Fiddle-sticks!” said the Red Queen. Alice and the Duchess looked at her, but she kept her eyes fixed on her knitting and said nothing else. The Duchess smiled, and tapped her own forehead with one finger, nodding her head towards the Queen as if to signify that something was the matter with her majesty’s head.

“What are you reading now?” she asked Alice, after a short pause. She had the air common to most people who ask that question, of not caring the least whether you answer them or not. Alice took her quite seriously, however, and said that she had just been reading over again a book called Alice in Wonderland.

“What a name for a book!” exclaimed the Duchess. “The only book I ever read was called ‘Denphobus–Wiggins–or–Wild–Salt–Life–in–the-Nor’–Nor’–West.’” This name she repeated very rapidly and as if it were only one long word.

“Is that the only book you ever read?” asked Alice.

“Let’s hear what’s the matter with it, hey?” growled the Duchess.

“Why, it must have been very hard to read,” replied Alice, doubtfully. She hardly knew what to say, indeed.

“Not near so hard to read as a book that you’ve never heard of,” said the Duchess. “In fact, I don’t see how you could read that at all.”

“Was it a true story?” Alice asked.

“Worse and worse!” cried the Duchess. “A true story, indeed! If I’d had even half an idea you weren’t going to believe me I shouldn’t have even mentioned the book. Why, I’m old enough to be your grandmother. And I don’t speak the truth, hey?” She was evidently getting into one of her pepper-jigs.

“You don’t quite understand, I think—” Alice began.

“Me! – don’t understand!” screamed the Duchess. “Why, I understand things by the dozens, by the heaps and crowds and piles! You little pert pig, you! Pray, how did you ever crawl here?”

“I don’t know, your grace,” answered Alice, anxious to say anything at all to mend matters.

“Not that I care, though,” said the Duchess, suddenly subsiding, and leaning back comfortably in an armchair in which she was seated. The minute before there had been no armchair there; it was very strange where it could have come from. She was sound asleep presently, and Alice, finding that the Red Queen had meanwhile gone away, sat down on the grass by the roadside, quite glad to have a few minutes to herself. It turned out that she had only very few indeed, however. For the Duchess soon awoke and sat up in her chair, and, giving Alice a sharp dig with her fan, she said, “Come, wake up, child! and go on with your story.”

Alice tried to explain that she was not asleep and that she had not been telling a story.

“Oh, how all this conversation does bore one!” said the Duchess, with a yawn, leaning back in the chair and fanning herself. “I hate to converse!”

“I don’t see why you converse, then,” Alice could not help saying.

“Noblesse oblige,” replied the Duchess.

Alice had heard this phrase before, and wished that she knew exactly what it meant, but she was determined not to say another word if she could help it.

“That means,” the Duchess went on to explain, “that I’m obliged to go on talking whether you like it or not.”

“Oh,” said Alice, rising, “then I’ll go away at once.”

“No, you won’t,” said the Duchess, poking her with the fan; “just sit down again, please.”

“Well but this conversation bores me too,” said Alice, courageously.

“I can’t help that,” said the Duchess, sternly. “Noblesse oblige; sit still.” And then she almost immediately fell asleep again.

Alice had always had the idea that noblesse oblige was rather a fine quality in its possessors, but she now made up her mind that it was anything but pleasant for the victim, and resolved that she would put up with it no longer. But just then she saw a strange-looking crowd advancing on the road. At first she thought it was the King’s army coming back again, and it was only as they drew nearer that she saw that it was the same set of creatures she had left at the March Hare’s tea-table. The tea things must have come after all, for several of them had plates in their hands, and one or two had cups out of which they were drinking. She stood aside, and they did not notice her at all, but crowded round the Duchess, who rose from her seat and began bowing and smiling and making ridiculous courtesies to them. “Take seats,” she said, waving her hand majestically towards the armchair.

“Thank you kindly, mum,” said the Gryphon, “but we’re all a-going to the Royal Kindergarten, and so we stopped for you. It’s ‘visitor’s day.’” Then they all quickly disappeared, and though Alice could not see how it happened, they must have taken the Duchess with them, chair and all.

The Red Queen had returned, and was knitting as industriously as ever. Alice saw that it was a pair of mittens which she seemed to be knitting both at once. She looked up with a grim sort of smile, evidently in a somewhat better humor than before. “I was just behind that hedge the whole time,” she said. “Noblesse oblige, indeed! Did you see the Duchess tapping her forehead? Depend upon it, something’s the matter with the old thing’s head.”

“She’s very ridiculous, isn’t she?” said Alice, laughing.

“She’s said to possess the finest, if not the next to the finest, manner in all Europe; that’s what she is. You ought to take her for a what d’ye call it,” the Queen said, with a smile.

“A what?” Alice asked.

“Oh, the thing you cut out dresses with,” said the Queen.

“Scissors?” suggested Alice.

“No, no, no! how could you cut out dresses with scissors? I mean you lay it on the table and cut out all round it.”

“Oh, a pattern,” Alice said.

“Yes, yes – a pattern! You ought to take her for a pattern,” said the Queen, really almost laughing. “By the way, how old are you?”

“I’m nearly ten years old,” replied Alice.

“Very nearly as old as I was at your age!” exclaimed the Queen. “What a coincidence!”

“You must have been exactly as old as I am at my age,” Alice explained.

“No!” contradicted the Queen. “You didn’t say exactly ten; you said nearly.”

“Oh, dear!” sighed Alice, in despair.

“Well,” said the Queen, “it’s best to be exact always; but it was a long while ago; and I’ve grown, whilst you haven’t. That makes a difference, of course. Then I see you have straight hair and clean black stockings, and that goes a great way. So I’ll see what I can do for you. By the way, these are for my son.” And she held up the mittens before Alice.

“You’ve finished them, haven’t you?” she said.

“Haven’t I, then!” said the Queen. “And my son went off to college this very morning. I believe I thought of everything, excepting, perhaps, hair-pins.”

“I shouldn’t think he would need hair-pins,” said Alice, laughing.

“He didn’t, of course,” said the Queen.

“Then what made you think of them?”

“Haven’t I just said that I didn’t think of them?” asked the Queen.

All this time she had been drawing the mittens on her own hands, pulling them up on her arms so that they reached her elbows. “Regular snow-shovels, aren’t they?” she said, holding out her arms. “But why don’t you say ‘No, thank you,’ or ‘Yes, please,’ or something?” she added, for Alice did not seem to be paying much attention.

“I wish—” she began.

“You needn’t wish for these mittens, for I can’t afford to give them to you,” interrupted the Queen.

“I don’t want them at all, thank you,” Alice answered. “I was wishing I could see the Red King, if I might.”

“The Red King? Oh, he’s about here somewhere; he can’t be very far off, you know.”

“We should be pleased to accept the homage of the young person were we but in circumstances—” This was said by a voice near by, that broke off suddenly, and added in a lower tone, evidently addressed to the Queen, “My dear, come here a minute, please; I want to speak to you.”

“Oh, come out with you!” the Queen called to him; “this young person won’t mind about your feet.”

“But I mind. Things have come to a pretty pass if I can’t have my feet, even when company comes,” muttered the King, limping out from his retreat with a crutch under one arm, and his other hand on a sceptre for a cane. Alice saw that he had no feet, but carefully avoiding any critical notice of the fact, she made him what she conceived to be a courtesy; this he returned by a rather awkward bow. “You’ll pardon a cripple,” he said. “‘Uneasy is the head that wears a crown,’ yet it befalls us at present to be more uneasy as to our feet than our head.”

“I am most deeply sorry that your majesty has suffered such grievous loss,” replied Alice in the choicest language she could command.

“My dear, I think this requires some explanation,” he said, turning to the Queen.

“I’ll explain it with pleasure,” she said, with a wave of her hand. “To cut a long matter short—”

“As you did me,” he muttered.

“His majesty, as you call him, got a crazy notion that it didn’t suit him to go to bed of nights, but he must go meandering about in the woods – ‘looking for acorns,’ he says.”

“It was only of moonlight nights,” he explained.

“Do stop interrupting so!” she went on. “And then in the daytime that makes him as sleepy as a bat, and so he goes snoring about like a wild pig. Acorns, indeed! I’m not sure he isn’t a wild pig. He dozes while the game is going on, so that our side loses every time. Who’s going to fight with any spirit around a king that’s snoring on the very chessboard before your eyes? So one day, when I came along and found him all in a heap under a tree, I just unscrewed his feet.”

“And the consequence is—” the King began, sadly.

“And the consequence is,” interrupted the Queen, “he can’t go scrambling about of nights; and the consequence is, he’s awake when other folks are. And now you know all there is to know about it.”

“It’s high time somebody knew all about it,” said the King, laying aside his royal manner, “and time something was done about it, too. I want you,” he said to Alice, “to look about the country and find the Red Knights, and tell them to run up to my assistance at once. This might have been amusing at first, but it no longer ceases to be funny.” Then he limped slowly away, followed by two pawns in waiting.

Alice thought it was quite a tragedy. “I should think he couldn’t play in the game at all without feet,” she objected, after a pause.

“He can’t,” answered the Queen. “They have to get a black wooden King out of another set. He’s an awkward creature, but he knows enough to keep his eyes open and his mouth shut in the game.”

“Have you really got his feet safe?” Alice asked.

The Queen reached into the depths of her pocket and produced a handful of things; there was a thimble and a small key, a few beads and two or three sixpences, and finally the King’s feet, with their round base attached. Alice wondered afterwards that she had not been more surprised at this impossible proceeding. “There they are, you see, slider and all.”

“Slider!” Alice exclaimed.

“Yes, to slide over the chessboard. You don’t suppose we want to walk about on that slippery thing with our own feet, do you? We couldn’t.”

“Well, I hope he will have it back again before long,” said Alice.

“Plen-ty of time!” replied the Queen; “and you needn’t go bothering the Knights about it, either, for I’ve told ’em myself. By the way, you may see the Black King, too, if you like; he’s so awfully civil to me; it’s great fun to hear him talk.”

She went close to the hedge, and called out, “Alexander! Alexander the Great! Here’s a young lady wants to see you!”

“Is that really his name?” asked Alice.

“No, of course not! Alexander! do you hear me?”

Either his majesty did not hear or else declined to obey the summons, for there was no answer. She called again and again, listening each time for a response that did not come.

“He’s playing a game with his own set, that’s it,” the Queen said, at last; “for he’s always so obedient. But you can fancy a little what he’s like, for here comes a Black Knight of the set with a message, I suppose. What sort of a thing is he riding on?”

A little procession was coming towards them with a Black Knight in the midst mounted on a toy wooden horse that went on wheels. A row of little black pawns were dragging it slowly along. When they came near they stopped, and the Knight bobbed his head awkwardly in acknowledgment of the Queen’s rank.

“The King’s compliments, and wich he can’t wait on your majesty, not to say, leastways, at present, mum.”

“How’s your game going?” asked the Queen, with an air of haughty indifference. “Not so well, I should say, with all of you out of it.”

“No, mum – werry anxious, mum,” replied the Knight. “Wich the King were a-looking werry bad, mum, when I see him, and the rest of ’em all puzzling of it out the best what they could.”

The Queen majestically waved her hand, and turned away; but Alice still stood looking with interest at the Black Knight and the efforts of his servants to turn the horse round. Twice they nearly upset him, so that at last she could not help going to their aid, and by lifting the front wheels a little, easily turned the horse’s head in the right direction. Then picking up two of the little pawns that had fallen, she waited until she saw them all safely trotting off down the road.

“You won’t get any gratitude out of those cheaply made chessmen,” said the Queen, scornfully. “Why, you dear old thing, how are you today?”

These last words were addressed, not to Alice, but to the White Queen, who suddenly arrived, breathing very hard, and unable to speak at first. “You shouldn’t run so, you really should not,” the Red Queen went on. “How hot you look! and how untidy, and dusty! Here, What’s-your-name, run get her a fan! get her some water! get her a cup of tea!”

“No, no, nothing! No tea – too hot! no water – too cold!” gasped the other. “What is her name, anyhow?”

“Alice, I think,” said the Red Queen.

“No, no! not that. Her real name, I mean – queen, princess, duchess, seamstress, waitress, or whatever! Let me be, please; I’m all right now.” And the White Queen, who seemed to have come to herself, was staring at Alice.

“I should like ever so much to be a queen, please your majesty, or a princess,” said Alice, who had not thought of it before. “How I should like,” she said to herself, “to have a crown on my head if I chance to meet the old Duchess again, and to say ‘noblesse oblige’ to her!”

“You can’t be a chess queen now, you know, for there’s no game going on,” said the White Queen; “but I’ll lend you my crown for a little while.”

“Oh, thank you!” said Alice. “I’d rather not, though, unless I could be a real queen, and have one always.”

“Well, you may have it always, then,” she said, laughing; “I’ve got plenty more, and I see you haven’t anything at all on your head. You’ll take cold.”

“Oh, thank your majesty very much,” she cried, as the Queen took off her crown and rather unceremoniously placed it on Alice’s head, crowning herself directly afterwards with another one which came to hand with mysterious promptness.

“They don’t seem to care any more for them than if they were old hats,” Alice thought, trying to set the crown straight on her head. “But I suppose nothing could make me a real queen.”

Still, notwithstanding this, and the fact that it was rather heavy and uncomfortable, a crown is a crown after all, and she was soon lost in pleasant meditation as to what she would say and do if she should chance to see the Duchess again. Thinking about this and other things, she almost forgot the two Queens, who, meanwhile, went on with their conversation; and Alice, when she had recalled her wandering attention, could not tell what they were talking about at first. There was evidently some “function” at which they were both to appear.

“Will you wear the new gown you had on yesterday?” she heard the Red Queen ask.

“So you saw it, then, did you? How did you like it?” said the White Queen.

