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+% SiSU 4.0.0
+
+@title: Through The Looking-Glass
+
+@creator: Carroll, Lewis
+
+@date:
+ :published: 1871
+ :created: 1871
+ :issued: 1871
+ :available: 1871
+ :added_to_site: 2004-04-12
+
+% 2005-10-30
+
+@rights:
+ :copyright: Lewis Carroll
+ :license: Public Domain
+
+@classify:
+ :topic_register: SiSU markup sample:book:novel;book:novel:fiction:fantasy|children's fiction
+
+@links:
+{ Through the Looking Glass @ Wikipedia }http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Through_the_Looking-Glass
+{ Lewis Carroll @ Wikipedia }http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_Carroll
+
+@make:
+ :headings: none; none; none; CHAPTER;
+ :breaks: new=3; break=4
+
+:A~ @title @author \\ The Millennium Fulcrum Edition 1.7 [text only]
+
+CHAPTER I - Looking-Glass house
+
+One thing was certain, that the WHITE kitten had had nothing to do with it:--it
+was the black kitten's fault entirely. For the white kitten had been having its
+face washed by the old cat for the last quarter of an hour (and bearing it
+pretty well, considering); so you see that it COULDN'T have had any hand in the
+mischief.
+
+The way Dinah washed her children's faces was this: first she held the poor
+thing down by its ear with one paw, and then with the other paw she rubbed its
+face all over, the wrong way, beginning at the nose: and just now, as I said,
+she was hard at work on the white kitten, which was lying quite still and
+trying to purr--no doubt feeling that it was all meant for its good.
+
+But the black kitten had been finished with earlier in the afternoon, and so,
+while Alice was sitting curled up in a corner of the great arm-chair, half
+talking to herself and half asleep, the kitten had been having a grand game of
+romps with the ball of worsted Alice had been trying to wind up, and had been
+rolling it up and down till it had all come undone again; and there it was,
+spread over the hearth-rug, all knots and tangles, with the kitten running
+after its own tail in the middle.
+
+'Oh, you wicked little thing!' cried Alice, catching up the kitten, and giving
+it a little kiss to make it understand that it was in disgrace. 'Really, Dinah
+ought to have taught you better manners! You OUGHT, Dinah, you know you ought!'
+she added, looking reproachfully at the old cat, and speaking in as cross a
+voice as she could manage--and then she scrambled back into the arm-chair,
+taking the kitten and the worsted with her, and began winding up the ball
+again. But she didn't get on very fast, as she was talking all the time,
+sometimes to the kitten, and sometimes to herself. Kitty sat very demurely on
+her knee, pretending to watch the progress of the winding, and now and then
+putting out one paw and gently touching the ball, as if it would be glad to
+help, if it might.
+
+'Do you know what to-morrow is, Kitty?' Alice began. 'You'd have guessed if
+you'd been up in the window with me--only Dinah was making you tidy, so you
+couldn't. I was watching the boys getting in sticks for the bonfire--and it
+wants plenty of sticks, Kitty! Only it got so cold, and it snowed so, they had
+to leave off. Never mind, Kitty, we'll go and see the bonfire to-morrow.' Here
+Alice wound two or three turns of the worsted round the kitten's neck, just to
+see how it would look: this led to a scramble, in which the ball rolled down
+upon the floor, and yards and yards of it got unwound again.
+
+'Do you know, I was so angry, Kitty,' Alice went on as soon as they were
+comfortably settled again, 'when I saw all the mischief you had been doing, I
+was very nearly opening the window, and putting you out into the snow! And
+you'd have deserved it, you little mischievous darling! What have you got to
+say for yourself? Now don't interrupt me!' she went on, holding up one finger.
+'I'm going to tell you all your faults. Number one: you squeaked twice while
+Dinah was washing your face this morning. Now you can't deny it, Kitty: I heard
+you! What's that you say?' (pretending that the kitten was speaking.) 'Her paw
+went into your eye? Well, that's YOUR fault, for keeping your eyes open--if
+you'd shut them tight up, it wouldn't have happened. Now don't make any more
+excuses, but listen! Number two: you pulled Snowdrop away by the tail just as I
+had put down the saucer of milk before her! What, you were thirsty, were you?
+How do you know she wasn't thirsty too? Now for number three: you unwound every
+bit of the worsted while I wasn't looking!
+
+'That's three faults, Kitty, and you've not been punished for any of them yet.
+You know I'm saving up all your punishments for Wednesday week--Suppose they
+had saved up all MY punishments!' she went on, talking more to herself than the
+kitten. 'What WOULD they do at the end of a year? I should be sent to prison, I
+suppose, when the day came. Or--let me see--suppose each punishment was to be
+going without a dinner: then, when the miserable day came, I should have to go
+without fifty dinners at once! Well, I shouldn't mind THAT much! I'd far rather
+go without them than eat them!
+
+'Do you hear the snow against the window-panes, Kitty? How nice and soft it
+sounds! Just as if some one was kissing the window all over outside. I wonder
+if the snow LOVES the trees and fields, that it kisses them so gently? And then
+it covers them up snug, you know, with a white quilt; and perhaps it says, "Go
+to sleep, darlings, till the summer comes again." And when they wake up in the
+summer, Kitty, they dress themselves all in green, and dance about--whenever
+the wind blows--oh, that's very pretty!' cried Alice, dropping the ball of
+worsted to clap her hands. 'And I do so WISH it was true! I'm sure the woods
+look sleepy in the autumn, when the leaves are getting brown.
+
+'Kitty, can you play chess? Now, don't smile, my dear, I'm asking it seriously.
+Because, when we were playing just now, you watched just as if you understood
+it: and when I said "Check!" you purred! Well, it WAS a nice check, Kitty, and
+really I might have won, if it hadn't been for that nasty Knight, that came
+wiggling down among my pieces. Kitty, dear, let's pretend--' And here I wish I
+could tell you half the things Alice used to say, beginning with her favourite
+phrase 'Let's pretend.' She had had quite a long argument with her sister only
+the day before --all because Alice had begun with 'Let's pretend we're kings
+and queens;' and her sister, who liked being very exact, had argued that they
+couldn't, because there were only two of them, and Alice had been reduced at
+last to say, 'Well, YOU can be one of them then, and I'LL be all the rest.' And
+once she had really frightened her old nurse by shouting suddenly in her ear,
+'Nurse! Do let's pretend that I'm a hungry hyaena, and you're a bone.'
+
+But this is taking us away from Alice's speech to the kitten. 'Let's pretend
+that you're the Red Queen, Kitty! Do you know, I think if you sat up and folded
+your arms, you'd look exactly like her. Now do try, there's a dear!' And Alice
+got the Red Queen off the table, and set it up before the kitten as a model for
+it to imitate: however, the thing didn't succeed, principally, Alice said,
+because the kitten wouldn't fold its arms properly. So, to punish it, she held
+it up to the Looking-glass, that it might see how sulky it was--'and if you're
+not good directly,' she added, 'I'll put you through into Looking-glass House.
+How would you like THAT?'
+
+'Now, if you'll only attend, Kitty, and not talk so much, I'll tell you all my
+ideas about Looking-glass House. First, there's the room you can see through
+the glass--that's just the same as our drawing room, only the things go the
+other way. I can see all of it when I get upon a chair--all but the bit behind
+the fireplace. Oh! I do so wish I could see THAT bit! I want so much to know
+whether they've a fire in the winter: you never CAN tell, you know, unless our
+fire smokes, and then smoke comes up in that room too--but that may be only
+pretence, just to make it look as if they had a fire. Well then, the books are
+something like our books, only the words go the wrong way; I know that, because
+I've held up one of our books to the glass, and then they hold up one in the
+other room.
+
+'How would you like to live in Looking-glass House, Kitty? I wonder if they'd
+give you milk in there? Perhaps Looking-glass milk isn't good to drink--But oh,
+Kitty! now we come to the passage. You can just see a little PEEP of the
+passage in Looking-glass House, if you leave the door of our drawing-room wide
+open: and it's very like our passage as far as you can see, only you know it
+may be quite different on beyond. Oh, Kitty! how nice it would be if we could
+only get through into Looking- glass House! I'm sure it's got, oh! such
+beautiful things in it! Let's pretend there's a way of getting through into it,
+somehow, Kitty. Let's pretend the glass has got all soft like gauze, so that we
+can get through. Why, it's turning into a sort of mist now, I declare! It'll be
+easy enough to get through--' She was up on the chimney-piece while she said
+this, though she hardly knew how she had got there. And certainly the glass WAS
+beginning to melt away, just like a bright silvery mist.
