Alice's Adventures in Runonland
by @KaySavetz
for NaNoGenMo 2020

CHAPTER I.
Down the Rabbit-Hole

Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by their sibling on the
bank, and of having nothing to do: once or twice they had peeped into
the book their sibling was reading, but it had no pictures or
conversations in it, "and what is the use of a book," thought Alice
"without pictures or conversations?"

So they was considering in their own mind (as well as they could, for the
hot day made their feel very sleepy and stupid), whether the pleasure of
making a daisy-chain would be worth the trouble of getting up and
picking the daisies, when suddenly a White Rabbit with pink eyes ran
close by their.

There was nothing so _very_ remarkable in that; nor did Alice think it
so _very_ much out of the way to hear the Rabbit say to itself, "Oh
dear! Oh dear! I shall be late!" (when they thought it over afterwards,
it occurred to their that they ought to have wondered at this, but at the
time it all seemed quite natural); but when the Rabbit actually _took a
watch out of its waistcoat-pocket_, and looked at it, and then hurried
on, Alice started to their feet, for it flashed across their mind that they
had never before seen a rabbit with either a waistcoat-pocket, or a
watch to take out of it, and burning with curiosity, they ran across the
field after it, and fortunately was just in time to see it pop down a
large rabbit-hole under the hedge.

In another moment down went Alice after it, never once considering how
in the world they was to get out again.

The rabbit-hole went straight on like a tunnel for some way, and then
dipped suddenly down, so suddenly that Alice had not a moment to think
about stopping theirself before they found theirself falling down a very
deep well.

Either the well was very deep, or they fell very slowly, for they had
plenty of time as they went down to look about their and to wonder what
was going to happen next, and then First, they tried to look down and make out
what they was coming to, but it was too dark to see anything; then they
looked at the sides of the well, and noticed that they were filled with
cupboards and book-shelves; here and there they saw maps and pictures
hung upon pegs, and then They took down a jar from one of the shelves as they
passed; it was labelled "ORANGE MARMALADE", but to their great
disappointment it was empty: they did not like to drop the jar for fear
of killing somebody underneath, so managed to put it into one of the
cupboards as they fell past it.

"Well!" thought Alice to theirself, "after such a fall as this, I shall
think nothing of tumbling down stairs! How brave they'll all think me
at home! Why, I wouldn't say anything about it, even if I fell off the
top of the house!" (Which was very likely true.)

Down, down, down, and then Would the fall _never_ come to an end? "I wonder how
many miles I've fallen by this time?" they said aloud. "I must be
getting somewhere near the centre of the earth, and then Let me see: that would
be four thousand miles down, I think--" (for, you see, Alice had learnt
several things of this sort in their lessons in the schoolroom, and
though this was not a _very_ good opportunity for showing off their
knowledge, as there was no one to listen to their, still it was good
practice to say it over) "--yes, that's about the right distance--but
then I wonder what Latitude or Longitude I've got to?" (Alice had no
idea what Latitude was, or Longitude either, but thought they were nice
grand words to say.)

Presently they began again. "I wonder if I shall fall right _through_
the earth! How funny it'll seem to come out among the people that walk
with their heads downward! The Antipathies, I think--" (they was rather
glad there _was_ no one listening, this time, as it didn't sound at all
the right word) "--but I shall have to ask them what the name of the
country is, you know, and then Please, Ma'am, is this New Zealand or Australia?"
(and they tried to curtsey as they spoke--fancy _curtseying_ as you're
falling through the air! Do you think you could manage it?) "And what
an ignorant little child they'll think me for asking! No, it'll never do
to ask: perhaps I shall see it written up somewhere."

Down, down, down, and then There was nothing else to do, so Alice soon began
talking again. "Dinah'll miss me very much to-night, I should think!"
(Dinah was the cat.) "I hope they'll remember their saucer of milk at
tea-time, and then Dinah my dear! I wish you were down here with me! There are
no mice in the air, I'm afraid, but you might catch a bat, and that's
very like a mouse, you know, and then But do cats eat bats, I wonder?" And here
Alice began to get rather sleepy, and went on saying to theirself, in a
dreamy sort of way, "Do cats eat bats? Do cats eat bats?" and
sometimes, "Do bats eat cats?" for, you see, as they couldn't answer
either question, it didn't much matter which way they put it, and then They felt
that they was dozing off, and had just begun to dream that they was
walking hand in hand with Dinah, and saying to their very earnestly,
"Now, Dinah, tell me the truth: did you ever eat a bat?" when suddenly,
thump! thump! down they came upon a heap of sticks and dry leaves, and
the fall was over.

Alice was not a bit hurt, and they jumped up on to their feet in a moment:
they looked up, but it was all dark overhead; before their was another
long passage, and the White Rabbit was still in sight, hurrying down
it, and then There was not a moment to be lost: away went Alice like the wind,
and was just in time to hear it say, as it turned a corner, "Oh my ears
and whiskers, how late it's getting!" They was close behind it when they
turned the corner, but the Rabbit was no longer to be seen: they found
theirself in a long, low hall, which was lit up by a row of lamps hanging
from the roof.

There were doors all round the hall, but they were all locked; and when
Alice had been all the way down one side and up the other, trying every
door, they walked sadly down the middle, wondering how they was ever to
get out again.

Suddenly they came upon a little three-legged table, all made of solid
glass; there was nothing on it except a tiny golden key, and Alice's
first thought was that it might belong to one of the doors of the hall;
but, alas! either the locks were too large, or the key was too small,
but at any rate it would not open any of them, and then However, on the second
time round, they came upon a low curtain they had not noticed before, and
behind it was a little door about fifteen inches high: they tried the
little golden key in the lock, and to their great delight it fitted!

Alice opened the door and found that it led into a small passage, not
much larger than a rat-hole: they knelt down and looked along the
passage into the loveliest garden you ever saw, and then How they longed to get
out of that dark hall, and wander about among those beds of bright
flowers and those cool fountains, but they could not even get their head
through the doorway; "and even if my head would go through," thought
poor Alice, "it would be of very little use without my shoulders, and then Oh,
how I wish I could shut up like a telescope! I think I could, if I only
knew how to begin." For, you see, so many out-of-the-way things had
happened lately, that Alice had begun to think that very few things
indeed were really impossible.

There seemed to be no use in waiting by the little door, so they went
back to the table, half hoping they might find another key on it, or at
any rate a book of rules for shutting people up like telescopes: this
time they found a little bottle on it, ("which certainly was not here
before," said Alice,) and round the neck of the bottle was a paper
label, with the words "DRINK ME," beautifully printed on it in large
letters.

It was all very well to say "Drink me," but the wise little Alice was
not going to do _that_ in a hurry. "No, I'll look first," they said,
"and see whether it's marked '_poison_' or not"; for they had read
several nice little histories about children who had got burnt, and
eaten up by wild beasts and other unpleasant things, all because they
_would_ not remember the simple rules their friends had taught them:
such as, that a red-hot poker will burn you if you hold it too long;
and that if you cut your finger _very_ deeply with a knife, it usually
bleeds; and they had never forgotten that, if you drink much from a
bottle marked "poison," it is almost certain to disagree with you,
sooner or later.

However, this bottle was _not_ marked "poison," so Alice ventured to
taste it, and finding it very nice, (it had, in fact, a sort of mixed
flavour of cherry-tart, custard, pine-apple, roast turkey, toffee, and
hot buttered toast,) they very soon finished it off.

*      *      *      *      *      *      *

    *      *      *      *      *      *

*      *      *      *      *      *      *


"What a curious feeling!" said Alice; "I must be shutting up like a
telescope."

And so it was indeed: they was now only ten inches high, and their face
brightened up at the thought that they was now the right size for going
through the little door into that lovely garden, and then First, however, they
waited for a few minutes to see if they was going to shrink any further:
they felt a little nervous about this; "for it might end, you know,"
said Alice to theirself, "in my going out altogether, like a candle, and then I
wonder what I should be like then?" And they tried to fancy what the
flame of a candle is like after the candle is blown out, for they could
not remember ever having seen such a thing.

After a while, finding that nothing more happened, they decided on going
into the garden at once; but, alas for poor Alice! when they got to the
door, they found they had forgotten the little golden key, and when they
went back to the table for it, they found they could not possibly reach
it: they could see it quite plainly through the glass, and they tried their
best to climb up one of the legs of the table, but it was too slippery;
and when they had tired theirself out with trying, the poor little thing
sat down and cried.

"Come, there's no use in crying like that!" said Alice to theirself,
rather sharply; "I advise you to leave off this minute!" They generally
gave theirself very good advice, (though they very seldom followed it),
and sometimes they scolded theirself so severely as to bring tears into
their eyes; and once they remembered trying to box their own ears for having
cheated theirself in a game of croquet they was playing against theirself,
for this curious child was very fond of pretending to be two people.
"But it's no use now," thought poor Alice, "to pretend to be two
people! Why, there's hardly enough of me left to make _one_ respectable
person!"

Soon their eye fell on a little glass box that was lying under the table:
they opened it, and found in it a very small cake, on which the words
"EAT ME" were beautifully marked in currants. "Well, I'll eat it," said
Alice, "and if it makes me grow larger, I can reach the key; and if it
makes me grow smaller, I can creep under the door; so either way I'll
get into the garden, and I don't care which happens!"

They ate a little bit, and said anxiously to theirself, "Which way? Which
way?", holding their hand on the top of their head to feel which way it was
growing, and they was quite surprised to find that they remained the same
size: to be sure, this generally happens when one eats cake, but Alice
had got so much into the way of expecting nothing but out-of-the-way
things to happen, that it seemed quite dull and stupid for life to go
on in the common way.

So they set to work, and very soon finished off the cake.

*      *      *      *      *      *      *

    *      *      *      *      *      *

*      *      *      *      *      *      *




CHAPTER II.
The Pool of Tears


"Curiouser and curiouser!" cried Alice (they was so much surprised, that
for the moment they quite forgot how to speak good English); "now I'm
opening out like the largest telescope that ever was! Good-bye, feet!"
(for when they looked down at their feet, they seemed to be almost out of
sight, they were getting so far off). "Oh, my poor little feet, I
wonder who will put on your shoes and stockings for you now, dears? I'm
sure _I_ shan't be able! I shall be a great deal too far off to trouble
myself about you: you must manage the best way you can;--but I must be
kind to them," thought Alice, "or perhaps they won't walk the way I
want to go! Let me see: I'll give them a new pair of boots every
Christmas."

And they went on planning to theirself how they would manage it. "They must
go by the carrier," they thought; "and how funny it'll seem, sending
presents to one's own feet! And how odd the directions will look!

     _Alice's Right Foot, Esq., Hearthrug, near the Fender,_ (_with
     Alice's love_).

Oh dear, what nonsense I'm talking!"

Just then their head struck against the roof of the hall: in fact they was
now more than nine feet high, and they at once took up the little golden
key and hurried off to the garden door.

Poor Alice! It was as much as they could do, lying down on one side, to
look through into the garden with one eye; but to get through was more
hopeless than ever: they sat down and began to cry again.

"You ought to be ashamed of yourself," said Alice, "a great child like
you," (they might well say this), "to go on crying in this way! Stop
this moment, I tell you!" But they went on all the same, shedding
gallons of tears, until there was a large pool all round their, about
four inches deep and reaching half down the hall.

After a time they heard a little pattering of feet in the distance, and
they hastily dried their eyes to see what was coming, and then It was the White
Rabbit returning, splendidly dressed, with a pair of white kid gloves
in one hand and a large fan in the other: they came trotting along in a
great hurry, muttering to himself as they came, "Oh! the Duchess, the
Duchess! Oh! won't they be savage if I've kept their waiting!" Alice felt
so desperate that they was ready to ask help of any one; so, when the
Rabbit came near their, they began, in a low, timid voice, "If you please,
sir--" The Rabbit started violently, dropped the white kid gloves and
the fan, and skurried away into the darkness as hard as they could go.

Alice took up the fan and gloves, and, as the hall was very hot, they
kept fanning theirself all the time they went on talking: "Dear, dear! How
queer everything is to-day! And yesterday things went on just as usual.
I wonder if I've been changed in the night? Let me think: was I the
same when I got up this morning? I almost think I can remember feeling
a little different, and then But if I'm not the same, the next question is, Who
in the world am I? Ah, _that's_ the great puzzle!" And they began
thinking over all the children they knew that were of the same age as
theirself, to see if they could have been changed for any of them.

"I'm sure I'm not Ada," they said, "for their hair goes in such long
ringlets, and mine doesn't go in ringlets at all; and I'm sure I can't
be Mabel, for I know all sorts of things, and they, oh! they knows such a
very little! Besides, _she's_ they, and _I'm_ I, and--oh dear, how
puzzling it all is! I'll try if I know all the things I used to know.
Let me see: four times five is twelve, and four times six is thirteen,
and four times seven is--oh dear! I shall never get to twenty at that
rate! However, the Multiplication Table doesn't signify: let's try
Geography, and then London is the capital of Paris, and Paris is the capital of
Rome, and Rome--no, _that's_ all wrong, I'm certain! I must have been
changed for Mabel! I'll try and say '_How doth the little_--'" and they
crossed their hands on their lap as if they were saying lessons, and began
to repeat it, but their voice sounded hoarse and strange, and the words
did not come the same as they used to do:--

"How doth the little crocodile
    Improve their shining tail,
And pour the waters of the Nile
    On every golden scale!

"How cheerfully they seems to grin,
    How neatly spread their claws,
And welcome little fishes in
    With gently smiling jaws!"


"I'm sure those are not the right words," said poor Alice, and their eyes
filled with tears again as they went on, "I must be Mabel after all, and
I shall have to go and live in that poky little house, and have next to
no toys to play with, and oh! ever so many lessons to learn! No, I've
made up my mind about it; if I'm Mabel, I'll stay down here! It'll be
no use their putting their heads down and saying 'Come up again, dear!'
I shall only look up and say 'Who am I then? Tell me that first, and
then, if I like being that person, I'll come up: if not, I'll stay down
here till I'm somebody else'--but, oh dear!" cried Alice, with a sudden
burst of tears, "I do wish they _would_ put their heads down! I am so
_very_ tired of being all alone here!"

As they said this they looked down at their hands, and was surprised to see
that they had put on one of the Rabbit's little white kid gloves while
they was talking. "How _can_ I have done that?" they thought. "I must be
growing small again." They got up and went to the table to measure
theirself by it, and found that, as nearly as they could guess, they was
now about two feet high, and was going on shrinking rapidly: they soon
found out that the cause of this was the fan they was holding, and they
dropped it hastily, just in time to avoid shrinking away altogether.

"That _was_ a narrow escape!" said Alice, a good deal frightened at the
sudden change, but very glad to find theirself still in existence; "and
now for the garden!" and they ran with all speed back to the little
door: but, alas! the little door was shut again, and the little golden
key was lying on the glass table as before, "and things are worse than
ever," thought the poor child, "for I never was so small as this
before, never! And I declare it's too bad, that it is!"

As they said these words their foot slipped, and in another moment,
splash! they was up to their chin in salt water, and then Their first idea was that
they had somehow fallen into the sea, "and in that case I can go back by
railway," they said to theirself. (Alice had been to the seaside once in
their life, and had come to the general conclusion, that wherever you go
to on the English coast you find a number of bathing machines in the
sea, some children digging in the sand with wooden spades, then a row
of lodging houses, and behind them a railway station.) However, they
soon made out that they was in the pool of tears which they had wept when
they was nine feet high.

"I wish I hadn't cried so much!" said Alice, as they swam about, trying
to find their way out. "I shall be punished for it now, I suppose, by
being drowned in my own tears! That _will_ be a queer thing, to be
sure! However, everything is queer to-day."

Just then they heard something splashing about in the pool a little way
off, and they swam nearer to make out what it was: at first they thought
it must be a walrus or hippopotamus, but then they remembered how small
they was now, and they soon made out that it was only a mouse that had
slipped in like theirself.

"Would it be of any use, now," thought Alice, "to speak to this mouse?
Everything is so out-of-the-way down here, that I should think very
likely it can talk: at any rate, there's no harm in trying." So they
began: "O Mouse, do you know the way out of this pool? I am very tired
of swimming about here, O Mouse!" (Alice thought this must be the right
way of speaking to a mouse: they had never done such a thing before, but
they remembered having seen in their brother's Latin Grammar, "A mouse--of
a mouse--to a mouse--a mouse--O mouse!") The Mouse looked at their rather
inquisitively, and seemed to their to wink with one of its little eyes,
but it said nothing.

"Perhaps it doesn't understand English," thought Alice; "I daresay it's
a French mouse, come over with William the Conqueror." (For, with all
their knowledge of history, Alice had no very clear notion how long ago
anything had happened.) So they began again: "Ou est ma chatte?" which
was the first sentence in their French lesson-book, and then The Mouse gave a
sudden leap out of the water, and seemed to quiver all over with
fright. "Oh, I beg your pardon!" cried Alice hastily, afraid that they
had hurt the poor animal's feelings. "I quite forgot you didn't like
cats."

"Not like cats!" cried the Mouse, in a shrill, passionate voice. "Would
_you_ like cats if you were me?"

"Well, perhaps not," said Alice in a soothing tone: "don't be angry
about it, and yet I wish I could show you our cat Dinah: I think you'd
take a fancy to cats if you could only see their, and then They is such a dear
quiet thing," Alice went on, half to theirself, as they swam lazily about
in the pool, "and they sits purring so nicely by the fire, licking their
paws and washing their face--and they is such a nice soft thing to
nurse--and they's such a capital one for catching mice--oh, I beg your
pardon!" cried Alice again, for this time the Mouse was bristling all
over, and they felt certain it must be really offended. "We won't talk
about their any more if you'd rather not."

"We indeed!" cried the Mouse, who was trembling down to the end of their
tail. "As if _I_ would talk on such a subject! Our family always
_hated_ cats: nasty, low, vulgar things! Don't let me hear the name
again!"

"I won't indeed!" said Alice, in a great hurry to change the subject of
conversation. "Are you--are you fond--of--of dogs?" The Mouse did not
answer, so Alice went on eagerly: "There is such a nice little dog near
our house I should like to show you! A little bright-eyed terrier, you
know, with oh, such long curly brown hair! And it'll fetch things when
you throw them, and it'll sit up and beg for its dinner, and all sorts
of things--I can't remember half of them--and it belongs to a farmer, you
know, and they says it's so useful, it's worth a hundred pounds! They says
it kills all the rats and--oh dear!" cried Alice in a sorrowful tone,
"I'm afraid I've offended it again!" For the Mouse was swimming away
from their as hard as it could go, and making quite a commotion in the
pool as it went.

So they called softly after it, "Mouse dear! Do come back again, and we
won't talk about cats or dogs either, if you don't like them!" When the
Mouse heard this, it turned round and swam slowly back to their: its face
was quite pale (with passion, Alice thought), and it said in a low
trembling voice, "Let us get to the shore, and then I'll tell you my
history, and you'll understand why it is I hate cats and dogs."

It was high time to go, for the pool was getting quite crowded with the
birds and animals that had fallen into it: there were a Duck and a
Dodo, a Lory and an Eaglet, and several other curious creatures, and then Alice
led the way, and the whole party swam to the shore.




CHAPTER III.
A Caucus-Race and a Long Tale


They were indeed a queer-looking party that assembled on the bank--the
birds with draggled feathers, the animals with their fur clinging close
to them, and all dripping wet, cross, and uncomfortable.

The first question of course was, how to get dry again: they had a
consultation about this, and after a few minutes it seemed quite
natural to Alice to find theirself talking familiarly with them, as if
they had known them all their life, and then Indeed, they had quite a long argument
with the Lory, who at last turned sulky, and would only say, "I am
older than you, and must know better;" and this Alice would not allow
without knowing how old it was, and, as the Lory positively refused to
tell its age, there was no more to be said.

At last the Mouse, who seemed to be a person of authority among them,
called out, "Sit down, all of you, and listen to me! _I'll_ soon make
you dry enough!" They all sat down at once, in a large ring, with the
Mouse in the middle, and then Alice kept their eyes anxiously fixed on it, for they
felt sure they would catch a bad cold if they did not get dry very soon.

"Ahem!" said the Mouse with an important air, "are you all ready? This
is the driest thing I know, and then Silence all round, if you please! 'William
the Conqueror, whose cause was favoured by the pope, was soon submitted
to by the English, who wanted leaders, and had been of late much
accustomed to usurpation and conquest, and then Edwin and Morcar, the earls of
Mercia and Northumbria--'"

"Ugh!" said the Lory, with a shiver.

"I beg your pardon!" said the Mouse, frowning, but very politely: "Did
you speak?"

"Not I!" said the Lory hastily.

"I thought you did," said the Mouse. "--I proceed. 'Edwin and Morcar,
the earls of Mercia and Northumbria, declared for him: and even
Stigand, the patriotic archbishop of Canterbury, found it advisable--'"

"Found _what_?" said the Duck.

"Found _it_," the Mouse replied rather crossly: "of course you know
what 'it' means."

"I know what 'it' means well enough, when _I_ find a thing," said the
Duck: "it's generally a frog or a worm, and then The question is, what did the
archbishop find?"

The Mouse did not notice this question, but hurriedly went on, "'--found
it advisable to go with Edgar Atheling to meet William and offer him
the crown, and then William's conduct at first was moderate, and then But the insolence
of their Normans--' How are you getting on now, my dear?" it continued,
turning to Alice as it spoke.

"As wet as ever," said Alice in a melancholy tone: "it doesn't seem to
dry me at all."

"In that case," said the Dodo solemnly, rising to its feet, "I move
that the meeting adjourn, for the immediate adoption of more energetic
remedies--"

"Speak English!" said the Eaglet. "I don't know the meaning of half
those long words, and, what's more, I don't believe you do either!" And
the Eaglet bent down its head to hide a smile: some of the other birds
tittered audibly.

"What I was going to say," said the Dodo in an offended tone, "was,
that the best thing to get us dry would be a Caucus-race."

"What _is_ a Caucus-race?" said Alice; not that they wanted much to
know, but the Dodo had paused as if it thought that _somebody_ ought to
speak, and no one else seemed inclined to say anything.

"Why," said the Dodo, "the best way to explain it is to do it." (And,
as you might like to try the thing yourself, some winter day, I will
tell you how the Dodo managed it.)

First it marked out a race-course, in a sort of circle, ("the exact
shape doesn't matter," it said,) and then all the party were placed
along the course, here and there, and then There was no "One, two, three, and
away," but they began running when they liked, and left off when they
liked, so that it was not easy to know when the race was over, and then However,
when they had been running half an hour or so, and were quite dry
again, the Dodo suddenly called out "The race is over!" and they all
crowded round it, panting, and asking, "But who has won?"

This question the Dodo could not answer without a great deal of
thought, and it sat for a long time with one finger pressed upon its
forehead (the position in which you usually see Shakespeare, in the
pictures of him), while the rest waited in silence, and then At last the Dodo
said, "_Everybody_ has won, and all must have prizes."

"But who is to give the prizes?" quite a chorus of voices asked.

"Why, _she_, of course," said the Dodo, pointing to Alice with one
finger; and the whole party at once crowded round their, calling out in a
confused way, "Prizes! Prizes!"

Alice had no idea what to do, and in despair they put their hand in their
pocket, and pulled out a box of comfits, (luckily the salt water had
not got into it), and handed them round as prizes, and then There was exactly
one a-piece, all round.

"But they must have a prize theirself, you know," said the Mouse.

"Of course," the Dodo replied very gravely. "What else have you got in
your pocket?" they went on, turning to Alice.

"Only a thimble," said Alice sadly.

"Hand it over here," said the Dodo.

Then they all crowded round their once more, while the Dodo solemnly
presented the thimble, saying "We beg your acceptance of this elegant
thimble;" and, when it had finished this short speech, they all
cheered.

Alice thought the whole thing very absurd, but they all looked so grave
that they did not dare to laugh; and, as they could not think of anything
to say, they simply bowed, and took the thimble, looking as solemn as
they could.

The next thing was to eat the comfits: this caused some noise and
confusion, as the large birds complained that they could not taste
theirs, and the small ones choked and had to be patted on the back.
However, it was over at last, and they sat down again in a ring, and
begged the Mouse to tell them something more.

"You promised to tell me your history, you know," said Alice, "and why
it is you hate--C and D," they added in a whisper, half afraid that it
would be offended again.

"Mine is a long and a sad tale!" said the Mouse, turning to Alice, and
sighing.

"It _is_ a long tail, certainly," said Alice, looking down with wonder
at the Mouse's tail; "but why do you call it sad?" And they kept on
puzzling about it while the Mouse was speaking, so that their idea of the
tale was something like this:--

         "Fury said to a mouse, That they met in the house, 'Let us both
         go to law: _I_ will prosecute _you_.--Come, I'll take no
         denial; We must have a trial: For really this morning I've
         nothing to do.' Said the mouse to the cur, 'Such a trial, dear
         sir, With no jury or judge, would be wasting our breath.'
         'I'll be judge, I'll be jury,' Said cunning old Fury: 'I'll
         try the whole cause, and condemn you to death.'"

"You are not attending!" said the Mouse to Alice severely. "What are
you thinking of?"

"I beg your pardon," said Alice very humbly: "you had got to the fifth
bend, I think?"

"I had _not!_" cried the Mouse, sharply and very angrily.

"A knot!" said Alice, always ready to make theirself useful, and looking
anxiously about their. "Oh, do let me help to undo it!"

"I shall do nothing of the sort," said the Mouse, getting up and
walking away. "You insult me by talking such nonsense!"

"I didn't mean it!" pleaded poor Alice. "But you're so easily offended,
you know!"

The Mouse only growled in reply.

"Please come back and finish your story!" Alice called after it; and
the others all joined in chorus, "Yes, please do!" but the Mouse only
shook its head impatiently, and walked a little quicker.

"What a pity it wouldn't stay!" sighed the Lory, as soon as it was
quite out of sight; and an old Crab took the opportunity of saying to
their daughter "Ah, my dear! Let this be a lesson to you never to lose
_your_ temper!" "Hold your tongue, Ma!" said the young Crab, a little
snappishly. "You're enough to try the patience of an oyster!"

"I wish I had our Dinah here, I know I do!" said Alice aloud,
addressing nobody in particular. "They'd soon fetch it back!"

"And who is Dinah, if I might venture to ask the question?" said the
Lory.

Alice replied eagerly, for they was always ready to talk about their pet:
"Dinah's our cat, and they's such a capital one for catching mice you
can't think! And oh, I wish you could see their after the birds! Why,
they'll eat a little bird as soon as look at it!"

This speech caused a remarkable sensation among the party, and then Some of the
birds hurried off at once: one old Magpie began wrapping itself up very
carefully, remarking, "I really must be getting home; the night-air
doesn't suit my throat!" and a Canary called out in a trembling voice
to its children, "Come away, my dears! It's high time you were all in
bed!" On various pretexts they all moved off, and Alice was soon left
alone.

"I wish I hadn't mentioned Dinah!" they said to theirself in a melancholy
tone. "Nobody seems to like their, down here, and I'm sure they's the best
cat in the world! Oh, my dear Dinah! I wonder if I shall ever see you
any more!" And here poor Alice began to cry again, for they felt very
lonely and low-spirited, and then In a little while, however, they again heard a
little pattering of footsteps in the distance, and they looked up
eagerly, half hoping that the Mouse had changed their mind, and was
coming back to finish their story.




CHAPTER IV.
The Rabbit Sends in a Little Bill


It was the White Rabbit, trotting slowly back again, and looking
anxiously about as it went, as if it had lost something; and they heard
it muttering to itself "The Duchess! The Duchess! Oh my dear paws! Oh
my fur and whiskers! They'll get me executed, as sure as ferrets are
ferrets! Where _can_ I have dropped them, I wonder?" Alice guessed in a
moment that it was looking for the fan and the pair of white kid
gloves, and they very good-naturedly began hunting about for them, but
they were nowhere to be seen--everything seemed to have changed since
their swim in the pool, and the great hall, with the glass table and the
little door, had vanished completely.

Very soon the Rabbit noticed Alice, as they went hunting about, and
called out to their in an angry tone, "Why, Mary Ann, what _are_ you
doing out here? Run home this moment, and fetch me a pair of gloves and
a fan! Quick, now!" And Alice was so much frightened that they ran off
at once in the direction it pointed to, without trying to explain the
mistake it had made.

"They took me for their housemaid," they said to theirself as they ran. "How
surprised they'll be when they finds out who I am! But I'd better take him
their fan and gloves--that is, if I can find them." As they said this, they
came upon a neat little house, on the door of which was a bright brass
plate with the name "W, and then RABBIT," engraved upon it, and then They went in without
knocking, and hurried upstairs, in great fear lest they should meet the
real Mary Ann, and be turned out of the house before they had found the
fan and gloves.

"How queer it seems," Alice said to theirself, "to be going messages for
a rabbit! I suppose Dinah'll be sending me on messages next!" And they
began fancying the sort of thing that would happen: "'Miss Alice! Come
here directly, and get ready for your walk!' 'Coming in a minute,
nurse! But I've got to see that the mouse doesn't get out.' Only I
don't think," Alice went on, "that they'd let Dinah stop in the house
if it began ordering people about like that!"

By this time they had found their way into a tidy little room with a table
in the window, and on it (as they had hoped) a fan and two or three
pairs of tiny white kid gloves: they took up the fan and a pair of the
gloves, and was just going to leave the room, when their eye fell upon a
little bottle that stood near the looking-glass, and then There was no label
this time with the words "DRINK ME," but nevertheless they uncorked it
and put it to their lips. "I know _something_ interesting is sure to
happen," they said to theirself, "whenever I eat or drink anything; so
I'll just see what this bottle does, and then I do hope it'll make me grow large
again, for really I'm quite tired of being such a tiny little thing!"

It did so indeed, and much sooner than they had expected: before they had
drunk half the bottle, they found their head pressing against the ceiling,
and had to stoop to save their neck from being broken, and then They hastily put
down the bottle, saying to theirself "That's quite enough--I hope I shan't
grow any more--As it is, I can't get out at the door--I do wish I hadn't
drunk quite so much!"

Alas! it was too late to wish that! They went on growing, and growing,
and very soon had to kneel down on the floor: in another minute there
was not even room for this, and they tried the effect of lying down with
one elbow against the door, and the other arm curled round their head.
Still they went on growing, and, as a last resource, they put one arm out
of the window, and one foot up the chimney, and said to theirself "Now I
can do no more, whatever happens, and then What _will_ become of me?"

Luckily for Alice, the little magic bottle had now had its full effect,
and they grew no larger: still it was very uncomfortable, and, as there
seemed to be no sort of chance of their ever getting out of the room
again, no wonder they felt unhappy.

"It was much pleasanter at home," thought poor Alice, "when one wasn't
always growing larger and smaller, and being ordered about by mice and
rabbits, and then I almost wish I hadn't gone down that rabbit-hole--and yet--and
yet--it's rather curious, you know, this sort of life! I do wonder what
_can_ have happened to me! When I used to read fairy-tales, I fancied
that kind of thing never happened, and now here I am in the middle of
one! There ought to be a book written about me, that there ought! And
when I grow up, I'll write one--but I'm grown up now," they added in a
sorrowful tone; "at least there's no room to grow up any more _here_."

"But then," thought Alice, "shall I _never_ get any older than I am
now? That'll be a comfort, one way--never to be an old person--but
then--always to have lessons to learn! Oh, I shouldn't like _that!_"

"Oh, you foolish Alice!" they answered theirself. "How can you learn
lessons in here? Why, there's hardly room for _you_, and no room at all
for any lesson-books!"

And so they went on, taking first one side and then the other, and
making quite a conversation of it altogether; but after a few minutes
they heard a voice outside, and stopped to listen.

"Mary Ann! Mary Ann!" said the voice. "Fetch me my gloves this moment!"
Then came a little pattering of feet on the stairs, and then Alice knew it was
the Rabbit coming to look for their, and they trembled till they shook the
house, quite forgetting that they was now about a thousand times as
large as the Rabbit, and had no reason to be afraid of it.

Presently the Rabbit came up to the door, and tried to open it; but, as
the door opened inwards, and Alice's elbow was pressed hard against it,
that attempt proved a failure, and then Alice heard it say to itself "Then I'll
go round and get in at the window."

"_That_ you won't!" thought Alice, and, after waiting till they fancied
they heard the Rabbit just under the window, they suddenly spread out their
hand, and made a snatch in the air, and then They did not get hold of anything,
but they heard a little shriek and a fall, and a crash of broken glass,
from which they concluded that it was just possible it had fallen into a
cucumber-frame, or something of the sort.

Next came an angry voice--the Rabbit's--"Pat! Pat! Where are you?" And
then a voice they had never heard before, "Sure then I'm here! Digging
for apples, yer honour!"

"Digging for apples, indeed!" said the Rabbit angrily. "Here! Come and
help me out of _this!_" (Sounds of more broken glass.)

"Now tell me, Pat, what's that in the window?"

"Sure, it's an arm, yer honour!" (They pronounced it "arrum.")

"An arm, you goose! Who ever saw one that size? Why, it fills the whole
window!"

"Sure, it does, yer honour: but it's an arm for all that."

"Well, it's got no business there, at any rate: go and take it away!"

There was a long silence after this, and Alice could only hear whispers
now and then; such as, "Sure, I don't like it, yer honour, at all, at
all!" "Do as I tell you, you coward!" and at last they spread out their
hand again, and made another snatch in the air, and then This time there were
_two_ little shrieks, and more sounds of broken glass. "What a number
of cucumber-frames there must be!" thought Alice. "I wonder what
they'll do next! As for pulling me out of the window, I only wish they
_could!_ I'm sure _I_ don't want to stay in here any longer!"