“Oh, charming!” said the other. “So youthful looking. It didn’t fit at all in the back breadth, and such a color! And the skirt was miles too short again, and all crooked, too. And why did you have it trimmed that way?” She drew a diagonal line across herself from one shoulder down, to denote the objectionable trimming.

The White Queen did not seem to know what to say to this. “What will you wear?” she asked.

“Oh, that’s a secret until the dress rehearsal,” replied the Red Queen; “and, by the way, will you be ready?”

“I can’t tell at all,” said the White Queen. “I’ve got my book along with me now. Won’t you rehearse with me that place where we come in together?”

Alice now perceived that they were talking about some kind of drama in which they were both to act. She longed to ask them all about it, for a little private theatrical that she had once witnessed had seemed to her the most delightful entertainment in the world; but, as the Queens appeared to have entirely forgotten her presence, she thought she would probably find out more by listening than by interrupting them. After a little more chatter, they both opened their books and took positions opposite each other, the Red Queen solemnly announcing—

“Act II. Scene IV.

R.Q.  Who has the knife?

W.Q.  The butcher has the knife.

R.Q.  Have you the meat of the tailor?

W.Q.  No, I have not the meat of the rich tailor; I have the tea of that poor man.

R.Q.  Has the carpenter the cloth shoe of the doctor’s sister or the cotton stocking of the hatter’s aunt?

W.Q.  He has the leather shoe of the cousin’s brother.

R.Q.  Who has the vinegar?

W.Q.  The small dog of the baker has the vinegar and the butter.

R.Q.  What have you?

W.Q.  I have the bad butter of the neighbor’s aunt.

R.Q.  Has the good carpenter the bad oysters of the wise mother-in-law, or the fried chicken of the baker’s aunt?

W.Q.  He has neither (ni l’un ni l’autre); he has the boiled owl of the housekeeper’s nephew and the roast pork of the son-in-law’s uncle.”

“You don’t put fire and spirit enough into the lines,” said the Red Queen when they were done. “That French quotation is so beautiful if you say it right.”

“It’s as much as I can do to pronounce the words at all,” replied the White Queen, meekly.

Just then they seemed to become suddenly aware of Alice’s presence, and the Red Queen said, “And so you’ve been listening here all this time, have you? Well, what do you think of us?”

Alice had found it exceedingly difficult to keep from laughing aloud during the rehearsal. She said now, as soberly as possible, “Why, it sounds very much like Fasquelle’s French Grammar, I think.”

The two Queens looked at each other, evidently very much impressed. “I told you it was something quite out of the common,” said the Red Queen. “One of the White Bishops said it reminded him of Shakespeare. And that’s a very fine part, too,” she continued, “where the bishop himself comes in, and says—

‘Why has the small monkey stolen the pickles of the kind blacksmith?’”

“Does it go on like that all the way?” asked Alice, turning her head away, and feeling that she certainly must contrive to change the subject at once.

“What’s the matter?” asked the Red Queen, looking at her suspiciously. “Are you choking?”

“I was rather afraid I might choke,” answered Alice; and seeing that her only safety was in talking about the first thing that came into her head, she said, “I suppose if the Red King is going to come into the play he will have his feet, won’t he? And will the Duchess have a part in it, too?”

“Stop asking questions, like a tee-to-tum,” said the Red Queen; “don’t you see how you disturb her!”

Changes certainly took place very suddenly in this country. The White Queen was now seated on the grass, turning over a great bundle of papers in frantic haste. Alice thought at first that they had something to do with the theatricals. They seemed to contain something the Queen was very anxious to find. She hurriedly turned them over and over, and upside down, and held them very close to her eyes and then very far off, rubbing her eyes continually so that they were growing red.

“She wants spectacles,” Alice suggested.

“No, she don’t,” said the Red Queen; “she wants to know what day of the month it is, or else what time the trains go; she don’t know which.”

“Both, I expect,” said the White Queen, looking wildly about her, and giving all the papers to Alice. “Just you look over these, will you?”

“Why,” exclaimed Alice, as she turned them over rapidly, “these are nothing but pieces of paper!”

“I know they’re pieces of paper as well as you do,” said the White Queen, snappishly.

“But I mean there’s nothing at all on them,” said Alice; “they’re only blank paper.”

“She knows there’s nothing on them,” said the Red Queen. “If there had been anything on them she could have found it for herself.”

“Of course I could,” said the other, with a sigh of relief. “And we really must be going, too. Just tell the Bishops— What shall she tell the Bishops?” And she looked inquiringly at the Red Queen.

“Let her simply give the ‘Message,’ I should say – and the ‘Paper,’” she replied.

“That’s the thing I wanted to find,” said the White Queen. “I remember now. That’s right; you can simply give them the ‘Message’ and the ‘Paper.’ The Bishops, you know.”

“No, indeed!” Alice cried; “I don’t know at all. I’ve no idea what you want me to do. I never heard of the Bishops.”

“Just tell them what we’ve told you, and don’t make such a noise and fuss about it, either,” said the Red Queen. “Hold up your head, turn out your toes, and speak in a loud, cheerful voice. Very few people know the best way to talk to a bishop.”

“I’m afraid I shan’t know,” said Alice, rather anxiously. “I should like to see the Bishops, but—”

“One of them has no head,” said the White Queen, suddenly.

“No head!” exclaimed Alice.

“No,” said the Red Queen; “he took off his mitre one hot day and he happened to lose it, and as his head was in the mitre, he lost that too. So he has no head.”

“Oh, dear!” said Alice; “I should think a Bishop would never venture to take his mitre off.”

“Oh, it doesn’t make much difference; their heads aren’t of much use,” she said. And, gathering up their skirts, both ladies disappeared through the gap in the hedge without another word.

CHAPTER VII

THE BISHOPS

“Now what in the world am I to do?” thought Alice. “If the Bishops should come along, I don’t know what I’m to say. But I suppose I can give them all these papers, and just tell them that the Queens commanded me to, and then I shall have nothing to do with it.”

As she began to pick up the scattered papers to arrange them neatly, she was surprised to find that many of them now had writing upon them, although she was sure there had been none whatever when she looked over them before. It was all in Looking-Glass language.

“What fun they must be!” she thought. “And if the Bishops don’t come along, I mean to take them home with me and read them in the looking-glass. And, anyhow, I needn’t give them all to the Bishops, for the White Queen said just the ‘Message’ and the ‘Paper.’ I’ll see if I can’t tell which of these papers those are.” So she began by looking carefully at each one as she laid it down.

She spelled out this name without much difficulty. “That must be one of them!” she cried; “and I’ll just keep it on the top, so that it will be all ready to give them.” Presently she came to another title which was just as easy to read as common writing. It was:

“There!” thought she, “I have the ‘Message’ and the ‘Paper’ both. And now I hope the Bishops will come. What a pity it is that one of them has no head!”

She now set off again, with the papers under her arm, in readiness for fresh adventures, and determined not to be surprised at anything. Nevertheless, she was really startled before she had gone very far to find that two of the Bishops, a Red and a White one, were just behind her.

As she stopped they came up, and, one on either side of her, they all walked on together. The Red Bishop was the one who had been so unfortunate as to lose his head; but, as the Queen had said, it did not seem to make much difference to him. They were two plump little fellows, but they tried to look as dignified as possible. Both of them had books; that of the Red Bishop was under his arm; but the White Bishop had his in one hand, with his thumb in the place where he had been reading.

The headless Bishop had in some inscrutable way retained the use of his voice, though he expressed himself only in very short sentences. It was he, in fact, who began the conversation.

“Well, child!” was all he said, however.

“Well, my young friend,” said the other Bishop immediately, “what are you doing here? Employing your time usefully, I hope? Remember,” he added, patting her on the shoulder—

“That useful is as useful does,

And flies delight to skip and buzz.”

“Time flies,” said the Red Bishop.

“True! too true!” said the other. “And the little buzzy bee flies. Talking of bees reminds me of them. An extremely moral little creature is your bee.

How doth the little bizzing bee

Her shiny nose prepare,

And gather wax for you and me,

And honeycomb her hair!

Oh, if we, too, would but give heed,

And seek for all we find,

Then bees would be of use, indeed

To educate the mind.

Such things as these,” he continued, “are very important to remember; we too frequently forget them.”

Although Alice had expected to find the Bishops very superior personages, she was hardly prepared to have them quite so patronizing as this one was, considering, too, that she was a queen, and was, besides, so much taller, even than the one who had a head. She put up her hand to feel if the crown was still there; the White Bishop noticed the movement. “Ah!” said he, “crowned heads signify but little! Perishable things! Vain tinsel, alas!

‘Sceptre and crown

Must tumble down!’”

“Jack fell down!” said the headless Bishop.

“True, so we hear! Ha, ha! Well put!” responded the White Bishop. “’Tis a useful proverb:

‘Jack fell down

And broke his crown.’

And for aught we learn to the contrary, it may have been broken in half.”

“Half a crown – two and six!” the other Bishop was heard to mutter.

“Yes; there’s a certain fitness in that remark,” the White Bishop said. “Money, too, hath its charms to soothe as well as bees. Talking of money reminds me of it. Have you such a thing as sixpence about you?” This he said to Alice.

“No, sir!” she promptly replied.

“Not even in your pocket?” he asked.

“No; I haven’t a penny,” she said. “The Red Queen is the only person I’ve seen here who has any sixpences, and she has only two, I think. But that reminds me that I have a ‘Message’ and a ‘Paper’ for you.”

“Have you so, indeed?” the White Bishop asked eagerly, as Alice carefully selected the papers. His countenance fell, however, as he glanced at them.

“These are merely poems,” he said. “Was there not, perchance, an envelope or small package as well?”

“No, not a thing,” answered Alice. “This is all I was to give you.”

“I thought I heard you make some allusion to your having been reminded of these papers in connection with sixpence?” he said, wistfully, as if there might be a morsel of hope.

“No,” said Alice, “the sixpences had nothing at all to do with it; but perhaps the Queen will give you one when you see her.”

“No, she won’t,” said the Red Bishop, decidedly, while the other one sadly shook his head, and remarked, as he wiped away a tear on his sleeve—

“’Tis a world of contrarious things; and this, as I observed, is simply poetry. However, I doubt not ’tis good poetry, even if simple.” He began to look over the papers.

“Must you read it now?” asked the headless Bishop.

The other made no reply. He was reading to himself with a forced smile, trying to recover his natural voice, and doing his best to be brave. Alice almost felt sorry for him.

At last he said, with heroic ease, “This seems, indeed, to be truly fine poetry. It will be an addition to my collection worth the price of admittance.”

“Are you making a collection of poems?” Alice inquired.

“Yes,” he said, “as you see.” And he opened the book he had in his hand at the title-page.

“‘Poems suitable for all Occasions.
A Collection for the Use of Schools.’”

she read aloud. “How very interesting they must be!”

“Well, indeed, may you say so!” returned the White Bishop. “I read them sometimes for hours and hours. A collection of suitable poems is a far greater work of the mind than a so-called poet himself. When I commence to read these, I hardly know, indeed, when I shall stop.”

“Needn’t begin yet,” murmured the Red Bishop, in a rather dejected voice.

“I will, at present, merely dip into it in order to allay our impatience. This, now, is really fine – hear this specimen! The images, all taken from the hand of Nature, cannot but please the incredulous:

‘Birds in their little nests agree

To make a shameful sight;

The children of one family

Fall out the side and fight!’

Now that’s as true and just a sentiment as you’ll find of a summer’s day, I hope.” Saying this, he shut the papers up in his book.

They had now come to a high-barred gate on the roadside. Halfway up, clinging to a bar and evidently trying to get over into the road, was the White King. His motions, naturally rather stiff, were much impeded by his having a sceptre in one hand and a book and lead-pencil in the other. Alice ran over to see if she could help him.

“Let me hold your book and your sceptre,” she said, “until you get over.”

“No!” said the King. “I do not trust a Memoranda of my Feelings to another; and as to my sceptre, I never let go of that under any circumstances.”

“Well, then,” Alice thought, repeating one of the Bishop’s quotations—

“‘Sceptre and crown

Must tumble down!’”

But presently, seeing that the King was not able either to get up or to get down again, she climbed on the gate herself, and, reaching over, she lifted him quite off his feet, over the topmost bar. She then helped him to get down on the other side, which was the more easily managed that he had dropped his book and pencil on the ground, and one of his hands was left free. In his eagerness to get these, however, he fell part of the way and came down on his back. He quickly snatched up his property, and getting himself upright, he hastened to join the Bishops, who were waiting in the road.

“I presume we are all gathered on the same occasion,” said the White Bishop, greeting him. “‘Oh, frabjous day!’ I may well call it. A credit alike to our heads and to our hearts. I may say also to our heads and to our heels. Ah, ha! your majesty! How say you?”

The King muttered some kind of grumpy reply. He evidently detected in the Bishop’s words a satirical allusion to his awkwardness at the gate, and he glanced at Alice with a frown, as though it were her fault.

“I have been honored with an invitation to read a poem suitable to the Occasion,” said the White Bishop.

“See to it that it is suitable,” replied the King. “Of suitable length, that is.”

“There are so many of suitable length that I may find myself obliged to select a number of them,” said the White Bishop. “Nearly all of them, in fact, are lengthy, your majesty.”

“Suitable shortness, he means,” said the Red Bishop, with a curious sort of chuckle.

“He seems to have much more sense than the other one,” Alice thought. “What a pity it is he is the one who has lost his head! But perhaps it’s having no head that has made the difference.”

“You should have the name of that Collection of yours altered, so that it could not possibly be made to mean that all those things may be read on all Occasions,” said the King.

“I said nearly all,” corrected the Bishop.