+
+In another moment Alice was through the glass, and had jumped lightly down into
+the Looking-glass room. The very first thing she did was to look whether there
+was a fire in the fireplace, and she was quite pleased to find that there was a
+real one, blazing away as brightly as the one she had left behind. 'So I shall
+be as warm here as I was in the old room,' thought Alice: 'warmer, in fact,
+because there'll be no one here to scold me away from the fire. Oh, what fun
+it'll be, when they see me through the glass in here, and can't get at me!'
+
+Then she began looking about, and noticed that what could be seen from the old
+room was quite common and uninteresting, but that all the rest was as different
+as possible. For instance, the pictures on the wall next the fire seemed to be
+all alive, and the very clock on the chimney-piece (you know you can only see
+the back of it in the Looking-glass) had got the face of a little old man, and
+grinned at her.
+
+'They don't keep this room so tidy as the other,' Alice thought to herself, as
+she noticed several of the chessmen down in the hearth among the cinders: but
+in another moment, with a little 'Oh!' of surprise, she was down on her hands
+and knees watching them. The chessmen were walking about, two and two!
+
+'Here are the Red King and the Red Queen,' Alice said (in a whisper, for fear
+of frightening them), 'and there are the White King and the White Queen sitting
+on the edge of the shovel--and here are two castles walking arm in arm--I don't
+think they can hear me,' she went on, as she put her head closer down, 'and I'm
+nearly sure they can't see me. I feel somehow as if I were invisible--'
+
+Here something began squeaking on the table behind Alice, and made her turn her
+head just in time to see one of the White Pawns roll over and begin kicking:
+she watched it with great curiosity to see what would happen next.
+
+'It is the voice of my child!' the White Queen cried out as she rushed past the
+King, so violently that she knocked him over among the cinders. 'My precious
+Lily! My imperial kitten!' and she began scrambling wildly up the side of the
+fender.
+
+'Imperial fiddlestick!' said the King, rubbing his nose, which had been hurt by
+the fall. He had a right to be a LITTLE annoyed with the Queen, for he was
+covered with ashes from head to foot.
+
+Alice was very anxious to be of use, and, as the poor little Lily was nearly
+screaming herself into a fit, she hastily picked up the Queen and set her on
+the table by the side of her noisy little daughter.
+
+The Queen gasped, and sat down: the rapid journey through the air had quite
+taken away her breath and for a minute or two she could do nothing but hug the
+little Lily in silence. As soon as she had recovered her breath a little, she
+called out to the White King, who was sitting sulkily among the ashes, 'Mind
+the volcano!'
+
+'What volcano?' said the King, looking up anxiously into the fire, as if he
+thought that was the most likely place to find one.
+
+'Blew--me--up,' panted the Queen, who was still a little out of breath. 'Mind
+you come up--the regular way--don't get blown up!'
+
+Alice watched the White King as he slowly struggled up from bar to bar, till at
+last she said, 'Why, you'll be hours and hours getting to the table, at that
+rate. I'd far better help you, hadn't I?' But the King took no notice of the
+question: it was quite clear that he could neither hear her nor see her.
+
+So Alice picked him up very gently, and lifted him across more slowly than she
+had lifted the Queen, that she mightn't take his breath away: but, before she
+put him on the table, she thought she might as well dust him a little, he was
+so covered with ashes.
+
+She said afterwards that she had never seen in all her life such a face as the
+King made, when he found himself held in the air by an invisible hand, and
+being dusted: he was far too much astonished to cry out, but his eyes and his
+mouth went on getting larger and larger, and rounder and rounder, till her hand
+shook so with laughing that she nearly let him drop upon the floor.
+
+'Oh! PLEASE don't make such faces, my dear!' she cried out, quite forgetting
+that the King couldn't hear her. 'You make me laugh so that I can hardly hold
+you! And don't keep your mouth so wide open! All the ashes will get into
+it--there, now I think you're tidy enough!' she added, as she smoothed his
+hair, and set him upon the table near the Queen.
+
+The King immediately fell flat on his back, and lay perfectly still: and Alice
+was a little alarmed at what she had done, and went round the room to see if
+she could find any water to throw over him. However, she could find nothing but
+a bottle of ink, and when she got back with it she found he had recovered, and
+he and the Queen were talking together in a frightened whisper--so low, that
+Alice could hardly hear what they said.
+
+The King was saying, 'I assure, you my dear, I turned cold to the very ends of
+my whiskers!'
+
+To which the Queen replied, 'You haven't got any whiskers.'
+
+'The horror of that moment,' the King went on, 'I shall never, NEVER forget!'
+
+'You will, though,' the Queen said, 'if you don't make a memorandum of it.'
+
+Alice looked on with great interest as the King took an enormous
+memorandum-book out of his pocket, and began writing. A sudden thought struck
+her, and she took hold of the end of the pencil, which came some way over his
+shoulder, and began writing for him.
+
+The poor King looked puzzled and unhappy, and struggled with the pencil for
+some time without saying anything; but Alice was too strong for him, and at
+last he panted out, 'My dear! I really MUST get a thinner pencil. I can't
+manage this one a bit; it writes all manner of things that I don't intend--'
+
+'What manner of things?' said the Queen, looking over the book (in which Alice
+had put 'THE WHITE KNIGHT IS SLIDING DOWN THE POKER. HE BALANCES VERY BADLY')
+'That's not a memorandum of YOUR feelings!'
+
+There was a book lying near Alice on the table, and while she sat watching the
+White King (for she was still a little anxious about him, and had the ink all
+ready to throw over him, in case he fainted again), she turned over the leaves,
+to find some part that she could read, '--for it's all in some language I don't
+know,' she said to herself.
+
+It was like this.
+
+poem{
+
+ YKCOWREBBAJ
+
+ sevot yhtils eht dna ,gillirb sawT'
+ ebaw eht ni elbmig dna eryg diD
+ ,sevogorob eht erew ysmim llA
+ .ebargtuo shtar emom eht dnA
+
+}poem
+
+She puzzled over this for some time, but at last a bright thought struck her.
+'Why, it's a Looking-glass book, of course! And if I hold it up to a glass, the
+words will all go the right way again.'
+
+This was the poem that Alice read.
+
+poem{
+
+ JABBERWOCKY
+
+ 'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
+ Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
+ All mimsy were the borogoves,
+ And the mome raths outgrabe.
+
+ 'Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
+ The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
+ Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
+ The frumious Bandersnatch!'
+
+ He took his vorpal sword in hand:
+ Long time the manxome foe he sought--
+ So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
+ And stood awhile in thought.
+
+ And as in uffish thought he stood,
+ The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
+ Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
+ And burbled as it came!
+
+ One, two! One, two! And through and through
+ The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
+ He left it dead, and with its head
+ He went galumphing back.
+
+ 'And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
+ Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
+ O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!'
+ He chortled in his joy.
+
+ 'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
+ Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
+ All mimsy were the borogoves,
+ And the mome raths outgrabe.
+
+}poem
+
+'It seems very pretty,' she said when she had finished it, 'but it's RATHER
+hard to understand!' (You see she didn't like to confess, ever to herself, that
+she couldn't make it out at all.) 'Somehow it seems to fill my head with
+ideas--only I don't exactly know what they are! However, SOMEBODY killed
+SOMETHING: that's clear, at any rate--'
+
+'But oh!' thought Alice, suddenly jumping up, 'if I don't make haste I shall
+have to go back through the Looking-glass, before I've seen what the rest of
+the house is like! Let's have a look at the garden first!' She was out of the
+room in a moment, and ran down stairs--or, at least, it wasn't exactly running,
+but a new invention of hers for getting down stairs quickly and easily, as
+Alice said to herself. She just kept the tips of her fingers on the hand-rail,
+and floated gently down without even touching the stairs with her feet; then
+she floated on through the hall, and would have gone straight out at the door
+in the same way, if she hadn't caught hold of the door-post. She was getting a
+little giddy with so much floating in the air, and was rather glad to find
+herself walking again in the natural way.