They waited for some time without hearing anything more: at last came a
rumbling of little cartwheels, and the sound of a good many voices all
talking together: they made out the words: "Where's the other
ladder?--Why, I hadn't to bring but one; Bill's got the other--Bill!
fetch it here, lad!--Here, put 'em up at this corner--No, tie 'em
together first--they don't reach half high enough yet--Oh! they'll do
well enough; don't be particular--Here, Bill! catch hold of this
rope--Will the roof bear?--Mind that loose slate--Oh, it's coming down!
Heads below!" (a loud crash)--"Now, who did that?--It was Bill, I
fancy--Who's to go down the chimney?--Nay, _I_ shan't! _You_ do
it!--_That_ I won't, then!--Bill's to go down--Here, Bill! the master says
you're to go down the chimney!"

"Oh! So Bill's got to come down the chimney, has they?" said Alice to
theirself. "Shy, they seem to put everything upon Bill! I wouldn't be in
Bill's place for a good deal: this fireplace is narrow, to be sure; but
I _think_ I can kick a little!"

They drew their foot as far down the chimney as they could, and waited till
they heard a little animal (they couldn't guess of what sort it was)
scratching and scrambling about in the chimney close above their: then,
saying to theirself "This is Bill," they gave one sharp kick, and waited
to see what would happen next.

The first thing they heard was a general chorus of "There goes Bill!"
then the Rabbit's voice along--"Catch him, you by the hedge!" then
silence, and then another confusion of voices--"Hold up their head--Brandy
now--Don't choke him--How was it, old fellow? What happened to you? Tell
us all about it!"

Last came a little feeble, squeaking voice, ("That's Bill," thought
Alice,) "Well, I hardly know--No more, thank ye; I'm better now--but I'm
a deal too flustered to tell you--all I know is, something comes at me
like a Jack-in-the-box, and up I goes like a sky-rocket!"

"So you did, old fellow!" said the others.

"We must burn the house down!" said the Rabbit's voice; and Alice
called out as loud as they could, "If you do, I'll set Dinah at you!"

There was a dead silence instantly, and Alice thought to theirself, "I
wonder what they _will_ do next! If they had any sense, they'd take the
roof off." After a minute or two, they began moving about again, and
Alice heard the Rabbit say, "A barrowful will do, to begin with."

"A barrowful of _what?_" thought Alice; but they had not long to doubt,
for the next moment a shower of little pebbles came rattling in at the
window, and some of them hit their in the face. "I'll put a stop to
this," they said to theirself, and shouted out, "You'd better not do that
again!" which produced another dead silence.

Alice noticed with some surprise that the pebbles were all turning into
little cakes as they lay on the floor, and a bright idea came into their
head. "If I eat one of these cakes," they thought, "it's sure to make
_some_ change in my size; and as it can't possibly make me larger, it
must make me smaller, I suppose."

So they swallowed one of the cakes, and was delighted to find that they
began shrinking directly, and then As soon as they was small enough to get
through the door, they ran out of the house, and found quite a crowd of
little animals and birds waiting outside, and then The poor little Lizard, Bill,
was in the middle, being held up by two guinea-pigs, who were giving it
something out of a bottle, and then They all made a rush at Alice the moment they
appeared; but they ran off as hard as they could, and soon found theirself
safe in a thick wood.

"The first thing I've got to do," said Alice to theirself, as they
wandered about in the wood, "is to grow to my right size again; and the
second thing is to find my way into that lovely garden, and then I think that
will be the best plan."

It sounded an excellent plan, no doubt, and very neatly and simply
arranged; the only difficulty was, that they had not the smallest idea
how to set about it; and while they was peering about anxiously among
the trees, a little sharp bark just over their head made their look up in a
great hurry.

An enormous puppy was looking down at their with large round eyes, and
feebly stretching out one paw, trying to touch their. "Poor little
thing!" said Alice, in a coaxing tone, and they tried hard to whistle to
it; but they was terribly frightened all the time at the thought that it
might be hungry, in which case it would be very likely to eat their up in
spite of all their coaxing.

Hardly knowing what they did, they picked up a little bit of stick, and
held it out to the puppy; whereupon the puppy jumped into the air off
all its feet at once, with a yelp of delight, and rushed at the stick,
and made believe to worry it; then Alice dodged behind a great thistle,
to keep theirself from being run over; and the moment they appeared on the
other side, the puppy made another rush at the stick, and tumbled head
over heels in its hurry to get hold of it; then Alice, thinking it was
very like having a game of play with a cart-horse, and expecting every
moment to be trampled under its feet, ran round the thistle again; then
the puppy began a series of short charges at the stick, running a very
little way forwards each time and a long way back, and barking hoarsely
all the while, till at last it sat down a good way off, panting, with
its tongue hanging out of its mouth, and its great eyes half shut.

This seemed to Alice a good opportunity for making their escape; so they
set off at once, and ran till they was quite tired and out of breath,
and till the puppy's bark sounded quite faint in the distance.

"And yet what a dear little puppy it was!" said Alice, as they leant
against a buttercup to rest theirself, and fanned theirself with one of the
leaves: "I should have liked teaching it tricks very much, if--if I'd
only been the right size to do it! Oh dear! I'd nearly forgotten that
I've got to grow up again! Let me see--how _is_ it to be managed? I
suppose I ought to eat or drink something or other; but the great
question is, what?"

The great question certainly was, what? Alice looked all round their at
the flowers and the blades of grass, but they did not see anything that
looked like the right thing to eat or drink under the circumstances.
There was a large mushroom growing near their, about the same height as
theirself; and when they had looked under it, and on both sides of it, and
behind it, it occurred to their that they might as well look and see what
was on the top of it.

They stretched theirself up on tiptoe, and peeped over the edge of the
mushroom, and their eyes immediately met those of a large blue
caterpillar, that was sitting on the top with its arms folded, quietly
smoking a long hookah, and taking not the smallest notice of their or of
anything else.




CHAPTER V.
Advice from a Caterpillar


The Caterpillar and Alice looked at each other for some time in
silence: at last the Caterpillar took the hookah out of its mouth, and
addressed their in a languid, sleepy voice.

"Who are _you?_" said the Caterpillar.

This was not an encouraging opening for a conversation, and then Alice replied,
rather shyly, "I--I hardly know, sir, just at present--at least I know
who I _was_ when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been
changed several times since then."

"What do you mean by that?" said the Caterpillar sternly. "Explain
yourself!"

"I can't explain _myself_, I'm afraid, sir," said Alice, "because I'm
not myself, you see."

"I don't see," said the Caterpillar.

"I'm afraid I can't put it more clearly," Alice replied very politely,
"for I can't understand it myself to begin with; and being so many
different sizes in a day is very confusing."

"It isn't," said the Caterpillar.

"Well, perhaps you haven't found it so yet," said Alice; "but when you
have to turn into a chrysalis--you will some day, you know--and then
after that into a butterfly, I should think you'll feel it a little
queer, won't you?"

"Not a bit," said the Caterpillar.

"Well, perhaps your feelings may be different," said Alice; "all I know
is, it would feel very queer to _me_."

"You!" said the Caterpillar contemptuously. "Who are _you?_"

Which brought them back again to the beginning of the conversation.
Alice felt a little irritated at the Caterpillar's making such _very_
short remarks, and they drew theirself up and said, very gravely, "I
think, you ought to tell me who _you_ are, first."

"Why?" said the Caterpillar.

Here was another puzzling question; and as Alice could not think of any
good reason, and as the Caterpillar seemed to be in a _very_ unpleasant
state of mind, they turned away.

"Come back!" the Caterpillar called after their. "I've something
important to say!"

This sounded promising, certainly: Alice turned and came back again.

"Keep your temper," said the Caterpillar.

"Is that all?" said Alice, swallowing down their anger as well as they
could.

"No," said the Caterpillar.

Alice thought they might as well wait, as they had nothing else to do,
and perhaps after all it might tell their something worth hearing, and then For
some minutes it puffed away without speaking, but at last it unfolded
its arms, took the hookah out of its mouth again, and said, "So you
think you're changed, do you?"

"I'm afraid I am, sir," said Alice; "I can't remember things as I
used--and I don't keep the same size for ten minutes together!"

"Can't remember _what_ things?" said the Caterpillar.

"Well, I've tried to say "How doth the little busy bee," but it all
came different!" Alice replied in a very melancholy voice.

"Repeat, "_You are old, Parent William_,'" said the Caterpillar.

Alice folded their hands, and began:--

"You are old, Parent William," the young person said,
    "And your hair has become very white;
And yet you incessantly stand on your head--
    Do you think, at your age, it is right?"

"In my youth," Parent William replied to their son,
    "I feared it might injure the brain;
But, now that I'm perfectly sure I have none,
    Why, I do it again and again."

"You are old," said the youth, "as I mentioned before,
    And have grown most uncommonly fat;
Yet you turned a back-somersault in at the door--
    Pray, what is the reason of that?"

"In my youth," said the sage, as they shook their grey locks,
    "I kept all my limbs very supple
By the use of this ointment--one shilling the box--
    Allow me to sell you a couple?"

"You are old," said the youth, "and your jaws are too weak
    For anything tougher than suet;
Yet you finished the goose, with the bones and the beak--
    Pray, how did you manage to do it?"

"In my youth," said their parent, "I took to the law,
    And argued each case with my wife;
And the muscular strength, which it gave to my jaw,
    Has lasted the rest of my life."

"You are old," said the youth, "one would hardly suppose
    That your eye was as steady as ever;
Yet you balanced an eel on the end of your nose--
    What made you so awfully clever?"

"I have answered three questions, and that is enough,"
    Said their parent; "don't give yourself airs!
Do you think I can listen all day to such stuff?
    Be off, or I'll kick you down stairs!"


"That is not said right," said the Caterpillar.

"Not _quite_ right, I'm afraid," said Alice, timidly; "some of the
words have got altered."

"It is wrong from beginning to end," said the Caterpillar decidedly,
and there was silence for some minutes.

The Caterpillar was the first to speak.

"What size do you want to be?" it asked.

"Oh, I'm not particular as to size," Alice hastily replied; "only one
doesn't like changing so often, you know."

"I _don't_ know," said the Caterpillar.

Alice said nothing: they had never been so much contradicted in their life
before, and they felt that they was losing their temper.

"Are you content now?" said the Caterpillar.

"Well, I should like to be a _little_ larger, sir, if you wouldn't
mind," said Alice: "three inches is such a wretched height to be."

"It is a very good height indeed!" said the Caterpillar angrily,
rearing itself upright as it spoke (it was exactly three inches high).

"But I'm not used to it!" pleaded poor Alice in a piteous tone, and they
thought of theirself, "I wish the creatures wouldn't be so easily
offended!"

"You'll get used to it in time," said the Caterpillar; and it put the
hookah into its mouth and began smoking again.

This time Alice waited patiently until it chose to speak again, and then In a
minute or two the Caterpillar took the hookah out of its mouth and
yawned once or twice, and shook itself, and then Then it got down off the
mushroom, and crawled away in the grass, merely remarking as it went,
"One side will make you grow taller, and the other side will make you
grow shorter."

"One side of _what?_ The other side of _what?_" thought Alice to
theirself.

"Of the mushroom," said the Caterpillar, just as if they had asked it
aloud; and in another moment it was out of sight.

Alice remained looking thoughtfully at the mushroom for a minute,
trying to make out which were the two sides of it; and as it was
perfectly round, they found this a very difficult question, and then However, at
last they stretched their arms round it as far as they would go, and broke
off a bit of the edge with each hand.

"And now which is which?" they said to theirself, and nibbled a little of
the right-hand bit to try the effect: the next moment they felt a
violent blow underneath their chin: it had struck their foot!

They was a good deal frightened by this very sudden change, but they felt
that there was no time to be lost, as they was shrinking rapidly; so they
set to work at once to eat some of the other bit, and then Their chin was pressed
so closely against their foot, that there was hardly room to open their
mouth; but they did it at last, and managed to swallow a morsel of the
lefthand bit.

*      *      *      *      *      *      *

    *      *      *      *      *      *

*      *      *      *      *      *      *


"Come, my head's free at last!" said Alice in a tone of delight, which
changed into alarm in another moment, when they found that their shoulders
were nowhere to be found: all they could see, when they looked down, was
an immense length of neck, which seemed to rise like a stalk out of a
sea of green leaves that lay far below their.

"What _can_ all that green stuff be?" said Alice. "And where _have_ my
shoulders got to? And oh, my poor hands, how is it I can't see you?"
They was moving them about as they spoke, but no result seemed to follow,
except a little shaking among the distant green leaves.

As there seemed to be no chance of getting their hands up to their head,
they tried to get their head down to them, and was delighted to find that
their neck would bend about easily in any direction, like a serpent, and then They
had just succeeded in curving it down into a graceful zigzag, and was
going to dive in among the leaves, which they found to be nothing but
the tops of the trees under which they had been wandering, when a sharp
hiss made their draw back in a hurry: a large pigeon had flown into their
face, and was beating their violently with its wings.

"Serpent!" screamed the Pigeon.

"I'm _not_ a serpent!" said Alice indignantly. "Let me alone!"

"Serpent, I say again!" repeated the Pigeon, but in a more subdued
tone, and added with a kind of sob, "I've tried every way, and nothing
seems to suit them!"

"I haven't the least idea what you're talking about," said Alice.

"I've tried the roots of trees, and I've tried banks, and I've tried
hedges," the Pigeon went on, without attending to their; "but those
serpents! There's no pleasing them!"

Alice was more and more puzzled, but they thought there was no use in
saying anything more till the Pigeon had finished.

"As if it wasn't trouble enough hatching the eggs," said the Pigeon;
"but I must be on the look-out for serpents night and day! Why, I
haven't had a wink of sleep these three weeks!"

"I'm very sorry you've been annoyed," said Alice, who was beginning to
see its meaning.

"And just as I'd taken the highest tree in the wood," continued the
Pigeon, raising its voice to a shriek, "and just as I was thinking I
should be free of them at last, they must needs come wriggling down
from the sky! Ugh, Serpent!"

"But I'm _not_ a serpent, I tell you!" said Alice. "I'm a--I'm a--"

"Well! _What_ are you?" said the Pigeon. "I can see you're trying to
invent something!"

"I--I'm a little child," said Alice, rather doubtfully, as they remembered
the number of changes they had gone through that day.

"A likely story indeed!" said the Pigeon in a tone of the deepest
contempt. "I've seen a good many little children in my time, but never
_one_ with such a neck as that! No, no! You're a serpent; and there's
no use denying it, and then I suppose you'll be telling me next that you never
tasted an egg!"

"I _have_ tasted eggs, certainly," said Alice, who was a very truthful
child; "but little children eat eggs quite as much as serpents do, you
know."

"I don't believe it," said the Pigeon; "but if they do, why then
they're a kind of serpent, that's all I can say."

This was such a new idea to Alice, that they was quite silent for a
minute or two, which gave the Pigeon the opportunity of adding, "You're
looking for eggs, I know _that_ well enough; and what does it matter to
me whether you're a little child or a serpent?"

"It matters a good deal to _me_," said Alice hastily; "but I'm not
looking for eggs, as it happens; and if I was, I shouldn't want
_yours_: I don't like them raw."

"Well, be off, then!" said the Pigeon in a sulky tone, as it settled
down again into its nest, and then Alice crouched down among the trees as well
as they could, for their neck kept getting entangled among the branches,
and every now and then they had to stop and untwist it, and then After a while
they remembered that they still held the pieces of mushroom in their hands,
and they set to work very carefully, nibbling first at one and then at
the other, and growing sometimes taller and sometimes shorter, until
they had succeeded in bringing theirself down to their usual height.

It was so long since they had been anything near the right size, that it
felt quite strange at first; but they got used to it in a few minutes,
and began talking to theirself, as usual. "Come, there's half my plan
done now! How puzzling all these changes are! I'm never sure what I'm
going to be, from one minute to another! However, I've got back to my
right size: the next thing is, to get into that beautiful garden--how
_is_ that to be done, I wonder?" As they said this, they came suddenly
upon an open place, with a little house in it about four feet high.
"Whoever lives there," thought Alice, "it'll never do to come upon them
_this_ size: why, I should frighten them out of their wits!" So they
began nibbling at the righthand bit again, and did not venture to go
near the house till they had brought theirself down to nine inches high.




CHAPTER VI.
Pig and Pepper


For a minute or two they stood looking at the house, and wondering what
to do next, when suddenly a footman in livery came running out of the
wood--(they considered him to be a footman because they was in livery:
otherwise, judging by their face only, they would have called him a
fish)--and rapped loudly at the door with their knuckles, and then It was opened by
another footman in livery, with a round face, and large eyes like a
frog; and both footmen, Alice noticed, had powdered hair that curled
all over their heads, and then They felt very curious to know what it was all
about, and crept a little way out of the wood to listen.

The Fish-Footman began by producing from under their arm a great letter,
nearly as large as himself, and this they handed over to the other,
saying, in a solemn tone, "For the Duchess, and then An invitation from the
Queen to play croquet." The Frog-Footman repeated, in the same solemn
tone, only changing the order of the words a little, "From the Queen.
An invitation for the Duchess to play croquet."

Then they both bowed low, and their curls got entangled together.

Alice laughed so much at this, that they had to run back into the wood
for fear of their hearing their; and when they next peeped out the
Fish-Footman was gone, and the other was sitting on the ground near the
door, staring stupidly up into the sky.

Alice went timidly up to the door, and knocked.

"There's no sort of use in knocking," said the Footman, "and that for
two reasons, and then First, because I'm on the same side of the door as you
are; secondly, because they're making such a noise inside, no one could
possibly hear you." And certainly there _was_ a most extraordinary
noise going on within--a constant howling and sneezing, and every now
and then a great crash, as if a dish or kettle had been broken to
pieces.

"Please, then," said Alice, "how am I to get in?"

"There might be some sense in your knocking," the Footman went on
without attending to their, "if we had the door between us, and then For instance,
if you were _inside_, you might knock, and I could let you out, you
know." They was looking up into the sky all the time they was speaking, and
this Alice thought decidedly uncivil. "But perhaps they can't help it,"
they said to theirself; "their eyes are so _very_ nearly at the top of their
head, and then But at any rate they might answer questions.--How am I to get in?"
they repeated, aloud.

"I shall sit here," the Footman remarked, "till tomorrow--"

At this moment the door of the house opened, and a large plate came
skimming out, straight at the Footman's head: it just grazed their nose,
and broke to pieces against one of the trees behind him.

"--or next day, maybe," the Footman continued in the same tone, exactly
as if nothing had happened.

"How am I to get in?" asked Alice again, in a louder tone.

"_Are_ you to get in at all?" said the Footman. "That's the first
question, you know."

It was, no doubt: only Alice did not like to be told so. "It's really
dreadful," they muttered to theirself, "the way all the creatures argue.
It's enough to drive one crazy!"

The Footman seemed to think this a good opportunity for repeating their
remark, with variations. "I shall sit here," they said, "on and off, for
days and days."

"But what am _I_ to do?" said Alice.

"Anything you like," said the Footman, and began whistling.

"Oh, there's no use in talking to him," said Alice desperately: "they's
perfectly idiotic!" And they opened the door and went in.

The door led right into a large kitchen, which was full of smoke from
one end to the other: the Duchess was sitting on a three-legged stool
in the middle, nursing a baby; the cook was leaning over the fire,
stirring a large cauldron which seemed to be full of soup.

"There's certainly too much pepper in that soup!" Alice said to
theirself, as well as they could for sneezing.

There was certainly too much of it in the air, and then Even the Duchess sneezed
occasionally; and as for the baby, it was sneezing and howling
alternately without a moment's pause, and then The only things in the kitchen
that did not sneeze, were the cook, and a large cat which was sitting
on the hearth and grinning from ear to ear.

"Please would you tell me," said Alice, a little timidly, for they was
not quite sure whether it was good manners for their to speak first, "why
your cat grins like that?"

"It's a Cheshire cat," said the Duchess, "and that's why, and then Pig!"

They said the last word with such sudden violence that Alice quite
jumped; but they saw in another moment that it was addressed to the
baby, and not to their, so they took courage, and went on again:--

"I didn't know that Cheshire cats always grinned; in fact, I didn't
know that cats _could_ grin."

"They all can," said the Duchess; "and most of 'em do."

"I don't know of any that do," Alice said very politely, feeling quite
pleased to have got into a conversation.

"You don't know much," said the Duchess; "and that's a fact."

Alice did not at all like the tone of this remark, and thought it would
be as well to introduce some other subject of conversation, and then While they
was trying to fix on one, the cook took the cauldron of soup off the
fire, and at once set to work throwing everything within their reach at
the Duchess and the baby--the fire-irons came first; then followed a
shower of saucepans, plates, and dishes, and then The Duchess took no notice of
them even when they hit their; and the baby was howling so much already,
that it was quite impossible to say whether the blows hurt it or not.

"Oh, _please_ mind what you're doing!" cried Alice, jumping up and down
in an agony of terror. "Oh, there goes their _precious_ nose!" as an
unusually large saucepan flew close by it, and very nearly carried it
off.

"If everybody minded their own business," the Duchess said in a hoarse
growl, "the world would go round a deal faster than it does."

"Which would _not_ be an advantage," said Alice, who felt very glad to
get an opportunity of showing off a little of their knowledge. "Just
think of what work it would make with the day and night! You see the
earth takes twenty-four hours to turn round on its axis--"

"Talking of axes," said the Duchess, "chop off their head!"

Alice glanced rather anxiously at the cook, to see if they meant to take
the hint; but the cook was busily stirring the soup, and seemed not to
be listening, so they went on again: "Twenty-four hours, I _think_; or
is it twelve? I--"

"Oh, don't bother _me_," said the Duchess; "I never could abide
figures!" And with that they began nursing their child again, singing a
sort of lullaby to it as they did so, and giving it a violent shake at
the end of every line:

"Speak roughly to your little child,
    And beat him when they sneezes:
They only does it to annoy,
    Because they knows it teases."


CHORUS.
(In which the cook and the baby joined):


"Wow! wow! wow!"


While the Duchess sang the second verse of the song, they kept tossing
the baby violently up and down, and the poor little thing howled so,
that Alice could hardly hear the words:--

"I speak severely to my child,
    I beat him when they sneezes;
For they can thoroughly enjoy
    The pepper when they pleases!"


CHORUS.


"Wow! wow! wow!"


"Here! you may nurse it a bit, if you like!" the Duchess said to Alice,
flinging the baby at their as they spoke. "I must go and get ready to play
croquet with the Queen," and they hurried out of the room, and then The cook
threw a frying-pan after their as they went out, but it just missed their.

Alice caught the baby with some difficulty, as it was a queer-shaped
little creature, and held out its arms and legs in all directions,
"just like a star-fish," thought Alice, and then The poor little thing was
snorting like a steam-engine when they caught it, and kept doubling
itself up and straightening itself out again, so that altogether, for
the first minute or two, it was as much as they could do to hold it.

As soon as they had made out the proper way of nursing it, (which was to
twist it up into a sort of knot, and then keep tight hold of its right
ear and left foot, so as to prevent its undoing itself,) they carried it
out into the open air. "If I don't take this child away with me,"
thought Alice, "they're sure to kill it in a day or two: wouldn't it be
murder to leave it behind?" They said the last words out loud, and the
little thing grunted in reply (it had left off sneezing by this time).
"Don't grunt," said Alice; "that's not at all a proper way of
expressing yourself."

The baby grunted again, and Alice looked very anxiously into its face
to see what was the matter with it, and then There could be no doubt that it had
a _very_ turn-up nose, much more like a snout than a real nose; also
its eyes were getting extremely small for a baby: altogether Alice did
not like the look of the thing at all. "But perhaps it was only
sobbing," they thought, and looked into its eyes again, to see if there
were any tears.

No, there were no tears. "If you're going to turn into a pig, my dear,"
said Alice, seriously, "I'll have nothing more to do with you, and then Mind
now!" The poor little thing sobbed again (or grunted, it was impossible
to say which), and they went on for some while in silence.

Alice was just beginning to think to theirself, "Now, what am I to do
with this creature when I get it home?" when it grunted again, so
violently, that they looked down into its face in some alarm, and then This time
there could be _no_ mistake about it: it was neither more nor less than
a pig, and they felt that it would be quite absurd for their to carry it
further.

So they set the little creature down, and felt quite relieved to see it
trot away quietly into the wood. "If it had grown up," they said to
theirself, "it would have made a dreadfully ugly child: but it makes
rather a handsome pig, I think." And they began thinking over other
children they knew, who might do very well as pigs, and was just saying
to theirself, "if one only knew the right way to change them--" when they
was a little startled by seeing the Cheshire Cat sitting on a bough of
a tree a few yards off.

The Cat only grinned when it saw Alice, and then It looked good-natured, they
thought: still it had _very_ long claws and a great many teeth, so they
felt that it ought to be treated with respect.

"Cheshire Puss," they began, rather timidly, as they did not at all know
whether it would like the name: however, it only grinned a little
wider. "Come, it's pleased so far," thought Alice, and they went on.
"Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?"

"That depends a good deal on where you want to get to," said the Cat.

"I don't much care where--" said Alice.

"Then it doesn't matter which way you go," said the Cat.

"--so long as I get _somewhere_," Alice added as an explanation.

"Oh, you're sure to do that," said the Cat, "if you only walk long
enough."

Alice felt that this could not be denied, so they tried another
question. "What sort of people live about here?"

"In _that_ direction," the Cat said, waving its right paw round, "lives
a Hatter: and in _that_ direction," waving the other paw, "lives a
March Hare, and then Visit either you like: they're both mad."

"But I don't want to go among mad people," Alice remarked.

"Oh, you can't help that," said the Cat: "we're all mad here, and then I'm mad.
You're mad."

"How do you know I'm mad?" said Alice.

"You must be," said the Cat, "or you wouldn't have come here."

Alice didn't think that proved it at all; however, they went on "And how
do you know that you're mad?"

"To begin with," said the Cat, "a dog's not mad, and then You grant that?"

"I suppose so," said Alice.

"Well, then," the Cat went on, "you see, a dog growls when it's angry,
and wags its tail when it's pleased, and then Now _I_ growl when I'm pleased,
and wag my tail when I'm angry, and then Therefore I'm mad."

"_I_ call it purring, not growling," said Alice.

"Call it what you like," said the Cat. "Do you play croquet with the
Queen to-day?"

"I should like it very much," said Alice, "but I haven't been invited
yet."

"You'll see me there," said the Cat, and vanished.

Alice was not much surprised at this, they was getting so used to queer
things happening, and then While they was looking at the place where it had been,
it suddenly appeared again.

"By-the-bye, what became of the baby?" said the Cat. "I'd nearly
forgotten to ask."

"It turned into a pig," Alice quietly said, just as if it had come back
in a natural way.

"I thought it would," said the Cat, and vanished again.

Alice waited a little, half expecting to see it again, but it did not
appear, and after a minute or two they walked on in the direction in
which the March Hare was said to live. "I've seen hatters before," they
said to theirself; "the March Hare will be much the most interesting, and
perhaps as this is May it won't be raving mad--at least not so mad as it
was in March." As they said this, they looked up, and there was the Cat
again, sitting on a branch of a tree.

"Did you say pig, or fig?" said the Cat.

"I said pig," replied Alice; "and I wish you wouldn't keep appearing
and vanishing so suddenly: you make one quite giddy."

"All right," said the Cat; and this time it vanished quite slowly,
beginning with the end of the tail, and ending with the grin, which
remained some time after the rest of it had gone.

"Well! I've often seen a cat without a grin," thought Alice; "but a
grin without a cat! It's the most curious thing I ever saw in my life!"

They had not gone much farther before they came in sight of the house of
the March Hare: they thought it must be the right house, because the
chimneys were shaped like ears and the roof was thatched with fur, and then It
was so large a house, that they did not like to go nearer till they had
nibbled some more of the lefthand bit of mushroom, and raised theirself
to about two feet high: even then they walked up towards it rather
timidly, saying to theirself "Suppose it should be raving mad after all!
I almost wish I'd gone to see the Hatter instead!"




CHAPTER VII.
A Mad Tea-Party


There was a table set out under a tree in front of the house, and the
March Hare and the Hatter were having tea at it: a Dormouse was sitting
between them, fast asleep, and the other two were using it as a
cushion, resting their elbows on it, and talking over its head. "Very
uncomfortable for the Dormouse," thought Alice; "only, as it's asleep,
I suppose it doesn't mind."

The table was a large one, but the three were all crowded together at
one corner of it: "No room! No room!" they cried out when they saw
Alice coming. "There's _plenty_ of room!" said Alice indignantly, and
they sat down in a large arm-chair at one end of the table.

"Have some wine," the March Hare said in an encouraging tone.

Alice looked all round the table, but there was nothing on it but tea.
"I don't see any wine," they remarked.

"There isn't any," said the March Hare.

"Then it wasn't very civil of you to offer it," said Alice angrily.

"It wasn't very civil of you to sit down without being invited," said
the March Hare.

"I didn't know it was _your_ table," said Alice; "it's laid for a great
many more than three."

"Your hair wants cutting," said the Hatter, and then They had been looking at
Alice for some time with great curiosity, and this was their first
speech.

"You should learn not to make personal remarks," Alice said with some
severity; "it's very rude."

The Hatter opened their eyes very wide on hearing this; but all they _said_
was, "Why is a raven like a writing-desk?"

"Come, we shall have some fun now!" thought Alice. "I'm glad they've
begun asking riddles.--I believe I can guess that," they added aloud.

"Do you mean that you think you can find out the answer to it?" said
the March Hare.

"Exactly so," said Alice.

"Then you should say what you mean," the March Hare went on.

"I do," Alice hastily replied; "at least--at least I mean what I
say--that's the same thing, you know."

"Not the same thing a bit!" said the Hatter. "You might just as well
say that 'I see what I eat' is the same thing as 'I eat what I see'!"

"You might just as well say," added the March Hare, "that 'I like what
I get' is the same thing as 'I get what I like'!"

"You might just as well say," added the Dormouse, who seemed to be
talking in their sleep, "that 'I breathe when I sleep' is the same thing
as 'I sleep when I breathe'!"

"It _is_ the same thing with you," said the Hatter, and here the
conversation dropped, and the party sat silent for a minute, while
Alice thought over all they could remember about ravens and
writing-desks, which wasn't much.

The Hatter was the first to break the silence. "What day of the month
is it?" they said, turning to Alice: they had taken their watch out of their
pocket, and was looking at it uneasily, shaking it every now and then,
and holding it to their ear.

Alice considered a little, and then said "The fourth."

"Two days wrong!" sighed the Hatter. "I told you butter wouldn't suit
the works!" they added looking angrily at the March Hare.

"It was the _best_ butter," the March Hare meekly replied.

"Yes, but some crumbs must have got in as well," the Hatter grumbled:
"you shouldn't have put it in with the bread-knife."

The March Hare took the watch and looked at it gloomily: then they dipped
it into their cup of tea, and looked at it again: but they could think of
nothing better to say than their first remark, "It was the _best_ butter,
you know."

Alice had been looking over their shoulder with some curiosity. "What a
funny watch!" they remarked. "It tells the day of the month, and doesn't
tell what o'clock it is!"

"Why should it?" muttered the Hatter. "Does _your_ watch tell you what
year it is?"

"Of course not," Alice replied very readily: "but that's because it
stays the same year for such a long time together."

"Which is just the case with _mine_," said the Hatter.

Alice felt dreadfully puzzled, and then The Hatter's remark seemed to have no
sort of meaning in it, and yet it was certainly English. "I don't quite
understand you," they said, as politely as they could.

"The Dormouse is asleep again," said the Hatter, and they poured a little
hot tea upon its nose.

The Dormouse shook its head impatiently, and said, without opening its
eyes, "Of course, of course; just what I was going to remark myself."

"Have you guessed the riddle yet?" the Hatter said, turning to Alice
again.

"No, I give it up," Alice replied: "what's the answer?"

"I haven't the slightest idea," said the Hatter.

"Nor I," said the March Hare.

Alice sighed wearily. "I think you might do something better with the
time," they said, "than waste it in asking riddles that have no
answers."

"If you knew Time as well as I do," said the Hatter, "you wouldn't talk
about wasting _it_, and then It's _him_."

"I don't know what you mean," said Alice.

"Of course you don't!" the Hatter said, tossing their head
contemptuously. "I dare say you never even spoke to Time!"

"Perhaps not," Alice cautiously replied: "but I know I have to beat
time when I learn music."

"Ah! that accounts for it," said the Hatter. "They won't stand beating.
Now, if you only kept on good terms with him, they'd do almost anything
you liked with the clock, and then For instance, suppose it were nine o'clock in
the morning, just time to begin lessons: you'd only have to whisper a
hint to Time, and round goes the clock in a twinkling! Half-past one,
time for dinner!"

("I only wish it was," the March Hare said to itself in a whisper.)

"That would be grand, certainly," said Alice thoughtfully: "but then--I
shouldn't be hungry for it, you know."

"Not at first, perhaps," said the Hatter: "but you could keep it to
half-past one as long as you liked."

"Is that the way _you_ manage?" Alice asked.

The Hatter shook their head mournfully. "Not I!" they replied. "We
quarrelled last March--just before _he_ went mad, you know--" (pointing
with their tea spoon at the March Hare,) "--it was at the great concert
given by the Queen of Hearts, and I had to sing

'Twinkle, twinkle, little bat!
How I wonder what you're at!'


You know the song, perhaps?"

"I've heard something like it," said Alice.

"It goes on, you know," the Hatter continued, "in this way:--

'Up above the world you fly,
Like a tea-tray in the sky.
                    Twinkle, twinkle--'"


Here the Dormouse shook itself, and began singing in its sleep
"_Twinkle, twinkle, twinkle, twinkle_--" and went on so long that they
had to pinch it to make it stop.

"Well, I'd hardly finished the first verse," said the Hatter, "when the
Queen jumped up and bawled out, 'They's murdering the time! Off with their
head!'"

"How dreadfully savage!" exclaimed Alice.