“Or nearly all, either. See that you have the name changed at once; there’s no time to be lost. Just put ‘Unsuitable for all Occasions;’ that will cover the ground. Everybody went to sleep the last time, and I don’t mean to have it so again.”

“I hardly think it could be done in time for this Occasion, please your majesty,” said the Bishop, meekly, opening the book, and sadly turning over the leaves. “The name is on top of every page.”

The King, however, had turned to his Memorandum-Book, as though he had dismissed the matter, and presently discovering that he had lost his pencil, he went back to find it.

They waited for him in silence; the White Bishop seemed so crestfallen that Alice rather sympathized with him.

“What would you do about it?” he said, addressing his Red brother, as soon as the King was out of hearing.

“Do? Nothing at all,” he replied.

“But I’ve been urged to read a Selection.”

“Read something quite short,” Alice ventured to suggest, “and the King will forget about the alteration, perhaps.”

“Very short,” added the Red Bishop.

This idea did not seem pleasing to the White Bishop, but the King had found his pencil and had now rejoined them.

“What is it you have in your book?” the King asked of the Red Bishop.

“Jokes,” he answered, promptly.

The White Bishop touched his mitre and nodded as hard as he could to remind them that the other had no head; and then pointing to the book of jokes, he tried to tell them something about it by making letters with his fingers. But nobody understood.

“I hope all that means that we are to have some of his jokes,” said the King. “Let it be so, by all means.”

The White Bishop did not reply, but he looked very much disconcerted; he said, however, after a pause, with as much cheerfulness as he could muster, “What are we to expect from your majesty?”

“Oh, the usual extemporaneous remarks from my Memorandum-Book here,” replied the King, carelessly tapping the cover with his pencil; “also the reciting of a poem composed expressly for me by the Ace of Spades – the little Court Poet, you know. Everything in the world is going to pieces, he says, except himself.”

“Poetry is,” said the Red Bishop.

“Yes,” acceded the King, “that’s true; you can’t get first-rate poetry any more. Look at this, now! I’ve rehearsed it and rehearsed it, but it doesn’t grow upon me as he said it would. I’ll rehearse it again if you don’t object.”

Nobody objected, and the King began:

“I dashed with royal purple foot

The wet and salty sea;

And the other on the land I put,

And cried, ‘I will be free!’

From blustering cliffs of adamant

The echoes answered, ‘No, you shan’t!’

‘Who’s that, that’s contradicting me?’

I answered back with haughty sniff;

I glared across the roaring sea,

And roared till I was stiff!

I screamed an hour and a half,—

The echoes only gave a laugh”

The whole party had stopped while the King was reciting these lines. He stood waving his sceptre in the air, and when he came to the end he stamped his foot on the ground and frowned at his audience; then, looking at Alice, he repeated the last two lines over again.

“What are you going to do about it?” she asked.

“Do about what?” he demanded, fiercely.

“Why, you couldn’t let the echoes go on like that, could you?”

“Yes, I could,” he said; “I could just as well as not. I’ll let ’em go on as much as they like, so they keep to themselves. I don’t want any echoes round here, mind you!”

“Did you ever see an echo?” she asked.

“See one? If you ever saw one, you’d never want to see another!” And he kept on scowling and muttering to himself, and now and then stamping his foot in rage, and waving his sceptre about.

It did not seem very surprising, somehow, that suddenly the White Queen should be standing at his side, patting him aa hard as she could on the shoulder. “Don’t, now, get your back up like this,” she said. “You’ll get into one of your tantrums directly.”

“When did I ever have a tantrum, I’d like to know?” said the King.

“Why, that day in the woods when you thought a Snark was coming after you!”

“Oh, that time!” replied the King. “Nonsense! that wasn’t a tantrum; and, besides, an echo is a kind of a Snark.”

“It’s that dreadful poetry that goes to his head,” the White Queen whispered to Alice.

“Oh, if it’s only the poetry,” said Alice, laughing, “couldn’t you have that altered? Or, perhaps, you could have something more put to it – something about ‘The Awful Thing it is to contradict a King!’”

“Yes,” said the King; “that wouldwould make me feel better, I think.”

“We can have that done at once, then,” said the Queen, hopefully, “for here comes the poet this very minute. You’ll tell him all about it, won’t you?” she said, turning to Alice.

Here a droll little fellow came up, with scrolls of paper under each arm, and bowed so low before the King and Bishops that he almost tumbled over. His appearance did not accord with her idea of a poet, and he seemed so lofty and conceited that Alice gave up all thoughts of getting him to alter the King’s poem to suit his majesty’s excitable nature. None of the party seemed to be much pleased to see the poet; they returned his salutation very stiffly; but whether he failed to notice this, or was so full of himself that he did not care, it was impossible to say. He nimbly selected one of his many papers, and said, while he was unrolling it—

“Pray all of you listen! This is the last and finest of all my odes. I will read it you. You will like that.”

He began at once, and read so fast that Alice could hardly understand him.

“Ye see not Poets every day;

Alas! alas!

So look upon me while ye may,

Before I pass!

Sometimes a ramptious Lion I am,

That acts uproarious as he goes;

Sometimes I’m Mary’s little Lamb,

That creeps around on gentle toes.

That can do nothing else but weep,

Because its sorrows are so deep;

That makes its feelings into doleful rhyme,

Counting upon its fingers all the time!”

“Now this is not nearly all of it,” he said, when he paused for a moment to get his breath; “but, before I go on, I will just commence another, and read them by turns, to save time. It will, as Shakespeare says, ‘kill two birds with the same stone,’ will it not? You will like that.”

So he turned to another paper which he had been all this time looking for, and began:

“Ah me! the world is black as ink!—”

“We shall be very late, my dear,” said the White King, in a loud whisper; “hadn’t we better—”

“Yes, I think we had,” the Red Bishop interrupted. And in the twinkling of an eye they were all off at a pace so rapid, that Alice almost immediately found herself left alone with the Poet, who was holding her by the sleeve. He had not taken the least notice of her before, but now he said, “Pray don’t go – don’t go just yet; it’s so hard for me to get anybody to listen to my poetry, and it’s really very great poetry, you know. Sit down here, will you not? and whilst I am reading you this one, you can be reading this other to yourself. You will like that.”

Alice would very much rather have followed the others, and she was quite annoyed to find herself sitting by the roadside with the Poet, obliged to look at a paper he had given her. It was a manuscript very badly written in lead-pencil, full of lines crossed out, and words inserted, and rows of little dots everywhere; but she had not even tried to decipher it before another one, and still others, were thrust into her hands; and then he began to throw them at her, a few at a time at first, and then by hundreds and hundreds. She tried to get up and go away, but in some mysterious way she seemed to be fixed in her place, and could not move a finger. “I shall soon be buried at this rate,” she thought, as they kept on coming. “And he is only an Ace of Spades, after all!”

““Wait till I get there, miss,” called a hoarse voice behind them. The Poet made his escape as soon as he saw that it was the Gryphon climbing over the wall.

“What’s all this?” the Gryphon said, coming up, and scratching away at the piles of manuscript with his strong claws.

“It’s poetry, I believe,” said Alice, smiling.

A party of workmen, who were going by, stopped to look.

“Thim Aces do be always at their thricks,” said one of them, taking the pipe out of his mouth.

“Here, fellows, hadn’t you better be gettin’ some of this here stuff out of the way?” the Gryphon asked them.

“Not widout orders, sorr.”

“’Ear him! Wot’s ’e a-hasking hus for?”

“’Tain’t none o’ our business, mister!”

“Hoots, mon! do the wark yersel’!”

And with these expressions of opinion the workmen passed on. Alice did not care what became of the poetry; she was very glad to find herself walking along on the road again with the Gryphon for a companion.

“It’s lucky enough I come along just then,” said the Gryphon. “Them literary fellows hates me. ’Twould have took you years and years to read all that, and not a word o’ sense in it, neither; for you don’t like poetry, now, do you?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Alice hesitated. “I like some kinds of poetry very much.”

“Well, when it comes to speaking a piece now and again, perhaps, or singin’ a bit of a song, or that, I don’t say; but those poets has too much poetry. Me and the Mock Turtle used to know some pieces once. Have you seen that old fellow yet? They do say as he’s a-losing his head.”

“No, I haven’t seen him yet at all,” said Alice. “He used to have a very curious kind of a head in the picture – for a turtle, that is.”

“Picture!” said the Gryphon, “what picture?”

“There’s a picture of both of you in a book that I have at home,” said Alice.

“Never hear tell of any such a thing,” he said.

Alice tried to think how she should begin to describe the book to him, but she found it would not be a very easy thing to do; so she was quite relieved to see presently that he had forgotten all about it. He went on talking about the Mock Turtle. “He’s always been a-complainin’ about his head ever since I know him,” he said.

“That’s what made him so sorrowful, wasn’t it?” asked Alice.

“Yes, that’s it; he never had no sorrow, you know,” answered the Gryphon. “You’ll be sure to see him at the Kindergarten show – the Occasion, you know. That’s where you’re a-goin’ to, I take it.”

“Why, I believe I am,” said Alice, quite glad to know just where she was going. “Of course, you are going, too?”

“Me?” said the Gryphon. “No, no! I don’t go in any such crowd as that; not if I know it. I’m a plain man, I am. A good pipe and a mug of beer, and my own chimney-corner – that’s where you’ll find me o’ nights, miss. But I must be off, for here comes your fine Bishop again. Him and me’s no great friends; leastways the White chap isn’t. The Red Bishops is pretty good fellows.”

The Gryphon went off with clumsy strides, but he did not go very far; he remained in a listening attitude within hearing of the Bishop’s voice as he came up to Alice. “Muddle-headed, shiftless fellow!” said the Bishop, shaking his head at the Gryphon; “to think of all I’ve done! – the admonition! the praise! the little moral pictures I and even at one time as much as threepence laid out in lozenges! And there he is, after all!”

Here the Gryphon scratched his beak with one claw and made an odd sort of grimace. The Bishop went on shaking his head at him so long that Alice was afraid it had come loose, and that he could not stop. To distract his attention from the Gryphon, she said, “I thought you had gone off with the King and Queen.”

“No, my child, not so. I went but a portion of their way only,” he said; “their rapid strides but ill suited my sober step. So your loss is their gain, hey, my young friend? What is it our classic friends say? – ‘Gallia est omnia divisa in partes tres.’”

“Are we going to the great Occasion now?” interrupted Alice, who did not take the Bishop’s wisdom very seriously, and was not even listening to him just then.

“That, I trust, is our destination,” he replied. “May I further inquire what is to be your addition to the general stock of literature displayed?”

Alice was a little surprised to hear that anything would be expected of her, but she said, “I believe I know some poetry, if that would do.”

“Very good, very proper, very sweet, if it is a selection suitable to the occasion,” answered he.

“One of the things I know,” she said, “is called ‘They are Seven.’”

“Very suitable, indeed!” answered the Bishop. “An old favorite of mine, in fact. Let me hear what you make of it.”

So Alice began at once, as follows:

“THEY ARE SEVEN.

A simple fisherman I met,

I asked to see his fish;

Some luck he said that he did get.

But not what he could wish.

He had a wet and shiny air,

In mackintoshes clad;

His price was fair, and very fair,—

Its fairness made me glad.

‘Of fishes there, alive or dead,

How many may there be?’

‘How many? Seven in all,’ he said.

And, wondering, looked at me.

‘And where are they, I pray you tell?’

He answered, ‘Seven they be;

Two of them are alive and well,

And two are in the sea.’

‘You say that two are in your pail,

And two are in the sea,

Yet there are seven? And yet you fail

To tell how that may be.’

Then did that fisherman reply,

‘Seven fish was what I said;

Three you may see with your own eye;

A string is through their head!’

‘You get mixed up in this, my man;

If two are still alive,

And three are there, I say, how can

That make you more than five?’

‘But, sir, ’tis you can’t get it straight;

And if ’tis not amiss,

I’ll tell you – if you’ll only wait—

As how it is like this:

There’s one got off, with bait and hook

(Best of my lot, he be),

One, while so be I didn’t look,

Got back into the sea.

That’s two; and these three here be five

That on this string are tied;

There’s two more in this pail alive;

Now are you satisfied?’

I was not, and I told him so;

But two of them I bought.

He still had seven, for all I know,

For by his plan he ought.”

“Both correct and pleasing,” said the Bishop. “Each word in its place. And how soothing the moral lesson conveyed! What a privilege! You have indeed chosen well.”

As to Alice, she was amazed at the ease with which she seemed to glide through the verses that she was quite certain she had got altogether wrong, but she very soon forgot all about it. There was a sound of footsteps behind them, and, looking back, she said, “Here comes the Hatter.”

“True,” said the Bishop. “He was a scholar in our school formerly. I doubt not he is a gentleman and a scholar yet. How do, sonny?”

The Hatter pointed to the holes in the knees of his trousers, but he said nothing. There was a bread-and-butter sandwich sticking out of the breast-pocket of his coat. He did not look much like either a gentleman or a scholar, Alice thought.

“Let me introduce you to this nice young lady,” the Bishop said.

“Oh, I know him already,” she said; “that is, I have seen him before. I know him by his hat.”

The Hatter looked much pleased, and, taking off his hat, he bowed very low, and then repeated his bow over and over again in the most absurd manner.

“Why do you always keep that paper on your hat?” Alice asked at last, by way of changing the subject.

“Paper!” he cried. “What paper?” And putting up his hand, he felt all round the crown of his hat until he came to the card stuck in the band. Then he took the hat off, and looked at it with critical attention.

“I didn’t know that was there,” he said, tearfully, looking up.

“How did it come to be there?” she asked.

“It’s a mistake,” he said, “a mistake from beginning to end.”

“I presume,” said the Bishop, “that the hat was taken from your shop-window with the price attached. I have seen such trophies.”