+
+CHAPTER II - The Garden of Live Flowers
+
+'I should see the garden far better,' said Alice to herself, 'if I could get to
+the top of that hill: and here's a path that leads straight to it--at least,
+no, it doesn't do that--' (after going a few yards along the path, and turning
+several sharp corners), 'but I suppose it will at last. But how curiously it
+twists! It's more like a corkscrew than a path! Well, THIS turn goes to the
+hill, I suppose--no, it doesn't! This goes straight back to the house! Well
+then, I'll try it the other way.'
+
+And so she did: wandering up and down, and trying turn after turn, but always
+coming back to the house, do what she would. Indeed, once, when she turned a
+corner rather more quickly than usual, she ran against it before she could stop
+herself.
+
+'It's no use talking about it,' Alice said, looking up at the house and
+pretending it was arguing with her. 'I'm NOT going in again yet. I know I
+should have to get through the Looking-glass again--back into the old room--and
+there'd be an end of all my adventures!'
+
+So, resolutely turning her back upon the house, she set out once more down the
+path, determined to keep straight on till she got to the hill. For a few
+minutes all went on well, and she was just saying, 'I really SHALL do it this
+time--' when the path gave a sudden twist and shook itself (as she described it
+afterwards), and the next moment she found herself actually walking in at the
+door.
+
+'Oh, it's too bad!' she cried. 'I never saw such a house for getting in the
+way! Never!'
+
+However, there was the hill full in sight, so there was nothing to be done but
+start again. This time she came upon a large flower-bed, with a border of
+daisies, and a willow-tree growing in the middle.
+
+'O Tiger-lily,' said Alice, addressing herself to one that was waving
+gracefully about in the wind, 'I WISH you could talk!'
+
+'We CAN talk,' said the Tiger-lily: 'when there's anybody worth talking to.'
+
+Alice was so astonished that she could not speak for a minute: it quite seemed
+to take her breath away. At length, as the Tiger-lily only went on waving
+about, she spoke again, in a timid voice--almost in a whisper. 'And can ALL the
+flowers talk?'
+
+'As well as YOU can,' said the Tiger-lily. 'And a great deal louder.'
+
+'It isn't manners for us to begin, you know,' said the Rose, 'and I really was
+wondering when you'd speak! Said I to myself, "Her face has got SOME sense in
+it, though it's not a clever one!" Still, you're the right colour, and that
+goes a long way.'
+
+'I don't care about the colour,' the Tiger-lily remarked. 'If only her petals
+curled up a little more, she'd be all right.'
+
+Alice didn't like being criticised, so she began asking questions. 'Aren't you
+sometimes frightened at being planted out here, with nobody to take care of
+you?'
+
+'There's the tree in the middle,' said the Rose: 'what else is it good for?'
+
+'But what could it do, if any danger came?' Alice asked.
+
+'It says "Bough-wough!"' cried a Daisy: 'that's why its branches are called
+boughs!'
+
+'Didn't you know THAT?' cried another Daisy, and here they all began shouting
+together, till the air seemed quite full of little shrill voices. 'Silence,
+every one of you!' cried the Tiger- lily, waving itself passionately from side
+to side, and trembling with excitement. 'They know I can't get at them!' it
+panted, bending its quivering head towards Alice, 'or they wouldn't dare to do
+it!'
+
+'Never mind!' Alice said in a soothing tone, and stooping down to the daisies,
+who were just beginning again, she whispered, 'If you don't hold your tongues,
+I'll pick you!'
+
+There was silence in a moment, and several of the pink daisies turned white.
+
+'That's right!' said the Tiger-lily. 'The daisies are worst of all. When one
+speaks, they all begin together, and it's enough to make one wither to hear the
+way they go on!'
+
+'How is it you can all talk so nicely?' Alice said, hoping to get it into a
+better temper by a compliment. 'I've been in many gardens before, but none of
+the flowers could talk.'
+
+'Put your hand down, and feel the ground,' said the Tiger-lily. 'Then you'll
+know why.'
+
+Alice did so. 'It's very hard,' she said, 'but I don't see what that has to do
+with it.'
+
+'In most gardens,' the Tiger-lily said, 'they make the beds too soft--so that
+the flowers are always asleep.'
+
+This sounded a very good reason, and Alice was quite pleased to know it. 'I
+never thought of that before!' she said.
+
+'It's MY opinion that you never think AT ALL,' the Rose said in a rather severe
+tone.
+
+'I never saw anybody that looked stupider,' a Violet said, so suddenly, that
+Alice quite jumped; for it hadn't spoken before.
+
+'Hold YOUR tongue!' cried the Tiger-lily. 'As if YOU ever saw anybody! You keep
+your head under the leaves, and snore away there, till you know no more what's
+going on in the world, than if you were a bud!'
+
+'Are there any more people in the garden besides me?' Alice said, not choosing
+to notice the Rose's last remark.
+
+'There's one other flower in the garden that can move about like you,' said the
+Rose. 'I wonder how you do it--' ('You're always wondering,' said the
+Tiger-lily), 'but she's more bushy than you are.'
+
+'Is she like me?' Alice asked eagerly, for the thought crossed her mind,
+'There's another little girl in the garden, somewhere!'
+
+'Well, she has the same awkward shape as you,' the Rose said, 'but she's
+redder--and her petals are shorter, I think.'
+
+'Her petals are done up close, almost like a dahlia,' the Tiger-lily
+interrupted: 'not tumbled about anyhow, like yours.'
+
+'But that's not YOUR fault,' the Rose added kindly: 'you're beginning to fade,
+you know--and then one can't help one's petals getting a little untidy.'
+
+Alice didn't like this idea at all: so, to change the subject, she asked 'Does
+she ever come out here?'
+
+'I daresay you'll see her soon,' said the Rose. 'She's one of the thorny kind.'
+
+'Where does she wear the thorns?' Alice asked with some curiosity.
+
+'Why all round her head, of course,' the Rose replied. 'I was wondering YOU
+hadn't got some too. I thought it was the regular rule.'
+
+'She's coming!' cried the Larkspur. 'I hear her footstep, thump, thump, thump,
+along the gravel-walk!'
+
+Alice looked round eagerly, and found that it was the Red Queen. 'She's grown a
+good deal!' was her first remark. She had indeed: when Alice first found her in
+the ashes, she had been only three inches high--and here she was, half a head
+taller than Alice herself!
+
+'It's the fresh air that does it,' said the Rose: 'wonderfully fine air it is,
+out here.'
+
+'I think I'll go and meet her,' said Alice, for, though the flowers were
+interesting enough, she felt that it would be far grander to have a talk with a
+real Queen.
+
+'You can't possibly do that,' said the Rose: '_I_ should advise you to walk the
+other way.'
+
+This sounded nonsense to Alice, so she said nothing, but set off at once
+towards the Red Queen. To her surprise, she lost sight of her in a moment, and
+found herself walking in at the front-door again.
+
+A little provoked, she drew back, and after looking everywhere for the queen
+(whom she spied out at last, a long way off), she thought she would try the
+plan, this time, of walking in the opposite direction.
+
+It succeeded beautifully. She had not been walking a minute before she found
+herself face to face with the Red Queen, and full in sight of the hill she had
+been so long aiming at.
+
+'Where do you come from?' said the Red Queen. 'And where are you going? Look
+up, speak nicely, and don't twiddle your fingers all the time.'
+
+Alice attended to all these directions, and explained, as well as she could,
+that she had lost her way.
+
+'I don't know what you mean by YOUR way,' said the Queen: 'all the ways about
+here belong to ME--but why did you come out here at all?' she added in a kinder
+tone. 'Curtsey while you're thinking what to say, it saves time.'
+
+Alice wondered a little at this, but she was too much in awe of the Queen to
+disbelieve it. 'I'll try it when I go home,' she thought to herself, 'the next
+time I'm a little late for dinner.'
+
+'It's time for you to answer now,' the Queen said, looking at her watch: 'open
+your mouth a LITTLE wider when you speak, and always say "your Majesty."'
+
+'I only wanted to see what the garden was like, your Majesty--'
+
+'That's right,' said the Queen, patting her on the head, which Alice didn't
+like at all, 'though, when you say "garden,"--I'VE seen gardens, compared with
+which this would be a wilderness.'