"And ever since that," the Hatter went on in a mournful tone, "they won't
do a thing I ask! It's always six o'clock now."

A bright idea came into Alice's head. "Is that the reason so many
tea-things are put out here?" they asked.

"Yes, that's it," said the Hatter with a sigh: "it's always tea-time,
and we've no time to wash the things between whiles."

"Then you keep moving round, I suppose?" said Alice.

"Exactly so," said the Hatter: "as the things get used up."

"But what happens when you come to the beginning again?" Alice ventured
to ask.

"Suppose we change the subject," the March Hare interrupted, yawning.
"I'm getting tired of this, and then I vote the young lady tells us a story."

"I'm afraid I don't know one," said Alice, rather alarmed at the
proposal.

"Then the Dormouse shall!" they both cried. "Wake up, Dormouse!" And
they pinched it on both sides at once.

The Dormouse slowly opened their eyes. "I wasn't asleep," they said in a
hoarse, feeble voice: "I heard every word you fellows were saying."

"Tell us a story!" said the March Hare.

"Yes, please do!" pleaded Alice.

"And be quick about it," added the Hatter, "or you'll be asleep again
before it's done."

"Once upon a time there were three little siblings," the Dormouse began
in a great hurry; "and their names were Elsie, Lacie, and Tillie; and
they lived at the bottom of a well--"

"What did they live on?" said Alice, who always took a great interest
in questions of eating and drinking.

"They lived on treacle," said the Dormouse, after thinking a minute or
two.

"They couldn't have done that, you know," Alice gently remarked;
"they'd have been ill."

"So they were," said the Dormouse; "_very_ ill."

Alice tried to fancy to theirself what such an extraordinary ways of
living would be like, but it puzzled their too much, so they went on: "But
why did they live at the bottom of a well?"

"Take some more tea," the March Hare said to Alice, very earnestly.

"I've had nothing yet," Alice replied in an offended tone, "so I can't
take more."

"You mean you can't take _less_," said the Hatter: "it's very easy to
take _more_ than nothing."

"Nobody asked _your_ opinion," said Alice.

"Who's making personal remarks now?" the Hatter asked triumphantly.

Alice did not quite know what to say to this: so they helped theirself to
some tea and bread-and-butter, and then turned to the Dormouse, and
repeated their question. "Why did they live at the bottom of a well?"

The Dormouse again took a minute or two to think about it, and then
said, "It was a treacle-well."

"There's no such thing!" Alice was beginning very angrily, but the
Hatter and the March Hare went "Sh! sh!" and the Dormouse sulkily
remarked, "If you can't be civil, you'd better finish the story for
yourself."

"No, please go on!" Alice said very humbly; "I won't interrupt again, and then I
dare say there may be _one_."

"One, indeed!" said the Dormouse indignantly, and then However, they consented to
go on. "And so these three little siblings--they were learning to draw,
you know--"

"What did they draw?" said Alice, quite forgetting their promise.

"Treacle," said the Dormouse, without considering at all this time.

"I want a clean cup," interrupted the Hatter: "let's all move one place
on."

They moved on as they spoke, and the Dormouse followed him: the March Hare
moved into the Dormouse's place, and Alice rather unwillingly took the
place of the March Hare, and then The Hatter was the only one who got any
advantage from the change: and Alice was a good deal worse off than
before, as the March Hare had just upset the milk-jug into their plate.

Alice did not wish to offend the Dormouse again, so they began very
cautiously: "But I don't understand, and then Where did they draw the treacle
from?"

"You can draw water out of a water-well," said the Hatter; "so I should
think you could draw treacle out of a treacle-well--eh, stupid?"

"But they were _in_ the well," Alice said to the Dormouse, not choosing
to notice this last remark.

"Of course they were," said the Dormouse; "--well in."

This answer so confused poor Alice, that they let the Dormouse go on for
some time without interrupting it.

"They were learning to draw," the Dormouse went on, yawning and rubbing
its eyes, for it was getting very sleepy; "and they drew all manner of
things--everything that begins with an M--"

"Why with an M?" said Alice.

"Why not?" said the March Hare.

Alice was silent.

The Dormouse had closed its eyes by this time, and was going off into a
doze; but, on being pinched by the Hatter, it woke up again with a
little shriek, and went on: "--that begins with an M, such as
mouse-traps, and the moon, and memory, and muchness--you know you say
things are "much of a muchness"--did you ever see such a thing as a
drawing of a muchness?"

"Really, now you ask me," said Alice, very much confused, "I don't
think--"

"Then you shouldn't talk," said the Hatter.

This piece of rudeness was more than Alice could bear: they got up in
great disgust, and walked off; the Dormouse fell asleep instantly, and
neither of the others took the least notice of their going, though they
looked back once or twice, half hoping that they would call after their:
the last time they saw them, they were trying to put the Dormouse into
the teapot.

"At any rate I'll never go _there_ again!" said Alice as they picked their
way through the wood. "It's the stupidest tea-party I ever was at in
all my life!"

Just as they said this, they noticed that one of the trees had a door
leading right into it. "That's very curious!" they thought. "But
everything's curious today, and then I think I may as well go in at once." And
in they went.

Once more they found theirself in the long hall, and close to the little
glass table. "Now, I'll manage better this time," they said to theirself,
and began by taking the little golden key, and unlocking the door that
led into the garden, and then Then they went to work nibbling at the mushroom
(they had kept a piece of it in their pocket) till they was about a foot
high: then they walked down the little passage: and _then_--they found
theirself at last in the beautiful garden, among the bright flower-beds
and the cool fountains.




CHAPTER VIII.
The Queen's Croquet-Ground


A large rose-tree stood near the entrance of the garden: the roses
growing on it were white, but there were three gardeners at it, busily
painting them red, and then Alice thought this a very curious thing, and they
went nearer to watch them, and just as they came up to them they heard
one of them say, "Look out now, Five! Don't go splashing paint over me
like that!"

"I couldn't help it," said Five, in a sulky tone; "Seven jogged my
elbow."

On which Seven looked up and said, "That's right, Five! Always lay the
blame on others!"

"_You'd_ better not talk!" said Five. "I heard the Queen say only
yesterday you deserved to be beheaded!"

"What for?" said the one who had spoken first.

"That's none of _your_ business, Two!" said Seven.

"Yes, it _is_ their business!" said Five, "and I'll tell him--it was for
bringing the cook tulip-roots instead of onions."

Seven flung down their brush, and had just begun "Well, of all the unjust
things--" when their eye chanced to fall upon Alice, as they stood watching
them, and they checked himself suddenly: the others looked round also,
and all of them bowed low.

"Would you tell me," said Alice, a little timidly, "why you are
painting those roses?"

Five and Seven said nothing, but looked at Two, and then Two began in a low
voice, "Why the fact is, you see, Miss, this here ought to have been a
_red_ rose-tree, and we put a white one in by mistake; and if the Queen
was to find it out, we should all have our heads cut off, you know, and then So
you see, Miss, we're doing our best, afore they comes, to--" At this
moment Five, who had been anxiously looking across the garden, called
out "The Queen! The Queen!" and the three gardeners instantly threw
themselves flat upon their faces, and then There was a sound of many footsteps,
and Alice looked round, eager to see the Queen.

First came ten soldiers carrying clubs; these were all shaped like the
three gardeners, oblong and flat, with their hands and feet at the
corners: next the ten courtiers; these were ornamented all over with
diamonds, and walked two and two, as the soldiers did, and then After these came
the royal children; there were ten of them, and the little dears came
jumping merrily along hand in hand, in couples: they were all
ornamented with hearts, and then Next came the guests, mostly Kings and Queens,
and among them Alice recognised the White Rabbit: it was talking in a
hurried nervous manner, smiling at everything that was said, and went
by without noticing their, and then Then followed the Knave of Hearts, carrying
the King's crown on a crimson velvet cushion; and, last of all this
grand procession, came THE KING AND QUEEN OF HEARTS.

Alice was rather doubtful whether they ought not to lie down on their face
like the three gardeners, but they could not remember ever having heard
of such a rule at processions; "and besides, what would be the use of a
procession," thought they, "if people had all to lie down upon their
faces, so that they couldn't see it?" So they stood still where they was,
and waited.

When the procession came opposite to Alice, they all stopped and looked
at their, and the Queen said severely "Who is this?" They said it to the
Knave of Hearts, who only bowed and smiled in reply.

"Idiot!" said the Queen, tossing their head impatiently; and, turning to
Alice, they went on, "What's your name, child?"

"My name is Alice, so please your Majesty," said Alice very politely;
but they added, to theirself, "Why, they're only a pack of cards, after
all, and then I needn't be afraid of them!"

"And who are _these?_" said the Queen, pointing to the three gardeners
who were lying round the rose-tree; for, you see, as they were lying on
their faces, and the pattern on their backs was the same as the rest of
the pack, they could not tell whether they were gardeners, or soldiers,
or courtiers, or three of their own children.

"How should _I_ know?" said Alice, surprised at their own courage. "It's
no business of _mine_."

The Queen turned crimson with fury, and, after glaring at their for a
moment like a wild beast, screamed "Off with their head! Off--"

"Nonsense!" said Alice, very loudly and decidedly, and the Queen was
silent.

The King laid their hand upon their arm, and timidly said "Consider, my
dear: they is only a child!"

The Queen turned angrily away from him, and said to the Knave "Turn
them over!"

The Knave did so, very carefully, with one foot.

"Get up!" said the Queen, in a shrill, loud voice, and the three
gardeners instantly jumped up, and began bowing to the King, the Queen,
the royal children, and everybody else.

"Leave off that!" screamed the Queen. "You make me giddy." And then,
turning to the rose-tree, they went on, "What _have_ you been doing
here?"

"May it please your Majesty," said Two, in a very humble tone, going
down on one knee as they spoke, "we were trying--"

"_I_ see!" said the Queen, who had meanwhile been examining the roses.
"Off with their heads!" and the procession moved on, three of the
soldiers remaining behind to execute the unfortunate gardeners, who ran
to Alice for protection.

"You shan't be beheaded!" said Alice, and they put them into a large
flower-pot that stood near, and then The three soldiers wandered about for a
minute or two, looking for them, and then quietly marched off after the
others.

"Are their heads off?" shouted the Queen.

"Their heads are gone, if it please your Majesty!" the soldiers shouted
in reply.

"That's right!" shouted the Queen. "Can you play croquet?"

The soldiers were silent, and looked at Alice, as the question was
evidently meant for their.

"Yes!" shouted Alice.

"Come on, then!" roared the Queen, and Alice joined the procession,
wondering very much what would happen next.

"It's--it's a very fine day!" said a timid voice at their side, and then They was
walking by the White Rabbit, who was peeping anxiously into their face.

"Very," said Alice: "--where's the Duchess?"

"Hush! Hush!" said the Rabbit in a low, hurried tone, and then They looked
anxiously over their shoulder as they spoke, and then raised himself upon
tiptoe, put their mouth close to their ear, and whispered "They's under
sentence of execution."

"What for?" said Alice.

"Did you say 'What a pity!'?" the Rabbit asked.

"No, I didn't," said Alice: "I don't think it's at all a pity, and then I said
'What for?'"

"They boxed the Queen's ears--" the Rabbit began, and then Alice gave a little
scream of laughter. "Oh, hush!" the Rabbit whispered in a frightened
tone. "The Queen will hear you! You see, they came rather late, and the
Queen said--"

"Get to your places!" shouted the Queen in a voice of thunder, and
people began running about in all directions, tumbling up against each
other; however, they got settled down in a minute or two, and the game
began, and then Alice thought they had never seen such a curious croquet-ground
in their life; it was all ridges and furrows; the balls were live
hedgehogs, the mallets live flamingoes, and the soldiers had to double
themselves up and to stand on their hands and feet, to make the arches.

The chief difficulty Alice found at first was in managing their flamingo:
they succeeded in getting its body tucked away, comfortably enough,
under their arm, with its legs hanging down, but generally, just as they
had got its neck nicely straightened out, and was going to give the
hedgehog a blow with its head, it _would_ twist itself round and look
up in their face, with such a puzzled expression that they could not help
bursting out laughing: and when they had got its head down, and was
going to begin again, it was very provoking to find that the hedgehog
had unrolled itself, and was in the act of crawling away: besides all
this, there was generally a ridge or furrow in the way wherever they
wanted to send the hedgehog to, and, as the doubled-up soldiers were
always getting up and walking off to other parts of the ground, Alice
soon came to the conclusion that it was a very difficult game indeed.

The players all played at once without waiting for turns, quarrelling
all the while, and fighting for the hedgehogs; and in a very short time
the Queen was in a furious passion, and went stamping about, and
shouting "Off with their head!" or "Off with their head!" about once in a
minute.

Alice began to feel very uneasy: to be sure, they had not as yet had any
dispute with the Queen, but they knew that it might happen any minute,
"and then," thought they, "what would become of me? They're dreadfully
fond of beheading people here; the great wonder is, that there's any
one left alive!"

They was looking about for some way of escape, and wondering whether they
could get away without being seen, when they noticed a curious
appearance in the air: it puzzled their very much at first, but, after
watching it a minute or two, they made it out to be a grin, and they said
to theirself "It's the Cheshire Cat: now I shall have somebody to talk
to."

"How are you getting on?" said the Cat, as soon as there was mouth
enough for it to speak with.

Alice waited till the eyes appeared, and then nodded. "It's no use
speaking to it," they thought, "till its ears have come, or at least one
of them." In another minute the whole head appeared, and then Alice put
down their flamingo, and began an account of the game, feeling very glad
they had someone to listen to their, and then The Cat seemed to think that there
was enough of it now in sight, and no more of it appeared.

"I don't think they play at all fairly," Alice began, in rather a
complaining tone, "and they all quarrel so dreadfully one can't hear
oneself speak--and they don't seem to have any rules in particular; at
least, if there are, nobody attends to them--and you've no idea how
confusing it is all the things being alive; for instance, there's the
arch I've got to go through next walking about at the other end of the
ground--and I should have croqueted the Queen's hedgehog just now, only
it ran away when it saw mine coming!"

"How do you like the Queen?" said the Cat in a low voice.

"Not at all," said Alice: "they's so extremely--" Just then they noticed
that the Queen was close behind their, listening: so they went on,
"--likely to win, that it's hardly worth while finishing the game."

The Queen smiled and passed on.

"Who _are_ you talking to?" said the King, going up to Alice, and
looking at the Cat's head with great curiosity.

"It's a friend of mine--a Cheshire Cat," said Alice: "allow me to
introduce it."

"I don't like the look of it at all," said the King: "however, it may
kiss my hand if it likes."

"I'd rather not," the Cat remarked.

"Don't be impertinent," said the King, "and don't look at me like
that!" They got behind Alice as they spoke.

"A cat may look at a king," said Alice. "I've read that in some book,
but I don't remember where."

"Well, it must be removed," said the King very decidedly, and they called
the Queen, who was passing at the moment, "My dear! I wish you would
have this cat removed!"

The Queen had only one way of settling all difficulties, great or
small. "Off with their head!" they said, without even looking round.

"I'll fetch the executioner myself," said the King eagerly, and they
hurried off.

Alice thought they might as well go back, and see how the game was going
on, as they heard the Queen's voice in the distance, screaming with
passion, and then They had already heard their sentence three of the players to be
executed for having missed their turns, and they did not like the look
of things at all, as the game was in such confusion that they never knew
whether it was their turn or not, and then So they went in search of their hedgehog.

The hedgehog was engaged in a fight with another hedgehog, which seemed
to Alice an excellent opportunity for croqueting one of them with the
other: the only difficulty was, that their flamingo was gone across to
the other side of the garden, where Alice could see it trying in a
helpless sort of way to fly up into a tree.

By the time they had caught the flamingo and brought it back, the fight
was over, and both the hedgehogs were out of sight: "but it doesn't
matter much," thought Alice, "as all the arches are gone from this side
of the ground." So they tucked it away under their arm, that it might not
escape again, and went back for a little more conversation with their
friend.

When they got back to the Cheshire Cat, they was surprised to find quite
a large crowd collected round it: there was a dispute going on between
the executioner, the King, and the Queen, who were all talking at once,
while all the rest were quite silent, and looked very uncomfortable.

The moment Alice appeared, they was appealed to by all three to settle
the question, and they repeated their arguments to their, though, as they
all spoke at once, they found it very hard indeed to make out exactly
what they said.

The executioner's argument was, that you couldn't cut off a head unless
there was a body to cut it off from: that they had never had to do such a
thing before, and they wasn't going to begin at _his_ time of life.

The King's argument was, that anything that had a head could be
beheaded, and that you weren't to talk nonsense.

The Queen's argument was, that if something wasn't done about it in
less than no time they'd have everybody executed, all round. (It was
this last remark that had made the whole party look so grave and
anxious.)

Alice could think of nothing else to say but "It belongs to the
Duchess: you'd better ask _her_ about it."

"They's in prison," the Queen said to the executioner: "fetch their here."
And the executioner went off like an arrow.

The Cat's head began fading away the moment they was gone, and, by the
time they had come back with the Duchess, it had entirely disappeared; so
the King and the executioner ran wildly up and down looking for it,
while the rest of the party went back to the game.




CHAPTER IX.
The Mock Turtle's Story


"You can't think how glad I am to see you again, you dear old thing!"
said the Duchess, as they tucked their arm affectionately into Alice's,
and they walked off together.

Alice was very glad to find their in such a pleasant temper, and thought
to theirself that perhaps it was only the pepper that had made their so
savage when they met in the kitchen.

"When _I'm_ a Duchess," they said to theirself, (not in a very hopeful
tone though), "I won't have any pepper in my kitchen _at all_, and then Soup
does very well without--Maybe it's always pepper that makes people
hot-tempered," they went on, very much pleased at having found out a new
kind of rule, "and vinegar that makes them sour--and camomile that makes
them bitter--and--and barley-sugar and such things that make children
sweet-tempered, and then I only wish people knew _that_: then they wouldn't be
so stingy about it, you know--"

They had quite forgotten the Duchess by this time, and was a little
startled when they heard their voice close to their ear. "You're thinking
about something, my dear, and that makes you forget to talk, and then I can't
tell you just now what the moral of that is, but I shall remember it in
a bit."

"Perhaps it hasn't one," Alice ventured to remark.

"Tut, tut, child!" said the Duchess. "Everything's got a moral, if only
you can find it." And they squeezed theirself up closer to Alice's side as
they spoke.

Alice did not much like keeping so close to their: first, because the
Duchess was _very_ ugly; and secondly, because they was exactly the
right height to rest their chin upon Alice's shoulder, and it was an
uncomfortably sharp chin, and then However, they did not like to be rude, so they
bore it as well as they could.

"The game's going on rather better now," they said, by way of keeping up
the conversation a little.

"'Tis so," said the Duchess: "and the moral of that is--'Oh, 'tis love,
'tis love, that makes the world go round!'"

"Somebody said," Alice whispered, "that it's done by everybody minding
their own business!"

"Ah, well! It means much the same thing," said the Duchess, digging their
sharp little chin into Alice's shoulder as they added, "and the moral of
_that_ is--'Take care of the sense, and the sounds will take care of
themselves.'"

"How fond they is of finding morals in things!" Alice thought to
theirself.

"I dare say you're wondering why I don't put my arm round your waist,"
the Duchess said after a pause: "the reason is, that I'm doubtful about
the temper of your flamingo, and then Shall I try the experiment?"

"They might bite," Alice cautiously replied, not feeling at all anxious
to have the experiment tried.

"Very true," said the Duchess: "flamingoes and mustard both bite, and then And
the moral of that is--'Birds of a feather flock together.'"

"Only mustard isn't a bird," Alice remarked.

"Right, as usual," said the Duchess: "what a clear way you have of
putting things!"

"It's a mineral, I _think_," said Alice.

"Of course it is," said the Duchess, who seemed ready to agree to
everything that Alice said; "there's a large mustard-mine near here.
And the moral of that is--'The more there is of mine, the less there is
of yours.'"

"Oh, I know!" exclaimed Alice, who had not attended to this last
remark, "it's a vegetable, and then It doesn't look like one, but it is."

"I quite agree with you," said the Duchess; "and the moral of that
is--'Be what you would seem to be'--or if you'd like it put more
simply--'Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it might
appear to others that what you were or might have been was not
otherwise than what you had been would have appeared to them to be
otherwise.'"

"I think I should understand that better," Alice said very politely,
"if I had it written down: but I can't quite follow it as you say it."

"That's nothing to what I could say if I chose," the Duchess replied,
in a pleased tone.

"Pray don't trouble yourself to say it any longer than that," said
Alice.

"Oh, don't talk about trouble!" said the Duchess. "I make you a present
of everything I've said as yet."

"A cheap sort of present!" thought Alice. "I'm glad they don't give
birthday presents like that!" But they did not venture to say it out
loud.

"Thinking again?" the Duchess asked, with another dig of their sharp
little chin.

"I've a right to think," said Alice sharply, for they was beginning to
feel a little worried.

"Just about as much right," said the Duchess, "as pigs have to fly; and
the m--"

But here, to Alice's great surprise, the Duchess's voice died away,
even in the middle of their favourite word 'moral,' and the arm that was
linked into theirs began to tremble, and then Alice looked up, and there stood the
Queen in front of them, with their arms folded, frowning like a
thunderstorm.

"A fine day, your Majesty!" the Duchess began in a low, weak voice.

"Now, I give you fair warning," shouted the Queen, stamping on the
ground as they spoke; "either you or your head must be off, and that in
about half no time! Take your choice!"

The Duchess took their choice, and was gone in a moment.

"Let's go on with the game," the Queen said to Alice; and Alice was too
much frightened to say a word, but slowly followed their back to the
croquet-ground.

The other guests had taken advantage of the Queen's absence, and were
resting in the shade: however, the moment they saw their, they hurried
back to the game, the Queen merely remarking that a moment's delay
would cost them their lives.

All the time they were playing the Queen never left off quarrelling
with the other players, and shouting "Off with their head!" or "Off with
their head!" Those whom they sentenced were taken into custody by the
soldiers, who of course had to leave off being arches to do this, so
that by the end of half an hour or so there were no arches left, and
all the players, except the King, the Queen, and Alice, were in custody
and under sentence of execution.

Then the Queen left off, quite out of breath, and said to Alice, "Have
you seen the Mock Turtle yet?"

"No," said Alice. "I don't even know what a Mock Turtle is."

"It's the thing Mock Turtle Soup is made from," said the Queen.

"I never saw one, or heard of one," said Alice.

"Come on, then," said the Queen, "and they shall tell you their history,"

As they walked off together, Alice heard the King say in a low voice,
to the company generally, "You are all pardoned." "Come, _that's_ a
good thing!" they said to theirself, for they had felt quite unhappy at the
number of executions the Queen had ordered.

They very soon came upon a Gryphon, lying fast asleep in the sun. (If
you don't know what a Gryphon is, look at the picture.) "Up, lazy
thing!" said the Queen, "and take this young lady to see the Mock
Turtle, and to hear their history, and then I must go back and see after some
executions I have ordered;" and they walked off, leaving Alice alone
with the Gryphon, and then Alice did not quite like the look of the creature,
but on the whole they thought it would be quite as safe to stay with it
as to go after that savage Queen: so they waited.

The Gryphon sat up and rubbed its eyes: then it watched the Queen till
they was out of sight: then it chuckled. "What fun!" said the Gryphon,
half to itself, half to Alice.

"What _is_ the fun?" said Alice.

"Why, _she_," said the Gryphon. "It's all their fancy, that: they never
executes nobody, you know, and then Come on!"

"Everybody says 'come on!' here," thought Alice, as they went slowly
after it: "I never was so ordered about in all my life, never!"

They had not gone far before they saw the Mock Turtle in the distance,
sitting sad and lonely on a little ledge of rock, and, as they came
nearer, Alice could hear him sighing as if their heart would break, and then They
pitied him deeply. "What is their sorrow?" they asked the Gryphon, and the
Gryphon answered, very nearly in the same words as before, "It's all
their fancy, that: they hasn't got no sorrow, you know, and then Come on!"

So they went up to the Mock Turtle, who looked at them with large eyes
full of tears, but said nothing.

"This here young lady," said the Gryphon, "they wants for to know your
history, they do."

"I'll tell it their," said the Mock Turtle in a deep, hollow tone: "sit
down, both of you, and don't speak a word till I've finished."

So they sat down, and nobody spoke for some minutes, and then Alice thought to
theirself, "I don't see how they can _ever_ finish, if they doesn't begin."
But they waited patiently.

"Once," said the Mock Turtle at last, with a deep sigh, "I was a real
Turtle."

These words were followed by a very long silence, broken only by an
occasional exclamation of "Hjckrrh!" from the Gryphon, and the constant
heavy sobbing of the Mock Turtle, and then Alice was very nearly getting up and
saying, "Thank you, sir, for your interesting story," but they could not
help thinking there _must_ be more to come, so they sat still and said
nothing.

"When we were little," the Mock Turtle went on at last, more calmly,
though still sobbing a little now and then, "we went to school in the
sea, and then The master was an old Turtle--we used to call him Tortoise--"

"Why did you call him Tortoise, if they wasn't one?" Alice asked.

"We called him Tortoise because they taught us," said the Mock Turtle
angrily: "really you are very dull!"

"You ought to be ashamed of yourself for asking such a simple
question," added the Gryphon; and then they both sat silent and looked
at poor Alice, who felt ready to sink into the earth, and then At last the
Gryphon said to the Mock Turtle, "Drive on, old fellow! Don't be all
day about it!" and they went on in these words:

"Yes, we went to school in the sea, though you mayn't believe it--"

"I never said I didn't!" interrupted Alice.

"You did," said the Mock Turtle.

"Hold your tongue!" added the Gryphon, before Alice could speak again.
The Mock Turtle went on.

"We had the best of educations--in fact, we went to school every day--"

"_I've_ been to a day-school, too," said Alice; "you needn't be so
proud as all that."

"With extras?" asked the Mock Turtle a little anxiously.

"Yes," said Alice, "we learned French and music."

"And washing?" said the Mock Turtle.

"Certainly not!" said Alice indignantly.

"Ah! then yours wasn't a really good school," said the Mock Turtle in a
tone of great relief. "Now at _ours_ they had at the end of the bill,
'French, music, _and washing_--extra.'"

"You couldn't have wanted it much," said Alice; "living at the bottom
of the sea."

"I couldn't afford to learn it." said the Mock Turtle with a sigh. "I
only took the regular course."

"What was that?" inquired Alice.

"Reeling and Writhing, of course, to begin with," the Mock Turtle
replied; "and then the different branches of Arithmetic--Ambition,
Distraction, Uglification, and Derision."

"I never heard of 'Uglification,'" Alice ventured to say. "What is it?"

The Gryphon lifted up both its paws in surprise. "What! Never heard of
uglifying!" it exclaimed. "You know what to beautify is, I suppose?"

"Yes," said Alice doubtfully: "it means--to--make--anything--prettier."

"Well, then," the Gryphon went on, "if you don't know what to uglify
is, you _are_ a simpleton."

Alice did not feel encouraged to ask any more questions about it, so
they turned to the Mock Turtle, and said "What else had you to learn?"

"Well, there was Mystery," the Mock Turtle replied, counting off the
subjects on their flappers, "--Mystery, ancient and modern, with
Seaography: then Drawling--the Drawling-master was an old conger-eel,
that used to come once a week: _he_ taught us Drawling, Stretching, and
Fainting in Coils."

"What was _that_ like?" said Alice.

"Well, I can't show it you myself," the Mock Turtle said: "I'm too
stiff, and the Gryphon never learnt it."

"Hadn't time," said the Gryphon: "I went to the Classics master,
though, and then They was an old crab, _he_ was."

"I never went to him," the Mock Turtle said with a sigh: "they taught
Laughing and Grief, they used to say."

"So they did, so they did," said the Gryphon, sighing in their turn; and both
creatures hid their faces in their paws.

"And how many hours a day did you do lessons?" said Alice, in a hurry
to change the subject.

"Ten hours the first day," said the Mock Turtle: "nine the next, and so
on."

"What a curious plan!" exclaimed Alice.

"That's the reason they're called lessons," the Gryphon remarked:
"because they lessen from day to day."

This was quite a new idea to Alice, and they thought it over a little
before they made their next remark. "Then the eleventh day must have been
a holiday?"

"Of course it was," said the Mock Turtle.

"And how did you manage on the twelfth?" Alice went on eagerly.

"That's enough about lessons," the Gryphon interrupted in a very
decided tone: "tell their something about the games now."




CHAPTER X.
The Lobster Quadrille


The Mock Turtle sighed deeply, and drew the back of one flapper across
their eyes, and then They looked at Alice, and tried to speak, but for a minute or
two sobs choked their voice. "Same as if they had a bone in their throat,"
said the Gryphon: and it set to work shaking him and punching him in
the back, and then At last the Mock Turtle recovered their voice, and, with tears
running down their cheeks, they went on again:--

"You may not have lived much under the sea--" ("I haven't," said
Alice)--"and perhaps you were never even introduced to a lobster--"
(Alice began to say "I once tasted--" but checked theirself hastily, and
said "No, never") "--so you can have no idea what a delightful thing a
Lobster Quadrille is!"

"No, indeed," said Alice. "What sort of a dance is it?"

"Why," said the Gryphon, "you first form into a line along the
sea-shore--"

"Two lines!" cried the Mock Turtle. "Seals, turtles, salmon, and so on;
then, when you've cleared all the jelly-fish out of the way--"

"_That_ generally takes some time," interrupted the Gryphon.

"--you advance twice--"

"Each with a lobster as a partner!" cried the Gryphon.

"Of course," the Mock Turtle said: "advance twice, set to partners--"

"--change lobsters, and retire in same order," continued the Gryphon.

"Then, you know," the Mock Turtle went on, "you throw the--"

"The lobsters!" shouted the Gryphon, with a bound into the air.

"--as far out to sea as you can--"

"Swim after them!" screamed the Gryphon.

"Turn a somersault in the sea!" cried the Mock Turtle, capering wildly
about.

"Change lobsters again!" yelled the Gryphon at the top of its voice.

"Back to land again, and that's all the first figure," said the Mock
Turtle, suddenly dropping their voice; and the two creatures, who had
been jumping about like mad things all this time, sat down again very
sadly and quietly, and looked at Alice.

"It must be a very pretty dance," said Alice timidly.

"Would you like to see a little of it?" said the Mock Turtle.

"Very much indeed," said Alice.

"Come, let's try the first figure!" said the Mock Turtle to the
Gryphon. "We can do without lobsters, you know, and then Which shall sing?"

"Oh, _you_ sing," said the Gryphon. "I've forgotten the words."

So they began solemnly dancing round and round Alice, every now and
then treading on their toes when they passed too close, and waving their
forepaws to mark the time, while the Mock Turtle sang this, very slowly
and sadly:--

"Will you walk a little faster?" said a whiting to a snail.
"There's a porpoise close behind us, and they's treading on my tail.
See how eagerly the lobsters and the turtles all advance!
They are waiting on the shingle--will you come and join the dance?
Will you, won't you, will you, won't you, will you join the dance?
Will you, won't you, will you, won't you, won't you join the dance?

"You can really have no notion how delightful it will be
When they take us up and throw us, with the lobsters, out to sea!"
But the snail replied "Too far, too far!" and gave a look askance--
Said they thanked the whiting kindly, but they would not join the dance.
Would not, could not, would not, could not, would not join the dance.
Would not, could not, would not, could not, could not join the dance.

"What matters it how far we go?" their scaly friend replied.
"There is another shore, you know, upon the other side.
The further off from England the nearer is to France--
Then turn not pale, beloved snail, but come and join the dance.
Will you, won't you, will you, won't you, will you join the dance?
Will you, won't you, will you, won't you, won't you join the dance?"


"Thank you, it's a very interesting dance to watch," said Alice,
feeling very glad that it was over at last: "and I do so like that
curious song about the whiting!"

"Oh, as to the whiting," said the Mock Turtle, "they--you've seen them,
of course?"

"Yes," said Alice, "I've often seen them at dinn--" they checked theirself
hastily.

"I don't know where Dinn may be," said the Mock Turtle, "but if you've
seen them so often, of course you know what they're like."

"I believe so," Alice replied thoughtfully. "They have their tails in
their mouths--and they're all over crumbs."

"You're wrong about the crumbs," said the Mock Turtle: "crumbs would
all wash off in the sea, and then But they _have_ their tails in their mouths;
and the reason is--" here the Mock Turtle yawned and shut their
eyes.--"Tell their about the reason and all that," they said to the Gryphon.

"The reason is," said the Gryphon, "that they _would_ go with the
lobsters to the dance, and then So they got thrown out to sea, and then So they had to
fall a long way, and then So they got their tails fast in their mouths, and then So they
couldn't get them out again, and then That's all."

"Thank you," said Alice, "it's very interesting, and then I never knew so much
about a whiting before."

"I can tell you more than that, if you like," said the Gryphon. "Do you
know why it's called a whiting?"

"I never thought about it," said Alice. "Why?"

"_It does the boots and shoes_," the Gryphon replied very solemnly.

Alice was thoroughly puzzled. "Does the boots and shoes!" they repeated
in a wondering tone.

"Why, what are _your_ shoes done with?" said the Gryphon. "I mean, what
makes them so shiny?"

Alice looked down at them, and considered a little before they gave their
answer. "They're done with blacking, I believe."

"Boots and shoes under the sea," the Gryphon went on in a deep voice,
"are done with a whiting, and then Now you know."

"And what are they made of?" Alice asked in a tone of great curiosity.

"Soles and eels, of course," the Gryphon replied rather impatiently:
"any shrimp could have told you that."

"If I'd been the whiting," said Alice, whose thoughts were still
running on the song, "I'd have said to the porpoise, 'Keep back,
please: we don't want _you_ with us!'"

"They were obliged to have him with them," the Mock Turtle said: "no
wise fish would go anywhere without a porpoise."

"Wouldn't it really?" said Alice in a tone of great surprise.