“Your honor,” replied the Hatter, sadly, “this is our sample hat. It’s better made than the ones we sell. But look at it now. There’s been tea spilt on it, and crumbs sticking all over it. It won’t do for a sample any more. I knew I had a nice hat on, but I didn’t know it was this one.”

He tried to blow the crumbs off; then, after smoothing the crown with his coat-sleeve, he took the card from the side of it and put it in behind. Then he carefully set the hat on his head again, and asked, “Does it show very badly now?”

“You can’t see it at all from where I stand now,” Alice answered, smiling; “but why don’t you take it out altogether and put it in one of your new hats?”

“I can’t,” said the Hatter. “It belongs to this hat, I tell you. The other hats are not like this; this is a sample. But—”

Here he gave a sudden screech, and, whisking his handkerchief about in the air, he shouted, “A bumbly-bee! A bumbly-bee!”

“That,” said the Bishop, looking critically at the intruder, “I deem to be simply a hornet. It comes from the Latin hornu, a horn.”

“He don’t care where it comes from,” said Alice, in strong sympathy with the Hatter. “He wants to know where it’s going to.”

“Ah, that is more than I can inform him,” said the Bishop, smiling placidly.

The hornet – which looked, however, exactly like a huge beetle – continued to circle in a threatening manner around the head of the Hatter, who at last could stand it no longer. He rushed off as fast as he could go, the “hornet” after him, rather to Alice’s relief; and while she was watching him, the Bishop, too, had taken himself away, and she found herself quite alone again.

CHAPTER VIII

THE KINDERGARTEN

Very soon the road made a sharp turn, and just round the corner Alice found herself approaching a wide gateway in a wall, with the name

over the top of it in large looking-glass letters.

This promised to be very interesting indeed. She had never been herself to a Kindergarten, and had always imagined that it must be like going to a party every day. Her mother so earnestly believed that love of home was the first, and throughout the most important, factor in the right development of little children, that she could not approve of Kindergartens, excepting as an expedient with careless, or incompetent, or busy mothers, whose children would otherwise be left chiefly to objectionable society.

The two Queens were standing near the gate talking to each other in whispers. They both had a sandwich in each hand, out of which they took bites alternately. Alice went up to them, and was about to ask respectfully whether she might go in, when the White Queen said, in a voice rather muffled by sandwich, “This is one of our visitors’ days; there’s one every day. You have to pay.”

“I haven’t any money,” said Alice.

“Well, then you’ll have to take it out in sandwiches. Sixpence down or six sandwiches,” said the White Queen.

“You must eat them all,” added the Red Queen.

Alice saw that there was a large basket full of them. “Oh, I couldn’t eat more than two” she said.

“Yes, you can, if you do it by arithmetic,” the White Queen insisted. “Eat them two at a time, like this. Look at me.” And she took a large bite first out of her right and then out of her left hand sandwich. “You’ll see that two counts for one, and three ones are three, and anybody can eat three if they try. It’s only three ones.”

The Red Queen had meanwhile been stuffing sandwiches into a paper bag, and, giving it a little expert twist, she thrust it into Alice’s hands.

“I needn’t eat any of them at all,” thought Alice, “if I don’t want to.” And, indeed, in a minute after she entirely forgot what she had done with them. The Queens took no further notice of her, and she walked past them and entered the open gate.

Some kind of game seemed to be going on in a large yard. There were pawns of different sizes and colors – red, black, white, and yellow – running about, and jumping, and pushing each other down, and getting up again. Skipping in among them were all sorts of animals – curious creatures – that did not look like any living things she knew about, excepting that the one which jumped over her head certainly seemed like a kangaroo. Nobody took any notice of Alice, but the fun of the game, if fun it was, went on in a way that she did not find very pleasant. She made her way, not without some difficulty, into a quieter corner of the yard, where she found a rustic bench to sit upon. There was an old owl perched behind it sitting on a high stand. He looked very much as if he were a stuffed owl, but he was certainly alive, for he opened and shut his eyes several times to look at Alice.

In a few minutes the White King came along and took a seat by her side.

“This is something worth while, now!” he said, looking at the game, that seemed to grow wilder and wilder. “This is fine!”

“What are they doing?” asked Alice.

“That’s the Natural History Class performing, I believe,” answered the King.

“Zoology, beg pardon!” said a stiff brown figure standing near them. He looked as if he were made of a round piece of wood like one of the men in a Noah’s Ark. His stiff arms, that he evidently could not move, looked as if they had been fastened on afterwards. When he went away he rolled himself round like a sort of self-moving barrel. Alice saw that there was another one exactly like him, excepting that this other had a red coat, and that he had lost one of his arms.

“Mr. Sham and Mr. Hem, I believe,” said the King. “Very able professors, both. And so is Mr. Jappet, but I don’t see him.”

“What do they teach?” asked Alice.

“How should I know?” said the King. “Whatever there is to teach, I suppose.”

He seemed for some reason to be a trifle displeased, and, opening a book he had, turned over the pages in silence for some minutes, making odd grimaces to himself. “You might care to look over this,” he said, at last, to Alice.

“Thank you,” she replied. “It isn’t your Memorandum-Book, then? I thought it was.”

“I should think not, indeed!” he answered, loftily. “I found this book on the end of the bench here when I sat down. I fancy it’s his.” And he turned his head with a nod towards the owl.

Then he laid the book on the bench and strolled away. Alice thought it was rather odd she had not noticed any book when she sat down. There was nothing at all promising in the appearance of it nor in its title, which was “College Examina-tions.” At home she would not have opened it, but she knew that a book which belonged to an owl in Wonderland must have something worth while in it. She opened at the preface, which was in very large print, and had the long words in it divided by hyphens, as in the “Second Reader.” It was addressed to “Col-lege Fac-ul-ties who ren-der know-ledge un-at-tain-able by the mass-es,” chiefly it appeared because of their neglect to furnish answers to the “vex-a-tious and spite-ful ques-tions” contained in examination papers. The author stated his belief that many of the professors were not themselves aware of the proper answers, and in this case his present work would be a “boon alike to teachers and taught.” The first chapter in the book was “Test Questions on Physics,” of which Alice read a page or two:

1. What was formerly the theory concerning Physics?

Physics was formerly supposed to be a name for medicines. When it was gradually observed that Physics did not cure the sick, scientific men made investigations with a view to discover their true nature and use.

2. Did they succeed?

They did. It was discovered to be useful stuff for school-books.

3. What are the chief properties of Physics?

Dryness and hardness.

4. What is matter?

Matter is a variable quality depending for its existence on circumstances.

5. Explain this, with diagram.

Take the case of A and B. If A should fall heavily from the platform C, landing suddenly on the ground at D, it would be no matter to B. Likewise, if B should fall heavily the same distance, it would be no matter to A; though it would be equally matter to A and B respectively.

6. What is momentum?

The force with which anything strikes you at the moment.

7. To what is momentum always equal?

It is always equal to the occasion.

8. Give an instance.

If a ball propelled at a given moment should strike the head of a professor of Physics, the result would be more momentous – i.e., have greater momentum – than if a similar ball at that moment should strike the head of a very bad small boy. The momentum in each instance would be equal to the occasion, plus the square of the difference in importance.

9. What is a lever?

A species of stick.

10. How was it discovered?

Two workmen were once endeavoring to lift a heavy boat. Not being able to do it, one of them cried, ‘Let us leave her!’

‘Lever! the very thing,’ said the other. And he took up what was formerly supposed to be only a crowbar, and moved the boat with surprising ease.

11. What is a porous substance?

One that you can pour water through; such as sieves, colanders, strainers, etc.

12. Are tea-pots, pitchers, and jugs porous?

Only partially so.”

Alice, although she did not know anything about Physics, could quite appreciate the absurdity of the owl’s book. There were several pages more about Physics, followed by an examination in Chemistry. But just then she heard the loud ringing of a bell, so she immediately shut the book and put it on the bench, looking round at the owl, who still sat blinking on his perch without appearing to take the slightest notice of anything.

The bell produced a great commotion in the playground. All the pawns crowded off together, leaving the animals to themselves – every one standing still on the spot where it chanced to be when the bell rang. There was plenty of room in the yard now, so she left her seat and began to walk about among the animals, gathering courage as she found that they all remained perfectly motionless. “They are nothing but great Noah’s Ark animals,” she said to herself at last, after regarding them attentively. “That is, I think so,” she added, doubtfully; for although the nearest ones kept their lifeless wooden attitudes, some of those that were a little farther off went on shaking their heads or wagging their tails very slightly – these always becoming perfectly still, however, as soon as she fixed her eyes upon them.

CHAPTER IX

THE MOCK TURTLE

She made her way through the animals over to the other side of the playground. Here there was a long building, with its door wide open into a room that was evidently the schoolroom. There were rows of desks and seats, but to Alice’s surprise there were no scholars. She wondered what had become of them, and she wandered about in the schoolroom for some time, walking between the monotonous rows of seats, and now and then stopping to look at the pictures fastened on the walls, that seemed as if they ought to be interesting. They were very high up, however, and so indistinct that she could not make out the subjects of any of them.

There was a raised platform at one end of the room, with the teacher’s desk on it, and a great globe on one side, and sitting on the platform, she saw as she came up to it, was the Mock Turtle. He had been almost hidden by the desk, and sat there, surrounded by books, with his attention fixed upon the one that he held in his hand. He looked up, however, when Alice approached, and, laying aside his book, sighed deeply. “I’m trying for to get a good education,” he said.

Alice said she thought that he had once had the best of educations.

“So I had! so I had!” he answered. “But I forgot that education. I didn’t know it very well, anyhow. I’m trying to learn another if I can, but it’s very hard work.”

“Is that one of the children’s school-books that you have?” she asked.

“No, indeed! I should think not,” he said, indignantly. “Do you take me for a child? It says in the beginning that this book is ‘Solely for the Use of Teachers.’”

Alice looked at it, and saw that “Teachers’ Key” was the name on the outside. “Oh, dear!” she said, laughing; “I shouldn’t think you would get much good out of that book.”

“Why not?” he asked, in a tearful voice; “why not?”

“Well, you’re not a teacher, are you?” said Alice.

“Of course I’m not,” answered he; “but I want to know what the teachers know. That’s what you go to school for, isn’t it?”

There was no denying this exactly, though Alice knew he was entirely on the wrong track.

“I thought if I just could find out what the teachers know,” he went on, “then I could learn it all at once, and be done with it; so that’s why I’ve come here all by myself. I’ve got all their books here.”

“But I should think it would be hard to learn anything out of a Key to an Arithmetic,” remarked Alice.

“I’ve not got very far yet,” he replied; “but it don’t seem hard at all. These are all answers, you know. You set down the answers, you see; you don’t have to guess the sums.”

Alice thought he was too absurd for anything, so she did not say a word.

“The children’s books,” he continued, “are a great deal harder. They have sums in ’em, and you’ve got to guess the answer. Nobody could do that.”

“Well, but the children do,” said Alice; “that is, they don’t guess the answer, but they—”

“Of course they don’t. That’s what I’ve just said,” the Mock Turtle interrupted. “They go home when they have to guess answers to things.”

Alice only smiled. There was no use in going on with such a conversation as that. “And besides,” she thought to herself, “it don’t matter at all what kind of book he has.” So she said—

“Didn’t you say that you were once a Real Turtle?”

“Yes, I believe I used to be, a long time ago. Some of my family are yet. I’m trying to get to be one again.”

“I wish you’d tell me what is the difference,” she said.

“Some people say there is no difference,” he said, in a low voice, bending over the Teachers’ Key to hide his emotion.

Alice was sorry to have hurt his feelings. He looked about him to find something to wipe his tears, and not finding anything else, he took up a feather-duster that lay near him, and dusted them away the best he could.

“Shouldn’t you call it a difference,” he said, as soon as he could speak, “to have an evening coat, and a silk hat, and all the roast beef and plum-pudding you want?”

“Is that what a Real Turtle has?” she asked.

“I believe so. I never saw a Real Turtle. I was abandoned by my parents on a desert island when I wasn’t old enough to ask them. That’s where I went to school, you know. It wasn’t a very good school.”

“And then how did you get over here?” asked Alice.

“I came over here,” he said, “in an emigrant ship. I was an emigrant, I believe. We used to dance on the deck, and sing the most beautiful songs all day.”

“I suppose that was so long ago,” Alice said, after a pause, “that you don’t remember any of the songs, do you?”

“No, I don’t hardly remember anything – not even the ‘Timsy Turtle Dove,’ and that was the best song I ever heard,” said the Mock Turtle. “All the verses began this way: ‘Trust me, timsy turtle true,’ and then they ended with ‘Turtle, turtle timsy!’ Oh, you can’t think how beautiful it was!”

“Don’t you think you could remember some of it?” Alice asked, for it sounded quite fascinating.

The Mock Turtle was beating with a pencil upon his book, as if keeping time to some tune in his head. “I only remember this,” he said, with a sigh:

“’Trust me, timsy turtle true!

One for me and one for you;

Flatter, flutter, fly and flew,

Turtle, turtle timsy!’

I wonder if a turtle dove is much like a turtle,” he went on to say. “Did you ever see one?”

Alice said that she never had, but that she did not believe it was a bit like a turtle.

“It must be a little like one,” he said, “or else they wouldn’t call it one, I should think. But I think,” he added, with sudden inspiration, “that I know the ‘Spider and the Fly,’ if you’d like to hear that. It was a piece we learned in our reading-book at school.”

“I believe I know that myself,” Alice said; “or at least part of it. But won’t you say it?” For she thought to herself, “He will be sure to make it as funny as can be by getting it all wrong.”

“Suppose you say the first verse; then I’ll say the next,” the Mock Turtle proposed.

Alice reflected that, although the poem was quite familiar to her, she really did not know it well enough to recite, and she surprised herself by getting through a verse very smoothly.