+
+Alice didn't dare to argue the point, but went on: '--and I thought I'd try and
+find my way to the top of that hill--'
+
+'When you say "hill,"' the Queen interrupted, '_I_ could show you hills, in
+comparison with which you'd call that a valley.'
+
+'No, I shouldn't,' said Alice, surprised into contradicting her at last: 'a
+hill CAN'T be a valley, you know. That would be nonsense--'
+
+The Red Queen shook her head, 'You may call it "nonsense" if you like,' she
+said, 'but I'VE heard nonsense, compared with which that would be as sensible
+as a dictionary!'
+
+Alice curtseyed again, as she was afraid from the Queen's tone that she was a
+LITTLE offended: and they walked on in silence till they got to the top of the
+little hill.
+
+For some minutes Alice stood without speaking, looking out in all directions
+over the country--and a most curious country it was. There were a number of
+tiny little brooks running straight across it from side to side, and the ground
+between was divided up into squares by a number of little green hedges, that
+reached from brook to brook.
+
+'I declare it's marked out just like a large chessboard!' Alice said at last.
+'There ought to be some men moving about somewhere --and so there are!' She
+added in a tone of delight, and her heart began to beat quick with excitement
+as she went on. 'It's a great huge game of chess that's being played--all over
+the world--if this IS the world at all, you know. Oh, what fun it is! How I
+WISH I was one of them! I wouldn't mind being a Pawn, if only I might
+join--though of course I should LIKE to be a Queen, best.'
+
+She glanced rather shyly at the real Queen as she said this, but her companion
+only smiled pleasantly, and said, 'That's easily managed. You can be the White
+Queen's Pawn, if you like, as Lily's too young to play; and you're in the
+Second Square to begin with: when you get to the Eighth Square you'll be a
+Queen --' Just at this moment, somehow or other, they began to run.
+
+Alice never could quite make out, in thinking it over afterwards, how it was
+that they began: all she remembers is, that they were running hand in hand, and
+the Queen went so fast that it was all she could do to keep up with her: and
+still the Queen kept crying 'Faster! Faster!' but Alice felt she COULD NOT go
+faster, though she had not breath left to say so.
+
+The most curious part of the thing was, that the trees and the other things
+round them never changed their places at all: however fast they went, they
+never seemed to pass anything. 'I wonder if all the things move along with us?'
+thought poor puzzled Alice. And the Queen seemed to guess her thoughts, for she
+cried, 'Faster! Don't try to talk!'
+
+Not that Alice had any idea of doing THAT. She felt as if she would never be
+able to talk again, she was getting so much out of breath: and still the Queen
+cried 'Faster! Faster!' and dragged her along. 'Are we nearly there?' Alice
+managed to pant out at last.
+
+'Nearly there!' the Queen repeated. 'Why, we passed it ten minutes ago!
+Faster!' And they ran on for a time in silence, with the wind whistling in
+Alice's ears, and almost blowing her hair off her head, she fancied.
+
+'Now! Now!' cried the Queen. 'Faster! Faster!' And they went so fast that at
+last they seemed to skim through the air, hardly touching the ground with their
+feet, till suddenly, just as Alice was getting quite exhausted, they stopped,
+and she found herself sitting on the ground, breathless and giddy.
+
+The Queen propped her up against a tree, and said kindly, 'You may rest a
+little now.'
+
+Alice looked round her in great surprise. 'Why, I do believe we've been under
+this tree the whole time! Everything's just as it was!'
+
+'Of course it is,' said the Queen, 'what would you have it?'
+
+'Well, in OUR country,' said Alice, still panting a little, 'you'd generally
+get to somewhere else--if you ran very fast for a long time, as we've been
+doing.'
+
+'A slow sort of country!' said the Queen. 'Now, HERE, you see, it takes all the
+running YOU can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere
+else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!'
+
+'I'd rather not try, please!' said Alice. 'I'm quite content to stay here--only
+I AM so hot and thirsty!'
+
+'I know what YOU'D like!' the Queen said good-naturedly, taking a little box
+out of her pocket. 'Have a biscuit?'
+
+Alice thought it would not be civil to say 'No,' though it wasn't at all what
+she wanted. So she took it, and ate it as well as she could: and it was VERY
+dry; and she thought she had never been so nearly choked in all her life.
+
+'While you're refreshing yourself,' said the Queen, 'I'll just take the
+measurements.' And she took a ribbon out of her pocket, marked in inches, and
+began measuring the ground, and sticking little pegs in here and there.
+
+'At the end of two yards,' she said, putting in a peg to mark the distance, 'I
+shall give you your directions--have another biscuit?'
+
+'No, thank you,' said Alice: 'one's QUITE enough!'
+
+'Thirst quenched, I hope?' said the Queen.
+
+Alice did not know what to say to this, but luckily the Queen did not wait for
+an answer, but went on. 'At the end of THREE yards I shall repeat them--for
+fear of your forgetting them. At the end of FOUR, I shall say good-bye. And at
+the end of FIVE, I shall go!'
+
+She had got all the pegs put in by this time, and Alice looked on with great
+interest as she returned to the tree, and then began slowly walking down the
+row.
+
+At the two-yard peg she faced round, and said, 'A pawn goes two squares in its
+first move, you know. So you'll go VERY quickly through the Third Square--by
+railway, I should think--and you'll find yourself in the Fourth Square in no
+time. Well, THAT square belongs to Tweedledum and Tweedledee--the Fifth is
+mostly water--the Sixth belongs to Humpty Dumpty--But you make no remark?'
+
+'I--I didn't know I had to make one--just then,' Alice faltered out.
+
+'You SHOULD have said, "It's extremely kind of you to tell me all
+this"--however, we'll suppose it said--the Seventh Square is all
+forest--however, one of the Knights will show you the way--and in the Eighth
+Square we shall be Queens together, and it's all feasting and fun!' Alice got
+up and curtseyed, and sat down again.
+
+At the next peg the Queen turned again, and this time she said, 'Speak in
+French when you can't think of the English for a thing --turn out your toes as
+you walk--and remember who you are!' She did not wait for Alice to curtsey this
+time, but walked on quickly to the next peg, where she turned for a moment to
+say 'good-bye,' and then hurried on to the last.
+
+How it happened, Alice never knew, but exactly as she came to the last peg, she
+was gone. Whether she vanished into the air, or whether she ran quickly into
+the wood ('and she CAN run very fast!' thought Alice), there was no way of
+guessing, but she was gone, and Alice began to remember that she was a Pawn,
+and that it would soon be time for her to move.
+
+CHAPTER III - Looking-Glass Insects
+
+Of course the first thing to do was to make a grand survey of the country she
+was going to travel through. 'It's something very like learning geography,'
+thought Alice, as she stood on tiptoe in hopes of being able to see a little
+further. 'Principal rivers-- there ARE none. Principal mountains--I'm on the
+only one, but I don't think it's got any name. Principal towns--why, what ARE
+those creatures, making honey down there? They can't be bees-- nobody ever saw
+bees a mile off, you know--' and for some time she stood silent, watching one
+of them that was bustling about among the flowers, poking its proboscis into
+them, 'just as if it was a regular bee,' thought Alice.
+
+However, this was anything but a regular bee: in fact it was an elephant--as
+Alice soon found out, though the idea quite took her breath away at first. 'And
+what enormous flowers they must be!' was her next idea. 'Something like
+cottages with the roofs taken off, and stalks put to them--and what quantities
+of honey they must make! I think I'll go down and--no, I won't JUST yet,' she
+went on, checking herself just as she was beginning to run down the hill, and
+trying to find some excuse for turning shy so suddenly. 'It'll never do to go
+down among them without a good long branch to brush them away--and what fun
+it'll be when they ask me how I like my walk. I shall say-- "Oh, I like it well
+enough--"' (here came the favourite little toss of the head), '"only it was so
+dusty and hot, and the elephants did tease so!"'
+
+'I think I'll go down the other way,' she said after a pause: 'and perhaps I
+may visit the elephants later on. Besides, I do so want to get into the Third
+Square!'
+
+So with this excuse she ran down the hill and jumped over the first of the six
+little brooks.