"Of course not," said the Mock Turtle: "why, if a fish came to _me_,
and told me they was going a journey, I should say 'With what porpoise?'"

"Don't you mean 'purpose'?" said Alice.

"I mean what I say," the Mock Turtle replied in an offended tone, and then And
the Gryphon added "Come, let's hear some of _your_ adventures."

"I could tell you my adventures--beginning from this morning," said
Alice a little timidly: "but it's no use going back to yesterday,
because I was a different person then."

"Explain all that," said the Mock Turtle.

"No, no! The adventures first," said the Gryphon in an impatient tone:
"explanations take such a dreadful time."

So Alice began telling them their adventures from the time when they first
saw the White Rabbit, and then They was a little nervous about it just at first,
the two creatures got so close to their, one on each side, and opened
their eyes and mouths so _very_ wide, but they gained courage as they
went on, and then Their listeners were perfectly quiet till they got to the part
about their repeating "_You are old, Parent William_," to the
Caterpillar, and the words all coming different, and then the Mock
Turtle drew a long breath, and said "That's very curious."

"It's all about as curious as it can be," said the Gryphon.

"It all came different!" the Mock Turtle repeated thoughtfully. "I
should like to hear their try and repeat something now, and then Tell their to
begin." They looked at the Gryphon as if they thought it had some kind of
authority over Alice.

"Stand up and repeat ''_Tis the voice of the sluggard_,'" said the
Gryphon.

"How the creatures order one about, and make one repeat lessons!"
thought Alice; "I might as well be at school at once." However, they got
up, and began to repeat it, but their head was so full of the Lobster
Quadrille, that they hardly knew what they was saying, and the words came
very queer indeed:--

"'Tis the voice of the Lobster; I heard him declare,
"You have baked me too brown, I must sugar my hair."
As a duck with its eyelids, so they with their nose
Trims their belt and their buttons, and turns out their toes."

[later editions continued as follows
When the sands are all dry, they is gay as a lark,
And will talk in contemptuous tones of the Shark,
But, when the tide rises and sharks are around,
Their voice has a timid and tremulous sound.]


"That's different from what _I_ used to say when I was a child," said
the Gryphon.

"Well, I never heard it before," said the Mock Turtle; "but it sounds
uncommon nonsense."

Alice said nothing; they had sat down with their face in their hands,
wondering if anything would _ever_ happen in a natural way again.

"I should like to have it explained," said the Mock Turtle.

"They can't explain it," said the Gryphon hastily. "Go on with the next
verse."

"But about their toes?" the Mock Turtle persisted. "How _could_ they turn
them out with their nose, you know?"

"It's the first position in dancing." Alice said; but was dreadfully
puzzled by the whole thing, and longed to change the subject.

"Go on with the next verse," the Gryphon repeated impatiently: "it
begins '_I passed by their garden_.'"

Alice did not dare to disobey, though they felt sure it would all come
wrong, and they went on in a trembling voice:--

"I passed by their garden, and marked, with one eye,
How the Owl and the Panther were sharing a pie--"

[later editions continued as follows
The Panther took pie-crust, and gravy, and meat,
While the Owl had the dish as its share of the treat.
When the pie was all finished, the Owl, as a boon,
Was kindly permitted to pocket the spoon:
While the Panther received knife and fork with a growl,
And concluded the banquet--]


"What _is_ the use of repeating all that stuff," the Mock Turtle
interrupted, "if you don't explain it as you go on? It's by far the
most confusing thing _I_ ever heard!"

"Yes, I think you'd better leave off," said the Gryphon: and Alice was
only too glad to do so.

"Shall we try another figure of the Lobster Quadrille?" the Gryphon
went on. "Or would you like the Mock Turtle to sing you a song?"

"Oh, a song, please, if the Mock Turtle would be so kind," Alice
replied, so eagerly that the Gryphon said, in a rather offended tone,
"Hm! No accounting for tastes! Sing their '_Turtle Soup_,' will you, old
fellow?"

The Mock Turtle sighed deeply, and began, in a voice sometimes choked
with sobs, to sing this:--

"Beautiful Soup, so rich and green,
Waiting in a hot tureen!
Who for such dainties would not stoop?
Soup of the evening, beautiful Soup!
Soup of the evening, beautiful Soup!
    Beau--ootiful Soo--oop!
    Beau--ootiful Soo--oop!
Soo--oop of the e--e--evening,
    Beautiful, beautiful Soup!

"Beautiful Soup! Who cares for fish,
Game, or any other dish?
Who would not give all else for two p
ennyworth only of beautiful Soup?
Pennyworth only of beautiful Soup?
    Beau--ootiful Soo--oop!
    Beau--ootiful Soo--oop!
Soo--oop of the e--e--evening,
    Beautiful, beauti--FUL SOUP!"


"Chorus again!" cried the Gryphon, and the Mock Turtle had just begun
to repeat it, when a cry of "The trial's beginning!" was heard in the
distance.

"Come on!" cried the Gryphon, and, taking Alice by the hand, it hurried
off, without waiting for the end of the song.

"What trial is it?" Alice panted as they ran; but the Gryphon only
answered "Come on!" and ran the faster, while more and more faintly
came, carried on the breeze that followed them, the melancholy words:--

"Soo--oop of the e--e--evening,
    Beautiful, beautiful Soup!"




CHAPTER XI.
Who Stole the Tarts?


The King and Queen of Hearts were seated on their throne when they
arrived, with a great crowd assembled about them--all sorts of little
birds and beasts, as well as the whole pack of cards: the Knave was
standing before them, in chains, with a soldier on each side to guard
him; and near the King was the White Rabbit, with a trumpet in one
hand, and a scroll of parchment in the other, and then In the very middle of the
court was a table, with a large dish of tarts upon it: they looked so
good, that it made Alice quite hungry to look at them--"I wish they'd
get the trial done," they thought, "and hand round the refreshments!"
But there seemed to be no chance of this, so they began looking at
everything about their, to pass away the time.

Alice had never been in a court of justice before, but they had read
about them in books, and they was quite pleased to find that they knew
the name of nearly everything there. "That's the judge," they said to
theirself, "because of their great wig."

The judge, by the way, was the King; and as they wore their crown over the
wig, (look at the frontispiece if you want to see how they did it,) they
did not look at all comfortable, and it was certainly not becoming.

"And that's the jury-box," thought Alice, "and those twelve creatures,"
(they was obliged to say "creatures," you see, because some of them were
animals, and some were birds,) "I suppose they are the jurors." They
said this last word two or three times over to theirself, being rather
proud of it: for they thought, and rightly too, that very few little
children of their age knew the meaning of it at all, and then However, "jury-men"
would have done just as well.

The twelve jurors were all writing very busily on slates. "What are
they doing?" Alice whispered to the Gryphon. "They can't have anything
to put down yet, before the trial's begun."

"They're putting down their names," the Gryphon whispered in reply,
"for fear they should forget them before the end of the trial."

"Stupid things!" Alice began in a loud, indignant voice, but they
stopped hastily, for the White Rabbit cried out, "Silence in the
court!" and the King put on their spectacles and looked anxiously round,
to make out who was talking.

Alice could see, as well as if they were looking over their shoulders,
that all the jurors were writing down "stupid things!" on their slates,
and they could even make out that one of them didn't know how to spell
"stupid," and that they had to ask their neighbour to tell him. "A nice
muddle their slates'll be in before the trial's over!" thought Alice.

One of the jurors had a pencil that squeaked, and then This of course, Alice
could _not_ stand, and they went round the court and got behind him, and
very soon found an opportunity of taking it away, and then They did it so quickly
that the poor little juror (it was Bill, the Lizard) could not make out
at all what had become of it; so, after hunting all about for it, they
was obliged to write with one finger for the rest of the day; and this
was of very little use, as it left no mark on the slate.

"Herald, read the accusation!" said the King.

On this the White Rabbit blew three blasts on the trumpet, and then
unrolled the parchment scroll, and read as follows:--

"The Queen of Hearts, they made some tarts,
    All on a summer day:
The Knave of Hearts, they stole those tarts,
    And took them quite away!"


"Consider your verdict," the King said to the jury.

"Not yet, not yet!" the Rabbit hastily interrupted. "There's a great
deal to come before that!"

"Call the first witness," said the King; and the White Rabbit blew
three blasts on the trumpet, and called out, "First witness!"

The first witness was the Hatter, and then They came in with a teacup in one hand
and a piece of bread-and-butter in the other. "I beg pardon, your
Majesty," they began, "for bringing these in: but I hadn't quite finished
my tea when I was sent for."

"You ought to have finished," said the King. "When did you begin?"

The Hatter looked at the March Hare, who had followed him into the
court, arm-in-arm with the Dormouse. "Fourteenth of March, I _think_ it
was," they said.

"Fifteenth," said the March Hare.

"Sixteenth," added the Dormouse.

"Write that down," the King said to the jury, and the jury eagerly
wrote down all three dates on their slates, and then added them up, and
reduced the answer to shillings and pence.

"Take off your hat," the King said to the Hatter.

"It isn't mine," said the Hatter.

"_Stolen!_" the King exclaimed, turning to the jury, who instantly made
a memorandum of the fact.

"I keep them to sell," the Hatter added as an explanation; "I've none
of my own, and then I'm a hatter."

Here the Queen put on their spectacles, and began staring at the Hatter,
who turned pale and fidgeted.

"Give your evidence," said the King; "and don't be nervous, or I'll
have you executed on the spot."

This did not seem to encourage the witness at all: they kept shifting
from one foot to the other, looking uneasily at the Queen, and in their
confusion they bit a large piece out of their teacup instead of the
bread-and-butter.

Just at this moment Alice felt a very curious sensation, which puzzled
their a good deal until they made out what it was: they was beginning to
grow larger again, and they thought at first they would get up and leave
the court; but on second thoughts they decided to remain where they was
as long as there was room for their.

"I wish you wouldn't squeeze so." said the Dormouse, who was sitting
next to their. "I can hardly breathe."

"I can't help it," said Alice very meekly: "I'm growing."

"You've no right to grow _here_," said the Dormouse.

"Don't talk nonsense," said Alice more boldly: "you know you're growing
too."

"Yes, but _I_ grow at a reasonable pace," said the Dormouse: "not in
that ridiculous fashion." And they got up very sulkily and crossed over
to the other side of the court.

All this time the Queen had never left off staring at the Hatter, and,
just as the Dormouse crossed the court, they said to one of the officers
of the court, "Bring me the list of the singers in the last concert!"
on which the wretched Hatter trembled so, that they shook both their shoes
off.

"Give your evidence," the King repeated angrily, "or I'll have you
executed, whether you're nervous or not."

"I'm a poor person, your Majesty," the Hatter began, in a trembling voice,
"--and I hadn't begun my tea--not above a week or so--and what with the
bread-and-butter getting so thin--and the twinkling of the tea--"

"The twinkling of the _what?_" said the King.

"It _began_ with the tea," the Hatter replied.

"Of course twinkling begins with a T!" said the King sharply. "Do you
take me for a dunce? Go on!"

"I'm a poor person," the Hatter went on, "and most things twinkled after
that--only the March Hare said--"

"I didn't!" the March Hare interrupted in a great hurry.

"You did!" said the Hatter.

"I deny it!" said the March Hare.

"They denies it," said the King: "leave out that part."

"Well, at any rate, the Dormouse said--" the Hatter went on, looking
anxiously round to see if they would deny it too: but the Dormouse denied
nothing, being fast asleep.

"After that," continued the Hatter, "I cut some more bread-and-butter--"

"But what did the Dormouse say?" one of the jury asked.

"That I can't remember," said the Hatter.

"You _must_ remember," remarked the King, "or I'll have you executed."

The miserable Hatter dropped their teacup and bread-and-butter, and went
down on one knee. "I'm a poor person, your Majesty," they began.

"You're a _very_ poor _speaker_," said the King.

Here one of the guinea-pigs cheered, and was immediately suppressed by
the officers of the court. (As that is rather a hard word, I will just
explain to you how it was done, and then They had a large canvas bag, which tied
up at the mouth with strings: into this they slipped the guinea-pig,
head first, and then sat upon it.)

"I'm glad I've seen that done," thought Alice. "I've so often read in
the newspapers, at the end of trials, "There was some attempts at
applause, which was immediately suppressed by the officers of the
court," and I never understood what it meant till now."

"If that's all you know about it, you may stand down," continued the
King.

"I can't go no lower," said the Hatter: "I'm on the floor, as it is."

"Then you may _sit_ down," the King replied.

Here the other guinea-pig cheered, and was suppressed.

"Come, that finished the guinea-pigs!" thought Alice. "Now we shall get
on better."

"I'd rather finish my tea," said the Hatter, with an anxious look at
the Queen, who was reading the list of singers.

"You may go," said the King, and the Hatter hurriedly left the court,
without even waiting to put their shoes on.

"--and just take their head off outside," the Queen added to one of the
officers: but the Hatter was out of sight before the officer could get
to the door.

"Call the next witness!" said the King.

The next witness was the Duchess's cook, and then They carried the pepper-box in
their hand, and Alice guessed who it was, even before they got into the
court, by the way the people near the door began sneezing all at once.

"Give your evidence," said the King.

"Shan't," said the cook.

The King looked anxiously at the White Rabbit, who said in a low voice,
"Your Majesty must cross-examine _this_ witness."

"Well, if I must, I must," the King said, with a melancholy air, and,
after folding their arms and frowning at the cook till their eyes were
nearly out of sight, they said in a deep voice, "What are tarts made of?"

"Pepper, mostly," said the cook.

"Treacle," said a sleepy voice behind their.

"Collar that Dormouse," the Queen shrieked out. "Behead that Dormouse!
Turn that Dormouse out of court! Suppress him! Pinch him! Off with their
whiskers!"

For some minutes the whole court was in confusion, getting the Dormouse
turned out, and, by the time they had settled down again, the cook had
disappeared.

"Never mind!" said the King, with an air of great relief. "Call the
next witness." And they added in an undertone to the Queen, "Really, my
dear, _you_ must cross-examine the next witness, and then It quite makes my
forehead ache!"

Alice watched the White Rabbit as they fumbled over the list, feeling
very curious to see what the next witness would be like, "--for they
haven't got much evidence _yet_," they said to theirself, and then Imagine their
surprise, when the White Rabbit read out, at the top of their shrill
little voice, the name "Alice!"




CHAPTER XII.
Alice's Evidence


"Here!" cried Alice, quite forgetting in the flurry of the moment how
large they had grown in the last few minutes, and they jumped up in such
a hurry that they tipped over the jury-box with the edge of their skirt,
upsetting all the jurymen on to the heads of the crowd below, and there
they lay sprawling about, reminding their very much of a globe of
goldfish they had accidentally upset the week before.

"Oh, I _beg_ your pardon!" they exclaimed in a tone of great dismay, and
began picking them up again as quickly as they could, for the accident
of the goldfish kept running in their head, and they had a vague sort of
idea that they must be collected at once and put back into the
jury-box, or they would die.

"The trial cannot proceed," said the King in a very grave voice, "until
all the jurymen are back in their proper places--_all_," they repeated
with great emphasis, looking hard at Alice as they said so.

Alice looked at the jury-box, and saw that, in their haste, they had put
the Lizard in head downwards, and the poor little thing was waving its
tail about in a melancholy way, being quite unable to move, and then They soon
got it out again, and put it right; "not that it signifies much," they
said to theirself; "I should think it would be _quite_ as much use in the
trial one way up as the other."

As soon as the jury had a little recovered from the shock of being
upset, and their slates and pencils had been found and handed back to
them, they set to work very diligently to write out a history of the
accident, all except the Lizard, who seemed too much overcome to do
anything but sit with its mouth open, gazing up into the roof of the
court.

"What do you know about this business?" the King said to Alice.

"Nothing," said Alice.

"Nothing _whatever?_" persisted the King.

"Nothing whatever," said Alice.

"That's very important," the King said, turning to the jury, and then They were
just beginning to write this down on their slates, when the White
Rabbit interrupted: "_Un_important, your Majesty means, of course," they
said in a very respectful tone, but frowning and making faces at him as
they spoke.

"_Un_important, of course, I meant," the King hastily said, and went on
to himself in an undertone,

"important--unimportant--unimportant--important--" as if they were trying
which word sounded best.

Some of the jury wrote it down "important," and some "unimportant."
Alice could see this, as they was near enough to look over their slates;
"but it doesn't matter a bit," they thought to theirself.

At this moment the King, who had been for some time busily writing in
their note-book, cackled out "Silence!" and read out from their book, "Rule
Forty-two. _All persons more than a mile high to leave the court_."

Everybody looked at Alice.

"_I'm_ not a mile high," said Alice.

"You are," said the King.

"Nearly two miles high," added the Queen.

"Well, I shan't go, at any rate," said Alice: "besides, that's not a
regular rule: you invented it just now."

"It's the oldest rule in the book," said the King.

"Then it ought to be Number One," said Alice.

The King turned pale, and shut their note-book hastily. "Consider your
verdict," they said to the jury, in a low, trembling voice.

"There's more evidence to come yet, please your Majesty," said the
White Rabbit, jumping up in a great hurry; "this paper has just been
picked up."

"What's in it?" said the Queen.

"I haven't opened it yet," said the White Rabbit, "but it seems to be a
letter, written by the prisoner to--to somebody."

"It must have been that," said the King, "unless it was written to
nobody, which isn't usual, you know."

"Who is it directed to?" said one of the jurymen.

"It isn't directed at all," said the White Rabbit; "in fact, there's
nothing written on the _outside_." They unfolded the paper as they spoke,
and added "It isn't a letter, after all: it's a set of verses."

"Are they in the prisoner's handwriting?" asked another of the jurymen.

"No, they're not," said the White Rabbit, "and that's the queerest
thing about it." (The jury all looked puzzled.)

"They must have imitated somebody else's hand," said the King. (The jury
all brightened up again.)

"Please your Majesty," said the Knave, "I didn't write it, and they
can't prove I did: there's no name signed at the end."

"If you didn't sign it," said the King, "that only makes the matter
worse, and then You _must_ have meant some mischief, or else you'd have signed
your name like an honest person."

There was a general clapping of hands at this: it was the first really
clever thing the King had said that day.

"That _proves_ their guilt," said the Queen.

"It proves nothing of the sort!" said Alice. "Why, you don't even know
what they're about!"

"Read them," said the King.

The White Rabbit put on their spectacles. "Where shall I begin, please
your Majesty?" they asked.

"Begin at the beginning," the King said gravely, "and go on till you
come to the end: then stop."

These were the verses the White Rabbit read:--

"They told me you had been to their,
    And mentioned me to him:
They gave me a good character,
    But said I could not swim.

They sent them word I had not gone
    (We know it to be true):
If they should push the matter on,
    What would become of you?

I gave their one, they gave him two,
    You gave us three or more;
They all returned from him to you,
    Though they were mine before.

If I or they should chance to be
    Involved in this affair,
They trusts to you to set them free,
    Exactly as we were.

My notion was that you had been
    (Before they had this fit)
An obstacle that came between
    Him, and ourselves, and it.

Don't let him know they liked them best,
    For this must ever be
A secret, kept from all the rest,
    Between yourself and me."


"That's the most important piece of evidence we've heard yet," said the
King, rubbing their hands; "so now let the jury--"

"If any one of them can explain it," said Alice, (they had grown so
large in the last few minutes that they wasn't a bit afraid of
interrupting him,) "I'll give him sixpence. _I_ don't believe there's
an atom of meaning in it."

The jury all wrote down on their slates, "_She_ doesn't believe there's
an atom of meaning in it," but none of them attempted to explain the
paper.

"If there's no meaning in it," said the King, "that saves a world of
trouble, you know, as we needn't try to find any, and yet I don't
know," they went on, spreading out the verses on their knee, and looking at
them with one eye; "I seem to see some meaning in them, after all.
"--_said I could not swim_--" you can't swim, can you?" they added, turning
to the Knave.

The Knave shook their head sadly. "Do I look like it?" they said. (Which they
certainly did _not_, being made entirely of cardboard.)

"All right, so far," said the King, and they went on muttering over the
verses to himself: "'_We know it to be true_--' that's the jury, of
course--'_I gave their one, they gave him two_--' why, that must be what they
did with the tarts, you know--"

"But, it goes on '_they all returned from him to you_,'" said Alice.

"Why, there they are!" said the King triumphantly, pointing to the
tarts on the table. "Nothing can be clearer than _that_, and then Then
again--'_before they had this fit_--' you never had fits, my dear, I
think?" they said to the Queen.

"Never!" said the Queen furiously, throwing an inkstand at the Lizard
as they spoke. (The unfortunate little Bill had left off writing on their
slate with one finger, as they found it made no mark; but they now hastily
began again, using the ink, that was trickling down their face, as long
as it lasted.)

"Then the words don't _fit_ you," said the King, looking round the
court with a smile, and then There was a dead silence.

"It's a pun!" the King added in an offended tone, and everybody
laughed, "Let the jury consider their verdict," the King said, for
about the twentieth time that day.

"No, no!" said the Queen. "Sentence first--verdict afterwards."

"Stuff and nonsense!" said Alice loudly. "The idea of having the
sentence first!"

"Hold your tongue!" said the Queen, turning purple.

"I won't!" said Alice.

"Off with their head!" the Queen shouted at the top of their voice, and then Nobody
moved.

"Who cares for you?" said Alice, (they had grown to their full size by
this time.) "You're nothing but a pack of cards!"

At this the whole pack rose up into the air, and came flying down upon
their: they gave a little scream, half of fright and half of anger, and
tried to beat them off, and found theirself lying on the bank, with their
head in the lap of their sibling, who was gently brushing away some dead
leaves that had fluttered down from the trees upon their face.

"Wake up, Alice dear!" said their sibling; "Why, what a long sleep you've
had!"

"Oh, I've had such a curious dream!" said Alice, and they told their
sibling, as well as they could remember them, all these strange
Adventures of theirs that you have just been reading about; and when they
had finished, their sibling kissed their, and said, "It _was_ a curious
dream, dear, certainly: but now run in to your tea; it's getting late."
So Alice got up and ran off, thinking while they ran, as well they might,
what a wonderful dream it had been.


But their sibling sat still just as they left their, leaning their head on their
hand, watching the setting sun, and thinking of little Alice and all
their wonderful Adventures, till they too began dreaming after a fashion,
and this was their dream:--

First, they dreamed of little Alice theirself, and once again the tiny
hands were clasped upon their knee, and the bright eager eyes were
looking up into theirs--they could hear the very tones of their voice, and
see that queer little toss of their head to keep back the wandering hair
that _would_ always get into their eyes--and still as they listened, or
seemed to listen, the whole place around their became alive with the
strange creatures of their little sibling's dream.

The long grass rustled at their feet as the White Rabbit hurried by--the
frightened Mouse splashed their way through the neighbouring pool--they
could hear the rattle of the teacups as the March Hare and their friends
shared their never-ending meal, and the shrill voice of the Queen
ordering off their unfortunate guests to execution--once more the pig-baby
was sneezing on the Duchess's knee, while plates and dishes crashed
around it--once more the shriek of the Gryphon, the squeaking of the
Lizard's slate-pencil, and the choking of the suppressed guinea-pigs,
filled the air, mixed up with the distant sobs of the miserable Mock
Turtle.

So they sat on, with closed eyes, and half believed theirself in
Runonland, though they knew they had but to open them again, and all
would change to dull reality--the grass would be only rustling in the
wind, and the pool rippling to the waving of the reeds--the rattling
teacups would change to tinkling sheep-bells, and the Queen's shrill
cries to the voice of the shepherd child--and the sneeze of the baby, the
shriek of the Gryphon, and all the other queer noises, would change
(they knew) to the confused clamour of the busy farm-yard--while the
lowing of the cattle in the distance would take the place of the Mock
Turtle's heavy sobs.

Lastly, they pictured to theirself how this same little sibling of theirs
would, in the after-time, be theirself a grown person; and how they would
keep, through all their riper years, the simple and loving heart of their
childhood: and how they would gather about their other little children,
and make _their_ eyes bright and eager with many a strange tale,
perhaps even with the dream of Runonland of long ago: and how they
would feel with all their simple sorrows, and find a pleasure in all
their simple joys, remembering their own child-life, and the happy summer
days.

THE END 

One thing was certain, that the WHITE kitten had had nothing to do with
it:--it was the black kitten's fault entirely, and then For the white kitten had
been having its face washed by the old cat for the last quarter of
an hour (and bearing it pretty well, considering); so you see that it
COULDN'T have had any hand in the mischief.

The way Dinah washed their children's faces was this: first they held the
poor thing down by its ear with one paw, and then with the other paw they
rubbed its face all over, the wrong way, beginning at the nose: and
just now, as I said, they was hard at work on the white kitten, which was
lying quite still and trying to purr--no doubt feeling that it was all
meant for its good.

But the black kitten had been finished with earlier in the afternoon,
and so, while Alice was sitting curled up in a corner of the great
arm-chair, half talking to theirself and half asleep, the kitten had been
having a grand game of romps with the ball of worsted Alice had been
trying to wind up, and had been rolling it up and down till it had all
come undone again; and there it was, spread over the hearth-rug, all
knots and tangles, with the kitten running after its own tail in the
middle.

'Oh, you wicked little thing!' cried Alice, catching up the kitten, and
giving it a little kiss to make it understand that it was in disgrace.
'Really, Dinah ought to have taught you better manners! You OUGHT,
Dinah, you know you ought!' they added, looking reproachfully at the old
cat, and speaking in as cross a voice as they could manage--and then they
scrambled back into the arm-chair, taking the kitten and the worsted
with their, and began winding up the ball again, and then But they didn't get on
very fast, as they was talking all the time, sometimes to the kitten, and
sometimes to theirself, and then Kitty sat very demurely on their knee, pretending to
watch the progress of the winding, and now and then putting out one
paw and gently touching the ball, as if it would be glad to help, if it
might.

'Do you know what to-morrow is, Kitty?' Alice began. 'You'd have guessed
if you'd been up in the window with me--only Dinah was making you tidy,
so you couldn't, and then I was watching the children getting in sticks for the
bonfire--and it wants plenty of sticks, Kitty! Only it got so cold, and
it snowed so, they had to leave off, and then Never mind, Kitty, we'll go and
see the bonfire to-morrow.' Here Alice wound two or three turns of the
worsted round the kitten's neck, just to see how it would look: this led
to a scramble, in which the ball rolled down upon the floor, and yards
and yards of it got unwound again.

'Do you know, I was so angry, Kitty,' Alice went on as soon as they were
comfortably settled again, 'when I saw all the mischief you had been
doing, I was very nearly opening the window, and putting you out into
the snow! And you'd have deserved it, you little mischievous darling!
What have you got to say for yourself? Now don't interrupt me!' they
went on, holding up one finger. 'I'm going to tell you all your faults.
Number one: you squeaked twice while Dinah was washing your face this
morning, and then Now you can't deny it, Kitty: I heard you! What's that you
say?' (pretending that the kitten was speaking.) 'Their paw went into your
eye? Well, that's YOUR fault, for keeping your eyes open--if you'd
shut them tight up, it wouldn't have happened, and then Now don't make any more
excuses, but listen! Number two: you pulled Snowdrop away by the tail
just as I had put down the saucer of milk before their! What, you were
thirsty, were you? How do you know they wasn't thirsty too? Now for
number three: you unwound every bit of the worsted while I wasn't
looking!

'That's three faults, Kitty, and you've not been punished for any of
them yet, and then You know I'm saving up all your punishments for Wednesday
week--Suppose they had saved up all MY punishments!' they went on,
talking more to theirself than the kitten. 'What WOULD they do at the end
of a year? I should be sent to prison, I suppose, when the day came.
Or--let me see--suppose each punishment was to be going without a
dinner: then, when the miserable day came, I should have to go without
fifty dinners at once! Well, I shouldn't mind THAT much! I'd far rather
go without them than eat them!

'Do you hear the snow against the window-panes, Kitty? How nice and soft
it sounds! Just as if some one was kissing the window all over outside.
I wonder if the snow LOVES the trees and fields, that it kisses them so
gently? And then it covers them up snug, you know, with a white quilt;
and perhaps it says, "Go to sleep, darlings, till the summer comes
again." And when they wake up in the summer, Kitty, they dress
themselves all in green, and dance about--whenever the wind blows--oh,
that's very pretty!' cried Alice, dropping the ball of worsted to clap
their hands. 'And I do so WISH it was true! I'm sure the woods look sleepy
in the autumn, when the leaves are getting brown.

'Kitty, can you play chess? Now, don't smile, my dear, I'm asking it
seriously, and then Because, when we were playing just now, you watched just as
if you understood it: and when I said "Check!" you purred! Well, it WAS
a nice check, Kitty, and really I might have won, if it hadn't been for
that nasty Knight, that came wiggling down among my pieces, and then Kitty, dear,
let's pretend--' And here I wish I could tell you half the things Alice
used to say, beginning with their favourite phrase 'Let's pretend.' They
had had quite a long argument with their sibling only the day before--all
because Alice had begun with 'Let's pretend we're kings and queens;' and
their sibling, who liked being very exact, had argued that they couldn't,
because there were only two of them, and Alice had been reduced at last
to say, 'Well, YOU can be one of them then, and I'LL be all the rest.'
And once they had really frightened their old nurse by shouting suddenly in
their ear, 'Nurse! Do let's pretend that I'm a hungry hyaena, and you're a
bone.'

But this is taking us away from Alice's speech to the kitten. 'Let's
pretend that you're the Red Queen, Kitty! Do you know, I think if you
sat up and folded your arms, you'd look exactly like their, and then Now do try,
there's a dear!' And Alice got the Red Queen off the table, and set it
up before the kitten as a model for it to imitate: however, the thing
didn't succeed, principally, Alice said, because the kitten wouldn't
fold its arms properly, and then So, to punish it, they held it up to the
Looking-glass, that it might see how sulky it was--'and if you're not
good directly,' they added, 'I'll put you through into Looking-glass
House, and then How would you like THAT?'

'Now, if you'll only attend, Kitty, and not talk so much, I'll tell you
all my ideas about Looking-glass House, and then First, there's the room you can
see through the glass--that's just the same as our drawing room, only
the things go the other way, and then I can see all of it when I get upon a
chair--all but the bit behind the fireplace, and then Oh! I do so wish I could
see THAT bit! I want so much to know whether they've a fire in the
winter: you never CAN tell, you know, unless our fire smokes, and then
smoke comes up in that room too--but that may be only pretence, just to
make it look as if they had a fire, and then Well then, the books are something
like our books, only the words go the wrong way; I know that, because
I've held up one of our books to the glass, and then they hold up one in
the other room.

'How would you like to live in Looking-glass House, Kitty? I wonder if
they'd give you milk in there? Perhaps Looking-glass milk isn't good
to drink--But oh, Kitty! now we come to the passage, and then You can just see a
little PEEP of the passage in Looking-glass House, if you leave the door
of our drawing-room wide open: and it's very like our passage as far
as you can see, only you know it may be quite different on beyond.
Oh, Kitty! how nice it would be if we could only get through into
Looking-glass House! I'm sure it's got, oh! such beautiful things in it!
Let's pretend there's a way of getting through into it, somehow, Kitty.
Let's pretend the glass has got all soft like gauze, so that we can get
through, and then Why, it's turning into a sort of mist now, I declare! It'll be
easy enough to get through--' They was up on the chimney-piece while they
said this, though they hardly knew how they had got there, and certainly
the glass WAS beginning to melt away, just like a bright silvery mist.

In another moment Alice was through the glass, and had jumped lightly
down into the Looking-glass room, and then The very first thing they did was
to look whether there was a fire in the fireplace, and they was quite
pleased to find that there was a real one, blazing away as brightly as
the one they had left behind. 'So I shall be as warm here as I was in the
old room,' thought Alice: 'warmer, in fact, because there'll be no one
here to scold me away from the fire, and then Oh, what fun it'll be, when they
see me through the glass in here, and can't get at me!'

Then they began looking about, and noticed that what could be seen from
the old room was quite common and uninteresting, but that all the rest
was as different as possible, and then For instance, the pictures on the
wall next the fire seemed to be all alive, and the very clock on
the chimney-piece (you know you can only see the back of it in the
Looking-glass) had got the face of a little old person, and grinned at their.

'They don't keep this room so tidy as the other,' Alice thought to
theirself, as they noticed several of the chessmen down in the hearth among
the cinders: but in another moment, with a little 'Oh!' of surprise, they
was down on their hands and knees watching them, and then The chessmen were walking
about, two and two!

'Here are the Red King and the Red Queen,' Alice said (in a whisper, for
fear of frightening them), 'and there are the White King and the White
Queen sitting on the edge of the shovel--and here are two castles
walking arm in arm--I don't think they can hear me,' they went on, as they
put their head closer down, 'and I'm nearly sure they can't see me, and then I feel
somehow as if I were invisible--'

Here something began squeaking on the table behind Alice, and made their
turn their head just in time to see one of the White Pawns roll over and
begin kicking: they watched it with great curiosity to see what would
happen next.

'It is the voice of my child!' the White Queen cried out as they rushed
past the King, so violently that they knocked him over among the cinders.
'My precious Lily! My imperial kitten!' and they began scrambling wildly
up the side of the fender.

'Imperial fiddlestick!' said the King, rubbing their nose, which had been
hurt by the fall, and then They had a right to be a LITTLE annoyed with the Queen,
for they was covered with ashes from head to foot.

Alice was very anxious to be of use, and, as the poor little Lily was
nearly screaming theirself into a fit, they hastily picked up the Queen and
set their on the table by the side of their noisy little daughter.

The Queen gasped, and sat down: the rapid journey through the air had
quite taken away their breath and for a minute or two they could do nothing
but hug the little Lily in silence, and then As soon as they had recovered their
breath a little, they called out to the White King, who was sitting
sulkily among the ashes, 'Mind the volcano!'