“‘Will you walk into my pantry?’ said the spider to the pig.

‘’Tis the prettiest little pantry, but the pies are fine and big.

The way to walk into them is to eat them one by one;

And I have many pretty things to eat when they are done.’

‘Oh, no, no, no,’ said the little pig, ‘to tempt me is in vain,

For if any one should blow me up I’d not come down again.’”

“That sounds all right,” said the Mock Turtle, when Alice stopped; “but I don’t think it is, quite.”

“Oh, it isn’t right a bit,” she said, laughing. “I don’t see how I came to say it that way. But it’s your turn now.”

“‘Will you walk into that spider?’ said the parlor to the fly,’”

he began; and then he stopped short, and said, “Do you think that’s right?”

“No, of course it isn’t!” said Alice. “But never mind; go on. It’s sure to be good fun somehow”

“No,” he objected, “I won’t go on if I’m not sure. It isn’t right to laugh at things just because they’re wrong.”

“But you wouldn’t laugh if they were right,” Alice said; “and so how could you laugh at all?”

“Well, I don’t want to laugh,” said the Mock Turtle. “I used to have a book with all those songs in it, and lots more. I can’t think where it has gone to; I must have lent it to the Gryphon.” He began to bite the end of his pencil and look thoughtful. “Did you ever hear a song,” he went on, “about a story of a great black bird that got into a house and wouldn’t go out again? They couldn’t make it go out.”

Alice thought she could not recollect any such story as that. “What sort of a bird was it?” she asked.

“I think it was a crow,” he replied; “but of course I don’t know whether it was or not, for I never saw a real crow.”

Alice tried to think how his not having seen a real crow could make any difference in his knowing whether it was a crow or not in the song.

“Perhaps it was a black hen,” she suggested. “Crows don’t come into the house ever, you know, and hens do, sometimes.”

“Then I dare say it was a hen, though I never saw a real hen, either,” he said. “This was a great black bird of some kind, anyhow, for there was a picture of it. It got into a room, and got up on top of a door, and would stay there. They couldn’t do a thing with it. They opened wide the shutter, but it made a dreadful flutter – and it kept on saying it would never, never, never go out any more, no matter what they did. It sat on people’s heads all the time, and picked with its beak, and scratched the violet velvet cushions. Then it kept on rapping, rapping, and tapping, tapping. It was horrid, you know. You can’t think how bad it was.”

“Yes,” said Alice, after thinking a little while; “I do remember hearing something like that read once. It was at a ‘Reading’ where I went with my mother a good while ago. It was about a Raven, That’s a kind of a crow, you know.”

“But what is a ‘Reading’?” the Mock Turtle asked.

“Oh, nothing much,” replied Alice. “Somebody just reads and reads, and the people all sit round and wait till he is done.”

“Is that what you call ‘nothing much’?” he exclaimed. “Why, of all things in the world, that’s what I’d like. They had something like that here once, but they didn’t call it that. The Poet had one. Only you had to pay two shillings.” Here the tears came to his eyes again, as he added, sobbing, “And – and – and I only had twopence. I believe nobody had two shillings.”

“Oh, I didn’t care for it at all!” said Alice. “The man who was reading made all the words go just everyhow, and you couldn’t half tell what it was about.”

“But, then, you might have a chance to look round and see if you could see a Real Turtle,” he said.

“I never saw one,” said Alice, laughing. “Not at a Reading nor anywhere else. What is that book you have there now?”

The Mock Turtle had taken up another book, and was turning over the leaves. “It’s called ‘Songs of Science,’” he said; “but you wouldn’t understand it. It’s intended to learn science with.”

“Nonsense!” said Alice. “I should think I could understand anything you could.”

“Well, here’s a ‘Chemistry song,’ for instance; and I don’t suppose you even know what Chemistry is.”

“Indeed, I do; I’ve done Chemistry myself,” answered Alice, who had, in fact, helped her brother in some of his private experiments in that branch of science, and knew several very imposing names.

“Well, then, this song tells all about Chemistry,” said the Mock Turtle; “it’s called ‘Kilkenny Cats.’”

“That’s very curious,” Alice thought. “I can’t see what any kind of cats has got to do with Chemistry.”

But the Mock Turtle had begun. “It’s called the ‘Quarrel’ too,” he said.

“The Acid bottles and Alkalies,

They lived on separate flats;

When one of them spoke about rats and mice,

The other one spoke of cats.

‘You’re only a rat and I’m a cat,’

Said Alkali once in spite.

‘No, no,’ answered Acid, ‘’tis you’re the rat;

And I’ll show you that I’m right.’

Soon, there was a silence in the room;

They hushed the matter up.

The Chemist he mopped it up with a broom.

And he left some in a cup.”

“Well!” said Alice, frankly, “I certainly don’t understand that. What was it that was in a cup?”

“I don’t exactly know what it was myself,” confessed the Mock Turtle; “but the book says there is a moral to it, I think. There’s an index; perhaps I can find it.”

He turned the leaves over, and began to look in what he called the index – some long columns of fine print at the end. Alice looked over and saw that it was only a list of geographical names that he had; but he continued to turn page after page, running his pencil up and down the columns, and murmuring to himself, “Quarrel, moral; moral, quarrel.”

“Oh, never mind!” Alice said, laughing; “I dare say it’s a riddle. How dark it is getting!”

“So it is,” said the Mock Turtle. And lie immediately began to collect the scattered books and pile them up neatly under the teacher’s desk. The large empty schoolroom looked rather desolate.

“What became of all the scholars?” Alice asked.

“Oh, they went home when the bell rang,” he replied; “it was study hour, you know.”

“Study hour!” cried Alice. “And didn’t they have to stay?”

“No; of course not. I’m the only one that ever comes in study hour, and I wouldn’t come myself except I’m in hopes of getting to be a Real Turtle.”

Just then Alice perceived in the failing light that there were some shelves behind the teacher’s desk filled with all sorts of odd-looking things. She could not make out what they were; they looked something like the Indian curiosities in her uncle’s cabinet.

“Those are objects, you know,” said the Mock Turtle.

“Objects!” repeated Alice.

“Yes, for object-lessons. Don’t you know what object-lessons are?”

Alice had heard of them, and had, indeed, taken many such lessons herself, without knowing them under any particular name. She could learn nothing from these objects, however.

The Mock Turtle, having put all the books in order, crossed the room without another word, and, going out the door, he shut and locked it after him. It appeared to be the only door in the room, and Alice felt provoked when she went over and found that it was really and truly locked, and that she could not get out.

Going back to the platform, she took a seat at the teacher’s desk, and began to look over the books and papers, feeling all the time that she was meddling with what did not belong to her. Strangely enough, she forgot all about the darkness that had seemed to be coming on. She could see perfectly well now, even the titles of the books in a row before her. There was a copy of the “College Examinations,” among others; there were an Arithmetic and a Spelling-Book, which must have been much more amusing books than their names seemed to indicate. No doubt Alice would have had a great deal of fun had she opened them, as she was just on the point of doing, when a title in the Jabberwocky language caught her eyes. “I wonder if that isn’t the very same book that had ‘Jabberwocky’ itself in it,” she thought. And sure enough, it turned out to be the very book that the “real Alice” had seen on the table in the Looking-Glass drawing-room.

There was a piece of looking-glass, cut just the same size as the book, slipped into a little case made for it inside the cover. Nothing could be more delightful.

First she found the poem of the Jabberwocky, and had the fun of reading it in the original, which, as she knew it by heart, she could have done even without the glass. Then she turned over the leaves slowly. The pieces in it were not all poetry; there was a great deal of prose, which she found it difficult to read, even with the glass, there were so many strange and unmeaning words in it. Farther on, however, was another poem, which looked easier. “Bandersnatchy” was its fascinating name:

“I knew the chirpling fellow well

Who slew the Jabberwock;

That story he would sit and tell

Till after ten o’clock.

His father, too! he made us tired

About his beamish boy;

And oftener than could be desired

He chortled in his joy.

So I made up my mind one day

To go and be his match;

I set out for the woods to slay

The frumious Bandersnatch.

A vorpal sword like his I got.

And a winxy pistol too,

Because you never can tell what

A Bandersnatch might do.

It was not tulgy like that day—

’Twas twigsy in the wood;

I heard a brimbling far away

That sounded as it should.

I said at once, ‘That must be it;

I’d like a glimpse to catch—

I ought to know before I hit

If ’tis a Bandersnatch.’

A queer thing whizzled overhead;

I thought ’twas up a tree.

‘Are you the Bandersnatch,’ I said.

It answered, ‘That I be!’

I found it was not up a tree,—

Its legs were awfully high.

Don’t shoot, and I’ll come down,’ said he,

And falsely turned to fly.

Its tail I chanced to grapple, but

That tail, how fast it flew!

’Twas leagues before my sword had cut

The biggest half in two.

I knew the tail would do as well,

Nay, better than the head.

And what a tale it was to tell!

‘In at the death!’ they said.

‘The Bandersnatch is dead!’ they shout.

The gumptious deed was such.

And since, we have not heard about

The Jabberwock so much.”

It took Alice a long time to read this; she read it over twice with great delight, and then, carefully sliding the glass back into its case, she put the book in its place. “That glass is just like a sort of dictionary,” she said to herself; and she wished that her French reading-book would translate in the same way.

In getting at the books, she had disarranged a pile of papers, with writing upon them. She saw that they were compositions written by the scholars; they had names on the outside, and one of them was signed “Mock Turtle.” Alice could not help looking at this. It was about the Camel.

“To write anything about a Camel,” he wrote, “is very hard, because he has such a great long crooked neck. And he also has two humps on him, except when he has only one; and they are to hold on by, when you fall off. He has no stommick, but only a pail of water inside of him, put so he can help himself easy. They fill it at the pump before he starts. His hair is bright red and blue and green; for Camels’ hair shawls have to be made of it. A camel is very much like a monkey, only he is made different. There is no more about the camel.”

Alice laughed, and laying the paper back with the others, she began to put them all in order again. Then she perceived that among them was one in print, with a great deal of large type in it, and having the word Programme on top. As her eye went rapidly down the page, she became more and more interested. She skipped the finer print of details, and read only such words as these:

GREAT OCCASION!

…………

KINDERGARTEN CELEBRATION!

…………

EXERCISES AND RECITALS.

…………

SPEECHES.

…………

PRESENCE OF ROYALTY.

…………

BISHOPS.

…………

MUSIC, POETRY, DRAMA.

…………

BANQUET,

“This must mean the Occasion I’ve heard so much about,” she said to herself. “Oh, I wonder where it is! Perhaps it is going on somewhere this very minute. If I only could get out of this room!”

She stood up on the platform and looked very searchingly along the walls to see if there was any other way of getting out, any window out of which she might perhaps climb, when she spied the outline of something that looked like a small door at the farthest corner of the room – a door exactly the color of the wall. Whether it had been there all the time or not, she did not stop to think.

CHAPTER X

THE GREAT OCCASION

It was really a door. As Alice approached she could hear music and voices, and could see a light gleaming through the keyhole. Full of curiosity, she knocked eagerly on the door her knuckles, and it flew open at once. The fish footman bowed to the ground, and she entered a large room that was lit up with rows of candles. Three droll-looking old fellows were standing in a conspicuous sort of balcony tuning up their fiddles, and a placard that hung on the balcony announced that they were “Loaned for the Occasion by King Cole.”

That it was truly a great occasion everything seemed to denote. Alice was just in time for it. There was a large door at the other end of the room wide open, and all the Wonderland people she knew, as well as some that she did not, were coming in and seating themselves. Upon the platform Kings and Bishops were taking their places, and the Court Poet was standing in a conspicuous attitude of melancholy grace.

There was a space left on the platform where the performances were to come off. The fiddlers were now fiddling with all their might, and everybody was talking at the top of their voices.

Alice found she was sitting next to the White Queen on the one side and the Hatter on the other. Instead of his sample hat he had put on a Turkish fez in honor of the event. It did not have a price label upon it, but some white threads were to be seen on a small unfaded square of the cloth, which made it look as if one had been recently taken off. He lifted his cap by the tassel and made a polite bow when he recognized Alice. On the bench behind her was the Mock Turtle, and next to him was the Gryphon, whom Alice was surprised to see, as he had so expressly said that he would not be there. He explained to Alice, when she turned round, that the Mock Turtle wouldn’t come without him, and that he “hated to disappoint the old chap. The Bishop was more fun than a circus, too,” he said. Everybody had a programme. Alice found she had brought the one she had in the schoolroom, but the curious part of it was that, on being compared, none of them were alike, and there was much discussion as to what really was going to happen.

The Duchess leaned over with a sort of society smile on her face, and told Alice how sweet she was looking tonight, and then, giving a little nudge and wink to the Red Queen, who sat next to her, she whispered something behind her fan, evidently about Alice, for they both laughed and looked at her. “But I don’t care a bit what they say,” she thought She looked round at the Hatter, who was dozing, with his fez tilted over almost to the end of his nose.

Presently a bell was rung sharply, and the music stopped. The White Bishop came forward and rapped on the floor with an umbrella. This proceeding did not have any effect upon the hilarious assembly, that appeared to have met there chiefly for its own amusement. The Bishop pounded as hard as he could several times without result, and the Gryphon, leaning over to speak to Alice, facetiously remarked that “he ought to have brought a gun along.”

Finally the King of Clubs arose in wrath and banged his sceptre on the back of the seat before him. “If this is a proivate amusement club,” he said, “and it looks vary much like it, then the mimbers of it had betther have stayed at home before they came.”

Alice had never noticed before how much the club spot upon cards is like a shamrock. The King looked very fierce, however, and his address had the effect of producing something like silence, though there was still some rustling and whispering going on.