+
+poem{
+
+* * * * ~#
+
+ * * * ~#
+
+* * * * ~#
+
+}poem
+
+'Tickets, please!' said the Guard, putting his head in at the window. In a
+moment everybody was holding out a ticket: they were about the same size as the
+people, and quite seemed to fill the carriage.
+
+'Now then! Show your ticket, child!' the Guard went on, looking angrily at
+Alice. And a great many voices all said together ('like the chorus of a song,'
+thought Alice), 'Don't keep him waiting, child! Why, his time is worth a
+thousand pounds a minute!'
+
+'I'm afraid I haven't got one,' Alice said in a frightened tone: 'there wasn't
+a ticket-office where I came from.' And again the chorus of voices went on.
+'There wasn't room for one where she came from. The land there is worth a
+thousand pounds an inch!'
+
+'Don't make excuses,' said the Guard: 'you should have bought one from the
+engine-driver.' And once more the chorus of voices went on with 'The man that
+drives the engine. Why, the smoke alone is worth a thousand pounds a puff!'
+
+Alice thought to herself, 'Then there's no use in speaking.' The voices didn't
+join in this time, as she hadn't spoken, but to her great surprise, they all
+THOUGHT in chorus (I hope you understand what THINKING IN CHORUS means--for I
+must confess that _I_ don't), 'Better say nothing at all. Language is worth a
+thousand pounds a word!'
+
+'I shall dream about a thousand pounds tonight, I know I shall!' thought Alice.
+
+All this time the Guard was looking at her, first through a telescope, then
+through a microscope, and then through an opera- glass. At last he said,
+'You're travelling the wrong way,' and shut up the window and went away.
+
+'So young a child,' said the gentleman sitting opposite to her (he was dressed
+in white paper), 'ought to know which way she's going, even if she doesn't know
+her own name!'
+
+A Goat, that was sitting next to the gentleman in white, shut his eyes and said
+in a loud voice, 'She ought to know her way to the ticket-office, even if she
+doesn't know her alphabet!'
+
+There was a Beetle sitting next to the Goat (it was a very queer carriage-full
+of passengers altogether), and, as the rule seemed to be that they should all
+speak in turn, HE went on with 'She'll have to go back from here as luggage!'
+
+Alice couldn't see who was sitting beyond the Beetle, but a hoarse voice spoke
+next. 'Change engines--' it said, and was obliged to leave off.
+
+'It sounds like a horse,' Alice thought to herself. And an extremely small
+voice, close to her ear, said, 'You might make a joke on that--something about
+"horse" and "hoarse," you know.'
+
+Then a very gentle voice in the distance said, 'She must be labelled "Lass,
+with care," you know--'
+
+And after that other voices went on ('What a number of people there are in the
+carriage!' thought Alice), saying, 'She must go by post, as she's got a head on
+her--' 'She must be sent as a message by the telegraph--' 'She must draw the
+train herself the rest of the way--' and so on.
+
+But the gentleman dressed in white paper leaned forwards and whispered in her
+ear, 'Never mind what they all say, my dear, but take a return-ticket every
+time the train stops.'
+
+'Indeed I shan't!' Alice said rather impatiently. 'I don't belong to this
+railway journey at all--I was in a wood just now --and I wish I could get back
+there.'
+
+'You might make a joke on THAT,' said the little voice close to her ear:
+'something about "you WOULD if you could," you know.'
+
+'Don't tease so,' said Alice, looking about in vain to see where the voice came
+from; 'if you're so anxious to have a joke made, why don't you make one
+yourself?'
+
+The little voice sighed deeply: it was VERY unhappy, evidently, and Alice would
+have said something pitying to comfort it, 'If it would only sigh like other
+people!' she thought. But this was such a wonderfully small sigh, that she
+wouldn't have heard it at all, if it hadn't come QUITE close to her ear. The
+consequence of this was that it tickled her ear very much, and quite took off
+her thoughts from the unhappiness of the poor little creature.
+
+'I know you are a friend,' the little voice went on; 'a dear friend, and an old
+friend. And you won't hurt me, though I AM an insect.'
+
+'What kind of insect?' Alice inquired a little anxiously. What she really
+wanted to know was, whether it could sting or not, but she thought this
+wouldn't be quite a civil question to ask.
+
+'What, then you don't--' the little voice began, when it was drowned by a
+shrill scream from the engine, and everybody jumped up in alarm, Alice among
+the rest.
+
+The Horse, who had put his head out of the window, quietly drew it in and said,
+'It's only a brook we have to jump over.' Everybody seemed satisfied with this,
+though Alice felt a little nervous at the idea of trains jumping at all.
+'However, it'll take us into the Fourth Square, that's some comfort!' she said
+to herself. In another moment she felt the carriage rise straight up into the
+air, and in her fright she caught at the thing nearest to her hand, which
+happened to be the Goat's beard.
+
+poem{
+
+* * * * ~#
+
+ * * * ~#
+
+* * * * ~#
+
+}poem
+
+But the beard seemed to melt away as she touched it, and she found herself
+sitting quietly under a tree--while the Gnat (for that was the insect she had
+been talking to) was balancing itself on a twig just over her head, and fanning
+her with its wings.
+
+It certainly was a VERY large Gnat: 'about the size of a chicken,' Alice
+thought. Still, she couldn't feel nervous with it, after they had been talking
+together so long.
+
+'--then you don't like all insects?' the Gnat went on, as quietly as if nothing
+had happened.
+
+'I like them when they can talk,' Alice said. 'None of them ever talk, where
+_{I}_ come from.'
+
+'What sort of insects do you rejoice in, where YOU come from?' the Gnat
+inquired.
+
+'I don't REJOICE in insects at all,' Alice explained, 'because I'm rather
+afraid of them--at least the large kinds. But I can tell you the names of some
+of them.'
+
+'Of course they answer to their names?' the Gnat remarked carelessly.
+
+'I never knew them do it.'
+
+'What's the use of their having names,' the Gnat said, 'if they won't answer to
+them?'
+
+'No use to THEM,' said Alice; 'but it's useful to the people who name them, I
+suppose. If not, why do things have names at all?'
+
+'I can't say,' the Gnat replied. 'Further on, in the wood down there, they've
+got no names--however, go on with your list of insects: you're wasting time.'
+
+'Well, there's the Horse-fly,' Alice began, counting off the names on her
+fingers.
+
+'All right,' said the Gnat: 'half way up that bush, you'll see a
+Rocking-horse-fly, if you look. It's made entirely of wood, and gets about by
+swinging itself from branch to branch.'
+
+'What does it live on?' Alice asked, with great curiosity.
+
+'Sap and sawdust,' said the Gnat. 'Go on with the list.'
+
+Alice looked up at the Rocking-horse-fly with great interest, and made up her
+mind that it must have been just repainted, it looked so bright and sticky; and
+then she went on.
+
+'And there's the Dragon-fly.'
+
+'Look on the branch above your head,' said the Gnat, 'and there you'll find a
+snap-dragon-fly. Its body is made of plum-pudding, its wings of holly-leaves,
+and its head is a raisin burning in brandy.'
+
+'And what does it live on?'
+
+'Frumenty and mince pie,' the Gnat replied; 'and it makes its nest in a
+Christmas box.'
+
+'And then there's the Butterfly,' Alice went on, after she had taken a good
+look at the insect with its head on fire, and had thought to herself, 'I wonder
+if that's the reason insects are so fond of flying into candles--because they
+want to turn into Snap-dragon-flies!'
+
+'Crawling at your feet,' said the Gnat (Alice drew her feet back in some
+alarm), 'you may observe a Bread-and-Butterfly. Its wings are thin slices of
+Bread-and-butter, its body is a crust, and its head is a lump of sugar.'
+
+'And what does IT live on?'
+
+'Weak tea with cream in it.'
+
+A new difficulty came into Alice's head. 'Supposing it couldn't find any?' she
+suggested.
+
+'Then it would die, of course.'
+
+'But that must happen very often,' Alice remarked thoughtfully.
+
+'It always happens,' said the Gnat.
+
+After this, Alice was silent for a minute or two, pondering. The Gnat amused
+itself meanwhile by humming round and round her head: at last it settled again
+and remarked, 'I suppose you don't want to lose your name?'