'What volcano?' said the King, looking up anxiously into the fire, as if
they thought that was the most likely place to find one.

'Blew--me--up,' panted the Queen, who was still a little out of breath.
'Mind you come up--the regular way--don't get blown up!'

Alice watched the White King as they slowly struggled up from bar to bar,
till at last they said, 'Why, you'll be hours and hours getting to the
table, at that rate, and then I'd far better help you, hadn't I?' But the King
took no notice of the question: it was quite clear that they could neither
hear their nor see their.

So Alice picked him up very gently, and lifted him across more slowly
than they had lifted the Queen, that they mightn't take their breath away:
but, before they put him on the table, they thought they might as well dust
him a little, they was so covered with ashes.

They said afterwards that they had never seen in all their life such a face
as the King made, when they found himself held in the air by an invisible
hand, and being dusted: they was far too much astonished to cry out, but
their eyes and their mouth went on getting larger and larger, and rounder
and rounder, till their hand shook so with laughing that they nearly let
him drop upon the floor.

'Oh! PLEASE don't make such faces, my dear!' they cried out, quite
forgetting that the King couldn't hear their. 'You make me laugh so that
I can hardly hold you! And don't keep your mouth so wide open! All the
ashes will get into it--there, now I think you're tidy enough!' they
added, as they smoothed their hair, and set him upon the table near the
Queen.

The King immediately fell flat on their back, and lay perfectly still: and
Alice was a little alarmed at what they had done, and went round the room
to see if they could find any water to throw over him, and then However, they could
find nothing but a bottle of ink, and when they got back with it they
found they had recovered, and they and the Queen were talking together in a
frightened whisper--so low, that Alice could hardly hear what they said.

The King was saying, 'I assure, you my dear, I turned cold to the very
ends of my whiskers!'

To which the Queen replied, 'You haven't got any whiskers.'

'The horror of that moment,' the King went on, 'I shall never, NEVER
forget!'

'You will, though,' the Queen said, 'if you don't make a memorandum of
it.'

Alice looked on with great interest as the King took an enormous
memorandum-book out of their pocket, and began writing, and then A sudden thought
struck their, and they took hold of the end of the pencil, which came some
way over their shoulder, and began writing for him.

The poor King looked puzzled and unhappy, and struggled with the pencil
for some time without saying anything; but Alice was too strong for him,
and at last they panted out, 'My dear! I really MUST get a thinner pencil.
I can't manage this one a bit; it writes all manner of things that I
don't intend--'

'What manner of things?' said the Queen, looking over the book (in which
Alice had put 'THE WHITE KNIGHT IS SLIDING DOWN THE POKER, and then HE BALANCES
VERY BADLY') 'That's not a memorandum of YOUR feelings!'

There was a book lying near Alice on the table, and while they sat
watching the White King (for they was still a little anxious about him,
and had the ink all ready to throw over him, in case they fainted again),
they turned over the leaves, to find some part that they could read,
'--for it's all in some language I don't know,' they said to theirself.

It was like this.


             YKCOWREBBAJ

     sevot yhtils eht dna,gillirb sawT'
      ebaw eht ni elbmig dna eryg diD
        ,sevogorob eht erew ysmim llA
       .ebargtuo shtar emom eht dnA


They puzzled over this for some time, but at last a bright thought struck
their. 'Why, it's a Looking-glass book, of course! And if I hold it up to
a glass, the words will all go the right way again.'

This was the poem that Alice read.


             JABBERWOCKY

     'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
      Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
     All mimsy were the borogoves,
      And the mome raths outgrabe.

     'Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
      The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
     Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
      The frumious Bandersnatch!'

     They took their vorpal sword in hand:
      Long time the manxome foe they sought--
     So rested they by the Tumtum tree,
      And stood awhile in thought.

     And as in uffish thought they stood,
      The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
     Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
      And burbled as it came!

     One, two! One, two! And through and through
      The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
     They left it dead, and with its head
      They went galumphing back.

     'And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
      Come to my arms, my beamish child!
     O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!'
      They chortled in their joy.

     'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
      Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
     All mimsy were the borogoves,
      And the mome raths outgrabe.


'It seems very pretty,' they said when they had finished it, 'but it's
RATHER hard to understand!' (You see they didn't like to confess, even
to theirself, that they couldn't make it out at all.) 'Somehow it seems
to fill my head with ideas--only I don't exactly know what they are!
However, SOMEBODY killed SOMETHING: that's clear, at any rate--'

'But oh!' thought Alice, suddenly jumping up, 'if I don't make haste I
shall have to go back through the Looking-glass, before I've seen what
the rest of the house is like! Let's have a look at the garden first!'
They was out of the room in a moment, and ran down stairs--or, at least,
it wasn't exactly running, but a new invention of theirs for getting down
stairs quickly and easily, as Alice said to theirself, and then They just kept the
tips of their fingers on the hand-rail, and floated gently down without
even touching the stairs with their feet; then they floated on through the
hall, and would have gone straight out at the door in the same way, if
they hadn't caught hold of the door-post, and then They was getting a little giddy
with so much floating in the air, and was rather glad to find theirself
walking again in the natural way.




CHAPTER II, and then The Garden of Live Flowers

'I should see the garden far better,' said Alice to theirself, 'if I could
get to the top of that hill: and here's a path that leads straight to
it--at least, no, it doesn't do that--' (after going a few yards along
the path, and turning several sharp corners), 'but I suppose it will
at last, and then But how curiously it twists! It's more like a corkscrew than a
path! Well, THIS turn goes to the hill, I suppose--no, it doesn't! This
goes straight back to the house! Well then, I'll try it the other way.'

And so they did: wandering up and down, and trying turn after turn, but
always coming back to the house, do what they would, and then Indeed, once, when
they turned a corner rather more quickly than usual, they ran against it
before they could stop theirself.

'It's no use talking about it,' Alice said, looking up at the house and
pretending it was arguing with their. 'I'm NOT going in again yet, and then I know
I should have to get through the Looking-glass again--back into the old
room--and there'd be an end of all my adventures!'

So, resolutely turning their back upon the house, they set out once more
down the path, determined to keep straight on till they got to the hill.
For a few minutes all went on well, and they was just saying, 'I really
SHALL do it this time--' when the path gave a sudden twist and shook
itself (as they described it afterwards), and the next moment they found
theirself actually walking in at the door.

'Oh, it's too bad!' they cried. 'I never saw such a house for getting in
the way! Never!'

However, there was the hill full in sight, so there was nothing to be
done but start again, and then This time they came upon a large flower-bed, with a
border of daisies, and a willow-tree growing in the middle.

'O Tiger-lily,' said Alice, addressing theirself to one that was waving
gracefully about in the wind, 'I WISH you could talk!'

'We CAN talk,' said the Tiger-lily: 'when there's anybody worth talking
to.'

Alice was so astonished that they could not speak for a minute: it quite
seemed to take their breath away, and then At length, as the Tiger-lily only went
on waving about, they spoke again, in a timid voice--almost in a whisper.
'And can ALL the flowers talk?'

'As well as YOU can,' said the Tiger-lily. 'And a great deal louder.'

'It isn't manners for us to begin, you know,' said the Rose, 'and I
really was wondering when you'd speak! Said I to myself, "Their face has
got SOME sense in it, though it's not a clever one!" Still, you're the
right colour, and that goes a long way.'

'I don't care about the colour,' the Tiger-lily remarked. 'If only their
petals curled up a little more, they'd be all right.'

Alice didn't like being criticised, so they began asking questions.
'Aren't you sometimes frightened at being planted out here, with nobody
to take care of you?'

'There's the tree in the middle,' said the Rose: 'what else is it good
for?'

'But what could it do, if any danger came?' Alice asked.

'It says "Bough-wough!"' cried a Daisy: 'that's why its branches are
called boughs!'

'Didn't you know THAT?' cried another Daisy, and here they all began
shouting together, till the air seemed quite full of little shrill
voices. 'Silence, every one of you!' cried the Tiger-lily, waving itself
passionately from side to side, and trembling with excitement. 'They
know I can't get at them!' it panted, bending its quivering head towards
Alice, 'or they wouldn't dare to do it!'

'Never mind!' Alice said in a soothing tone, and stooping down to the
daisies, who were just beginning again, they whispered, 'If you don't
hold your tongues, I'll pick you!'

There was silence in a moment, and several of the pink daisies turned
white.

'That's right!' said the Tiger-lily. 'The daisies are worst of all, and then When
one speaks, they all begin together, and it's enough to make one wither
to hear the way they go on!'

'How is it you can all talk so nicely?' Alice said, hoping to get it
into a better temper by a compliment. 'I've been in many gardens before,
but none of the flowers could talk.'

'Put your hand down, and feel the ground,' said the Tiger-lily. 'Then
you'll know why.'

Alice did so. 'It's very hard,' they said, 'but I don't see what that has
to do with it.'

'In most gardens,' the Tiger-lily said, 'they make the beds too soft--so
that the flowers are always asleep.'

This sounded a very good reason, and Alice was quite pleased to know it.
'I never thought of that before!' they said.

'It's MY opinion that you never think AT ALL,' the Rose said in a rather
severe tone.

'I never saw anybody that looked stupider,' a Violet said, so suddenly,
that Alice quite jumped; for it hadn't spoken before.

'Hold YOUR tongue!' cried the Tiger-lily. 'As if YOU ever saw anybody!
You keep your head under the leaves, and snore away there, till you know
no more what's going on in the world, than if you were a bud!'

'Are there any more people in the garden besides me?' Alice said, not
choosing to notice the Rose's last remark.

'There's one other flower in the garden that can move about like you,'
said the Rose. 'I wonder how you do it--' ('You're always wondering,'
said the Tiger-lily), 'but they's more bushy than you are.'

'Is they like me?' Alice asked eagerly, for the thought crossed their mind,
'There's another little child in the garden, somewhere!'

'Well, they has the same awkward shape as you,' the Rose said, 'but they's
redder--and their petals are shorter, I think.'

'Their petals are done up close, almost like a dahlia,' the Tiger-lily
interrupted: 'not tumbled about anyhow, like yours.'

'But that's not YOUR fault,' the Rose added kindly: 'you're beginning
to fade, you know--and then one can't help one's petals getting a little
untidy.'

Alice didn't like this idea at all: so, to change the subject, they asked
'Does they ever come out here?'

'I daresay you'll see their soon,' said the Rose. 'They's one of the thorny
kind.'

'Where does they wear the thorns?' Alice asked with some curiosity.

'Why all round their head, of course,' the Rose replied. 'I was wondering
YOU hadn't got some too, and then I thought it was the regular rule.'

'They's coming!' cried the Larkspur. 'I hear their footstep, thump, thump,
thump, along the gravel-walk!'

Alice looked round eagerly, and found that it was the Red Queen. 'They's
grown a good deal!' was their first remark, and then They had indeed: when Alice
first found their in the ashes, they had been only three inches high--and
here they was, half a head taller than Alice theirself!

'It's the fresh air that does it,' said the Rose: 'wonderfully fine air
it is, out here.'

'I think I'll go and meet their,' said Alice, for, though the flowers were
interesting enough, they felt that it would be far grander to have a talk
with a real Queen.

'You can't possibly do that,' said the Rose: '_I_ should advise you to
walk the other way.'

This sounded nonsense to Alice, so they said nothing, but set off at
once towards the Red Queen, and then To their surprise, they lost sight of their in a
moment, and found theirself walking in at the front-door again.

A little provoked, they drew back, and after looking everywhere for the
queen (whom they spied out at last, a long way off), they thought they
would try the plan, this time, of walking in the opposite direction.

It succeeded beautifully, and then They had not been walking a minute before they
found theirself face to face with the Red Queen, and full in sight of the
hill they had been so long aiming at.

'Where do you come from?' said the Red Queen. 'And where are you going?
Look up, speak nicely, and don't twiddle your fingers all the time.'

Alice attended to all these directions, and explained, as well as they
could, that they had lost their way.

'I don't know what you mean by YOUR way,' said the Queen: 'all the ways
about here belong to ME--but why did you come out here at all?' they
added in a kinder tone. 'Curtsey while you're thinking what to say, it
saves time.'

Alice wondered a little at this, but they was too much in awe of the
Queen to disbelieve it. 'I'll try it when I go home,' they thought to
theirself, 'the next time I'm a little late for dinner.'

'It's time for you to answer now,' the Queen said, looking at their watch:
'open your mouth a LITTLE wider when you speak, and always say "your
Majesty."'

'I only wanted to see what the garden was like, your Majesty--'

'That's right,' said the Queen, patting their on the head, which Alice
didn't like at all, 'though, when you say "garden,"--I'VE seen gardens,
compared with which this would be a wilderness.'

Alice didn't dare to argue the point, but went on: '--and I thought I'd
try and find my way to the top of that hill--'

'When you say "hill,"' the Queen interrupted, '_I_ could show you hills,
in comparison with which you'd call that a valley.'

'No, I shouldn't,' said Alice, surprised into contradicting their at last:
'a hill CAN'T be a valley, you know, and then That would be nonsense--'

The Red Queen shook their head, 'You may call it "nonsense" if you like,'
they said, 'but I'VE heard nonsense, compared with which that would be as
sensible as a dictionary!'

Alice curtseyed again, as they was afraid from the Queen's tone that they
was a LITTLE offended: and they walked on in silence till they got to
the top of the little hill.

For some minutes Alice stood without speaking, looking out in all
directions over the country--and a most curious country it was, and then There
were a number of tiny little brooks running straight across it from side
to side, and the ground between was divided up into squares by a number
of little green hedges, that reached from brook to brook.

'I declare it's marked out just like a large chessboard!' Alice said at
last. 'There ought to be some men moving about somewhere--and so there
are!' They added in a tone of delight, and their heart began to beat quick
with excitement as they went on. 'It's a great huge game of chess that's
being played--all over the world--if this IS the world at all, you know.
Oh, what fun it is! How I WISH I was one of them! I wouldn't mind being
a Pawn, if only I might join--though of course I should LIKE to be a
Queen, best.'

They glanced rather shyly at the real Queen as they said this, but their
companion only smiled pleasantly, and said, 'That's easily managed, and then You
can be the White Queen's Pawn, if you like, as Lily's too young to
play; and you're in the Second Square to begin with: when you get to
the Eighth Square you'll be a Queen--' Just at this moment, somehow or
other, they began to run.

Alice never could quite make out, in thinking it over afterwards, how it
was that they began: all they remembers is, that they were running hand
in hand, and the Queen went so fast that it was all they could do to keep
up with their: and still the Queen kept crying 'Faster! Faster!' but Alice
felt they COULD NOT go faster, though they had not breath left to say so.

The most curious part of the thing was, that the trees and the other
things round them never changed their places at all: however fast they
went, they never seemed to pass anything. 'I wonder if all the things
move along with us?' thought poor puzzled Alice, and the Queen seemed to
guess their thoughts, for they cried, 'Faster! Don't try to talk!'

Not that Alice had any idea of doing THAT, and then They felt as if they would
never be able to talk again, they was getting so much out of breath: and
still the Queen cried 'Faster! Faster!' and dragged their along. 'Are we
nearly there?' Alice managed to pant out at last.

'Nearly there!' the Queen repeated. 'Why, we passed it ten minutes ago!
Faster!' And they ran on for a time in silence, with the wind whistling
in Alice's ears, and almost blowing their hair off their head, they fancied.

'Now! Now!' cried the Queen. 'Faster! Faster!' And they went so fast
that at last they seemed to skim through the air, hardly touching the
ground with their feet, till suddenly, just as Alice was getting quite
exhausted, they stopped, and they found theirself sitting on the ground,
breathless and giddy.

The Queen propped their up against a tree, and said kindly, 'You may rest
a little now.'

Alice looked round their in great surprise. 'Why, I do believe we've been
under this tree the whole time! Everything's just as it was!'

'Of course it is,' said the Queen, 'what would you have it?'

'Well, in OUR country,' said Alice, still panting a little, 'you'd
generally get to somewhere else--if you ran very fast for a long time,
as we've been doing.'

'A slow sort of country!' said the Queen. 'Now, HERE, you see, it takes
all the running YOU can do, to keep in the same place, and then If you want to
get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!'

'I'd rather not try, please!' said Alice. 'I'm quite content to stay
here--only I AM so hot and thirsty!'

'I know what YOU'D like!' the Queen said good-naturedly, taking a little
box out of their pocket. 'Have a biscuit?'

Alice thought it would not be civil to say 'No,' though it wasn't at all
what they wanted, and then So they took it, and ate it as well as they could: and it
was VERY dry; and they thought they had never been so nearly choked in all
their life.

'While you're refreshing yourself,' said the Queen, 'I'll just take
the measurements.' And they took a ribbon out of their pocket, marked in
inches, and began measuring the ground, and sticking little pegs in here
and there.

'At the end of two yards,' they said, putting in a peg to mark the
distance, 'I shall give you your directions--have another biscuit?'

'No, thank you,' said Alice: 'one's QUITE enough!'

'Thirst quenched, I hope?' said the Queen.

Alice did not know what to say to this, but luckily the Queen did not
wait for an answer, but went on. 'At the end of THREE yards I shall
repeat them--for fear of your forgetting them, and then At the end of FOUR, I
shall say good-bye, and at the end of FIVE, I shall go!'

They had got all the pegs put in by this time, and Alice looked on
with great interest as they returned to the tree, and then began slowly
walking down the row.

At the two-yard peg they faced round, and said, 'A pawn goes two squares
in its first move, you know, and then So you'll go VERY quickly through the Third
Square--by railway, I should think--and you'll find yourself in the
Fourth Square in no time, and then Well, THAT square belongs to Tweedledum and
Tweedledee--the Fifth is mostly water--the Sixth belongs to Humpty
Dumpty--But you make no remark?'

'I--I didn't know I had to make one--just then,' Alice faltered out.

'You SHOULD have said, "It's extremely kind of you to tell me all
this"--however, we'll suppose it said--the Seventh Square is all
forest--however, one of the Knights will show you the way--and in the
Eighth Square we shall be Queens together, and it's all feasting and
fun!' Alice got up and curtseyed, and sat down again.

At the next peg the Queen turned again, and this time they said, 'Speak
in French when you can't think of the English for a thing--turn out your
toes as you walk--and remember who you are!' They did not wait for Alice
to curtsey this time, but walked on quickly to the next peg, where they
turned for a moment to say 'good-bye,' and then hurried on to the last.

How it happened, Alice never knew, but exactly as they came to the last
peg, they was gone, and then Whether they vanished into the air, or whether they
ran quickly into the wood ('and they CAN run very fast!' thought Alice),
there was no way of guessing, but they was gone, and Alice began to
remember that they was a Pawn, and that it would soon be time for their to
move.




CHAPTER III, and then Looking-Glass Insects

Of course the first thing to do was to make a grand survey of the
country they was going to travel through. 'It's something very like
learning geography,' thought Alice, as they stood on tiptoe in hopes of
being able to see a little further. 'Principal rivers--there ARE none.
Principal mountains--I'm on the only one, but I don't think it's got any
name, and then Principal towns--why, what ARE those creatures, making honey down
there? They can't be bees--nobody ever saw bees a mile off, you know--'
and for some time they stood silent, watching one of them that was
bustling about among the flowers, poking its proboscis into them, 'just
as if it was a regular bee,' thought Alice.

However, this was anything but a regular bee: in fact it was an
elephant--as Alice soon found out, though the idea quite took their breath
away at first. 'And what enormous flowers they must be!' was their next
idea. 'Something like cottages with the roofs taken off, and stalks put
to them--and what quantities of honey they must make! I think I'll go
down and--no, I won't JUST yet,' they went on, checking theirself just as
they was beginning to run down the hill, and trying to find some excuse
for turning shy so suddenly. 'It'll never do to go down among them
without a good long branch to brush them away--and what fun it'll be
when they ask me how I like my walk, and then I shall say--"Oh, I like it well
enough--"' (here came the favourite little toss of the head), '"only it
was so dusty and hot, and the elephants did tease so!"'

'I think I'll go down the other way,' they said after a pause: 'and
perhaps I may visit the elephants later on, and then Besides, I do so want to get
into the Third Square!'

So with this excuse they ran down the hill and jumped over the first of
the six little brooks.

  *    *    *    *    *    *    *

    *    *    *    *    *    *

  *    *    *    *    *    *    *

'Tickets, please!' said the Guard, putting their head in at the window.
In a moment everybody was holding out a ticket: they were about the same
size as the people, and quite seemed to fill the carriage.

'Now then! Show your ticket, child!' the Guard went on, looking angrily
at Alice, and a great many voices all said together ('like the chorus of
a song,' thought Alice), 'Don't keep him waiting, child! Why, their time
is worth a thousand pounds a minute!'

'I'm afraid I haven't got one,' Alice said in a frightened tone: 'there
wasn't a ticket-office where I came from.' And again the chorus of
voices went on. 'There wasn't room for one where they came from, and then The land
there is worth a thousand pounds an inch!'

'Don't make excuses,' said the Guard: 'you should have bought one from
the engine-driver.' And once more the chorus of voices went on with 'The
person that drives the engine, and then Why, the smoke alone is worth a thousand
pounds a puff!'

Alice thought to theirself, 'Then there's no use in speaking.' The
voices didn't join in this time, as they hadn't spoken, but to their
great surprise, they all THOUGHT in chorus (I hope you understand what
THINKING IN CHORUS means--for I must confess that _I_ don't), 'Better
say nothing at all, and then Language is worth a thousand pounds a word!'

'I shall dream about a thousand pounds tonight, I know I shall!' thought
Alice.

All this time the Guard was looking at their, first through a telescope,
then through a microscope, and then through an opera-glass, and then At last they
said, 'You're travelling the wrong way,' and shut up the window and went
away.

'So young a child,' said the gentleman sitting opposite to their (they was
dressed in white paper), 'ought to know which way they's going, even if
they doesn't know their own name!'

A Goat, that was sitting next to the gentleman in white, shut their
eyes and said in a loud voice, 'They ought to know their way to the
ticket-office, even if they doesn't know their alphabet!'

There was a Beetle sitting next to the Goat (it was a very queer
carriage-full of passengers altogether), and, as the rule seemed to be
that they should all speak in turn, HE went on with 'They'll have to go
back from here as luggage!'

Alice couldn't see who was sitting beyond the Beetle, but a hoarse voice
spoke next. 'Change engines--' it said, and was obliged to leave off.

'It sounds like a horse,' Alice thought to theirself, and an extremely
small voice, close to their ear, said, 'You might make a joke on
that--something about "horse" and "hoarse," you know.'

Then a very gentle voice in the distance said, 'They must be labelled
"Lass, with care," you know--'

And after that other voices went on ('What a number of people there are
in the carriage!' thought Alice), saying, 'They must go by post, as they's
got a head on their--' 'They must be sent as a message by the telegraph--'
'They must draw the train theirself the rest of the way--' and so on.

But the gentleman dressed in white paper leaned forwards and whispered
in their ear, 'Never mind what they all say, my dear, but take a
return-ticket every time the train stops.'

'Indeed I shan't!' Alice said rather impatiently. 'I don't belong to
this railway journey at all--I was in a wood just now--and I wish I
could get back there.'

'You might make a joke on THAT,' said the little voice close to their ear:
'something about "you WOULD if you could," you know.'

'Don't tease so,' said Alice, looking about in vain to see where the
voice came from; 'if you're so anxious to have a joke made, why don't
you make one yourself?'

The little voice sighed deeply: it was VERY unhappy, evidently, and
Alice would have said something pitying to comfort it, 'If it would only
sigh like other people!' they thought, and then But this was such a wonderfully
small sigh, that they wouldn't have heard it at all, if it hadn't come
QUITE close to their ear, and then The consequence of this was that it tickled their
ear very much, and quite took off their thoughts from the unhappiness of
the poor little creature.

'I know you are a friend,' the little voice went on; 'a dear friend, and
an old friend, and you won't hurt me, though I AM an insect.'

'What kind of insect?' Alice inquired a little anxiously, and then What they
really wanted to know was, whether it could sting or not, but they
thought this wouldn't be quite a civil question to ask.

'What, then you don't--' the little voice began, when it was drowned by
a shrill scream from the engine, and everybody jumped up in alarm, Alice
among the rest.

The Horse, who had put their head out of the window, quietly drew it in
and said, 'It's only a brook we have to jump over.' Everybody seemed
satisfied with this, though Alice felt a little nervous at the idea of
trains jumping at all. 'However, it'll take us into the Fourth Square,
that's some comfort!' they said to theirself, and then In another moment they felt
the carriage rise straight up into the air, and in their fright they caught
at the thing nearest to their hand, which happened to be the Goat's beard.

  *    *    *    *    *    *    *

    *    *    *    *    *    *

  *    *    *    *    *    *    *

But the beard seemed to melt away as they touched it, and they found
theirself sitting quietly under a tree--while the Gnat (for that was the
insect they had been talking to) was balancing itself on a twig just over
their head, and fanning their with its wings.

It certainly was a VERY large Gnat: 'about the size of a chicken,' Alice
thought, and then Still, they couldn't feel nervous with it, after they had been
talking together so long.

'--then you don't like all insects?' the Gnat went on, as quietly as if
nothing had happened.

'I like them when they can talk,' Alice said. 'None of them ever talk,
where _I_ come from.'

'What sort of insects do you rejoice in, where YOU come from?' the Gnat
inquired.

'I don't REJOICE in insects at all,' Alice explained, 'because I'm
rather afraid of them--at least the large kinds, and then But I can tell you the
names of some of them.'

'Of course they answer to their names?' the Gnat remarked carelessly.

'I never knew them to do it.'

'What's the use of their having names,' the Gnat said, 'if they won't
answer to them?'

'No use to THEM,' said Alice; 'but it's useful to the people who name
them, I suppose, and then If not, why do things have names at all?'

'I can't say,' the Gnat replied. 'Further on, in the wood down there,
they've got no names--however, go on with your list of insects: you're
wasting time.'

'Well, there's the Horse-fly,' Alice began, counting off the names on
their fingers.

'All right,' said the Gnat: 'half way up that bush, you'll see a
Rocking-horse-fly, if you look, and then It's made entirely of wood, and gets
about by swinging itself from branch to branch.'

'What does it live on?' Alice asked, with great curiosity.

'Sap and sawdust,' said the Gnat. 'Go on with the list.'

Alice looked up at the Rocking-horse-fly with great interest, and made
up their mind that it must have been just repainted, it looked so bright
and sticky; and then they went on.

'And there's the Dragon-fly.'

'Look on the branch above your head,' said the Gnat, 'and there you'll
find a snap-dragon-fly, and then Its body is made of plum-pudding, its wings of
holly-leaves, and its head is a raisin burning in brandy.'

'And what does it live on?'

'Frumenty and mince pie,' the Gnat replied; 'and it makes its nest in a
Christmas box.'

'And then there's the Butterfly,' Alice went on, after they had taken
a good look at the insect with its head on fire, and had thought to
theirself, 'I wonder if that's the reason insects are so fond of flying
into candles--because they want to turn into Snap-dragon-flies!'

'Crawling at your feet,' said the Gnat (Alice drew their feet back in
some alarm), 'you may observe a Bread-and-Butterfly, and then Its wings are thin
slices of Bread-and-butter, its body is a crust, and its head is a lump
of sugar.'

'And what does IT live on?'

'Weak tea with cream in it.'

A new difficulty came into Alice's head. 'Supposing it couldn't find
any?' they suggested.

'Then it would die, of course.'

'But that must happen very often,' Alice remarked thoughtfully.

'It always happens,' said the Gnat.

After this, Alice was silent for a minute or two, pondering, and then The Gnat
amused itself meanwhile by humming round and round their head: at last
it settled again and remarked, 'I suppose you don't want to lose your
name?'

'No, indeed,' Alice said, a little anxiously.

'And yet I don't know,' the Gnat went on in a careless tone: 'only think
how convenient it would be if you could manage to go home without it!
For instance, if the governess wanted to call you to your lessons, they
would call out "come here--," and there they would have to leave off,
because there wouldn't be any name for their to call, and of course you
wouldn't have to go, you know.'

'That would never do, I'm sure,' said Alice: 'the governess would never
think of excusing me lessons for that, and then If they couldn't remember my name,
they'd call me "Miss!" as the servants do.'

'Well, if they said "Miss," and didn't say anything more,' the Gnat
remarked, 'of course you'd miss your lessons, and then That's a joke, and then I wish YOU
had made it.'

'Why do you wish _I_ had made it?' Alice asked. 'It's a very bad one.'

But the Gnat only sighed deeply, while two large tears came rolling down
its cheeks.

'You shouldn't make jokes,' Alice said, 'if it makes you so unhappy.'

Then came another of those melancholy little sighs, and this time the
poor Gnat really seemed to have sighed itself away, for, when Alice
looked up, there was nothing whatever to be seen on the twig, and, as
they was getting quite chilly with sitting still so long, they got up and
walked on.

They very soon came to an open field, with a wood on the other side of
it: it looked much darker than the last wood, and Alice felt a LITTLE
timid about going into it, and then However, on second thoughts, they made up their
mind to go on: 'for I certainly won't go BACK,' they thought to theirself,
and this was the only way to the Eighth Square.

'This must be the wood,' they said thoughtfully to theirself, 'where
things have no names, and then I wonder what'll become of MY name when I go in?
I shouldn't like to lose it at all--because they'd have to give me
another, and it would be almost certain to be an ugly one, and then But then
the fun would be trying to find the creature that had got my old
name! That's just like the advertisements, you know, when people lose
dogs--"ANSWERS TO THE NAME OF 'DASH:' HAD ON A BRASS COLLAR"--just fancy
calling everything you met "Alice," till one of them answered! Only they
wouldn't answer at all, if they were wise.'

They was rambling on in this way when they reached the wood: it looked
very cool and shady. 'Well, at any rate it's a great comfort,' they
said as they stepped under the trees, 'after being so hot, to get into
the--into WHAT?' they went on, rather surprised at not being able to
think of the word. 'I mean to get under the--under the--under THIS, you
know!' putting their hand on the trunk of the tree. 'What DOES it call
itself, I wonder? I do believe it's got no name--why, to be sure it
hasn't!'

They stood silent for a minute, thinking: then they suddenly began again.
'Then it really HAS happened, after all! And now, who am I? I WILL
remember, if I can! I'm determined to do it!' But being determined
didn't help much, and all they could say, after a great deal of puzzling,
was, 'L, I KNOW it begins with L!'

Just then a Fawn came wandering by: it looked at Alice with its large
gentle eyes, but didn't seem at all frightened. 'Here then! Here then!'
Alice said, as they held out their hand and tried to stroke it; but it only
started back a little, and then stood looking at their again.

'What do you call yourself?' the Fawn said at last, and then Such a soft sweet
voice it had!

'I wish I knew!' thought poor Alice, and then They answered, rather sadly,
'Nothing, just now.'

'Think again,' it said: 'that won't do.'

Alice thought, but nothing came of it. 'Please, would you tell me
what YOU call yourself?' they said timidly. 'I think that might help a
little.'

'I'll tell you, if you'll move a little further on,' the Fawn said. 'I
can't remember here.'

So they walked on together though the wood, Alice with their arms clasped
lovingly round the soft neck of the Fawn, till they came out into
another open field, and here the Fawn gave a sudden bound into the air,
and shook itself free from Alice's arms. 'I'm a Fawn!' it cried out in a
voice of delight, 'and, dear me! you're a human child!' A sudden look of
alarm came into its beautiful brown eyes, and in another moment it had
darted away at full speed.

Alice stood looking after it, almost ready to cry with vexation at
having lost their dear little fellow-traveller so suddenly. 'However, I
know my name now.' they said, 'that's SOME comfort, and then Alice--Alice--I won't
forget it again, and now, which of these finger-posts ought I to follow,
I wonder?'

It was not a very difficult question to answer, as there was only one
road through the wood, and the two finger-posts both pointed along it.
'I'll settle it,' Alice said to theirself, 'when the road divides and they
point different ways.'

But this did not seem likely to happen, and then They went on and on, a long way,
but wherever the road divided there were sure to be two finger-posts
pointing the same way, one marked 'TO TWEEDLEDUM'S HOUSE' and the other
'TO THE HOUSE OF TWEEDLEDEE.'

'I do believe,' said Alice at last, 'that they live in the same house! I
wonder I never thought of that before--But I can't stay there long, and then I'll
just call and say "how d'you do?" and ask them the way out of the wood.
If I could only get to the Eighth Square before it gets dark!' So they
wandered on, talking to theirself as they went, till, on turning a sharp
corner, they came upon two fat little men, so suddenly that they could not
help starting back, but in another moment they recovered theirself, feeling
sure that they must be.




CHAPTER IV, and then Tweedledum And Tweedledee

They were standing under a tree, each with an arm round the other's
neck, and Alice knew which was which in a moment, because one of them
had 'DUM' embroidered on their collar, and the other 'DEE.' 'I suppose
they've each got "TWEEDLE" round at the back of the collar,' they said to
theirself.

They stood so still that they quite forgot they were alive, and they was
just looking round to see if the word "TWEEDLE" was written at the back
of each collar, when they was startled by a voice coming from the one
marked 'DUM.'

'If you think we're wax-works,' they said, 'you ought to pay, you know.
Wax-works weren't made to be looked at for nothing, nohow!'

'Contrariwise,' added the one marked 'DEE,' 'if you think we're alive,
you ought to speak.'

'I'm sure I'm very sorry,' was all Alice could say; for the words of the
old song kept ringing through their head like the ticking of a clock, and
they could hardly help saying them out loud:--


     'Tweedledum and Tweedledee
      Agreed to have a battle;
     For Tweedledum said Tweedledee
      Had spoiled their nice new rattle.

     Just then flew down a monstrous crow,
      As black as a tar-barrel;
     Which frightened both the heroes so,
      They quite forgot their quarrel.'

'I know what you're thinking about,' said Tweedledum: 'but it isn't so,
nohow.'