“Ahem!” said the Bishop, coming forward, with a smile, and consulting some papers he had in his hand. “The first thing noticed in the programme of this pleasant and, I trust, profitable occasion is, I see, to be a toast. Where is the toast?”

“Please, sir,” began a very small pawn.

“Silence!” said the Bishop, sternly.

The pawn, who had been standing rather unsteadily on a broken base, fell down flat on his face.

“Silence! I repeat! Where is the toast? I said. Fetch it hither.”

“’Tain’t toasted yet!” called out a personage who was peeping through the crack of a door.

“The toast is the last thing,” said the Red Bishop. “It comes after the banquet. You’ve got the papers wrong side about.”

“Ha! So I perceive that I have,” said the White Bishop, in no wise embarrassed; “and upside down as well. I should have learned such simple facts myself shortly, however, by being made aware of the untimely end of these proceedings.”

“Well, then,” he began again, “the first thing that I note in the programme of this pleasant and, I trust, profitable occasion is a speech by the Red Bishop. That dignitary will now address the assembly – but briefly, please, briefly.”

The Red Bishop at once came forward and spoke very rapidly. “Myfriendsihavenothingtosay-andnowordstosayitin.” He then retreated, amidst a storm of applause from the audience.

“Well, we’re getting along; we’re getting on – slowly,” resumed the White Bishop, looking at his watch, and then putting it to his ear. “Now, what have we next? Next is mentioned that there is to be laughter, but the person to whom this part is assigned is not specified.” He paused, and after running his eye down the paper, said, “I see there is ‘Laughter’ referred to in several places, and also the words ‘Hear! Hear!’ frequently occur. I presume that they are stage directions, and need not engage our intention. The next item of interest is a drill exercise of the youngest class by their excellent teacher.”

A crowd of little pawns – red, white, and black – led by a teacher, now came in and took their places on the platform. They formed into line, and began to hop up and down, keeping step and time to a song they sang with sharp, thin, little voices. It was only one verse over and over again:

“We hop, hop, hop,

Then we stop, stop, stop,

Then we flop.”

The singing of each line was accompanied by the appropriate action. They hopped, they stopped, and then they all flopped, by falling face downward on the floor, immediately springing up again to do it all over and over. Then at some signal from the teacher they all left the platform, the Bishop saying, as they went, “Well done, my little friends!”

“And thus,” he continued, “are they taught what it is to hop, and to stop, and to flop, the same theory being applied to other branches of life. By this plan, at once instructive and amusing, they learn things without knowing them, which is the aim of all true education. I yield now to the gentle sway of Miss Heart, another excellent teacher.”

This teacher stepped briskly upon the platform with the stiff, jerky air of a mechanical doll; she was followed by a dejected-looking White Pawn.

“That teacher is the Ace of Hearts, I believe,” thought Alice, looking at the proceedings with great interest.

“I have been requested—” said the teacher, in a low whisper.

“Louder! Louder!” shouted several voices.

“I have been requested,” she began again, this time in a high, squeaky voice, “to exhibit an object-lesson in its inception, growth, and finish. I am directed to be as brief as possible.”

Two larger pawns now came in with a small table, which they placed before her, and then took their departure. The White Pawn stood opposite to her, with his back to the company.

“What is this, Jemmy?” she said, placing a small object on the table. “Quick now!”

“That’s a nammon” said Jemmy, though it really was an almond.

“Right!” said the teacher. “Now, where does it come from?”

“Outer a paper bag,” said Jemmy, after a minute or two of deep reflection.

“Observe,” said Miss Heart, addressing the audience, “the rapid awakening of thought. And how was it made, Jemmy?”

“I s’pect it growed!” said Jemmy, after another pause. He was visibly waking up now, and she looked towards the audience with a nod, in order to call attention to the fact,

“Now,” she said, placing another thing on the table, “you don’t know what this is. It’s not an ammon. It’s an ammonite. Where does it come from?”

“Outer a pape—” began Jemmy.

“Think again,” interrupted Miss Heart. “It’s an Object, Jemmy. Where does it come from?”

“Offer the shelf where the Objic’s is,” answered Jemmy, with a look of triumph.

“Right. And how was it made?”

“I s’pect it didn’t grow – not this time!” said Jemmy, whose mind seemed to be as wide awake now as could be desired. He had seized on the “ammon,” but Miss Heart took it away from him.

“What’s the difference between ’em?” she asked, laying it beside the Object.

“That one’s bigger’n the other,” he said, pointing to the ammonite.

“Well, then, Jemmy,” said the teacher, “now I hope you know all about an ammonite. So we’ll put it back with the Objects, now. But you may have the ammon. What will you do with it?”

“Scraunch it open and eat it,” replied Jemmy, promptly.

The two pawns came and took away the table; the lesson was now over. As they left the platform Jemmy, who was already munching the almond, was heard to ask, “Say, could yer eat that ammonite?”

The Bishop was instantly in his place again. He had just been having a drink of water, or something, and was wiping his mouth. “You have now, my friends,” he began, “seen education at its fountain-head. We have beheld the harmless wisdom of the serpent joined to the wings of the dove. More! We have seen Science herself, in the form of a simple ammonite, making a lodging-place in the breast of a hitherto innocent pawn. What more can we ask? But instructive and pertinent as our reflections are, we must not allow our young friends to consume the entire evening. Suffice to say that by such gentle meanderings of truth we store the mind with facts – facts, those ornaments of society and the solace of long winter evenings. Now, if any person would like at this juncture to ask a question, it will be in order for him or her to do so.”

“What do they do with them facts on cold winter evenings?” the Gryphon promptly rose to inquire.

There was silence for several minutes.

“Why is there no answer?” asked the King of Hearts.

“Why should there be any, your majesty?” returned the Bishop.

“I understood it was said that questions might be asked,” said the King.

“They might, undoubtedly,” replied the Bishop; “but it was not said they might be answered. But this is no time for cabalistic remarks, my friends. We arrive at the next Performance on the Programme, which I announce as ‘The Poem,’ – that little word, but now vast indeed to the Poet himself. He is but a wild, sad thing, our Poet, yet has he eagerly promised to lay aside the mantle of his gloom for this occasion only and array himself in lighter plumes. I gracefully retire in his favor.”

He looked at his watch as he gracefiilly retired, and they heard him remark to the Poet, in a tone anything but respectful, “Cut that short, Mr. Ace, please.”

The Poet stepped forward with a curious grimace that was meant to express haughty scorn half hidden by feigned cheerfulness. He bowed very slightly to the audience as he unrolled his Poem.

Alice suddenly felt one of those uncontrollable impulses to laugh that sometimes overcome young people, and when the Gryphon looked at her with a facetious wink, it was too much; she gave way to a burst of laughter that it was rather surprising nobody seemed to notice. Somewhat ashamed of such conduct, however, she tried her best to stop, and managed to listen in silence to the Poet’s verses, without venturing to look up a single time, however, for fear of another attack of merriment. The expression on the Poet’s face was certainly irresistible, and it was prudent in Alice to refrain from looking at him. His Poem was called “The Bitter, Bitter Truth;” he made an impressive pause after announcing the title, and finally began:

“Ah Me! The world is Black as Ink;

And Ruin is standing on the Brink!

And Things are getting Worse and Worse,

Because they will not listen to my Verse.

There’s Kings that steal

The people’s barley-meal

(I know myself of such);

And lumps of fat they likewise take,

And plums, – and soggy pudding make,

Whereof they eat too much.

And Queens that ought to grieve,

And hold such pranks in scorn,

Do slice the clammy bits they leave,

And fry them up next morn.

In Counting-Houses sly, the while,

The Kings are counting out

The Money from a goodly pile

They’ve stolen, I have no doubt

And Queens know not how ill it looks

When they turn into pastry cooks,

With aprons on like kitchen-maids;

And whether they are Queens of Spades

Or Queens of Diamonds, or of Hearts,

Let their knaves steal their tarts.

And that unwholesome pie,

With crusts of pocketfuls of rye,—

Let them steal that, the grewsome thing!

A pretty dish! And set before a King

By some unseemly Queen.

Only a Cat

Could eat a choky pie like that;

I saw the Dog turn up his nose in scorn,—

The Dog tossed by the Cow with crumpled horn.

It was the self-same Queen

Who, from a kitchen plate,

Was eating bread and honey seen,

Hard by the kitchen grate!

I’d be the maid with nipped-off nose

Rather than Royalty like those;

I’d rather be the Maiden all forlorn,

Married unto the Man that tattered was, and torn.

And who would want to be

That roly-poly old King Cole,

With screechy, scrawchy fiddlers three

And maudlin pipe and bowl?

I’d rather be the Priest that shaven was, and shorn.

Waked by the Cock that crow-ed in the morn!

Yet no one gives a thought to me,

A Poet, – weeping Bitterly!”

This Poem was greeted with uproarious laughter and cheers. Hands were clapped, handkerchiefs waved, boots, and sticks, and umbrellas thumped on the floor. There were even yells, and screeches, and howls of approval, and the applause lasted so long that the Poet was obliged to consider it as an encore, to which he responded at last by reciting again the last two lines in a very doleful voice. There was a great deal of mirth, especially among the Royal Personages present. Although they were of one mind as to the justice of the Poet’s scathing accusations, they seemed to think it the best part of the fun.

“So true, you know,” said the Duchess, who had laughed most of all, and took upon herself quite the airs of a queen.

The Queen of Hearts rose from her seat, and said, in a commanding tone, “Saucy rogue! Off with his head!” But there was a grim smile on her majesty’s countenance; it was well understood that the Ace of Spades was a favorite at the Card Court.

The Poet gave no sign of having even heard her sentence. All throughout the applause he stood in a fine dejected attitude, with his arms crossed, and as much scorn on his countenance as it was possible for him to get there. The White King was the only one of all the Royal Personages who had nothing to say. Alice had noticed several times during the exercises that he had seemed very drowsy, nodding his head, and then suddenly bracing himself up with the wide-awake air of a very sleepy person. He was so sound asleep now that not even the noisy applause had disturbed him, and Alice thought it was rather fortunate. The poem that he was to recite – the one that had such a way of going to his head – had not been altered as far as she knew, and the prospect of his getting into a tantrum over it on the platform was rather distressing. She hoped no one would wake him up when his turn came.

The Bishop now came forward again, this time with a strangely crestfallen air. He had a book that Alice saw at once was not his precious Collection; it was a much thinner volume, bound in red. He turned over the leaves with a very disheartened air, and at last he said, keeping the book open at a place he had found—

“Ladies and Gentlemen – Life is not all sunshine. Sometimes it is even thunder and lightning, as in the present case. I beg leave to announce to you that the worm has entered the bud. My immortal Work, the only Collection resembling it in the world, perhaps, I may also add, in this or any country – I allude, alas, to my ‘Collection of Poems Suitable – ’”

Here he stopped, and looked round furtively at the White King, who was now, however, audibly as well as visibly asleep, and then he went on in a louder voice – “Suitable, I repeat, for ALL Occasions. Being laid aside a moment to imbibe a harmless cup of tea, the book, my friends, was not a Cheshire cat, and could not have disappeared without hands. I had hoped for the pleasure of dripping those drops of moral wisdom upon your heads, like honey from the honey-comb, but I am forced to supply the omission I offer you by a vacuum, filled by a selection from the pages of my unfortunate Brother, who, not being able to collect himself (you notice that he has not yet even found his own head), has no more skill in collecting Poems than a common hen, seen to be picking hither and thither after trivial insects. This Twaddle I am about to give you is by Royal Request only.

“DER LEEDLE JOHANN SCHMAUS.

Mein son, der ist his vater’s joy;

Mein lofely Johann Schmaus;

I vish you see my leedle boy

Ven you come in mein House.

He haf so many leedle tricks

Vot no von find him out.

He fill dat hole mit shtones und shticks.

Dot shtop das Wasser-shpout.

He shteal mein Wurst – was dat you call?

Mein sausage – from der shelluf;

He shteal his Mutter’s cookies all;

He say he help himselluf.

He get ein leedle Nail von day.

He puts dot in mein shoe;

Ach, Himmel! Was ist das, I say,

Das shtick me troo and troo?

I tells not all dem tricks by mir,—

Dat’s too moch pens and inks;

Ach! bot dat leedle boy was dear

As vot you cannot tinks!

Der neighbor in der house abof,

Dey calls him Johnny Dutch;

Some time dey say dey tinks I lofe

Mein leedle boy too much.”

There was much laughter and applause, and some attempt at an encore, which was sternly frowned upon by the Bishop. He had to resort to his umbrella again to restore order, but as this only had the effect of seeming to be part of the noisy demonstrations of the audience, it rather increased the hilarity than otherwise.

The King of Clubs again came to the rescue with his voice and sceptre. “If ye go on the loike of this,” he said, “we’ll be ivery wan of us home in our beds be the time we’ll be getting to the banquet-table this night.” This had the effect of restoring order, and even silence, at once.

The Bishop, his unwelcome task over, now seemed quite himself again. With a complacent smile and bow, as though it were his first appearance for the evening, he said, “My friends, for friends I may, indeed, call you – tried and trusty friends – at last your patience is about to be rewarded. The great event of the evening is now close at hand, which, facetiously alluding to myself, I shall call

“THE WHITE BISHOP’S SPEECH

“My Friends – When an emotional and at the same time psychological revulsion of mind checks at its source the accustomed routine of educational decorum; when, in fact, truth, rolling in thunder-tones from the well-spring of nations, obscures and at the same time eliminates—”

Here the King of Hearts rose from his seat and called out, in a loud voice, “One moment, please!”

“How much is there of that?” he asked, as soon as the Bishop had reluctantly stopped.

“I hardly know, your majesty,” answered the Bishop, in a decidedly grumpy voice.

“Well, find out, please!”