+
+'No, indeed,' Alice said, a little anxiously.
+
+'And yet I don't know,' the Gnat went on in a careless tone: 'only think how
+convenient it would be if you could manage to go home without it! For instance,
+if the governess wanted to call you to your lessons, she would call out "come
+here--," and there she would have to leave off, because there wouldn't be any
+name for her to call, and of course you wouldn't have to go, you know.'
+
+'That would never do, I'm sure,' said Alice: 'the governess would never think
+of excusing me lessons for that. If she couldn't remember my name, she'd call
+me "Miss!" as the servants do.'
+
+'Well, if she said "Miss," and didn't say anything more,' the Gnat remarked,
+'of course you'd miss your lessons. That's a joke. I wish YOU had made it.'
+
+'Why do you wish _{I}_ had made it?' Alice asked. 'It's a very bad one.'
+
+But the Gnat only sighed deeply, while two large tears came rolling down its
+cheeks.
+
+'You shouldn't make jokes,' Alice said, 'if it makes you so unhappy.'
+
+Then came another of those melancholy little sighs, and this time the poor Gnat
+really seemed to have sighed itself away, for, when Alice looked up, there was
+nothing whatever to be seen on the twig, and, as she was getting quite chilly
+with sitting still so long, she got up and walked on.
+
+She very soon came to an open field, with a wood on the other side of it: it
+looked much darker than the last wood, and Alice felt a LITTLE timid about
+going into it. However, on second thoughts, she made up her mind to go on: 'for
+I certainly won't go BACK,' she thought to herself, and this was the only way
+to the Eighth Square.
+
+'This must be the wood,' she said thoughtfully to herself, 'where things have
+no names. I wonder what'll become of MY name when I go in? I shouldn't like to
+lose it at all--because they'd have to give me another, and it would be almost
+certain to be an ugly one. But then the fun would be trying to find the
+creature that had got my old name! That's just like the advertisements, you
+know, when people lose dogs--"ANSWERS TO THE NAME OF 'DASH:' HAD ON A BRASS
+COLLAR"--just fancy calling everything you met "Alice," till one of them
+answered! Only they wouldn't answer at all, if they were wise.'
+
+She was rambling on in this way when she reached the wood: it looked very cool
+and shady. 'Well, at any rate it's a great comfort,' she said as she stepped
+under the trees, 'after being so hot, to get into the--into WHAT?' she went on,
+rather surprised at not being able to think of the word. 'I mean to get under
+the--under the--under THIS, you know!' putting her hand on the trunk of the
+tree. 'What DOES it call itself, I wonder? I do believe it's got no name--why,
+to be sure it hasn't!'
+
+She stood silent for a minute, thinking: then she suddenly began again. 'Then
+it really HAS happened, after all! And now, who am I? I WILL remember, if I
+can! I'm determined to do it!' But being determined didn't help much, and all
+she could say, after a great deal of puzzling, was, 'L, I KNOW it begins with
+L!'
+
+Just then a Fawn came wandering by: it looked at Alice with its large gentle
+eyes, but didn't seem at all frightened. 'Here then! Here then!' Alice said, as
+she held out her hand and tried to stroke it; but it only started back a
+little, and then stood looking at her again.
+
+'What do you call yourself?' the Fawn said at last. Such a soft sweet voice it
+had!
+
+'I wish I knew!' thought poor Alice. She answered, rather sadly, 'Nothing, just
+now.'
+
+'Think again,' it said: 'that won't do.'
+
+Alice thought, but nothing came of it. 'Please, would you tell me what YOU call
+yourself?' she said timidly. 'I think that might help a little.'
+
+'I'll tell you, if you'll move a little further on,' the Fawn said. 'I can't
+remember here.'
+
+So they walked on together though the wood, Alice with her arms clasped
+lovingly round the soft neck of the Fawn, till they came out into another open
+field, and here the Fawn gave a sudden bound into the air, and shook itself
+free from Alice's arms. 'I'm a Fawn!' it cried out in a voice of delight, 'and,
+dear me! you're a human child!' A sudden look of alarm came into its beautiful
+brown eyes, and in another moment it had darted away at full speed.
+
+Alice stood looking after it, almost ready to cry with vexation at having lost
+her dear little fellow-traveller so suddenly. 'However, I know my name now.'
+she said, 'that's SOME comfort. Alice--Alice--I won't forget it again. And now,
+which of these finger-posts ought I to follow, I wonder?'
+
+It was not a very difficult question to answer, as there was only one road
+through the wood, and the two finger-posts both pointed along it. 'I'll settle
+it,' Alice said to herself, 'when the road divides and they point different
+ways.'
+
+But this did not seem likely to happen. She went on and on, a long way, but
+wherever the road divided there were sure to be two finger-posts pointing the
+same way, one marked 'TO TWEEDLEDUM'S HOUSE' and the other 'TO THE HOUSE OF
+TWEEDLEDEE.'
+
+'I do believe,' said Alice at last, 'that they live in the same house! I wonder
+I never thought of that before--But I can't stay there long. I'll just call and
+say "how d'you do?" and ask them the way out of the wood. If I could only get
+to the Eighth Square before it gets dark!' So she wandered on, talking to
+herself as she went, till, on turning a sharp corner, she came upon two fat
+little men, so suddenly that she could not help starting back, but in another
+moment she recovered herself, feeling sure that they must be.
+
+CHAPTER IV - Tweedledum and Tweedledee
+
+They were standing under a tree, each with an arm round the other's neck, and
+Alice knew which was which in a moment, because one of them had 'DUM'
+embroidered on his collar, and the other 'DEE.' 'I suppose they've each got
+"TWEEDLE" round at the back of the collar,' she said to herself.
+
+They stood so still that she quite forgot they were alive, and she was just
+looking round to see if the word "TWEEDLE" was written at the back of each
+collar, when she was startled by a voice coming from the one marked 'DUM.'
+
+'If you think we're wax-works,' he said, 'you ought to pay, you know. Wax-works
+weren't made to be looked at for nothing, nohow!'
+
+'Contrariwise,' added the one marked 'DEE,' 'if you think we're alive, you
+ought to speak.'
+
+'I'm sure I'm very sorry,' was all Alice could say; for the words of the old
+song kept ringing through her head like the ticking of a clock, and she could
+hardly help saying them out loud:--
+
+poem{
+
+ 'Tweedledum and Tweedledee
+ Agreed to have a battle;
+ For Tweedledum said Tweedledee
+ Had spoiled his nice new rattle.
+
+ Just then flew down a monstrous crow,
+ As black as a tar-barrel;
+ Which frightened both the heroes so,
+ They quite forgot their quarrel.'
+
+}poem
+
+'I know what you're thinking about,' said Tweedledum: 'but it isn't so, nohow.'
+
+'Contrariwise,' continued Tweedledee, 'if it was so, it might be; and if it
+were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic.'
+
+'I was thinking,' Alice said very politely, 'which is the best way out of this
+wood: it's getting so dark. Would you tell me, please?'
+
+But the little men only looked at each other and grinned.
+
+They looked so exactly like a couple of great schoolboys, that Alice couldn't
+help pointing her finger at Tweedledum, and saying 'First Boy!'
+
+'Nohow!' Tweedledum cried out briskly, and shut his mouth up again with a snap.
+
+'Next Boy!' said Alice, passing on to Tweedledee, though she felt quite certain
+he would only shout out 'Contrariwise!' and so he did.
+
+'You've been wrong!' cried Tweedledum. 'The first thing in a visit is to say
+"How d'ye do?" and shake hands!' And here the two brothers gave each other a
+hug, and then they held out the two hands that were free, to shake hands with
+her.
+
+Alice did not like shaking hands with either of them first, for fear of hurting
+the other one's feelings; so, as the best way out of the difficulty, she took
+hold of both hands at once: the next moment they were dancing round in a ring.
+This seemed quite natural (she remembered afterwards), and she was not even
+surprised to hear music playing: it seemed to come from the tree under which
+they were dancing, and it was done (as well as she could make it out) by the
+branches rubbing one across the other, like fiddles and fiddle-sticks.
+
+'But it certainly WAS funny,' (Alice said afterwards, when she was telling her
+sister the history of all this,) 'to find myself singing "HERE WE GO ROUND THE
+MULBERRY BUSH." I don't know when I began it, but somehow I felt as if I'd been
+singing it a long long time!'