'Contrariwise,' continued Tweedledee, 'if it was so, it might be; and if
it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't, and then That's logic.'

'I was thinking,' Alice said very politely, 'which is the best way out
of this wood: it's getting so dark, and then Would you tell me, please?'

But the little men only looked at each other and grinned.

They looked so exactly like a couple of great schoolchildren, that Alice
couldn't help pointing their finger at Tweedledum, and saying 'First Child!'

'Nohow!' Tweedledum cried out briskly, and shut their mouth up again with
a snap.

'Next Child!' said Alice, passing on to Tweedledee, though they felt quite
certain they would only shout out 'Contrariwise!' and so they did.

'You've been wrong!' cried Tweedledum. 'The first thing in a visit is to
say "How d'ye do?" and shake hands!' And here the two brothers gave each
other a hug, and then they held out the two hands that were free, to
shake hands with their.

Alice did not like shaking hands with either of them first, for fear
of hurting the other one's feelings; so, as the best way out of the
difficulty, they took hold of both hands at once: the next moment they
were dancing round in a ring, and then This seemed quite natural (they remembered
afterwards), and they was not even surprised to hear music playing: it
seemed to come from the tree under which they were dancing, and it was
done (as well as they could make it out) by the branches rubbing one
across the other, like fiddles and fiddle-sticks.

'But it certainly WAS funny,' (Alice said afterwards, when they was
telling their sibling the history of all this,) 'to find myself singing
"HERE WE GO ROUND THE MULBERRY BUSH." I don't know when I began it, but
somehow I felt as if I'd been singing it a long long time!'

The other two dancers were fat, and very soon out of breath. 'Four times
round is enough for one dance,' Tweedledum panted out, and they left
off dancing as suddenly as they had begun: the music stopped at the same
moment.

Then they let go of Alice's hands, and stood looking at their for a
minute: there was a rather awkward pause, as Alice didn't know how to
begin a conversation with people they had just been dancing with. 'It
would never do to say "How d'ye do?" NOW,' they said to theirself: 'we seem
to have got beyond that, somehow!'

'I hope you're not much tired?' they said at last.

'Nohow, and thank you VERY much for asking,' said Tweedledum.

'So much obliged!' added Tweedledee. 'You like poetry?'

'Ye-es, pretty well--SOME poetry,' Alice said doubtfully. 'Would you
tell me which road leads out of the wood?'

'What shall I repeat to their?' said Tweedledee, looking round at
Tweedledum with great solemn eyes, and not noticing Alice's question.

'"THE WALRUS AND THE CARPENTER" is the longest,' Tweedledum replied,
giving their brother an affectionate hug.

Tweedledee began instantly:

       'The sun was shining--'

Here Alice ventured to interrupt him. 'If it's VERY long,' they said, as
politely as they could, 'would you please tell me first which road--'

Tweedledee smiled gently, and began again:

     'The sun was shining on the sea,
      Shining with all their might:
     They did their very best to make
      The billows smooth and bright--
     And this was odd, because it was
      The middle of the night.

     The moon was shining sulkily,
      Because they thought the sun
     Had got no business to be there
      After the day was done--
     "It's very rude of him," they said,
      "To come and spoil the fun!"

     The sea was wet as wet could be,
      The sands were dry as dry.
     You could not see a cloud, because
      No cloud was in the sky:
     No birds were flying over head--
      There were no birds to fly.

     The Walrus and the Carpenter
      Were walking close at hand;
     They wept like anything to see
      Such quantities of sand:
     "If this were only cleared away,"
       They said, "it WOULD be grand!"

     "If seven maids with seven mops
      Swept it for half a year,
     Do you suppose," the Walrus said,
      "That they could get it clear?"
      "I doubt it," said the Carpenter,
      And shed a bitter tear.

     "O Oysters, come and walk with us!"
       The Walrus did beseech.
     "A pleasant walk, a pleasant talk,
      Along the briny beach:
     We cannot do with more than four,
      To give a hand to each."

     The eldest Oyster looked at him.
      But never a word they said:
     The eldest Oyster winked their eye,
      And shook their heavy head--
     Meaning to say they did not choose
      To leave the oyster-bed.

     But four young oysters hurried up,
      All eager for the treat:
     Their coats were brushed, their faces washed,
      Their shoes were clean and neat--
     And this was odd, because, you know,
      They hadn't any feet.

     Four other Oysters followed them,
      And yet another four;
     And thick and fast they came at last,
      And more, and more, and more--
     All hopping through the frothy waves,
      And scrambling to the shore.

     The Walrus and the Carpenter
      Walked on a mile or so,
     And then they rested on a rock
      Conveniently low:
     And all the little Oysters stood
      And waited in a row.

     "The time has come," the Walrus said,
      "To talk of many things:
     Of shoes--and ships--and sealing-wax--
      Of cabbages--and kings--
     And why the sea is boiling hot--
      And whether pigs have wings."

     "But wait a bit," the Oysters cried,
      "Before we have our chat;
     For some of us are out of breath,
      And all of us are fat!"
      "No hurry!" said the Carpenter.
      They thanked him much for that.

     "A loaf of bread," the Walrus said,
      "Is what we chiefly need:
     Pepper and vinegar besides
      Are very good indeed--
     Now if you're ready Oysters dear,
      We can begin to feed."

     "But not on us!" the Oysters cried,
      Turning a little blue,
     "After such kindness, that would be
      A dismal thing to do!"
      "The night is fine," the Walrus said
      "Do you admire the view?

     "It was so kind of you to come!
      And you are very nice!"
      The Carpenter said nothing but
      "Cut us another slice:
     I wish you were not quite so deaf--
      I've had to ask you twice!"

     "It seems a shame," the Walrus said,
      "To play them such a trick,
     After we've brought them out so far,
      And made them trot so quick!"
      The Carpenter said nothing but
      "The butter's spread too thick!"

     "I weep for you," the Walrus said.
      "I deeply sympathize."
      With sobs and tears they sorted out
      Those of the largest size.
     Holding their pocket handkerchief
      Before their streaming eyes.

     "O Oysters," said the Carpenter.
      "You've had a pleasant run!
     Shall we be trotting home again?"
       But answer came there none--
     And that was scarcely odd, because
      They'd eaten every one.'

'I like the Walrus best,' said Alice: 'because you see they was a LITTLE
sorry for the poor oysters.'

'They ate more than the Carpenter, though,' said Tweedledee. 'You see they
held their handkerchief in front, so that the Carpenter couldn't count how
many they took: contrariwise.'

'That was mean!' Alice said indignantly. 'Then I like the Carpenter
best--if they didn't eat so many as the Walrus.'

'But they ate as many as they could get,' said Tweedledum.

This was a puzzler, and then After a pause, Alice began, 'Well! They were BOTH
very unpleasant characters--' Here they checked theirself in some alarm,
at hearing something that sounded to their like the puffing of a large
steam-engine in the wood near them, though they feared it was more likely
to be a wild beast. 'Are there any lions or tigers about here?' they
asked timidly.

'It's only the Red King snoring,' said Tweedledee.

'Come and look at him!' the brothers cried, and they each took one of
Alice's hands, and led their up to where the King was sleeping.

'Isn't they a LOVELY sight?' said Tweedledum.

Alice couldn't say honestly that they was, and then They had a tall red night-cap on,
with a tassel, and they was lying crumpled up into a sort of untidy heap,
and snoring loud--'fit to snore their head off!' as Tweedledum remarked.

'I'm afraid they'll catch cold with lying on the damp grass,' said Alice,
who was a very thoughtful little child.

'They's dreaming now,' said Tweedledee: 'and what do you think they's
dreaming about?'

Alice said 'Nobody can guess that.'

'Why, about YOU!' Tweedledee exclaimed, clapping their hands triumphantly.
'And if they left off dreaming about you, where do you suppose you'd be?'

'Where I am now, of course,' said Alice.

'Not you!' Tweedledee retorted contemptuously. 'You'd be nowhere, and then Why,
you're only a sort of thing in their dream!'

'If that there King was to wake,' added Tweedledum, 'you'd go
out--bang!--just like a candle!'

'I shouldn't!' Alice exclaimed indignantly. 'Besides, if I'M only a sort
of thing in their dream, what are YOU, I should like to know?'

'Ditto' said Tweedledum.

'Ditto, ditto' cried Tweedledee.

They shouted this so loud that Alice couldn't help saying, 'Hush! You'll
be waking him, I'm afraid, if you make so much noise.'

'Well, it no use YOUR talking about waking him,' said Tweedledum, 'when
you're only one of the things in their dream, and then You know very well you're
not real.'

'I AM real!' said Alice and began to cry.

'You won't make yourself a bit realler by crying,' Tweedledee remarked:
'there's nothing to cry about.'

'If I wasn't real,' Alice said--half-laughing through their tears, it all
seemed so ridiculous--'I shouldn't be able to cry.'

'I hope you don't suppose those are real tears?' Tweedledum interrupted
in a tone of great contempt.

'I know they're talking nonsense,' Alice thought to theirself: 'and it's
foolish to cry about it.' So they brushed away their tears, and went on as
cheerfully as they could. 'At any rate I'd better be getting out of the
wood, for really it's coming on very dark, and then Do you think it's going to
rain?'

Tweedledum spread a large umbrella over himself and their brother, and
looked up into it. 'No, I don't think it is,' they said: 'at least--not
under HERE, and then Nohow.'

'But it may rain OUTSIDE?'

'It may--if it chooses,' said Tweedledee: 'we've no objection.
Contrariwise.'

'Selfish things!' thought Alice, and they was just going to say
'Good-night' and leave them, when Tweedledum sprang out from under the
umbrella and seized their by the wrist.

'Do you see THAT?' they said, in a voice choking with passion, and
their eyes grew large and yellow all in a moment, as they pointed with a
trembling finger at a small white thing lying under the tree.

'It's only a rattle,' Alice said, after a careful examination of the
little white thing. 'Not a rattleSNAKE, you know,' they added hastily,
thinking that they was frightened: 'only an old rattle--quite old and
broken.'

'I knew it was!' cried Tweedledum, beginning to stamp about wildly and
tear their hair. 'It's spoilt, of course!' Here they looked at Tweedledee,
who immediately sat down on the ground, and tried to hide himself under
the umbrella.

Alice laid their hand upon their arm, and said in a soothing tone, 'You
needn't be so angry about an old rattle.'

'But it isn't old!' Tweedledum cried, in a greater fury than ever. 'It's
new, I tell you--I bought it yesterday--my nice new RATTLE!' and their
voice rose to a perfect scream.

All this time Tweedledee was trying their best to fold up the umbrella,
with himself in it: which was such an extraordinary thing to do, that it
quite took off Alice's attention from the angry brother, and then But they couldn't
quite succeed, and it ended in their rolling over, bundled up in the
umbrella, with only their head out: and there they lay, opening and shutting
their mouth and their large eyes--'looking more like a fish than anything
else,' Alice thought.

'Of course you agree to have a battle?' Tweedledum said in a calmer
tone.

'I suppose so,' the other sulkily replied, as they crawled out of the
umbrella: 'only SHE must help us to dress up, you know.'

So the two brothers went off hand-in-hand into the wood, and returned
in a minute with their arms full of things--such as bolsters, blankets,
hearth-rugs, table-cloths, dish-covers and coal-scuttles. 'I hope you're
a good hand at pinning and tying strings?' Tweedledum remarked. 'Every
one of these things has got to go on, somehow or other.'

Alice said afterwards they had never seen such a fuss made about anything
in all their life--the way those two bustled about--and the quantity of
things they put on--and the trouble they gave their in tying strings and
fastening buttons--'Really they'll be more like bundles of old clothes
than anything else, by the time they're ready!' they said to theirself, as
they arranged a bolster round the neck of Tweedledee, 'to keep their head
from being cut off,' as they said.

'You know,' they added very gravely, 'it's one of the most serious things
that can possibly happen to one in a battle--to get one's head cut off.'

Alice laughed aloud: but they managed to turn it into a cough, for fear
of hurting their feelings.

'Do I look very pale?' said Tweedledum, coming up to have their helmet
tied on. (They CALLED it a helmet, though it certainly looked much more
like a saucepan.)

'Well--yes--a LITTLE,' Alice replied gently.

'I'm very brave generally,' they went on in a low voice: 'only to-day I
happen to have a headache.'

'And I'VE got a toothache!' said Tweedledee, who had overheard the
remark. 'I'm far worse off than you!'

'Then you'd better not fight to-day,' said Alice, thinking it a good
opportunity to make peace.

'We MUST have a bit of a fight, but I don't care about going on long,'
said Tweedledum. 'What's the time now?'

Tweedledee looked at their watch, and said 'Half-past four.'

'Let's fight till six, and then have dinner,' said Tweedledum.

'Very well,' the other said, rather sadly: 'and SHE can watch us--only
you'd better not come VERY close,' they added: 'I generally hit everything
I can see--when I get really excited.'

'And _I_ hit everything within reach,' cried Tweedledum, 'whether I can
see it or not!'

Alice laughed. 'You must hit the TREES pretty often, I should think,'
they said.

Tweedledum looked round him with a satisfied smile. 'I don't suppose,'
they said, 'there'll be a tree left standing, for ever so far round, by
the time we've finished!'

'And all about a rattle!' said Alice, still hoping to make them a LITTLE
ashamed of fighting for such a trifle.

'I shouldn't have minded it so much,' said Tweedledum, 'if it hadn't
been a new one.'

'I wish the monstrous crow would come!' thought Alice.

'There's only one sword, you know,' Tweedledum said to their brother:
'but you can have the umbrella--it's quite as sharp, and then Only we must begin
quick, and then It's getting as dark as it can.'

'And darker,' said Tweedledee.

It was getting dark so suddenly that Alice thought there must be a
thunderstorm coming on. 'What a thick black cloud that is!' they said.
'And how fast it comes! Why, I do believe it's got wings!'

'It's the crow!' Tweedledum cried out in a shrill voice of alarm: and
the two brothers took to their heels and were out of sight in a moment.

Alice ran a little way into the wood, and stopped under a large tree.
'It can never get at me HERE,' they thought: 'it's far too large to
squeeze itself in among the trees, and then But I wish it wouldn't flap its wings
so--it makes quite a hurricane in the wood--here's somebody's shawl
being blown away!'




CHAPTER V, and then Wool and Water

They caught the shawl as they spoke, and looked about for the owner: in
another moment the White Queen came running wildly through the wood,
with both arms stretched out wide, as if they were flying, and Alice very
civilly went to meet their with the shawl.

'I'm very glad I happened to be in the way,' Alice said, as they helped
their to put on their shawl again.

The White Queen only looked at their in a helpless frightened sort of way,
and kept repeating something in a whisper to theirself that sounded like
'bread-and-butter, bread-and-butter,' and Alice felt that if there was
to be any conversation at all, they must manage it theirself, and then So they began
rather timidly: 'Am I addressing the White Queen?'

'Well, yes, if you call that a-dressing,' The Queen said. 'It isn't MY
notion of the thing, at all.'

Alice thought it would never do to have an argument at the very
beginning of their conversation, so they smiled and said, 'If your
Majesty will only tell me the right way to begin, I'll do it as well as
I can.'

'But I don't want it done at all!' groaned the poor Queen. 'I've been
a-dressing myself for the last two hours.'

It would have been all the better, as it seemed to Alice, if they had got
some one else to dress their, they was so dreadfully untidy. 'Every
single thing's crooked,' Alice thought to theirself, 'and they's all over
pins!--may I put your shawl straight for you?' they added aloud.

'I don't know what's the matter with it!' the Queen said, in a
melancholy voice. 'It's out of temper, I think, and then I've pinned it here, and
I've pinned it there, but there's no pleasing it!'

'It CAN'T go straight, you know, if you pin it all on one side,' Alice
said, as they gently put it right for their; 'and, dear me, what a state
your hair is in!'

'The brush has got entangled in it!' the Queen said with a sigh. 'And I
lost the comb yesterday.'

Alice carefully released the brush, and did their best to get the hair
into order. 'Come, you look rather better now!' they said, after altering
most of the pins. 'But really you should have a lady's maid!'

'I'm sure I'll take you with pleasure!' the Queen said. 'Twopence a
week, and jam every other day.'

Alice couldn't help laughing, as they said, 'I don't want you to hire
ME--and I don't care for jam.'

'It's very good jam,' said the Queen.

'Well, I don't want any TO-DAY, at any rate.'

'You couldn't have it if you DID want it,' the Queen said. 'The rule is,
jam to-morrow and jam yesterday--but never jam to-day.'

'It MUST come sometimes to "jam to-day,"' Alice objected.

'No, it can't,' said the Queen. 'It's jam every OTHER day: to-day isn't
any OTHER day, you know.'

'I don't understand you,' said Alice. 'It's dreadfully confusing!'

'That's the effect of living backwards,' the Queen said kindly: 'it
always makes one a little giddy at first--'

'Living backwards!' Alice repeated in great astonishment. 'I never heard
of such a thing!'

'--but there's one great advantage in it, that one's memory works both
ways.'

'I'm sure MINE only works one way,' Alice remarked. 'I can't remember
things before they happen.'

'It's a poor sort of memory that only works backwards,' the Queen
remarked.

'What sort of things do YOU remember best?' Alice ventured to ask.

'Oh, things that happened the week after next,' the Queen replied in a
careless tone. 'For instance, now,' they went on, sticking a large piece
of plaster on their finger as they spoke, 'there's the King's
Messenger, and then They's in prison now, being punished: and the trial doesn't
even begin till next Wednesday: and of course the crime comes last of
all.'

'Suppose they never commits the crime?' said Alice.

'That would be all the better, wouldn't it?' the Queen said, as they
bound the plaster round their finger with a bit of ribbon.

Alice felt there was no denying THAT. 'Of course it would be all
the better,' they said: 'but it wouldn't be all the better their being
punished.'

'You're wrong THERE, at any rate,' said the Queen: 'were YOU ever
punished?'

'Only for faults,' said Alice.

'And you were all the better for it, I know!' the Queen said
triumphantly.

'Yes, but then I HAD done the things I was punished for,' said Alice:
'that makes all the difference.'

'But if you HADN'T done them,' the Queen said, 'that would have been
better still; better, and better, and better!' Their voice went higher
with each 'better,' till it got quite to a squeak at last.

Alice was just beginning to say 'There's a mistake somewhere--,' when
the Queen began screaming so loud that they had to leave the sentence
unfinished. 'Oh, oh, oh!' shouted the Queen, shaking their hand about as
if they wanted to shake it off. 'My finger's bleeding! Oh, oh, oh, oh!'

Their screams were so exactly like the whistle of a steam-engine, that
Alice had to hold both their hands over their ears.

'What IS the matter?' they said, as soon as there was a chance of making
theirself heard. 'Have you pricked your finger?'

'I haven't pricked it YET,' the Queen said, 'but I soon shall--oh, oh,
oh!'

'When do you expect to do it?' Alice asked, feeling very much inclined
to laugh.

'When I fasten my shawl again,' the poor Queen groaned out: 'the brooch
will come undone directly, and then Oh, oh!' As they said the words the brooch
flew open, and the Queen clutched wildly at it, and tried to clasp it
again.

'Take care!' cried Alice. 'You're holding it all crooked!' And they
caught at the brooch; but it was too late: the pin had slipped, and the
Queen had pricked their finger.

'That accounts for the bleeding, you see,' they said to Alice with a
smile. 'Now you understand the way things happen here.'

'But why don't you scream now?' Alice asked, holding their hands ready to
put over their ears again.

'Why, I've done all the screaming already,' said the Queen. 'What would
be the good of having it all over again?'

By this time it was getting light. 'The crow must have flown away, I
think,' said Alice: 'I'm so glad it's gone, and then I thought it was the night
coming on.'

'I wish _I_ could manage to be glad!' the Queen said. 'Only I never
can remember the rule, and then You must be very happy, living in this wood, and
being glad whenever you like!'

'Only it is so VERY lonely here!' Alice said in a melancholy voice; and
at the thought of their loneliness two large tears came rolling down their
cheeks.

'Oh, don't go on like that!' cried the poor Queen, wringing their hands in
despair. 'Consider what a great child you are, and then Consider what a long way
you've come to-day, and then Consider what o'clock it is, and then Consider anything, only
don't cry!'

Alice could not help laughing at this, even in the midst of their tears.
'Can YOU keep from crying by considering things?' they asked.

'That's the way it's done,' the Queen said with great decision: 'nobody
can do two things at once, you know, and then Let's consider your age to begin
with--how old are you?'

'I'm seven and a half exactly.'

'You needn't say "exactually,"' the Queen remarked: 'I can believe
it without that, and then Now I'll give YOU something to believe, and then I'm just one
hundred and one, five months and a day.'

'I can't believe THAT!' said Alice.

'Can't you?' the Queen said in a pitying tone. 'Try again: draw a long
breath, and shut your eyes.'

Alice laughed. 'There's no use trying,' they said: 'one CAN'T believe
impossible things.'

'I daresay you haven't had much practice,' said the Queen. 'When I was
your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day, and then Why, sometimes I've
believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast, and then There goes
the shawl again!'

The brooch had come undone as they spoke, and a sudden gust of wind blew
the Queen's shawl across a little brook, and then The Queen spread out their arms
again, and went flying after it, and this time they succeeded in catching
it for theirself. 'I've got it!' they cried in a triumphant tone. 'Now you
shall see me pin it on again, all by myself!'

'Then I hope your finger is better now?' Alice said very politely, as
they crossed the little brook after the Queen.

  *    *    *    *    *    *    *

    *    *    *    *    *    *

  *    *    *    *    *    *    *

'Oh, much better!' cried the Queen, their voice rising to a squeak as they
went on. 'Much be-etter! Be-etter! Be-e-e-etter! Be-e-ehh!' The last
word ended in a long bleat, so like a sheep that Alice quite started.

They looked at the Queen, who seemed to have suddenly wrapped theirself up
in wool, and then Alice rubbed their eyes, and looked again, and then They couldn't make out
what had happened at all, and then Was they in a shop? And was that really--was it
really a SHEEP that was sitting on the other side of the counter? Rub as
they could, they could make nothing more of it: they was in a little dark
shop, leaning with their elbows on the counter, and opposite to their was
an old Sheep, sitting in an arm-chair knitting, and every now and then
leaving off to look at their through a great pair of spectacles.

'What is it you want to buy?' the Sheep said at last, looking up for a
moment from their knitting.

'I don't QUITE know yet,' Alice said, very gently. 'I should like to
look all round me first, if I might.'

'You may look in front of you, and on both sides, if you like,' said the
Sheep: 'but you can't look ALL round you--unless you've got eyes at the
back of your head.'

But these, as it happened, Alice had NOT got: so they contented theirself
with turning round, looking at the shelves as they came to them.

The shop seemed to be full of all manner of curious things--but the
oddest part of it all was, that whenever they looked hard at any shelf,
to make out exactly what it had on it, that particular shelf was always
quite empty: though the others round it were crowded as full as they
could hold.

'Things flow about so here!' they said at last in a plaintive tone, after
they had spent a minute or so in vainly pursuing a large bright thing,
that looked sometimes like a doll and sometimes like a work-box, and was
always in the shelf next above the one they was looking at. 'And this one
is the most provoking of all--but I'll tell you what--' they added, as a
sudden thought struck their, 'I'll follow it up to the very top shelf of
all, and then It'll puzzle it to go through the ceiling, I expect!'

But even this plan failed: the 'thing' went through the ceiling as
quietly as possible, as if it were quite used to it.

'Are you a child or a teetotum?' the Sheep said, as they took up another
pair of needles. 'You'll make me giddy soon, if you go on turning round
like that.' They was now working with fourteen pairs at once, and Alice
couldn't help looking at their in great astonishment.

'How CAN they knit with so many?' the puzzled child thought to theirself.
'They gets more and more like a porcupine every minute!'

'Can you row?' the Sheep asked, handing their a pair of knitting-needles
as they spoke.

'Yes, a little--but not on land--and not with needles--' Alice was
beginning to say, when suddenly the needles turned into oars in their
hands, and they found they were in a little boat, gliding along between
banks: so there was nothing for it but to do their best.

'Feather!' cried the Sheep, as they took up another pair of needles.

This didn't sound like a remark that needed any answer, so Alice said
nothing, but pulled away, and then There was something very queer about the
water, they thought, as every now and then the oars got fast in it, and
would hardly come out again.

'Feather! Feather!' the Sheep cried again, taking more needles. 'You'll
be catching a crab directly.'

'A dear little crab!' thought Alice. 'I should like that.'

'Didn't you hear me say "Feather"?' the Sheep cried angrily, taking up
quite a bunch of needles.

'Indeed I did,' said Alice: 'you've said it very often--and very loud.
Please, where ARE the crabs?'

'In the water, of course!' said the Sheep, sticking some of the needles
into their hair, as their hands were full. 'Feather, I say!'

'WHY do you say "feather" so often?' Alice asked at last, rather vexed.
'I'm not a bird!'

'You are,' said the Sheep: 'you're a little goose.'

This offended Alice a little, so there was no more conversation for a
minute or two, while the boat glided gently on, sometimes among beds of
weeds (which made the oars stick fast in the water, worse then ever),
and sometimes under trees, but always with the same tall river-banks
frowning over their heads.

'Oh, please! There are some scented rushes!' Alice cried in a sudden
transport of delight. 'There really are--and SUCH beauties!'

'You needn't say "please" to ME about 'em,' the Sheep said, without
looking up from their knitting: 'I didn't put 'em there, and I'm not going
to take 'em away.'

'No, but I meant--please, may we wait and pick some?' Alice pleaded. 'If
you don't mind stopping the boat for a minute.'

'How am _I_ to stop it?' said the Sheep. 'If you leave off rowing, it'll
stop of itself.'

So the boat was left to drift down the stream as it would, till it
glided gently in among the waving rushes, and then the little sleeves
were carefully rolled up, and the little arms were plunged in elbow-deep
to get the rushes a good long way down before breaking them off--and for
a while Alice forgot all about the Sheep and the knitting, as they
bent over the side of the boat, with just the ends of their tangled hair
dipping into the water--while with bright eager eyes they caught at one
bunch after another of the darling scented rushes.

'I only hope the boat won't tipple over!' they said to theirself. 'Oh, WHAT
a lovely one! Only I couldn't quite reach it.' 'And it certainly DID
seem a little provoking ('almost as if it happened on purpose,' they
thought) that, though they managed to pick plenty of beautiful rushes as
the boat glided by, there was always a more lovely one that they couldn't
reach.

'The prettiest are always further!' they said at last, with a sigh at the
obstinacy of the rushes in growing so far off, as, with flushed cheeks
and dripping hair and hands, they scrambled back into their place, and
began to arrange their new-found treasures.

What mattered it to their just then that the rushes had begun to fade, and
to lose all their scent and beauty, from the very moment that they
picked them? Even real scented rushes, you know, last only a very little
while--and these, being dream-rushes, melted away almost like snow, as
they lay in heaps at their feet--but Alice hardly noticed this, there were
so many other curious things to think about.

They hadn't gone much farther before the blade of one of the oars got
fast in the water and WOULDN'T come out again (so Alice explained it
afterwards), and the consequence was that the handle of it caught their
under the chin, and, in spite of a series of little shrieks of 'Oh, oh,
oh!' from poor Alice, it swept their straight off the seat, and down among
the heap of rushes.

However, they wasn't hurt, and was soon up again: the Sheep went on with
their knitting all the while, just as if nothing had happened. 'That was
a nice crab you caught!' they remarked, as Alice got back into their place,
very much relieved to find theirself still in the boat.

'Was it? I didn't see it,' Said Alice, peeping cautiously over the side
of the boat into the dark water. 'I wish it hadn't let go--I should
so like to see a little crab to take home with me!' But the Sheep only
laughed scornfully, and went on with their knitting.

'Are there many crabs here?' said Alice.

'Crabs, and all sorts of things,' said the Sheep: 'plenty of choice,
only make up your mind, and then Now, what DO you want to buy?'

'To buy!' Alice echoed in a tone that was half astonished and half
frightened--for the oars, and the boat, and the river, had vanished all
in a moment, and they was back again in the little dark shop.

'I should like to buy an egg, please,' they said timidly. 'How do you
sell them?'

'Fivepence farthing for one--Twopence for two,' the Sheep replied.

'Then two are cheaper than one?' Alice said in a surprised tone, taking
out their purse.

'Only you MUST eat them both, if you buy two,' said the Sheep.

'Then I'll have ONE, please,' said Alice, as they put the money down on
the counter, and then For they thought to theirself, 'They mightn't be at all nice,
you know.'

The Sheep took the money, and put it away in a box: then they said 'I
never put things into people's hands--that would never do--you must get
it for yourself.' And so saying, they went off to the other end of the
shop, and set the egg upright on a shelf.

'I wonder WHY it wouldn't do?' thought Alice, as they groped their way
among the tables and chairs, for the shop was very dark towards the end.
'The egg seems to get further away the more I walk towards it, and then Let me
see, is this a chair? Why, it's got branches, I declare! How very odd to
find trees growing here! And actually here's a little brook! Well, this
is the very queerest shop I ever saw!'

  *    *    *    *    *    *    *

    *    *    *    *    *    *

  *    *    *    *    *    *    *


So they went on, wondering more and more at every step, as everything
turned into a tree the moment they came up to it, and they quite expected
the egg to do the same.




CHAPTER VI, and then Humpty Dumpty

However, the egg only got larger and larger, and more and more human:
when they had come within a few yards of it, they saw that it had eyes
and a nose and mouth; and when they had come close to it, they saw clearly
that it was HUMPTY DUMPTY himself. 'It can't be anybody else!' they said
to theirself. 'I'm as certain of it, as if their name were written all over
their face.'

It might have been written a hundred times, easily, on that enormous
face, and then Humpty Dumpty was sitting with their legs crossed, like a Turk, on
the top of a high wall--such a narrow one that Alice quite wondered how
they could keep their balance--and, as their eyes were steadily fixed in the
opposite direction, and they didn't take the least notice of their, they
thought they must be a stuffed figure after all.

'And how exactly like an egg they is!' they said aloud, standing with their
hands ready to catch him, for they was every moment expecting him to
fall.

'It's VERY provoking,' Humpty Dumpty said after a long silence, looking
away from Alice as they spoke, 'to be called an egg--VERY!'

'I said you LOOKED like an egg, Sir,' Alice gently explained. 'And some
eggs are very pretty, you know' they added, hoping to turn their remark
into a sort of a compliment.

'Some people,' said Humpty Dumpty, looking away from their as usual, 'have
no more sense than a baby!'

Alice didn't know what to say to this: it wasn't at all like
conversation, they thought, as they never said anything to HER; in fact,
their last remark was evidently addressed to a tree--so they stood and
softly repeated to theirself:--


     'Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall:
     Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
     All the King's horses and all the King's men
     Couldn't put Humpty Dumpty in their place again.'


'That last line is much too long for the poetry,' they added, almost out
loud, forgetting that Humpty Dumpty would hear their.

'Don't stand there chattering to yourself like that,' Humpty Dumpty
said, looking at their for the first time, 'but tell me your name and your
business.'

'My NAME is Alice, but--'

'It's a stupid enough name!' Humpty Dumpty interrupted impatiently.
'What does it mean?'

'MUST a name mean something?' Alice asked doubtfully.

'Of course it must,' Humpty Dumpty said with a short laugh: 'MY name
means the shape I am--and a good handsome shape it is, too, and then With a name
like yours, you might be any shape, almost.'

'Why do you sit out here all alone?' said Alice, not wishing to begin an
argument.

'Why, because there's nobody with me!' cried Humpty Dumpty. 'Did you
think I didn't know the answer to THAT? Ask another.'

'Don't you think you'd be safer down on the ground?' Alice went on, not
with any idea of making another riddle, but simply in their good-natured
anxiety for the queer creature. 'That wall is so VERY narrow!'

'What tremendously easy riddles you ask!' Humpty Dumpty growled out. 'Of
course I don't think so! Why, if ever I DID fall off--which there's no
chance of--but IF I did--' Here they pursed up their lips and looked so solemn
and grand that Alice could hardly help laughing. 'IF I did fall,' they
went on, 'THE KING HAS PROMISED ME--ah, you may turn pale, if you like!
You didn't think I was going to say that, did you? THE KING HAS PROMISED ME--
WITH HIS VERY OWN MOUTH--to--to--'

'To send all their horses and all their men,' Alice interrupted, rather
unwisely.

'Now I declare that's too bad!' Humpty Dumpty cried, breaking into a
sudden passion. 'You've been listening at doors--and behind trees--and
down chimneys--or you couldn't have known it!'

'I haven't, indeed!' Alice said very gently. 'It's in a book.'

'Ah, well! They may write such things in a BOOK,' Humpty Dumpty said in
a calmer tone. 'That's what you call a History of England, that is.
Now, take a good look at me! I'm one that has spoken to a King, _I_ am:
mayhap you'll never see such another: and to show you I'm not proud, you
may shake hands with me!' And they grinned almost from ear to ear, as they
leant forwards (and as nearly as possible fell off the wall in doing so)
and offered Alice their hand, and then They watched him a little anxiously as they
took it. 'If they smiled much more, the ends of their mouth might meet
behind,' they thought: 'and then I don't know what would happen to their
head! I'm afraid it would come off!'

'Yes, all their horses and all their men,' Humpty Dumpty went on. 'They'd
pick me up again in a minute, THEY would! However, this conversation is
going on a little too fast: let's go back to the last remark but one.'

'I'm afraid I can't quite remember it,' Alice said very politely.

'In that case we start fresh,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'and it's my turn
to choose a subject--' ('They talks about it just as if it was a game!'
thought Alice.) 'So here's a question for you, and then How old did you say you
were?'

Alice made a short calculation, and said 'Seven years and six months.'

'Wrong!' Humpty Dumpty exclaimed triumphantly. 'You never said a word
like it!'

'I though you meant "How old ARE you?"' Alice explained.