There was a rustling of paper for a minute or two while the Bishop was finding out.

“There are not more than about seventy-five pages, your majesty,” he said, at last, “but it is my intention to leave out two, exactly in the middle.”

“Well, very good,” said the King of Hearts. “Leave them out, by all means. But there has been some mention made of a Banquet; pray where does that come in?”

“The Banquet, sire,” said the Bishop, turning the Programme over, “is on the other side.”

“Let it be put on this side, then,” commanded the King, “and let it take place at once.”

“I hardly think—” began the Bishop.

“The Banquet is taking place this very minute,” said the March Hare, suddenly appearing on the scene. He had on a cook’s cap and apron, and carried a long ladle. “There’s plum-cake, and white bread and brown, and sardines, and—”

But everybody was getting up with one accord; and with the most astonishing swiftness the whole audience crowded out the door, leaving Alice, who could not make up her mind so suddenly on any subject, sitting alone in an empty room. The performances she had reason to think were not more than half over. Her own Programme had disappeared, so she took up a paper left on the seat next to her that she supposed was the one belonging to the White Queen. To her surprise she found that this paper was not a Programme at all, but a Menu card of the Banquet. It was full of such names as these:

Potage de rien du tout.

Pommes de terre sans culottes.

Réchauffée de je ne sais quoi.

Badinage à la gamin de Paris.

Charlotte ruse de guerre.

Ragoût à la chiffonnière.

(Entre nous.)

Alice could not make anything out of this at all, excepting that the things did not sound very tempting. R. S. V. P. was at the bottom of the Menu, and Alice smiled, as she happened to know what that meant. She rose from her seat and went to the open door, considering whether it would be worth while to try to follow the party. Nothing was to be seen of them, however, nor was there a sound to indicate even the direction in which they had gone.

“But I don’t care for their old Banquet,” she said to herself, “even if I could find it.”

She was indeed quite glad, on the whole, to find herself alone, and she went on her way, taking a pathway that led from the door, and that soon brought her out into the road again.

CHAPTER XI

THE TWEEDLES

It was a charming day. It did not occur to Alice to wonder what had become of the darkness; and as to the Banquet, she entirely forgot all about it. She was looking in at a gateway by the roadside that seemed to open into some beautifully kept park grounds, and hesitating as to whether she ought to enter them, when she saw no less a personage than the Queen of Hearts standing on the lawn and looking through her hands, which she held up to her eyes after the manner of opera-glasses.

“Come here, child,” she called out to Alice, without turning her head, “and see if your eyes can’t see better than mine. I believe this is Mr. Tweedle got back already. He’s been away, you know.”

“Oh, do you mean Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum?” said Alice, approaching; “and can you see them from here?”

“See him, you mean,” corrected the Queen. “You talk as if there were two of him.”

“Why, there are two of them!” said Alice.

“What do you mean? Off with your head!” cried the Queen of Hearts, with a savage frown.

“But, your majesty,” Alice persisted, “everybody knows there are two Tweedles – why, there they are now!”

Across a long stretch of meadow that reached to the foot of a little hill, Alice was sure she saw two short, plump figures standing side by side. It was a long way off, and they were very small, but she thought she could not be mistaken.

“Now, roll up your hands, and look at them as I’m doing,” said the Queen.

Alice did so, and the two figures seemed to join together and grow into one. She could see this figure quite plainly; it was certainly one of the Tweedles, but only one. She stood looking alternately in both ways for some minutes without speaking, and at last she said, “Why, it’s the strangest thing! It’s just like a stereoscope!”

“Exactly,” said the Queen, “if you mean by that that there’s only one Tweedle. Nobody but you ever called it such a name. But your head comes off all the same, just as soon as I can get anybody to do it.”

Alice walked on towards the meadow, with the Queen following her.

“Well, but,” persisted Alice, not very much concerned about her head, “I thought they once agreed to have a battle, and then But look at all these rattles on the ground here!”

Strown about on the grass were a number of the wooden toys that children call watchmen’s rattles, and there were also two or three babies’ rattles made of basket-work.

“Those are rattlesnakes’ rattles,” said the Queen.

“What nonsense!” cried Alice. “Rattlesnakes don’t have that kind of rattles!”

“They can have any sort they choose, I suppose!” replied the Queen, in an angry voice. “By the way, I will send some one after your head.”

Alice was so interested in Tweedle Dum, or Tweedle Dee (“I don’t know which it is,” she thought), that she hardly noticed that the Queen had departed. She decided at once that she would follow a path that she saw went straight on across the meadow, and find out all about the Tweedles if she could.

It seemed a very short walk, for in a few minutes she found herself going straight in at the door of a little house.

There was a very small tea-table in the room, and seated before it on a little chair was one of the Tweedles, with a mug in his hand. He looked up at her for a moment without showing any surprise, and then went on drinking. The table was set with dolls’ tea-things; there were tiny dishes of jam and biscuits and cakes, and Tweedle was evidently having his supper.

“Come in, or else get out; but don’t stand there in my light,” he said, presently.

“Will you please tell me who you are?” Alice asked.

“I’m Tweedle,” he said, watching her very closely as she came in and took the only empty chair in the room, a seat opposite to him at the table. He immediately removed the jam and cakes to his own side of the table, out of her reach as he thought.

“I shall want all these myself,” he said.

“I don’t want any, I’m sure,” said Alice. “You’re not very polite, certainly.”

“I know it,” said Tweedle; “but this is my supper; contrariwise, if it was yours, I’d ask you to take some. But are you really sure you don’t want any?”

“Really and truly,” answered Alice.

“Well, then – thanks,” he said, putting the dishes back, “for you see I’m rather crowded here. And now, if there’s anything you want that’s not on the table, do ring for it.”

“Will the maid bring it?” asked Alice.

“No,” replied Tweedle, “I expect not. I have no maid. Contrariwise, if you don’t want anything, what do you sit down to the table for? I didn’t invite you, and I don’t mean to.”

“There’s no other seat in the room,” replied Alice; “but I’ll go away, I’m sure, if you really don’t want me.”

“I really don’t,” answered Tweedle, “nohow.”

There was nothing else to do after this but to go at once; and though Alice had a great mind to be vexed, she reflected that she had been rather rude herself in coming into his house in such a very unexpected manner.

“I shall be coming out for a bit of a walk myself when I’ve done supper,” he called after her, as she went out the door.

The footpath led round the side of the house and went straight up the hill behind it. She had not gone far before she heard Tweedle coming up the hill, panting and puffing like a small engine; and he called to her to wait. He had a heavy umbrella with him.

“You might have had a little of that jam, after all; it was uncommon nasty and sticky!” he said, as soon as he could speak.

“Couldn’t you eat it all yourself?” she asked.

“No, I couldn’t, nohow,” he answered. “I knew you wanted it, too, all the time.”

“You’re the rudest person I’ve seen here!” said Alice.

“I dare say I am,” he replied. “I hope so. My brother tries to be ruder than I am, but he can’t be, nohow.”

“Oh, that’s what I want to ask you!” she cried, forgetting all about his rudeness. “Then there are really and truly two of you after all. And so the Queen of Hearts was wrong?”

“No, she was right,” he contradicted; “there is only one of us – one of him and one of me. We used to go together so much that we got mistaken for two.”

This was not very clear to Alice, but she asked, “And don’t you go together any more?”

“No, indeed,” replied Tweedle, decisively.

“Why not?” she asked.

Tweedle was rather slow in replying, but at last he muttered, in an angry voice, “Of all the nasty, selfish, greedy things—” and then stopped as if overcome by some recollection.

“I dare say you were just as bad,” said Alice.

“So I was,” said Tweedle; “but so was he.”

“You haven’t got your name on your collar, I see,” said Alice, changing the subject. “Which one are you?”

“Oh, those names were just fancy. If you see me first, then I’m Dee; contrariwise, if you see him first, he’s Dum. You can see us from the top of this hill. He lives one side and I live t’other; or, I live one side and he lives t’other. It’s just as it happens, whatever.”

“I saw one of you a little while ago,” Alice remarked.

“Did you?” asked Tweedle. “Which one?”

“That’s what I don’t know,” said Alice. “At first I thought it was both of you.”

“If you don’t know which one you saw, you can’t tell which one I am,” he said, “nohow.”

Alice was decidedly puzzled; she kept thinking about it until they came to the top of the hill, without understanding it any better. They walked on a few steps and came to where they could look down on the other side of the hill, and there she saw a little house at the bottom exactly like the one which they had just left, and which was now out of sight. There was no sign of the other Tweedle, however. Alice said she had hoped they might see him, too.

“Oh, we don’t want to see him,” said Tweedle. “He’s a very deserving fellow, he is.”

“Is he?” said Alice. “I thought you didn’t like him. What makes you say he’s deserving, all of a sudden?”

“Because he is,” Tweedle replied. “He deserves a dozen good whacks; and he’ll get ’em, too, if we ever fight again.” And he went “Grr-r-r-r-rr,” with a snarling gesture, at the thought of his brother.

“There must be two of them,” Alice said to herself, with conviction.

“He’s in bed now,” said Tweedle. “He always goes to bed when I’m up. Contrariwise, just as I get snugly tucked up, house and all, out he comes.”

“That’s something like the little man and woman in the barometer that we have,” Alice said. “The woman goes in when it rains.”

“There you’re wrong,” said Tweedle. “He goes in when it rains, because he hasn’t any umbrella.”

Here Tweedle looked at his umbrella with great complacency, and pretty soon he raised it over his head, and spent a few minutes in admiring it. There was a small rustic seat by the side of the pathway here on the hill, just large enough for two, and Tweedle sat down upon it.

“Come under this umbrella,” he said, “and I’ll tell you the rest of that poetry.”

“Oh, that will be delightful!” exclaimed Alice, taking a seat. “But you haven’t told me any poetry yet.”

“Haven’t I?” said Tweedle; “that’s very curious. I don’t understand it. For you’ve heard ‘The Walrus and the Carpenter,’ I’m sure.”

“Yes,” said Alice, “but you didn’t say it to me, and it wasn’t I who heard you, and—” She was getting almost as mixed up as the Wonderland people, but Tweedle seemed to understand.

“Just as I thought,” he interrupted her. “The other one of me said it to the other one of you.”

“Was there any more of that?” she asked.

“There wasn’t then,” he replied, “because we didn’t know any more. But we know nearly all of it now. What was the last you heard?”

Alice was quite prepared for examination in Wonderland literature. She repeated the lines:

“Only the shells were left, because

They’d eaten every one.”

“That ain’t right, nohow,” said Tweedle.

“Of course not,” Alice assented. “It isn’t right to deceive even oysters, like that.”

“I mean the verse isn’t right,” he said. “You’ve got it all wrong. But no matter; have it so if you like. This is the way it goes on:

“They flung the oyster-shells away

As far as eye could reach;

And then they both went back again

Along the briny beach.

The Carpenter right sadly gazed

Upon the neighboring shore:

The Walrus did not care a bit;

He wished he had some more.

‘How many do you think,’ he said,

‘Could we have had apiece?’

‘Too many,’ said the Carpenter;

‘And here comes the police.’

The Walrus laughed a scornful laugh.

‘Well, let them come!’ said he.

Yet still he flung their knife away

Into the deepest sea.

They walked together hand in hand,

As harmless as they could;

They gazed upon the distant ships:

It did no sort of good.

They took the Carpenter along

And put him into prison;

And this was only right, because

Those oysters weren’t his’n.

The Walrus, too, was taken off;

They put him in the Zoo;

They kept him in a little pond

Exposed to public view.

He sometimes wished he could get off

To frolic in the sea;

He often wished that he had let

Those little fellows be.”

“Oh,” Alice exclaimed, as soon as he had finished, “how perfectly splendid, wasn’t it?”

“Well, no, not splendid, I should say,” said Tweedle. “Nohow.”

“Well, but it served them right,” said Alice.

“The Carpenter was a relation of mine,” he observed.

“Was he? Really?” she asked, in surprise.

“Yes, he was,” answered Tweedle, “and the Walrus was my uncle.”

“I don’t believe you at all,” said Alice, detecting a mischievous look on Tweedle’s face.

“I don’t care,” replied Tweedle. “Have him for your uncle, then, if you like. It suits me just the same.”

“You said you knew nearly all of that poem,” said Alice, not noticing his last remark. “Is there any more of it?”

“Yes,” answered Tweedle. “The Carpenter soon got out of prison, and then he got the Walrus away, too, and so they both went down to the seashore and got some more oysters.”

“Oh, dear!” cried Alice. “Why, I thought they were both so sorry about it.”

“Well, so they were. But oysters are very good. I wish I could get some, I know. But how sleepy I am!” he said, with a yawn. “I don’t want to talk to you any more.”

He suddenly rose from his seat, and shutting his umbrella, he turned and ran back down the hill – very awkwardly, but at a pace so rapid that Alice could not keep up with him. By the time she had reached his house he had gone in, and he shut the door in her face.

“What am I to do?” she asked, as he appeared at the window.

“Just what you like,” he said, shutting the window and pulling down a blind.

Alice had grown accustomed to the abrupt manners most of the Wonderland people had, but Tweedle was certainly the very rudest of them all. He was very diverting, though, and she wished she could see more of him. She walked slowly up to the top of the hill again, and then seeing at a glance that the window of the other house was now open, she concluded to go down and make a visit to the other Tweedle, “For there isn’t the least doubt about there being two of them,” she said to herself. “I wonder what the Queen of Hearts could have meant.”

The path leading down to his house was exactly like the other, and went round to the front door just as that did. She found herself entering at the door in the same abrupt manner in which she had entered the first house. There was precisely the same tea-table spread, and Alice could hardly believe it was another Tweedle, so exactly like the first one was the figure seated in the little chair with a mug in his hand. He looked up at her for a moment without showing any surprise, and then went on drinking.