+
+The other two dancers were fat, and very soon out of breath. 'Four times round
+is enough for one dance,' Tweedledum panted out, and they left off dancing as
+suddenly as they had begun: the music stopped at the same moment.
+
+Then they let go of Alice's hands, and stood looking at her for a minute: there
+was a rather awkward pause, as Alice didn't know how to begin a conversation
+with people she had just been dancing with. 'It would never do to say "How d'ye
+do?" NOW,' she said to herself: 'we seem to have got beyond that, somehow!'
+
+'I hope you're not much tired?' she said at last.
+
+'Nohow. And thank you VERY much for asking,' said Tweedledum.
+
+'So much obliged!' added Tweedledee. 'You like poetry?'
+
+'Ye-es, pretty well--SOME poetry,' Alice said doubtfully. 'Would you tell me
+which road leads out of the wood?'
+
+'What shall I repeat to her?' said Tweedledee, looking round at Tweedledum with
+great solemn eyes, and not noticing Alice's question.
+
+'"THE WALRUS AND THE CARPENTER" is the longest,' Tweedledum replied, giving his
+brother an affectionate hug.
+
+Tweedledee began instantly:
+
+'The sun was shining--'
+
+Here Alice ventured to interrupt him. 'If it's VERY long,' she said, as
+politely as she could, 'would you please tell me first which road--'
+
+Tweedledee smiled gently, and began again:
+
+poem{
+
+ 'The sun was shining on the sea,
+ Shining with all his might:
+ He did his very best to make
+ The billows smooth and bright--
+ And this was odd, because it was
+ The middle of the night.
+
+ The moon was shining sulkily,
+ Because she thought the sun
+ Had got no business to be there
+ After the day was done--
+ "It's very rude of him," she said,
+ "To come and spoil the fun!"
+
+ The sea was wet as wet could be,
+ The sands were dry as dry.
+ You could not see a cloud, because
+ No cloud was in the sky:
+ No birds were flying over head--
+ There were no birds to fly.
+
+ The Walrus and the Carpenter
+ Were walking close at hand;
+ They wept like anything to see
+ Such quantities of sand:
+ "If this were only cleared away,"
+ They said, "it WOULD be grand!"
+
+ "If seven maids with seven mops
+ Swept it for half a year,
+ Do you suppose," the Walrus said,
+ "That they could get it clear?"
+ "I doubt it," said the Carpenter,
+ And shed a bitter tear.
+
+ "O Oysters, come and walk with us!"
+ The Walrus did beseech.
+ "A pleasant walk, a pleasant talk,
+ Along the briny beach:
+ We cannot do with more than four,
+ To give a hand to each."
+
+ The eldest Oyster looked at him.
+ But never a word he said:
+ The eldest Oyster winked his eye,
+ And shook his heavy head--
+ Meaning to say he did not choose
+ To leave the oyster-bed.
+
+ But four young oysters hurried up,
+ All eager for the treat:
+ Their coats were brushed, their faces washed,
+ Their shoes were clean and neat--
+ And this was odd, because, you know,
+ They hadn't any feet.
+
+ Four other Oysters followed them,
+ And yet another four;
+ And thick and fast they came at last,
+ And more, and more, and more--
+ All hopping through the frothy waves,
+ And scrambling to the shore.
+
+ The Walrus and the Carpenter
+ Walked on a mile or so,
+ And then they rested on a rock
+ Conveniently low:
+ And all the little Oysters stood
+ And waited in a row.
+
+ "The time has come," the Walrus said,
+ "To talk of many things:
+ Of shoes--and ships--and sealing-wax--
+ Of cabbages--and kings--
+ And why the sea is boiling hot--
+ And whether pigs have wings."
+
+ "But wait a bit," the Oysters cried,
+ "Before we have our chat;
+ For some of us are out of breath,
+ And all of us are fat!"
+ "No hurry!" said the Carpenter.
+ They thanked him much for that.
+
+ "A loaf of bread," the Walrus said,
+ "Is what we chiefly need:
+ Pepper and vinegar besides
+ Are very good indeed--
+ Now if you're ready Oysters dear,
+ We can begin to feed."
+
+ "But not on us!" the Oysters cried,
+ Turning a little blue,
+ "After such kindness, that would be
+ A dismal thing to do!"
+ "The night is fine," the Walrus said
+ "Do you admire the view?
+
+ "It was so kind of you to come!
+ And you are very nice!"
+ The Carpenter said nothing but
+ "Cut us another slice:
+ I wish you were not quite so deaf--
+ I've had to ask you twice!"
+
+ "It seems a shame," the Walrus said,
+ "To play them such a trick,
+ After we've brought them out so far,
+ And made them trot so quick!"
+ The Carpenter said nothing but
+ "The butter's spread too thick!"
+
+ "I weep for you," the Walrus said.
+ "I deeply sympathize."
+ With sobs and tears he sorted out
+ Those of the largest size.
+ Holding his pocket handkerchief
+ Before his streaming eyes.
+
+ "O Oysters," said the Carpenter.
+ "You've had a pleasant run!
+ Shall we be trotting home again?"
+ But answer came there none--
+ And that was scarcely odd, because
+ They'd eaten every one.'
+
+}poem
+
+'I like the Walrus best,' said Alice: 'because you see he was a LITTLE sorry
+for the poor oysters.'
+
+'He ate more than the Carpenter, though,' said Tweedledee. 'You see he held his
+handkerchief in front, so that the Carpenter couldn't count how many he took:
+contrariwise.'
+
+'That was mean!' Alice said indignantly. 'Then I like the Carpenter best--if he
+didn't eat so many as the Walrus.'
+
+'But he ate as many as he could get,' said Tweedledum.
+
+This was a puzzler. After a pause, Alice began, 'Well! They were BOTH very
+unpleasant characters--' Here she checked herself in some alarm, at hearing
+something that sounded to her like the puffing of a large steam-engine in the
+wood near them, though she feared it was more likely to be a wild beast. 'Are
+there any lions or tigers about here?' she asked timidly.
+
+'It's only the Red King snoring,' said Tweedledee.
+
+'Come and look at him!' the brothers cried, and they each took one of Alice's
+hands, and led her up to where the King was sleeping.
+
+'Isn't he a LOVELY sight?' said Tweedledum.
+
+Alice couldn't say honestly that he was. He had a tall red night-cap on, with a
+tassel, and he was lying crumpled up into a sort of untidy heap, and snoring
+loud--'fit to snore his head off!' as Tweedledum remarked.
+
+'I'm afraid he'll catch cold with lying on the damp grass,' said Alice, who was
+a very thoughtful little girl.
+
+'He's dreaming now,' said Tweedledee: 'and what do you think he's dreaming
+about?'
+
+Alice said 'Nobody can guess that.'
+
+'Why, about YOU!' Tweedledee exclaimed, clapping his hands triumphantly. 'And
+if he left off dreaming about you, where do you suppose you'd be?'
+
+'Where I am now, of course,' said Alice.
+
+'Not you!' Tweedledee retorted contemptuously. 'You'd be nowhere. Why, you're
+only a sort of thing in his dream!'
+
+'If that there King was to wake,' added Tweedledum, 'you'd go out--bang!--just
+like a candle!'
+
+'I shouldn't!' Alice exclaimed indignantly. 'Besides, if I'M only a sort of
+thing in his dream, what are YOU, I should like to know?'
+
+'Ditto' said Tweedledum.
+
+'Ditto, ditto' cried Tweedledee.
+
+He shouted this so loud that Alice couldn't help saying, 'Hush! You'll be
+waking him, I'm afraid, if you make so much noise.'
+
+'Well, it no use YOUR talking about waking him,' said Tweedledum, 'when you're
+only one of the things in his dream. You know very well you're not real.'
+
+'I AM real!' said Alice and began to cry.
+
+'You won't make yourself a bit realler by crying,' Tweedledee remarked:
+'there's nothing to cry about.'
+
+'If I wasn't real,' Alice said--half-laughing through her tears, it all seemed
+so ridiculous--'I shouldn't be able to cry.'
+
+'I hope you don't suppose those are real tears?' Tweedledum interrupted in a
+tone of great contempt.