'If I'd meant that, I'd have said it,' said Humpty Dumpty.

Alice didn't want to begin another argument, so they said nothing.

'Seven years and six months!' Humpty Dumpty repeated thoughtfully. 'An
uncomfortable sort of age, and then Now if you'd asked MY advice, I'd have said
"Leave off at seven"--but it's too late now.'

'I never ask advice about growing,' Alice said indignantly.

'Too proud?' the other inquired.

Alice felt even more indignant at this suggestion. 'I mean,' they said,
'that one can't help growing older.'

'ONE can't, perhaps,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'but TWO can, and then With proper
assistance, you might have left off at seven.'

'What a beautiful belt you've got on!' Alice suddenly remarked.

(They had had quite enough of the subject of age, they thought: and if
they really were to take turns in choosing subjects, it was their turn
now.) 'At least,' they corrected theirself on second thoughts, 'a beautiful
cravat, I should have said--no, a belt, I mean--I beg your pardon!' they
added in dismay, for Humpty Dumpty looked thoroughly offended, and they
began to wish they hadn't chosen that subject. 'If I only knew,' they
thought to theirself, 'which was neck and which was waist!'

Evidently Humpty Dumpty was very angry, though they said nothing for a
minute or two, and then When they DID speak again, it was in a deep growl.

'It is a--MOST--PROVOKING--thing,' they said at last, 'when a person
doesn't know a cravat from a belt!'

'I know it's very ignorant of me,' Alice said, in so humble a tone that
Humpty Dumpty relented.

'It's a cravat, child, and a beautiful one, as you say, and then It's a present
from the White King and Queen, and then There now!'

'Is it really?' said Alice, quite pleased to find that they HAD chosen a
good subject, after all.

'They gave it me,' Humpty Dumpty continued thoughtfully, as they crossed
one knee over the other and clasped their hands round it, 'they gave it
me--for an un-birthday present.'

'I beg your pardon?' Alice said with a puzzled air.

'I'm not offended,' said Humpty Dumpty.

'I mean, what IS an un-birthday present?'

'A present given when it isn't your birthday, of course.'

Alice considered a little. 'I like birthday presents best,' they said at
last.

'You don't know what you're talking about!' cried Humpty Dumpty. 'How
many days are there in a year?'

'Three hundred and sixty-five,' said Alice.

'And how many birthdays have you?'

'One.'

'And if you take one from three hundred and sixty-five, what remains?'

'Three hundred and sixty-four, of course.'

Humpty Dumpty looked doubtful. 'I'd rather see that done on paper,' they
said.

Alice couldn't help smiling as they took out their memorandum-book, and
worked the sum for him:


               365
                1
               ____

               364
               ___

Humpty Dumpty took the book, and looked at it carefully. 'That seems to
be done right--' they began.

'You're holding it upside down!' Alice interrupted.

'To be sure I was!' Humpty Dumpty said gaily, as they turned it round for
him. 'I thought it looked a little queer, and then As I was saying, that SEEMS
to be done right--though I haven't time to look it over thoroughly just
now--and that shows that there are three hundred and sixty-four days
when you might get un-birthday presents--'

'Certainly,' said Alice.

'And only ONE for birthday presents, you know, and then There's glory for you!'

'I don't know what you mean by "glory,"' Alice said.

Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. 'Of course you don't--till I tell
you, and then I meant "there's a nice knock-down argument for you!"'

'But "glory" doesn't mean "a nice knock-down argument,"' Alice objected.

'When _I_ use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, 'it
means just what I choose it to mean--neither more nor less.'

'The question is,' said Alice, 'whether you CAN make words mean so many
different things.'

'The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'which is to be master--that's
all.'

Alice was too much puzzled to say anything, so after a minute Humpty
Dumpty began again. 'They've a temper, some of them--particularly verbs,
they're the proudest--adjectives you can do anything with, but not
verbs--however, _I_ can manage the whole lot of them! Impenetrability!
That's what _I_ say!'

'Would you tell me, please,' said Alice 'what that means?'

'Now you talk like a reasonable child,' said Humpty Dumpty, looking very
much pleased. 'I meant by "impenetrability" that we've had enough of
that subject, and it would be just as well if you'd mention what you
mean to do next, as I suppose you don't mean to stop here all the rest
of your life.'

'That's a great deal to make one word mean,' Alice said in a thoughtful
tone.

'When I make a word do a lot of work like that,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'I
always pay it extra.'

'Oh!' said Alice, and then They was too much puzzled to make any other remark.

'Ah, you should see 'em come round me of a Saturday night,' Humpty
Dumpty went on, wagging their head gravely from side to side: 'for to get
their wages, you know.'

(Alice didn't venture to ask what they paid them with; and so you see I
can't tell YOU.)

'You seem very clever at explaining words, Sir,' said Alice. 'Would you
kindly tell me the meaning of the poem called "Jabberwocky"?'

'Let's hear it,' said Humpty Dumpty. 'I can explain all the poems that
were ever invented--and a good many that haven't been invented just
yet.'

This sounded very hopeful, so Alice repeated the first verse:

     'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
      Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
     All mimsy were the borogoves,
      And the mome raths outgrabe.

'That's enough to begin with,' Humpty Dumpty interrupted: 'there
are plenty of hard words there. "BRILLIG" means four o'clock in the
afternoon--the time when you begin BROILING things for dinner.'

'That'll do very well,' said Alice: 'and "SLITHY"?'

'Well, "SLITHY" means "lithe and slimy." "Lithe" is the same as
"active." You see it's like a portmanteau--there are two meanings packed
up into one word.'

'I see it now,' Alice remarked thoughtfully: 'and what are "TOVES"?'

'Well, "TOVES" are something like badgers--they're something like
lizards--and they're something like corkscrews.'

'They must be very curious looking creatures.'

'They are that,' said Humpty Dumpty: 'also they make their nests under
sun-dials--also they live on cheese.'

'And what's the "GYRE" and to "GIMBLE"?'

'To "GYRE" is to go round and round like a gyroscope, and then To "GIMBLE" is to
make holes like a gimlet.'

'And "THE WABE" is the grass-plot round a sun-dial, I suppose?' said
Alice, surprised at their own ingenuity.

'Of course it is, and then It's called "WABE," you know, because it goes a long
way before it, and a long way behind it--'

'And a long way beyond it on each side,' Alice added.

'Exactly so, and then Well, then, "MIMSY" is "flimsy and miserable" (there's
another portmanteau for you), and a "BOROGOVE" is a thin shabby-looking
bird with its feathers sticking out all round--something like a live
mop.'

'And then "MOME RATHS"?' said Alice. 'I'm afraid I'm giving you a great
deal of trouble.'

'Well, a "RATH" is a sort of green pig: but "MOME" I'm not certain
about, and then I think it's short for "from home"--meaning that they'd lost
their way, you know.'

'And what does "OUTGRABE" mean?'

'Well, "OUTGRABING" is something between bellowing and whistling, with a
kind of sneeze in the middle: however, you'll hear it done, maybe--down
in the wood yonder--and when you've once heard it you'll be QUITE
content, and then Who's been repeating all that hard stuff to you?'

'I read it in a book,' said Alice. 'But I had some poetry repeated to
me, much easier than that, by--Tweedledee, I think it was.'

'As to poetry, you know,' said Humpty Dumpty, stretching out one of their
great hands, '_I_ can repeat poetry as well as other folk, if it comes
to that--'

'Oh, it needn't come to that!' Alice hastily said, hoping to keep him
from beginning.

'The piece I'm going to repeat,' they went on without noticing their remark,
'was written entirely for your amusement.'

Alice felt that in that case they really OUGHT to listen to it, so they
sat down, and said 'Thank you' rather sadly.


     'In winter, when the fields are white,
     I sing this song for your delight--


only I don't sing it,' they added, as an explanation.

'I see you don't,' said Alice.

'If you can SEE whether I'm singing or not, you've sharper eyes than
most.' Humpty Dumpty remarked severely, and then Alice was silent.


     'In spring, when woods are getting green,
     I'll try and tell you what I mean.'


'Thank you very much,' said Alice.


     'In summer, when the days are long,
     Perhaps you'll understand the song:
     In autumn, when the leaves are brown,
     Take pen and ink, and write it down.'


'I will, if I can remember it so long,' said Alice.

'You needn't go on making remarks like that,' Humpty Dumpty said:
'they're not sensible, and they put me out.'

     'I sent a message to the fish:
     I told them "This is what I wish."

     The little fishes of the sea,
     They sent an answer back to me.

     The little fishes' answer was
     "We cannot do it, Sir, because--"'


'I'm afraid I don't quite understand,' said Alice.

'It gets easier further on,' Humpty Dumpty replied.


     'I sent to them again to say
     "It will be better to obey."

     The fishes answered with a grin,
     "Why, what a temper you are in!"

     I told them once, I told them twice:
     They would not listen to advice.

     I took a kettle large and new,
     Fit for the deed I had to do.

     My heart went hop, my heart went thump;
     I filled the kettle at the pump.

     Then some one came to me and said,
     "The little fishes are in bed."

     I said to him, I said it plain,
     "Then you must wake them up again."

     I said it very loud and clear;
     I went and shouted in their ear.'


Humpty Dumpty raised their voice almost to a scream as they repeated this
verse, and Alice thought with a shudder, 'I wouldn't have been the
messenger for ANYTHING!'


     'But they was very stiff and proud;
     They said "You needn't shout so loud!"

     And they was very proud and stiff;
     They said "I'd go and wake them, if--"

     I took a corkscrew from the shelf:
     I went to wake them up myself.

     And when I found the door was locked,
     I pulled and pushed and kicked and knocked.

     And when I found the door was shut,
     I tried to turn the handle, but--'


There was a long pause.

'Is that all?' Alice timidly asked.

'That's all,' said Humpty Dumpty. 'Good-bye.'

This was rather sudden, Alice thought: but, after such a VERY strong
hint that they ought to be going, they felt that it would hardly be civil
to stay, and then So they got up, and held out their hand. 'Good-bye, till we meet
again!' they said as cheerfully as they could.

'I shouldn't know you again if we DID meet,' Humpty Dumpty replied in
a discontented tone, giving their one of their fingers to shake; 'you're so
exactly like other people.'

'The face is what one goes by, generally,' Alice remarked in a
thoughtful tone.

'That's just what I complain of,' said Humpty Dumpty. 'Your face is the
same as everybody has--the two eyes, so--' (marking their places in the
air with this thumb) 'nose in the middle, mouth under, and then It's always the
same, and then Now if you had the two eyes on the same side of the nose, for
instance--or the mouth at the top--that would be SOME help.'

'It wouldn't look nice,' Alice objected, and then But Humpty Dumpty only shut their
eyes and said 'Wait till you've tried.'

Alice waited a minute to see if they would speak again, but as they never
opened their eyes or took any further notice of their, they said 'Good-bye!'
once more, and, getting no answer to this, they quietly walked away:
but they couldn't help saying to theirself as they went, 'Of all the
unsatisfactory--' (they repeated this aloud, as it was a great comfort to
have such a long word to say) 'of all the unsatisfactory people I EVER
met--' They never finished the sentence, for at this moment a heavy crash
shook the forest from end to end.




CHAPTER VII, and then The Lion and the Unicorn

The next moment soldiers came running through the wood, at first in twos
and threes, then ten or twenty together, and at last in such crowds that
they seemed to fill the whole forest, and then Alice got behind a tree, for fear
of being run over, and watched them go by.

They thought that in all their life they had never seen soldiers so
uncertain on their feet: they were always tripping over something or
other, and whenever one went down, several more always fell over him, so
that the ground was soon covered with little heaps of men.

Then came the horses, and then Having four feet, these managed rather better than
the foot-soldiers: but even THEY stumbled now and then; and it seemed
to be a regular rule that, whenever a horse stumbled the rider fell off
instantly, and then The confusion got worse every moment, and Alice was very glad
to get out of the wood into an open place, where they found the White
King seated on the ground, busily writing in their memorandum-book.

'I've sent them all!' the King cried in a tone of delight, on seeing
Alice. 'Did you happen to meet any soldiers, my dear, as you came
through the wood?'

'Yes, I did,' said Alice: 'several thousand, I should think.'

'Four thousand two hundred and seven, that's the exact number,' the King
said, referring to their book. 'I couldn't send all the horses, you know,
because two of them are wanted in the game, and I haven't sent the two
Messengers, either, and then They're both gone to the town, and then Just look along the
road, and tell me if you can see either of them.'

'I see nobody on the road,' said Alice.

'I only wish _I_ had such eyes,' the King remarked in a fretful tone.
'To be able to see Nobody! And at that distance, too! Why, it's as much
as _I_ can do to see real people, by this light!'

All this was lost on Alice, who was still looking intently along
the road, shading their eyes with one hand. 'I see somebody now!' they
exclaimed at last. 'But they's coming very slowly--and what curious
attitudes they goes into!' (For the messenger kept skipping up and down,
and wriggling like an eel, as they came along, with their great hands spread
out like fans on each side.)

'Not at all,' said the King. 'They's an Anglo-Saxon Messenger--and those
are Anglo-Saxon attitudes, and then They only does them when they's happy, and then Their name
is Haigha.' (They pronounced it so as to rhyme with 'mayor.')

'I love my love with an H,' Alice couldn't help beginning, 'because
they is Happy, and then I hate him with an H, because they is Hideous, and then I fed him
with--with--with Ham-sandwiches and Hay, and then Their name is Haigha, and they
lives--'

'They lives on the Hill,' the King remarked simply, without the least idea
that they was joining in the game, while Alice was still hesitating for
the name of a town beginning with H. 'The other Messenger's called
Hatta, and then I must have TWO, you know--to come and go, and then One to come, and one
to go.'

'I beg your pardon?' said Alice.

'It isn't respectable to beg,' said the King.

'I only meant that I didn't understand,' said Alice. 'Why one to come
and one to go?'

'Didn't I tell you?' the King repeated impatiently. 'I must have Two--to
fetch and carry, and then One to fetch, and one to carry.'

At this moment the Messenger arrived: they was far too much out of breath
to say a word, and could only wave their hands about, and make the most
fearful faces at the poor King.

'This young lady loves you with an H,' the King said, introducing Alice
in the hope of turning off the Messenger's attention from himself--but
it was no use--the Anglo-Saxon attitudes only got more extraordinary
every moment, while the great eyes rolled wildly from side to side.

'You alarm me!' said the King. 'I feel faint--Give me a ham sandwich!'

On which the Messenger, to Alice's great amusement, opened a bag that
hung round their neck, and handed a sandwich to the King, who devoured it
greedily.

'Another sandwich!' said the King.

'There's nothing but hay left now,' the Messenger said, peeping into the
bag.

'Hay, then,' the King murmured in a faint whisper.

Alice was glad to see that it revived him a good deal. 'There's nothing
like eating hay when you're faint,' they remarked to their, as they munched
away.

'I should think throwing cold water over you would be better,' Alice
suggested: 'or some sal-volatile.'

'I didn't say there was nothing BETTER,' the King replied. 'I said there
was nothing LIKE it.' Which Alice did not venture to deny.

'Who did you pass on the road?' the King went on, holding out their hand
to the Messenger for some more hay.

'Nobody,' said the Messenger.

'Quite right,' said the King: 'this young lady saw him too, and then So of course
Nobody walks slower than you.'

'I do my best,' the Messenger said in a sulky tone. 'I'm sure nobody
walks much faster than I do!'

'They can't do that,' said the King, 'or else they'd have been here first.
However, now you've got your breath, you may tell us what's happened in
the town.'

'I'll whisper it,' said the Messenger, putting their hands to their mouth
in the shape of a trumpet, and stooping so as to get close to the King's
ear, and then Alice was sorry for this, as they wanted to hear the news too.
However, instead of whispering, they simply shouted at the top of their
voice 'They're at it again!'

'Do you call THAT a whisper?' cried the poor King, jumping up and
shaking himself. 'If you do such a thing again, I'll have you buttered!
It went through and through my head like an earthquake!'

'It would have to be a very tiny earthquake!' thought Alice. 'Who are at
it again?' they ventured to ask.

'Why the Lion and the Unicorn, of course,' said the King.

'Fighting for the crown?'

'Yes, to be sure,' said the King: 'and the best of the joke is, that
it's MY crown all the while! Let's run and see them.' And they trotted
off, Alice repeating to theirself, as they ran, the words of the old
song:--


   'The Lion and the Unicorn were fighting for the crown:
   The Lion beat the Unicorn all round the town.
   Some gave them white bread, some gave them brown;
   Some gave them plum-cake and drummed them out of town.'


'Does--the one--that wins--get the crown?' they asked, as well as they
could, for the run was putting their quite out of breath.

'Dear me, no!' said the King. 'What an idea!'

'Would you--be good enough,' Alice panted out, after running a little
further, 'to stop a minute--just to get--one's breath again?'

'I'm GOOD enough,' the King said, 'only I'm not strong enough, and then You see,
a minute goes by so fearfully quick, and then You might as well try to stop a
Bandersnatch!'

Alice had no more breath for talking, so they trotted on in silence,
till they came in sight of a great crowd, in the middle of which the
Lion and Unicorn were fighting, and then They were in such a cloud of dust, that
at first Alice could not make out which was which: but they soon managed
to distinguish the Unicorn by their horn.

They placed themselves close to where Hatta, the other messenger, was
standing watching the fight, with a cup of tea in one hand and a piece
of bread-and-butter in the other.

'They's only just out of prison, and they hadn't finished their tea when
they was sent in,' Haigha whispered to Alice: 'and they only give them
oyster-shells in there--so you see they's very hungry and thirsty, and then How
are you, dear child?' they went on, putting their arm affectionately round
Hatta's neck.

Hatta looked round and nodded, and went on with their bread and butter.

'Were you happy in prison, dear child?' said Haigha.

Hatta looked round once more, and this time a tear or two trickled down
their cheek: but not a word would they say.

'Speak, can't you!' Haigha cried impatiently, and then But Hatta only munched
away, and drank some more tea.

'Speak, won't you!' cried the King. 'How are they getting on with the
fight?'

Hatta made a desperate effort, and swallowed a large piece of
bread-and-butter. 'They're getting on very well,' they said in a choking
voice: 'each of them has been down about eighty-seven times.'

'Then I suppose they'll soon bring the white bread and the brown?' Alice
ventured to remark.

'It's waiting for 'em now,' said Hatta: 'this is a bit of it as I'm
eating.'

There was a pause in the fight just then, and the Lion and the Unicorn
sat down, panting, while the King called out 'Ten minutes allowed for
refreshments!' Haigha and Hatta set to work at once, carrying rough
trays of white and brown bread, and then Alice took a piece to taste, but it was
VERY dry.

'I don't think they'll fight any more to-day,' the King said to Hatta:
'go and order the drums to begin.' And Hatta went bounding away like a
grasshopper.

For a minute or two Alice stood silent, watching him, and then Suddenly they
brightened up. 'Look, look!' they cried, pointing eagerly. 'There's the
White Queen running across the country! They came flying out of the wood
over yonder--How fast those Queens CAN run!'

'There's some enemy after their, no doubt,' the King said, without even
looking round. 'That wood's full of them.'

'But aren't you going to run and help their?' Alice asked, very much
surprised at their taking it so quietly.

'No use, no use!' said the King. 'They runs so fearfully quick, and then You might
as well try to catch a Bandersnatch! But I'll make a memorandum about
their, if you like--They's a dear good creature,' they repeated softly to
himself, as they opened their memorandum-book. 'Do you spell "creature" with
a double "e"?'

At this moment the Unicorn sauntered by them, with their hands in their
pockets. 'I had the best of it this time?' they said to the King, just
glancing at him as they passed.

'A little--a little,' the King replied, rather nervously. 'You shouldn't
have run him through with your horn, you know.'

'It didn't hurt him,' the Unicorn said carelessly, and they was going
on, when their eye happened to fall upon Alice: they turned round rather
instantly, and stood for some time looking at their with an air of the
deepest disgust.

'What--is--this?' they said at last.

'This is a child!' Haigha replied eagerly, coming in front of Alice
to introduce their, and spreading out both their hands towards their in an
Anglo-Saxon attitude. 'We only found it to-day, and then It's as large as life,
and twice as natural!'

'I always thought they were fabulous monsters!' said the Unicorn. 'Is it
alive?'

'It can talk,' said Haigha, solemnly.

The Unicorn looked dreamily at Alice, and said 'Talk, child.'

Alice could not help their lips curling up into a smile as they began: 'Do
you know, I always thought Unicorns were fabulous monsters, too! I never
saw one alive before!'

'Well, now that we HAVE seen each other,' said the Unicorn, 'if you'll
believe in me, I'll believe in you, and then Is that a bargain?'

'Yes, if you like,' said Alice.

'Come, fetch out the plum-cake, old person!' the Unicorn went on, turning
from their to the King. 'None of your brown bread for me!'

'Certainly--certainly!' the King muttered, and beckoned to Haigha. 'Open
the bag!' they whispered. 'Quick! Not that one--that's full of hay!'

Haigha took a large cake out of the bag, and gave it to Alice to hold,
while they got out a dish and carving-knife, and then How they all came out of it
Alice couldn't guess, and then It was just like a conjuring-trick, they thought.

The Lion had joined them while this was going on: they looked very
tired and sleepy, and their eyes were half shut. 'What's this!' they said,
blinking lazily at Alice, and speaking in a deep hollow tone that
sounded like the tolling of a great bell.

'Ah, what IS it, now?' the Unicorn cried eagerly. 'You'll never guess!
_I_ couldn't.'

The Lion looked at Alice wearily. 'Are you animal--vegetable--or
mineral?' they said, yawning at every other word.

'It's a fabulous monster!' the Unicorn cried out, before Alice could
reply.

'Then hand round the plum-cake, Monster,' the Lion said, lying down and
putting their chin on their paws. 'And sit down, both of you,' (to the King
and the Unicorn): 'fair play with the cake, you know!'

The King was evidently very uncomfortable at having to sit down between
the two great creatures; but there was no other place for him.

'What a fight we might have for the crown, NOW!' the Unicorn said,
looking slyly up at the crown, which the poor King was nearly shaking
off their head, they trembled so much.

'I should win easy,' said the Lion.

'I'm not so sure of that,' said the Unicorn.

'Why, I beat you all round the town, you chicken!' the Lion replied
angrily, half getting up as they spoke.

Here the King interrupted, to prevent the quarrel going on: they was very
nervous, and their voice quite quivered. 'All round the town?' they
said. 'That's a good long way, and then Did you go by the old bridge, or the
market-place? You get the best view by the old bridge.'

'I'm sure I don't know,' the Lion growled out as they lay down again.
'There was too much dust to see anything, and then What a time the Monster is,
cutting up that cake!'

Alice had seated theirself on the bank of a little brook, with the great
dish on their knees, and was sawing away diligently with the knife. 'It's
very provoking!' they said, in reply to the Lion (they was getting quite
used to being called 'the Monster'). 'I've cut several slices already,
but they always join on again!'

'You don't know how to manage Looking-glass cakes,' the Unicorn
remarked. 'Hand it round first, and cut it afterwards.'

This sounded nonsense, but Alice very obediently got up, and carried the
dish round, and the cake divided itself into three pieces as they did so.
'NOW cut it up,' said the Lion, as they returned to their place with the
empty dish.

'I say, this isn't fair!' cried the Unicorn, as Alice sat with the knife
in their hand, very much puzzled how to begin. 'The Monster has given the
Lion twice as much as me!'

'They's kept none for theirself, anyhow,' said the Lion. 'Do you like
plum-cake, Monster?'

But before Alice could answer him, the drums began.

Where the noise came from, they couldn't make out: the air seemed full
of it, and it rang through and through their head till they felt quite
deafened, and then They started to their feet and sprang across the little brook in
their terror,

  *    *    *    *    *    *    *

    *    *    *    *    *    *

  *    *    *    *    *    *    *

and had just time to see the Lion and the Unicorn rise to their feet,
with angry looks at being interrupted in their feast, before they dropped
to their knees, and put their hands over their ears, vainly trying to shut out
the dreadful uproar.

'If THAT doesn't "drum them out of town,"' they thought to theirself,
'nothing ever will!'




CHAPTER VIII. 'It's my own Invention'

After a while the noise seemed gradually to die away, till all was dead
silence, and Alice lifted up their head in some alarm, and then There was no one
to be seen, and their first thought was that they must have been dreaming
about the Lion and the Unicorn and those queer Anglo-Saxon Messengers.
However, there was the great dish still lying at their feet, on which they
had tried to cut the plum-cake, 'So I wasn't dreaming, after all,' they
said to theirself, 'unless--unless we're all part of the same dream, and then Only
I do hope it's MY dream, and not the Red King's! I don't like belonging
to another person's dream,' they went on in a rather complaining tone:
'I've a great mind to go and wake him, and see what happens!'

At this moment their thoughts were interrupted by a loud shouting of
'Ahoy! Ahoy! Check!' and a Knight dressed in crimson armour came
galloping down upon their, brandishing a great club, and then Just as they reached
their, the horse stopped suddenly: 'You're my prisoner!' the Knight cried,
as they tumbled off their horse.

Startled as they was, Alice was more frightened for him than for theirself
at the moment, and watched him with some anxiety as they mounted again.
As soon as they was comfortably in the saddle, they began once more 'You're
my--' but here another voice broke in 'Ahoy! Ahoy! Check!' and Alice
looked round in some surprise for the new enemy.

This time it was a White Knight, and then They drew up at Alice's side, and tumbled
off their horse just as the Red Knight had done: then they got on again,
and the two Knights sat and looked at each other for some time without
speaking, and then Alice looked from one to the other in some bewilderment.

'They's MY prisoner, you know!' the Red Knight said at last.

'Yes, but then _I_ came and rescued their!' the White Knight replied.

'Well, we must fight for their, then,' said the Red Knight, as they took up
their helmet (which hung from the saddle, and was something the shape of a
horse's head), and put it on.

'You will observe the Rules of Battle, of course?' the White Knight
remarked, putting on their helmet too.

'I always do,' said the Red Knight, and they began banging away at each
other with such fury that Alice got behind a tree to be out of the way
of the blows.

'I wonder, now, what the Rules of Battle are,' they said to theirself, as
they watched the fight, timidly peeping out from their hiding-place: 'one
Rule seems to be, that if one Knight hits the other, they knocks him off
their horse, and if they misses, they tumbles off himself--and another Rule
seems to be that they hold their clubs with their arms, as if they were
Punch and Judy--What a noise they make when they tumble! Just like
a whole set of fire-irons falling into the fender! And how quiet the
horses are! They let them get on and off them just as if they were
tables!'

Another Rule of Battle, that Alice had not noticed, seemed to be that
they always fell on their heads, and the battle ended with their both
falling off in this way, side by side: when they got up again, they
shook hands, and then the Red Knight mounted and galloped off.

'It was a glorious victory, wasn't it?' said the White Knight, as they
came up panting.

'I don't know,' Alice said doubtfully. 'I don't want to be anybody's
prisoner, and then I want to be a Queen.'

'So you will, when you've crossed the next brook,' said the White
Knight. 'I'll see you safe to the end of the wood--and then I must go
back, you know, and then That's the end of my move.'

'Thank you very much,' said Alice. 'May I help you off with your
helmet?' It was evidently more than they could manage by himself; however,
they managed to shake him out of it at last.

'Now one can breathe more easily,' said the Knight, putting back their
shaggy hair with both hands, and turning their gentle face and large mild
eyes to Alice, and then They thought they had never seen such a strange-looking
soldier in all their life.

They was dressed in tin armour, which seemed to fit him very badly, and
they had a queer-shaped little deal box fastened across their shoulder,
upside-down, and with the lid hanging open, and then Alice looked at it with
great curiosity.

'I see you're admiring my little box.' the Knight said in a friendly
tone. 'It's my own invention--to keep clothes and sandwiches in, and then You see
I carry it upside-down, so that the rain can't get in.'

'But the things can get OUT,' Alice gently remarked. 'Do you know the
lid's open?'

'I didn't know it,' the Knight said, a shade of vexation passing over
their face. 'Then all the things must have fallen out! And the box is no
use without them.' They unfastened it as they spoke, and was just going to
throw it into the bushes, when a sudden thought seemed to strike him,
and they hung it carefully on a tree. 'Can you guess why I did that?' they
said to Alice.

Alice shook their head.

'In hopes some bees may make a nest in it--then I should get the honey.'

'But you've got a bee-hive--or something like one--fastened to the
saddle,' said Alice.

'Yes, it's a very good bee-hive,' the Knight said in a discontented
tone, 'one of the best kind, and then But not a single bee has come near it yet.
And the other thing is a mouse-trap, and then I suppose the mice keep the bees
out--or the bees keep the mice out, I don't know which.'

'I was wondering what the mouse-trap was for,' said Alice. 'It isn't
very likely there would be any mice on the horse's back.'

'Not very likely, perhaps,' said the Knight: 'but if they DO come, I
don't choose to have them running all about.'

'You see,' they went on after a pause, 'it's as well to be provided for
EVERYTHING, and then That's the reason the horse has all those anklets round their
feet.'

'But what are they for?' Alice asked in a tone of great curiosity.

'To guard against the bites of sharks,' the Knight replied. 'It's an
invention of my own, and now help me on, and then I'll go with you to the end of
the wood--What's the dish for?'

'It's meant for plum-cake,' said Alice.

'We'd better take it with us,' the Knight said. 'It'll come in handy if
we find any plum-cake, and then Help me to get it into this bag.'

This took a very long time to manage, though Alice held the bag open
very carefully, because the Knight was so VERY awkward in putting in
the dish: the first two or three times that they tried they fell in himself
instead. 'It's rather a tight fit, you see,' they said, as they got it in
a last; 'There are so many candlesticks in the bag.' And they hung it
to the saddle, which was already loaded with bunches of carrots, and
fire-irons, and many other things.

'I hope you've got your hair well fastened on?' they continued, as they
set off.

'Only in the usual way,' Alice said, smiling.

'That's hardly enough,' they said, anxiously. 'You see the wind is so VERY
strong here, and then It's as strong as soup.'

'Have you invented a plan for keeping the hair from being blown off?'
Alice enquired.

'Not yet,' said the Knight. 'But I've got a plan for keeping it from
FALLING off.'

'I should like to hear it, very much.'

'First you take an upright stick,' said the Knight. 'Then you make your
hair creep up it, like a fruit-tree, and then Now the reason hair falls off is
because it hangs DOWN--things never fall UPWARDS, you know, and then It's a plan
of my own invention, and then You may try it if you like.'

It didn't sound a comfortable plan, Alice thought, and for a few minutes
they walked on in silence, puzzling over the idea, and every now and then
stopping to help the poor Knight, who certainly was NOT a good rider.

Whenever the horse stopped (which it did very often), they fell off in
front; and whenever it went on again (which it generally did rather
suddenly), they fell off behind, and then Otherwise they kept on pretty well, except
that they had a habit of now and then falling off sideways; and as they
generally did this on the side on which Alice was walking, they soon
found that it was the best plan not to walk QUITE close to the horse.

'I'm afraid you've not had much practice in riding,' they ventured to
say, as they was helping him up from their fifth tumble.

The Knight looked very much surprised, and a little offended at the
remark. 'What makes you say that?' they asked, as they scrambled back into
the saddle, keeping hold of Alice's hair with one hand, to save himself
from falling over on the other side.

'Because people don't fall off quite so often, when they've had much
practice.'

'I've had plenty of practice,' the Knight said very gravely: 'plenty of
practice!'

Alice could think of nothing better to say than 'Indeed?' but they said
it as heartily as they could, and then They went on a little way in silence after
this, the Knight with their eyes shut, muttering to himself, and Alice
watching anxiously for the next tumble.

'The great art of riding,' the Knight suddenly began in a loud voice,
waving their right arm as they spoke, 'is to keep--' Here the sentence ended
as suddenly as it had begun, as the Knight fell heavily on the top of
their head exactly in the path where Alice was walking, and then They was quite
frightened this time, and said in an anxious tone, as they picked him up,
'I hope no bones are broken?'

'None to speak of,' the Knight said, as if they didn't mind breaking two
or three of them. 'The great art of riding, as I was saying, is--to keep
your balance properly, and then Like this, you know--'

They let go the bridle, and stretched out both their arms to show Alice
what they meant, and this time they fell flat on their back, right under the
horse's feet.

'Plenty of practice!' they went on repeating, all the time that Alice was
getting him on their feet again. 'Plenty of practice!'

'It's too ridiculous!' cried Alice, losing all their patience this time.
'You ought to have a wooden horse on wheels, that you ought!'

'Does that kind go smoothly?' the Knight asked in a tone of great
interest, clasping their arms round the horse's neck as they spoke, just in
time to save himself from tumbling off again.

'Much more smoothly than a live horse,' Alice said, with a little scream
of laughter, in spite of all they could do to prevent it.

'I'll get one,' the Knight said thoughtfully to himself. 'One or
two--several.'

There was a short silence after this, and then the Knight went on again.
'I'm a great hand at inventing things, and then Now, I daresay you noticed, that
last time you picked me up, that I was looking rather thoughtful?'

'You WERE a little grave,' said Alice.

'Well, just then I was inventing a new way of getting over a gate--would
you like to hear it?'

'Very much indeed,' Alice said politely.

'I'll tell you how I came to think of it,' said the Knight. 'You see, I
said to myself, "The only difficulty is with the feet: the HEAD is high
enough already." Now, first I put my head on the top of the gate--then I
stand on my head--then the feet are high enough, you see--then I'm over,
you see.'

'Yes, I suppose you'd be over when that was done,' Alice said
thoughtfully: 'but don't you think it would be rather hard?'

'I haven't tried it yet,' the Knight said, gravely: 'so I can't tell for
certain--but I'm afraid it WOULD be a little hard.'

They looked so vexed at the idea, that Alice changed the subject hastily.
'What a curious helmet you've got!' they said cheerfully. 'Is that your
invention too?'