“Come in, or else get out; but don’t stand there in my light,” he said, presently.

“Will you please tell me who you are?” Alice asked.

“I’m Tweedle,” he said, watching her very closely as she came in and took the only empty chair in the room, a seat opposite to him at the table. He immediately removed the jam and cakes to his own side of the table, out of her reach as he thought.

“I shall want all these myself,” he said. “I don’t want any, I’m sure,” said Alice. “You’re not very polite, certainly.”

“I know it,” said Tweedle; “but this is my supper; contrariwise, if it was yours, I’d ask you to take some. But are you really sure you don’t want any?”

“Really and truly,” answered Alice.

“Well, then – thanks,” he said, putting the dishes back, “for you see I’m rather crowded here. And now, if there’s anything you want that’s not on the table, do ring for it.”

“Will the maid—”

Here she suddenly became aware that exactly the same scene was going on between them; that even she herself was saying the same things she had said before, and she was overcome by a sense of bewilderment. Her eye fell, too, on the umbrella in the corner, just as she remembered seeing it in the other Tweedle’s house.

“Well, I can’t stand this,” she said, after pausing for a moment to think it over; and just as this Tweedle was saying, “No, I expect not. I have no maid,” she turned, and left the house at once, walking away as quickly as she could, without noticing whither she was going.

“Of all the curious things I’ve seen yet,” she exclaimed to herself, without finishing the sentence. “And now I shall never know which was which, and I won’t ever be sure whether there were two of them or not, after all!”

CHAPTER XII

THE PAGEANT

For here, on stopping to look round her, she saw that she had come to a very different sort of country, and had entirely lost sight of the little house and its surroundings, and even of the pathway that led from it, so that she could not have found her way back to it. There was no path in the grassy woodland around her, and she walked on and on among the trees, the landscape slowly changing until it grew to be that of a well-kept park, with old trees in groups, and beautiful deer around them feeding on the soft grass. She walked slowly for fear of disturbing them, but they were very tame, and some of them came up and thrust their noses in her hands. It became more and more charming every moment; never in her life had Alice seen anything so beautiful. Suddenly she came out between two groups of dark foliage into an open space, and beyond this space was a high, close hedge. A wide opening in this hedge made a gateway, the pillars on each side of which were Castles, one of them Red, the other White. Through this gateway could be seen the most wonderful garden, with myriads of flowers, and bright-colored birds, and marvelous fountains sparkling in the sun.

The Castles had deep Gothic doorways, and just at the entrance of the White one stood a White horse that Alice recognized at once as the one belonging to the White Knight, though the Knight was not there. At the other doorway was a Red Knight on his horse, standing, as if on guard, in a stiff attitude, with his helmet on. He looked rather solemn, and seemed to take no notice of Alice, but she summoned courage enough to approach him.

“May I go into that beautiful garden?” she asked.

“No, not just now,” he said, in a decided but not very stern voice. “You mustn’t go in there without special permission, because the royal family are in residence. But perhaps you can get permission.”

“I know some of the Kings and Queens quite well,” she said. “I’ll ask them as soon as I see any of them. Do they come in and out of this gate?”

“No. The Kings and Queens you’ve seen are not the same ones who live in the ivory palace that is in these grounds. I’m only an outside gatekeeper myself, and I don’t go in except I’m invited. There’s another gateway inside there, with pearl and ivory castles; and the Knights there are carved out of ivory. The Kings and Queens have precious stones in them.”

“How very grand and proud they must be!” Alice said, thinking aloud.

“No, indeed,” the Knight replied, quickly. “They’re very kind and good. They’re very glad to have any one come into their beautiful grounds, if they’re sure that it’s somebody who won’t do any mischief there.”

“The White Knight isn’t on his horse,” Alice remarked, after a long pause.

“Oh, have you made his acquaintance already?” he asked.

Alice said that she had, and that she liked him very much.

“Well, he’s a rather good sort, even if there is a little nonsense about him. He wouldn’t hurt a fly. And he can fight well enough when he has a chance, too. And then there’s the Red Bishops. Have you seen either of them?”

“I saw the one that has no head,” Alice replied. “I thought he had a great deal of sense, and I was very sorry about his head.”

“Well, then,” he said, dismounting and taking off his helmet so that he could talk better, “you’ll be very glad. That Bishop is a great friend of mine, and I’ve been away a long time on my trusty steed, up and down the land, searching for his head. And I’ve found it. I’ve only just got back with it.”

“Oh,” said Alice, delighted, “does he know you’ve got it?”

“Not yet. He don’t even know I went for it, because I thought maybe I wouldn’t get it, and then he would be disappointed. I found it not so very far from the spot where he lost it, in a place where I’d looked for it twenty times before.”

“Will it make any difference in him?” Alice asked. “Will he be like the White Bishop?”

The Red Knight laughed. “Not a bit of it. Their heads don’t make any difference,” said he, repeating what the Red Queen had said. “Only it makes them look much better. And I’m very glad that I’ve happened to come back with the head in time for today, because there’s going to be a Pageant, and he will be glad to have his head then, so as to look like other people. I hope you’ll see him in the Pageant with his head on.”

“Oh, how very, very much I should like to see the Pageant!” cried Alice, much impressed by the name. “Will you please tell me what it is, and how I could get there?”

“It’s a sort of procession,” he said, “that we have every year. All the Kings and Queens and their courts, and foreign guests from other kingdoms, have a grand march with all the magnificence they can get. They will wind in and out through all these groups of trees, around and around, and then when they’re all collected they will march through the forest until they come to the great Royal Sport Grounds, where there will be games and tournaments for two or three weeks. Perhaps you’d like to be in the Pageant yourself? I think I could manage it. There’s a tame white pony wandering about here somewhere; you may ride on him if you like.”

Alice was silent. She could not find any words to express her rapture, but the Knight seemed to take it for granted.

“Well, then,” he said, “when you hear a horn blowing through the wood, just come here to this gate and wait until you see me.”

“By the way,” he continued, “I ought to be off now. It won’t be’ long before the Pageant begins, and I ought to be going this very minute, to be in time to give the Bishop his head. How I wish the White Knight would come back! He went to get his helmet mended.”

“Oh, must you wait for him?” asked Alice, anxiously.

“Yes. One of us, at least, must be always here on guard, excepting when we’re fighting or else in a procession, and then the Gryphons come. We have to watch the Ivory Gardens, you know.”

“Couldn’t you get the Gryphons?” she said.

“No; they never come unless they hear the horn blowing,” he answered. “I don’t know what I shall do!”

“I wish I could watch in your place,” Alice said. “But I suppose, of course—”

“That’s a capital idea,” he interrupted. “I believe you could well enough. I can get the white pony for you at once, and then you’ll only have to give me your high word of honor that you’ll stay here until the White Knight comes, and that you’ll not let anybody pass these gates.”

“Well!” cried Alice, joyfully.

The Knight set off immediately, and in a few minutes came back leading a very tame white pony. He helped Alice to mount, and placed her in exactly the position she must keep, and then put a sword in her hand.

“Now,” he said, “you’ll be all ready for the Pageant; besides, I won’t be gone very long even if the White Knight don’t come; but I expect he will. I wouldn’t go if it weren’t so very important. You’re not afraid, are you?”

“Oh, no indeed!” Alice cried; and the Knight turned to go, looking back to wave his hand. She saw that he had a small box tied on the saddle behind him; no doubt it contained the Bishop’s head, she thought.

The moment after, she was alone in that beautiful solitude, seeming to make part of it, so still was her pony and so motionless did she feel obliged to keep herself.

“I never heard of anybody else in the whole world having such a glorious adventure as this,” she thought. Her mind went over all the scenes of her everyday life. She remembered even the conversation with her mother the evening before, and her talk with Tom about the wedding-cake, and the new door in her chamber. How long ago that all seemed! The light and shade of the charmed landscape lay around her; she wished she dared turn her pony’s head so that she could look into the palace gardens; but she could at least hear the birds singing and the splashing of the fountains. She could not have told how long she stood thus as in an entrancing dream, when a slight noise on one side made her turn her head.

The White Knight was there, sitting on his horse looking towards her. He had his helmet on, which made him look quite unlike himself.

Alice explained to him how she had come to be there instead of the Red Knight, and he said that he had supposed that was the way of it.

“I’m very glad to see you again,” he added. “I’m sorry I couldn’t have come sooner, but the man had my helmet, you see, and I couldn’t come without it. I had tried to mend it myself, and that only made it worse; so that’s why it took him so long. You can go now, if you like.”

“Oh, it has been delightful!” she answered. “I think I should like to stay until the Red Knight comes back.”

“I see you have a fine crown on your head now; so I suppose you feel like a queen,” he said.

Alice had entirely forgotten the crown that the White Queen had so recklessly given her, and indeed thought that she must have lost it directly afterwards, for she was quite sure that it was not on her head at the great Kindergarten Occasion. But now it had somehow come back again.

“I don’t think,” she said, in answer to the White Knight, “that you could feel like a queen, unless you really were one.”

Still, she was very glad now that she would have a crown to wear at the Pageant. She looked down at her everyday dress, and wished very much that some fairy godmother were there to change it into shining silk.

“Do you think it will be much longer before the Pageant begins?” she asked.

“No; they are preparing now,” he said. “Don’t you see them gathering in the wood yonder?”

Alice changed the position of her pony a little so that she could see better into the woods, and here and there through the trees she could see gleaming figures of Kings and Queens and Knights appear in openings through the foliage.

“I don’t remember ever seeing any of these before,” she said, after watching them for some time.

“There are a great many strangers come,” he said; “new ones every year; whole sets of chess and families of cards that we don’t know ourselves. I’m always glad when it’s over.”

“Do the carved ivory ones come?”

“Oh, never! They never leave their own gardens. But here come all our people, and now we must begin to form into line.”

Alice was quite excited. The Red Knight was approaching; the two Bishops that she knew were just behind him, and they all soon came up. The Red Bishop had on his newly-found head, and he gave a merry smile when he saw Alice, but there was no time to say anything. The others were all coming up; she was pleased to see that the Red King had had his feet restored to him, and was walking in a very dignified manner. Already they were forming into a procession, walking two and two. A horn was sounding through the wood, and then Alice saw two Gryphons come up and take the places of the two Knights at the castle doorways; they were so exactly alike that she could not tell which of them was her old friend. Although Alice was so delighted to be in the procession, she wished she could be standing down under one of the trees at the same time, so that she could see them all go by.

But it was time for her to take her place, which was just after the Kings and Queens and Bishops. The White Rabbit in his herald’s dress came and took a place by her side; he had a most serious and important air. It was much too solemn an occasion for any exchange of greeting, and he did not even look at Alice. Then, as the Red Knight had said, they all began to wind slowly round and round among the groups of trees, other parts of the procession coming up continually from the distance and joining themselves wherever they could find a place in the long Pageant.

It got more and more imposing as they went on. Very soon the blowing of the horn of summons changed into the most ravishing music, and gold and jewels began to gleam on the royal personages. Alice found that her plain frock was slowly changing into a magnificent white robe embroidered with golden flowers, and the Knights behind her were transformed with shining armor and waving plumes. The Bishops, too, were in splendid embroidered robes, and had gold and silver inlaid mitres. It was most wonderful. Every now and then they stopped for a few minutes to allow spaces in the ranks behind them to close up; and when the procession was entirely formed, the King in front gave a signal, and they all turned slowly into a dark forest. Then some voices before them began a strange song that blended with the music, and when they stopped, voices behind took up the song in a different key. Alice noticed that the Bishops before her were singing, too, in a very low voice. The forest path seemed to be like a great cathedral, with long shafts of sunlight coming through the high leafy windows here and there between the trees, and making the gems and gold suddenly flash in the darkness.

As the Pageant went on Alice thought that gradually they were moving more and more slowly, so that it seemed to take them a long while to reach a small square pond that she could see by the side of the road just before them. It shone clear and still in the dim woods. When they came to the edge of it she could see, just as in a looking-glass, the reflections of the trees in it, and part of the Pageant. She leaned over a little to see if she could not catch the image of herself on the pony, and just at this minute – Alice could hardly tell how it happened, for she was sure she had not moved upon her seat – she began slowly sliding off the pony’s back. She saw the Knights come forward and stretch out their arms to help her, but she kept on sliding and sliding, trying all the time as hard as she could to hold on, until she fell gently into the pond.

All the Pageant had vanished. She rubbed her eyes and looked around, and could not imagine what sort of place she had come into. At first she thought the shining pond was still there; out gradually it became plain that the light was only from a large looking-glass, with a mantel-piece below it. There was a fire burning in the grate, and a lamp turned quite low on the center-table. Suddenly, as her eyes became accustomed to the light, she saw that it was their own drawing-room, and that she was sitting on the floor just at the foot of the large sofa, from which she seemed to have fallen along with all the cushions. She gave a little cry of surprise, and instantly her mother, who had been sitting in the library close by, came in.

“Alice, my dear child, what is the matter?” she asked in some alarm.

“Why, I don’t know,” said Alice, “only I’ve had the most wonderful time!”

“You must have been walking in your sleep, my dear,” her mother said. And then, fearing that Alice might feel rather frightened, she added, smiling, “I used to do that myself when I was young, but I never knew such a thing to happen to you before. Come, I will go up with you; it is eleven o’clock. You shall tell us all about your dream in the morning.”

So Alice was very soon tucked up in bed once more, with another good-night from her mother, and was soon asleep again. Fragments of her strange adventures haunted her sleep all through the rest of the night; some of the scenes she seemed to see over again, and the old characters appeared before her in new combinations. But it was only in the full sunlight of the morning, when she was wide awake in her own little room where there was no new door now to be seen, that she realized the whole significance of her dream, and knew that she too had had some real adventures in Wonderland.