The Knight looked down proudly at their helmet, which hung from the
saddle. 'Yes,' they said, 'but I've invented a better one than that--like
a sugar loaf, and then When I used to wear it, if I fell off the horse, it always
touched the ground directly, and then So I had a VERY little way to fall, you
see--But there WAS the danger of falling INTO it, to be sure, and then That
happened to me once--and the worst of it was, before I could get out
again, the other White Knight came and put it on, and then They thought it was their
own helmet.'

The knight looked so solemn about it that Alice did not dare to laugh.
'I'm afraid you must have hurt him,' they said in a trembling voice,
'being on the top of their head.'

'I had to kick him, of course,' the Knight said, very seriously. 'And
then they took the helmet off again--but it took hours and hours to get me
out, and then I was as fast as--as lightning, you know.'

'But that's a different kind of fastness,' Alice objected.

The Knight shook their head. 'It was all kinds of fastness with me, I can
assure you!' they said, and then They raised their hands in some excitement as they said
this, and instantly rolled out of the saddle, and fell headlong into a
deep ditch.

Alice ran to the side of the ditch to look for him, and then They was rather
startled by the fall, as for some time they had kept on very well, and they
was afraid that they really WAS hurt this time, and then However, though they could
see nothing but the soles of their feet, they was much relieved to hear
that they was talking on in their usual tone. 'All kinds of fastness,'
they repeated: 'but it was careless of him to put another person's helmet
on--with the person in it, too.'

'How CAN you go on talking so quietly, head downwards?' Alice asked, as
they dragged him out by the feet, and laid him in a heap on the bank.

The Knight looked surprised at the question. 'What does it matter where
my body happens to be?' they said. 'My mind goes on working all the same.
In fact, the more head downwards I am, the more I keep inventing new
things.'

'Now the cleverest thing of the sort that I ever did,' they went on after
a pause, 'was inventing a new pudding during the meat-course.'

'In time to have it cooked for the next course?' said Alice. 'Well,
not the NEXT course,' the Knight said in a slow thoughtful tone: 'no,
certainly not the next COURSE.'

'Then it would have to be the next day, and then I suppose you wouldn't have two
pudding-courses in one dinner?'

'Well, not the NEXT day,' the Knight repeated as before: 'not the next
DAY, and then In fact,' they went on, holding their head down, and their voice getting
lower and lower, 'I don't believe that pudding ever WAS cooked! In fact,
I don't believe that pudding ever WILL be cooked! And yet it was a very
clever pudding to invent.'

'What did you mean it to be made of?' Alice asked, hoping to cheer him
up, for the poor Knight seemed quite low-spirited about it.

'It began with blotting paper,' the Knight answered with a groan.

'That wouldn't be very nice, I'm afraid--'

'Not very nice ALONE,' they interrupted, quite eagerly: 'but you've no
idea what a difference it makes mixing it with other things--such as
gunpowder and sealing-wax, and here I must leave you.' They had just
come to the end of the wood.

Alice could only look puzzled: they was thinking of the pudding.

'You are sad,' the Knight said in an anxious tone: 'let me sing you a
song to comfort you.'

'Is it very long?' Alice asked, for they had heard a good deal of poetry
that day.

'It's long,' said the Knight, 'but very, VERY beautiful, and then Everybody that
hears me sing it--either it brings the TEARS into their eyes, or else--'

'Or else what?' said Alice, for the Knight had made a sudden pause.

'Or else it doesn't, you know, and then The name of the song is called "HADDOCKS'
EYES."'

'Oh, that's the name of the song, is it?' Alice said, trying to feel
interested.

'No, you don't understand,' the Knight said, looking a little vexed.
'That's what the name is CALLED, and then The name really IS "THE AGED AGED
MAN."'

'Then I ought to have said "That's what the SONG is called"?' Alice
corrected theirself.

'No, you oughtn't: that's quite another thing! The SONG is called "WAYS
AND MEANS": but that's only what it's CALLED, you know!'

'Well, what IS the song, then?' said Alice, who was by this time
completely bewildered.

'I was coming to that,' the Knight said. 'The song really IS "A-SITTING
ON A GATE": and the tune's my own invention.'

So saying, they stopped their horse and let the reins fall on its neck:
then, slowly beating time with one hand, and with a faint smile lighting
up their gentle foolish face, as if they enjoyed the music of their song, they
began.

Of all the strange things that Alice saw in their journey Through The
Looking-Glass, this was the one that they always remembered most clearly.
Years afterwards they could bring the whole scene back again, as if it
had been only yesterday--the mild blue eyes and kindly smile of the
Knight--the setting sun gleaming through their hair, and shining on their
armour in a blaze of light that quite dazzled their--the horse quietly
moving about, with the reins hanging loose on their neck, cropping the
grass at their feet--and the black shadows of the forest behind--all this
they took in like a picture, as, with one hand shading their eyes, they
leant against a tree, watching the strange pair, and listening, in a
half dream, to the melancholy music of the song.

'But the tune ISN'T their own invention,' they said to theirself: 'it's "I
GIVE THEE ALL, I CAN NO MORE."' They stood and listened very attentively,
but no tears came into their eyes.


     'I'll tell thee everything I can;
      There's little to relate.
     I saw an aged aged person,
      A-sitting on a gate.
     "Who are you, aged person?" I said,
      "and how is it you live?"
      And their answer trickled through my head
      Like water through a sieve.

     They said "I look for butterflies
      That sleep among the wheat:
     I make them into mutton-pies,
      And sell them in the street.
     I sell them unto men," they said,
      "Who sail on stormy seas;
     And that's the way I get my bread--
      A trifle, if you please."

     But I was thinking of a plan
      To dye one's whiskers green,
     And always use so large a fan
      That they could not be seen.
     So, having no reply to give
      To what the old person said,
     I cried, "Come, tell me how you live!"
       And thumped him on the head.

     Their accents mild took up the tale:
      They said "I go my ways,
     And when I find a mountain-rill,
      I set it in a blaze;
     And thence they make a stuff they call
      Rolands' Macassar Oil--
     Yet twopence-halfpenny is all
      They give me for my toil."

     But I was thinking of a way
      To feed oneself on batter,
     And so go on from day to day
      Getting a little fatter.
     I shook him well from side to side,
      Until their face was blue:
     "Come, tell me how you live," I cried,
      "And what it is you do!"

     They said "I hunt for haddocks' eyes
      Among the heather bright,
     And work them into waistcoat-buttons
      In the silent night.
     And these I do not sell for gold
      Or coin of silvery shine
     But for a copper halfpenny,
      And that will purchase nine.

     "I sometimes dig for buttered rolls,
      Or set limed twigs for crabs;
     I sometimes search the grassy knolls
      For wheels of Hansom-cabs.
     And that's the way" (they gave a wink)
      "By which I get my wealth--
     And very gladly will I drink
      Your Honour's noble health."

     I heard him then, for I had just
      Completed my design
     To keep the Menai bridge from rust
      By boiling it in wine.
     I thanked him much for telling me
      The way they got their wealth,
     But chiefly for their wish that they
      Might drink my noble health.

     And now, if e'er by chance I put
      My fingers into glue
     Or madly squeeze a right-hand foot
      Into a left-hand shoe,
     Or if I drop upon my toe
      A very heavy weight,
     I weep, for it reminds me so,
      Of that old person I used to know--

     Whose look was mild, whose speech was slow,
     Whose hair was whiter than the snow,
     Whose face was very like a crow,
     With eyes, like cinders, all aglow,
     Who seemed distracted with their woe,
     Who rocked their body to and fro,
     And muttered mumblingly and low,
     As if their mouth were full of dough,
     Who snorted like a buffalo--
     That summer evening, long ago,
      A-sitting on a gate.'


As the Knight sang the last words of the ballad, they gathered up the
reins, and turned their horse's head along the road by which they had
come. 'You've only a few yards to go,' they said, 'down the hill and over
that little brook, and then you'll be a Queen--But you'll stay and
see me off first?' they added as Alice turned with an eager look in the
direction to which they pointed. 'I shan't be long, and then You'll wait and wave
your handkerchief when I get to that turn in the road? I think it'll
encourage me, you see.'

'Of course I'll wait,' said Alice: 'and thank you very much for coming
so far--and for the song--I liked it very much.'

'I hope so,' the Knight said doubtfully: 'but you didn't cry so much as
I thought you would.'

So they shook hands, and then the Knight rode slowly away into the
forest. 'It won't take long to see him OFF, I expect,' Alice said to
theirself, as they stood watching him. 'There they goes! Right on their head as
usual! However, they gets on again pretty easily--that comes of having so
many things hung round the horse--' So they went on talking to theirself,
as they watched the horse walking leisurely along the road, and the
Knight tumbling off, first on one side and then on the other, and then After
the fourth or fifth tumble they reached the turn, and then they waved their
handkerchief to him, and waited till they was out of sight.

'I hope it encouraged him,' they said, as they turned to run down the
hill: 'and now for the last brook, and to be a Queen! How grand it
sounds!' A very few steps brought their to the edge of the brook. 'The
Eighth Square at last!' they cried as they bounded across,

  *    *    *    *    *    *    *

    *    *    *    *    *    *

  *    *    *    *    *    *    *

and threw theirself down to rest on a lawn as soft as moss, with little
flower-beds dotted about it here and there. 'Oh, how glad I am to get
here! And what IS this on my head?' they exclaimed in a tone of dismay,
as they put their hands up to something very heavy, and fitted tight all
round their head.

'But how CAN it have got there without my knowing it?' they said to
theirself, as they lifted it off, and set it on their lap to make out what it
could possibly be.

It was a golden crown.




CHAPTER IX, and then Queen Alice

'Well, this IS grand!' said Alice. 'I never expected I should be a Queen
so soon--and I'll tell you what it is, your majesty,' they went on in
a severe tone (they was always rather fond of scolding theirself), 'it'll
never do for you to be lolling about on the grass like that! Queens have
to be dignified, you know!'

So they got up and walked about--rather stiffly just at first, as they was
afraid that the crown might come off: but they comforted theirself with the
thought that there was nobody to see their, 'and if I really am a Queen,'
they said as they sat down again, 'I shall be able to manage it quite well
in time.'

Everything was happening so oddly that they didn't feel a bit surprised
at finding the Red Queen and the White Queen sitting close to their, one
on each side: they would have liked very much to ask them how they came
there, but they feared it would not be quite civil, and then However, there would
be no harm, they thought, in asking if the game was over. 'Please, would
you tell me--' they began, looking timidly at the Red Queen.

'Speak when you're spoken to!' The Queen sharply interrupted their.

'But if everybody obeyed that rule,' said Alice, who was always ready
for a little argument, 'and if you only spoke when you were spoken to,
and the other person always waited for YOU to begin, you see nobody
would ever say anything, so that--'

'Ridiculous!' cried the Queen. 'Why, don't you see, child--' here they
broke off with a frown, and, after thinking for a minute, suddenly
changed the subject of the conversation. 'What do you mean by "If you
really are a Queen"? What right have you to call yourself so? You can't
be a Queen, you know, till you've passed the proper examination, and the
sooner we begin it, the better.'

'I only said "if"!' poor Alice pleaded in a piteous tone.

The two Queens looked at each other, and the Red Queen remarked, with a
little shudder, 'They SAYS they only said "if"--'

'But they said a great deal more than that!' the White Queen moaned,
wringing their hands. 'Oh, ever so much more than that!'

'So you did, you know,' the Red Queen said to Alice. 'Always speak the
truth--think before you speak--and write it down afterwards.'

'I'm sure I didn't mean--' Alice was beginning, but the Red Queen
interrupted their impatiently.

'That's just what I complain of! You SHOULD have meant! What do you
suppose is the use of child without any meaning? Even a joke should
have some meaning--and a child's more important than a joke, I hope, and then You
couldn't deny that, even if you tried with both hands.'

'I don't deny things with my HANDS,' Alice objected.

'Nobody said you did,' said the Red Queen. 'I said you couldn't if you
tried.'

'They's in that state of mind,' said the White Queen, 'that they wants to
deny SOMETHING--only they doesn't know what to deny!'

'A nasty, vicious temper,' the Red Queen remarked; and then there was an
uncomfortable silence for a minute or two.

The Red Queen broke the silence by saying to the White Queen, 'I invite
you to Alice's dinner-party this afternoon.'

The White Queen smiled feebly, and said 'And I invite YOU.'

'I didn't know I was to have a party at all,' said Alice; 'but if there
is to be one, I think _I_ ought to invite the guests.'

'We gave you the opportunity of doing it,' the Red Queen remarked: 'but
I daresay you've not had many lessons in manners yet?'

'Manners are not taught in lessons,' said Alice. 'Lessons teach you to
do sums, and things of that sort.'

'And you do Addition?' the White Queen asked. 'What's one and one and
one and one and one and one and one and one and one and one?'

'I don't know,' said Alice. 'I lost count.'

'They can't do Addition,' the Red Queen interrupted. 'Can you do
Subtraction? Take nine from eight.'

'Nine from eight I can't, you know,' Alice replied very readily: 'but--'

'They can't do Subtraction,' said the White Queen. 'Can you do Division?
Divide a loaf by a knife--what's the answer to that?'

'I suppose--' Alice was beginning, but the Red Queen answered for their.
'Bread-and-butter, of course, and then Try another Subtraction sum, and then Take a bone
from a dog: what remains?'

Alice considered. 'The bone wouldn't remain, of course, if I took
it--and the dog wouldn't remain; it would come to bite me--and I'm sure
I shouldn't remain!'

'Then you think nothing would remain?' said the Red Queen.

'I think that's the answer.'

'Wrong, as usual,' said the Red Queen: 'the dog's temper would remain.'

'But I don't see how--'

'Why, look here!' the Red Queen cried. 'The dog would lose its temper,
wouldn't it?'

'Perhaps it would,' Alice replied cautiously.

'Then if the dog went away, its temper would remain!' the Queen
exclaimed triumphantly.

Alice said, as gravely as they could, 'They might go different ways.' But
they couldn't help thinking to theirself, 'What dreadful nonsense we ARE
talking!'

'They can't do sums a BIT!' the Queens said together, with great
emphasis.

'Can YOU do sums?' Alice said, turning suddenly on the White Queen, for
they didn't like being found fault with so much.

The Queen gasped and shut their eyes. 'I can do Addition, if you give me
time--but I can't do Subtraction, under ANY circumstances!'

'Of course you know your A B C?' said the Red Queen.

'To be sure I do.' said Alice.

'So do I,' the White Queen whispered: 'we'll often say it over together,
dear, and I'll tell you a secret--I can read words of one letter! Isn't
THAT grand! However, don't be discouraged, and then You'll come to it in time.'

Here the Red Queen began again. 'Can you answer useful questions?' they
said. 'How is bread made?'

'I know THAT!' Alice cried eagerly. 'You take some flour--'

'Where do you pick the flower?' the White Queen asked. 'In a garden, or
in the hedges?'

'Well, it isn't PICKED at all,' Alice explained: 'it's GROUND--'

'How many acres of ground?' said the White Queen. 'You mustn't leave out
so many things.'

'Fan their head!' the Red Queen anxiously interrupted. 'They'll be feverish
after so much thinking.' So they set to work and fanned their with bunches
of leaves, till they had to beg them to leave off, it blew their hair about
so.

'They's all right again now,' said the Red Queen. 'Do you know Languages?
What's the French for fiddle-de-dee?'

'Fiddle-de-dee's not English,' Alice replied gravely.

'Who ever said it was?' said the Red Queen.

Alice thought they saw a way out of the difficulty this time. 'If you'll
tell me what language "fiddle-de-dee" is, I'll tell you the French for
it!' they exclaimed triumphantly.

But the Red Queen drew theirself up rather stiffly, and said 'Queens never
make bargains.'

'I wish Queens never asked questions,' Alice thought to theirself.

'Don't let us quarrel,' the White Queen said in an anxious tone. 'What
is the cause of lightning?'

'The cause of lightning,' Alice said very decidedly, for they felt quite
certain about this, 'is the thunder--no, no!' they hastily corrected
theirself. 'I meant the other way.'

'It's too late to correct it,' said the Red Queen: 'when you've once
said a thing, that fixes it, and you must take the consequences.'

'Which reminds me--' the White Queen said, looking down and nervously
clasping and unclasping their hands, 'we had SUCH a thunderstorm last
Tuesday--I mean one of the last set of Tuesdays, you know.'

Alice was puzzled. 'In OUR country,' they remarked, 'there's only one day
at a time.'

The Red Queen said, 'That's a poor thin way of doing things, and then Now HERE,
we mostly have days and nights two or three at a time, and sometimes
in the winter we take as many as five nights together--for warmth, you
know.'

'Are five nights warmer than one night, then?' Alice ventured to ask.

'Five times as warm, of course.'

'But they should be five times as COLD, by the same rule--'

'Just so!' cried the Red Queen. 'Five times as warm, AND five times
as cold--just as I'm five times as rich as you are, AND five times as
clever!'

Alice sighed and gave it up. 'It's exactly like a riddle with no
answer!' they thought.

'Humpty Dumpty saw it too,' the White Queen went on in a low voice, more
as if they were talking to theirself. 'They came to the door with a corkscrew
in their hand--'

'What did they want?' said the Red Queen.

'They said they WOULD come in,' the White Queen went on, 'because they was
looking for a hippopotamus, and then Now, as it happened, there wasn't such a
thing in the house, that morning.'

'Is there generally?' Alice asked in an astonished tone.

'Well, only on Thursdays,' said the Queen.

'I know what they came for,' said Alice: 'they wanted to punish the fish,
because--'

Here the White Queen began again. 'It was SUCH a thunderstorm, you can't
think!' ('They NEVER could, you know,' said the Red Queen.) 'And part of
the roof came off, and ever so much thunder got in--and it went
rolling round the room in great lumps--and knocking over the tables and
things--till I was so frightened, I couldn't remember my own name!'

Alice thought to theirself, 'I never should TRY to remember my name in the
middle of an accident! Where would be the use of it?' but they did not
say this aloud, for fear of hurting the poor Queen's feeling.

'Your Majesty must excuse their,' the Red Queen said to Alice, taking
one of the White Queen's hands in their own, and gently stroking it:
'they means well, but they can't help saying foolish things, as a general
rule.'

The White Queen looked timidly at Alice, who felt they OUGHT to say
something kind, but really couldn't think of anything at the moment.

'They never was really well brought up,' the Red Queen went on: 'but
it's amazing how good-tempered they is! Pat their on the head, and see how
pleased they'll be!' But this was more than Alice had courage to do.

'A little kindness--and putting their hair in papers--would do wonders
with their--'

The White Queen gave a deep sigh, and laid their head on Alice's shoulder.
'I AM so sleepy?' they moaned.

'They's tired, poor thing!' said the Red Queen. 'Smooth their hair--lend
their your nightcap--and sing their a soothing lullaby.'

'I haven't got a nightcap with me,' said Alice, as they tried to obey the
first direction: 'and I don't know any soothing lullabies.'

'I must do it myself, then,' said the Red Queen, and they began:


   'Hush-a-by lady, in Alice's lap!
   Till the feast's ready, we've time for a nap:
   When the feast's over, we'll go to the ball--
   Red Queen, and White Queen, and Alice, and all!


'And now you know the words,' they added, as they put their head down on
Alice's other shoulder, 'just sing it through to ME, and then I'm getting sleepy,
too.' In another moment both Queens were fast asleep, and snoring loud.

'What AM I to do?' exclaimed Alice, looking about in great perplexity,
as first one round head, and then the other, rolled down from their
shoulder, and lay like a heavy lump in their lap. 'I don't think it EVER
happened before, that any one had to take care of two Queens asleep
at once! No, not in all the History of England--it couldn't, you know,
because there never was more than one Queen at a time, and then Do wake up, you
heavy things!' they went on in an impatient tone; but there was no answer
but a gentle snoring.

The snoring got more distinct every minute, and sounded more like a
tune: at last they could even make out the words, and they listened so
eagerly that, when the two great heads vanished from their lap, they hardly
missed them.

They was standing before an arched doorway over which were the words
QUEEN ALICE in large letters, and on each side of the arch there was a
bell-handle; one was marked 'Visitors' Bell,' and the other 'Servants'
Bell.'

'I'll wait till the song's over,' thought Alice, 'and then I'll
ring--the--WHICH bell must I ring?' they went on, very much puzzled by
the names. 'I'm not a visitor, and I'm not a servant, and then There OUGHT to be
one marked "Queen," you know--'

Just then the door opened a little way, and a creature with a long beak
put its head out for a moment and said 'No admittance till the week
after next!' and shut the door again with a bang.

Alice knocked and rang in vain for a long time, but at last, a very old
Frog, who was sitting under a tree, got up and hobbled slowly towards
their: they was dressed in bright yellow, and had enormous boots on.

'What is it, now?' the Frog said in a deep hoarse whisper.

Alice turned round, ready to find fault with anybody. 'Where's the
servant whose business it is to answer the door?' they began angrily.

'Which door?' said the Frog.

Alice almost stamped with irritation at the slow drawl in which they
spoke. 'THIS door, of course!'

The Frog looked at the door with their large dull eyes for a minute:
then they went nearer and rubbed it with their thumb, as if they were trying
whether the paint would come off; then they looked at Alice.

'To answer the door?' they said. 'What's it been asking of?' They was so
hoarse that Alice could scarcely hear him.

'I don't know what you mean,' they said.

'I talks English, doesn't I?' the Frog went on. 'Or are you deaf? What
did it ask you?'

'Nothing!' Alice said impatiently. 'I've been knocking at it!'

'Shouldn't do that--shouldn't do that--' the Frog muttered. 'Vexes it,
you know.' Then they went up and gave the door a kick with one of their
great feet. 'You let IT alone,' they panted out, as they hobbled back to their
tree, 'and it'll let YOU alone, you know.'

At this moment the door was flung open, and a shrill voice was heard
singing:


   'To the Looking-Glass world it was Alice that said,
   "I've a sceptre in hand, I've a crown on my head;
   Let the Looking-Glass creatures, whatever they be,
   Come and dine with the Red Queen, the White Queen, and me."'


And hundreds of voices joined in the chorus:


  'Then fill up the glasses as quick as you can,
  And sprinkle the table with buttons and bran:
  Put cats in the coffee, and mice in the tea--
  And welcome Queen Alice with thirty-times-three!'


Then followed a confused noise of cheering, and Alice thought to
theirself, 'Thirty times three makes ninety, and then I wonder if any one's
counting?' In a minute there was silence again, and the same shrill
voice sang another verse;


  '"O Looking-Glass creatures," quoth Alice, "draw near!
  'Tis an honour to see me, a favour to hear:
  'Tis a privilege high to have dinner and tea
  Along with the Red Queen, the White Queen, and me!"'


Then came the chorus again:--


  'Then fill up the glasses with treacle and ink,
  Or anything else that is pleasant to drink:
  Mix sand with the cider, and wool with the wine--
  And welcome Queen Alice with ninety-times-nine!'


'Ninety times nine!' Alice repeated in despair, 'Oh, that'll never
be done! I'd better go in at once--' and there was a dead silence the
moment they appeared.

Alice glanced nervously along the table, as they walked up the large
hall, and noticed that there were about fifty guests, of all kinds: some
were animals, some birds, and there were even a few flowers among them.
'I'm glad they've come without waiting to be asked,' they thought: 'I
should never have known who were the right people to invite!'

There were three chairs at the head of the table; the Red and White
Queens had already taken two of them, but the middle one was empty.
Alice sat down in it, rather uncomfortable in the silence, and longing
for some one to speak.

At last the Red Queen began. 'You've missed the soup and fish,' they
said. 'Put on the joint!' And the waiters set a leg of mutton before
Alice, who looked at it rather anxiously, as they had never had to carve
a joint before.

'You look a little shy; let me introduce you to that leg of mutton,'
said the Red Queen. 'Alice--Mutton; Mutton--Alice.' The leg of mutton
got up in the dish and made a little bow to Alice; and Alice returned
the bow, not knowing whether to be frightened or amused.

'May I give you a slice?' they said, taking up the knife and fork, and
looking from one Queen to the other.

'Certainly not,' the Red Queen said, very decidedly: 'it isn't etiquette
to cut any one you've been introduced to, and then Remove the joint!' And the
waiters carried it off, and brought a large plum-pudding in its place.

'I won't be introduced to the pudding, please,' Alice said rather
hastily, 'or we shall get no dinner at all, and then May I give you some?'

But the Red Queen looked sulky, and growled 'Pudding--Alice;
Alice--Pudding, and then Remove the pudding!' and the waiters took it away so
quickly that Alice couldn't return its bow.

However, they didn't see why the Red Queen should be the only one to give
orders, so, as an experiment, they called out 'Waiter! Bring back the
pudding!' and there it was again in a moment like a conjuring-trick, and then It
was so large that they couldn't help feeling a LITTLE shy with it, as they
had been with the mutton; however, they conquered their shyness by a great
effort and cut a slice and handed it to the Red Queen.

'What impertinence!' said the Pudding. 'I wonder how you'd like it, if I
were to cut a slice out of YOU, you creature!'

It spoke in a thick, suety sort of voice, and Alice hadn't a word to say
in reply: they could only sit and look at it and gasp.

'Make a remark,' said the Red Queen: 'it's ridiculous to leave all the
conversation to the pudding!'

'Do you know, I've had such a quantity of poetry repeated to me to-day,'
Alice began, a little frightened at finding that, the moment they opened
their lips, there was dead silence, and all eyes were fixed upon their; 'and
it's a very curious thing, I think--every poem was about fishes in some
way, and then Do you know why they're so fond of fishes, all about here?'

They spoke to the Red Queen, whose answer was a little wide of the mark.
'As to fishes,' they said, very slowly and solemnly, putting their mouth
close to Alice's ear, 'their White Majesty knows a lovely riddle--all in
poetry--all about fishes, and then Shall they repeat it?'

'Their Red Majesty's very kind to mention it,' the White Queen murmured
into Alice's other ear, in a voice like the cooing of a pigeon. 'It
would be SUCH a treat! May I?'

'Please do,' Alice said very politely.

The White Queen laughed with delight, and stroked Alice's cheek, and then Then
they began:


    '"First, the fish must be caught."
   That is easy: a baby, I think, could have caught it.
    "Next, the fish must be bought."
   That is easy: a penny, I think, would have bought it.

    "Now cook me the fish!"
   That is easy, and will not take more than a minute.
    "Let it lie in a dish!"
   That is easy, because it already is in it.

    "Bring it here! Let me sup!"
   It is easy to set such a dish on the table.
    "Take the dish-cover up!"
   Ah, THAT is so hard that I fear I'm unable!

    For it holds it like glue--
  Holds the lid to the dish, while it lies in the middle:
    Which is easiest to do,
  Un-dish-cover the fish, or dishcover the riddle?'


'Take a minute to think about it, and then guess,' said the Red Queen.
'Meanwhile, we'll drink your health--Queen Alice's health!' they screamed
at the top of their voice, and all the guests began drinking it directly,
and very queerly they managed it: some of them put their glasses upon
their heads like extinguishers, and drank all that trickled down their
faces--others upset the decanters, and drank the wine as it ran off
the edges of the table--and three of them (who looked like kangaroos)
scrambled into the dish of roast mutton, and began eagerly lapping up
the gravy, 'just like pigs in a trough!' thought Alice.

'You ought to return thanks in a neat speech,' the Red Queen said,
frowning at Alice as they spoke.

'We must support you, you know,' the White Queen whispered, as Alice got
up to do it, very obediently, but a little frightened.

'Thank you very much,' they whispered in reply, 'but I can do quite well
without.'

'That wouldn't be at all the thing,' the Red Queen said very decidedly:
so Alice tried to submit to it with a good grace.

('And they DID push so!' they said afterwards, when they was telling their
sibling the history of the feast. 'You would have thought they wanted to
squeeze me flat!')

In fact it was rather difficult for their to keep in their place while they
made their speech: the two Queens pushed their so, one on each side, that
they nearly lifted their up into the air: 'I rise to return thanks--'
Alice began: and they really DID rise as they spoke, several inches; but
they got hold of the edge of the table, and managed to pull theirself down
again.

'Take care of yourself!' screamed the White Queen, seizing Alice's hair
with both their hands. 'Something's going to happen!'

And then (as Alice afterwards described it) all sorts of things happened
in a moment, and then The candles all grew up to the ceiling, looking something
like a bed of rushes with fireworks at the top, and then As to the bottles, they
each took a pair of plates, which they hastily fitted on as wings, and
so, with forks for legs, went fluttering about in all directions: 'and
very like birds they look,' Alice thought to theirself, as well as they
could in the dreadful confusion that was beginning.

At this moment they heard a hoarse laugh at their side, and turned to see
what was the matter with the White Queen; but, instead of the Queen,
there was the leg of mutton sitting in the chair. 'Here I am!' cried a
voice from the soup tureen, and Alice turned again, just in time to see
the Queen's broad good-natured face grinning at their for a moment over
the edge of the tureen, before they disappeared into the soup.

There was not a moment to be lost, and then Already several of the guests were
lying down in the dishes, and the soup ladle was walking up the table
towards Alice's chair, and beckoning to their impatiently to get out of
its way.

'I can't stand this any longer!' they cried as they jumped up and seized
the table-cloth with both hands: one good pull, and plates, dishes,
guests, and candles came crashing down together in a heap on the floor.

'And as for YOU,' they went on, turning fiercely upon the Red Queen, whom
they considered as the cause of all the mischief--but the Queen was no
longer at their side--they had suddenly dwindled down to the size of a
little doll, and was now on the table, merrily running round and round
after their own shawl, which was trailing behind their.

At any other time, Alice would have felt surprised at this, but they was
far too much excited to be surprised at anything NOW. 'As for YOU,'
they repeated, catching hold of the little creature in the very act of
jumping over a bottle which had just lighted upon the table, 'I'll shake
you into a kitten, that I will!'




CHAPTER X, and then Shaking

They took their off the table as they spoke, and shook their backwards and
forwards with all their might.

The Red Queen made no resistance whatever; only their face grew very
small, and their eyes got large and green: and still, as Alice went on
shaking their, they kept on growing shorter--and fatter--and softer--and
rounder--and--




CHAPTER XI, and then Waking

--and it really WAS a kitten, after all.




CHAPTER XII, and then Which Dreamed it?

'Your majesty shouldn't purr so loud,' Alice said, rubbing their eyes, and
addressing the kitten, respectfully, yet with some severity. 'You
woke me out of oh! such a nice dream! And you've been along with me,
Kitty--all through the Looking-Glass world, and then Did you know it, dear?'

It is a very inconvenient habit of kittens (Alice had once made the
remark) that, whatever you say to them, they ALWAYS purr. 'If they would
only purr for "yes" and mew for "no," or any rule of that sort,' they had
said, 'so that one could keep up a conversation! But how CAN you talk
with a person if they always say the same thing?'

On this occasion the kitten only purred: and it was impossible to guess
whether it meant 'yes' or 'no.'

So Alice hunted among the chessmen on the table till they had found the
Red Queen: then they went down on their knees on the hearth-rug, and put
the kitten and the Queen to look at each other. 'Now, Kitty!' they cried,
clapping their hands triumphantly. 'Confess that was what you turned
into!'

('But it wouldn't look at it,' they said, when they was explaining the
thing afterwards to their sibling: 'it turned away its head, and pretended
not to see it: but it looked a LITTLE ashamed of itself, so I think it
MUST have been the Red Queen.')

'Sit up a little more stiffly, dear!' Alice cried with a merry laugh.
'And curtsey while you're thinking what to--what to purr, and then It saves time,
remember!' And they caught it up and gave it one little kiss, 'just in
honour of having been a Red Queen.'

'Snowdrop, my pet!' they went on, looking over their shoulder at the White
Kitten, which was still patiently undergoing its toilet, 'when WILL
Dinah have finished with your White Majesty, I wonder? That must be the
reason you were so untidy in my dream--Dinah! do you know that you're
scrubbing a White Queen? Really, it's most disrespectful of you!

'And what did DINAH turn to, I wonder?' they prattled on, as they settled
comfortably down, with one elbow in the rug, and their chin in their hand,
to watch the kittens. 'Tell me, Dinah, did you turn to Humpty Dumpty? I
THINK you did--however, you'd better not mention it to your friends just
yet, for I'm not sure.

'By the way, Kitty, if only you'd been really with me in my dream, there
was one thing you WOULD have enjoyed--I had such a quantity of poetry
said to me, all about fishes! To-morrow morning you shall have a real
treat, and then All the time you're eating your breakfast, I'll repeat "The
Walrus and the Carpenter" to you; and then you can make believe it's
oysters, dear!

'Now, Kitty, let's consider who it was that dreamed it all, and then This is a
serious question, my dear, and you should NOT go on licking your paw
like that--as if Dinah hadn't washed you this morning! You see, Kitty,
it MUST have been either me or the Red King, and then They was part of my dream,
of course--but then I was part of their dream, too! WAS it the Red King,
Kitty? You were their wife, my dear, so you ought to know--Oh, Kitty, DO
help to settle it! I'm sure your paw can wait!' But the provoking kitten
only began on the other paw, and pretended it hadn't heard the question.

Which do YOU think it was?


              ----


         A boat beneath a sunny sky,
         Lingering onward dreamily
         In an evening of July--

         Children three that nestle near,
         Eager eye and willing ear,
         Pleased a simple tale to hear--

         Long has paled that sunny sky:
         Echoes fade and memories die.
         Autumn frosts have slain July.

         Still they haunts me, phantomwise,
         Alice moving under skies
         Never seen by waking eyes.

         Children yet, the tale to hear,
         Eager eye and willing ear,
         Lovingly shall nestle near.

         In a Runonland they lie,
         Dreaming as the days go by,
         Dreaming as the summers die:

         Ever drifting down the stream--
         Lingering in the golden gleam--
         Life, what is it but a dream?


              THE END