+
+'I know they're talking nonsense,' Alice thought to herself: 'and it's foolish
+to cry about it.' So she brushed away her tears, and went on as cheerfully as
+she could. 'At any rate I'd better be getting out of the wood, for really it's
+coming on very dark. Do you think it's going to rain?'
+
+Tweedledum spread a large umbrella over himself and his brother, and looked up
+into it. 'No, I don't think it is,' he said: 'at least--not under HERE. Nohow.'
+
+'But it may rain OUTSIDE?'
+
+'It may--if it chooses,' said Tweedledee: 'we've no objection. Contrariwise.'
+
+'Selfish things!' thought Alice, and she was just going to say 'Good-night' and
+leave them, when Tweedledum sprang out from under the umbrella and seized her
+by the wrist.
+
+'Do you see THAT?' he said, in a voice choking with passion, and his eyes grew
+large and yellow all in a moment, as he pointed with a trembling finger at a
+small white thing lying under the tree.
+
+'It's only a rattle,' Alice said, after a careful examination of the little
+white thing. 'Not a rattleSNAKE, you know,' she added hastily, thinking that he
+was frightened: 'only an old rattle--quite old and broken.'
+
+'I knew it was!' cried Tweedledum, beginning to stamp about wildly and tear his
+hair. 'It's spoilt, of course!' Here he looked at Tweedledee, who immediately
+sat down on the ground, and tried to hide himself under the umbrella.
+
+Alice laid her hand upon his arm, and said in a soothing tone, 'You needn't be
+so angry about an old rattle.'
+
+'But it isn't old!' Tweedledum cried, in a greater fury than ever. 'It's new, I
+tell you--I bought it yesterday--my nice new RATTLE!' and his voice rose to a
+perfect scream.
+
+All this time Tweedledee was trying his best to fold up the umbrella, with
+himself in it: which was such an extraordinary thing to do, that it quite took
+off Alice's attention from the angry brother. But he couldn't quite succeed,
+and it ended in his rolling over, bundled up in the umbrella, with only his
+head out: and there he lay, opening and shutting his mouth and his large
+eyes--'looking more like a fish than anything else,' Alice thought.
+
+'Of course you agree to have a battle?' Tweedledum said in a calmer tone.
+
+'I suppose so,' the other sulkily replied, as he crawled out of the umbrella:
+'only SHE must help us to dress up, you know.'
+
+So the two brothers went off hand-in-hand into the wood, and returned in a
+minute with their arms full of things--such as bolsters, blankets, hearth-rugs,
+table-cloths, dish-covers and coal-scuttles. 'I hope you're a good hand at
+pinning and tying strings?' Tweedledum remarked. 'Every one of these things has
+got to go on, somehow or other.'
+
+Alice said afterwards she had never seen such a fuss made about anything in all
+her life--the way those two bustled about-- and the quantity of things they put
+on--and the trouble they gave her in tying strings and fastening
+buttons--'Really they'll be more like bundles of old clothes than anything
+else, by the time they're ready!' she said to herself, as she arranged a
+bolster round the neck of Tweedledee, 'to keep his head from being cut off,' as
+he said.
+
+'You know,' he added very gravely, 'it's one of the most serious things that
+can possibly happen to one in a battle--to get one's head cut off.'
+
+Alice laughed aloud: but she managed to turn it into a cough, for fear of
+hurting his feelings.
+
+'Do I look very pale?' said Tweedledum, coming up to have his helmet tied on.
+(He CALLED it a helmet, though it certainly looked much more like a saucepan.)
+
+'Well--yes--a LITTLE,' Alice replied gently.
+
+'I'm very brave generally,' he went on in a low voice: 'only to-day I happen to
+have a headache.'
+
+'And I'VE got a toothache!' said Tweedledee, who had overheard the remark. 'I'm
+far worse off than you!'
+
+'Then you'd better not fight to-day,' said Alice, thinking it a good
+opportunity to make peace.
+
+'We MUST have a bit of a fight, but I don't care about going on long,' said
+Tweedledum. 'What's the time now?'
+
+Tweedledee looked at his watch, and said 'Half-past four.'
+
+'Let's fight till six, and then have dinner,' said Tweedledum.
+
+'Very well,' the other said, rather sadly: 'and SHE can watch us--only you'd
+better not come VERY close,' he added: 'I generally hit everything I can
+see--when I get really excited.'
+
+'And _{I}_ hit everything within reach,' cried Tweedledum, 'whether I can see
+it or not!'
+
+Alice laughed. 'You must hit the TREES pretty often, I should think,' she said.
+
+Tweedledum looked round him with a satisfied smile. 'I don't suppose,' he said,
+'there'll be a tree left standing, for ever so far round, by the time we've
+finished!'
+
+'And all about a rattle!' said Alice, still hoping to make them a LITTLE
+ashamed of fighting for such a trifle.
+
+'I shouldn't have minded it so much,' said Tweedledum, 'if it hadn't been a new
+one.'
+
+'I wish the monstrous crow would come!' thought Alice.
+
+'There's only one sword, you know,' Tweedledum said to his brother: 'but you
+can have the umbrella--it's quite as sharp. Only we must begin quick. It's
+getting as dark as it can.'
+
+'And darker,' said Tweedledee.
+
+It was getting dark so suddenly that Alice thought there must be a thunderstorm
+coming on. 'What a thick black cloud that is!' she said. 'And how fast it
+comes! Why, I do believe it's got wings!'
+
+'It's the crow!' Tweedledum cried out in a shrill voice of alarm: and the two
+brothers took to their heels and were out of sight in a moment.
+
+Alice ran a little way into the wood, and stopped under a large tree. 'It can
+never get at me HERE,' she thought: 'it's far too large to squeeze itself in
+among the trees. But I wish it wouldn't flap its wings so--it makes quite a
+hurricane in the wood-- here's somebody's shawl being blown away!'
+
+CHAPTER V - Wool and Water
+
+She caught the shawl as she spoke, and looked about for the owner: in another
+moment the White Queen came running wildly through the wood, with both arms
+stretched out wide, as if she were flying, and Alice very civilly went to meet
+her with the shawl.
+
+'I'm very glad I happened to be in the way,' Alice said, as she helped her to
+put on her shawl again.
+
+The White Queen only looked at her in a helpless frightened sort of way, and
+kept repeating something in a whisper to herself that sounded like
+'bread-and-butter, bread-and-butter,' and Alice felt that if there was to be
+any conversation at all, she must manage it herself. So she began rather
+timidly: 'Am I addressing the White Queen?'
+
+'Well, yes, if you call that a-dressing,' The Queen said. 'It isn't MY notion
+of the thing, at all.'
+
+Alice thought it would never do to have an argument at the very beginning of
+their conversation, so she smiled and said, 'If your Majesty will only tell me
+the right way to begin, I'll do it as well as I can.'
+
+'But I don't want it done at all!' groaned the poor Queen. 'I've been
+a-dressing myself for the last two hours.'
+
+It would have been all the better, as it seemed to Alice, if she had got some
+one else to dress her, she was so dreadfully untidy. 'Every single thing's
+crooked,' Alice thought to herself, 'and she's all over pins!--may I put your
+shawl straight for you?' she added aloud.
+
+'I don't know what's the matter with it!' the Queen said, in a melancholy
+voice. 'It's out of temper, I think. I've pinned it here, and I've pinned it
+there, but there's no pleasing it!'
+
+'It CAN'T go straight, you know, if you pin it all on one side,' Alice said, as
+she gently put it right for her; 'and, dear me, what a state your hair is in!'
+
+'The brush has got entangled in it!' the Queen said with a sigh. 'And I lost
+the comb yesterday.'
+
+Alice carefully released the brush, and did her best to get the hair into
+order. 'Come, you look rather better now!' she said, after altering most of the
+pins. 'But really you should have a lady's maid!'
+
+'I'm sure I'll take you with pleasure!' the Queen said. 'Twopence a week, and
+jam every other day.'
+
+Alice couldn't help laughing, as she said, 'I don't want you to hire ME--and I
+don't care for jam.'
+
+'It's very good jam,' said the Queen.
+
+'Well, I don't want any TO-DAY, at any rate.'
+
+'You couldn't have it if you DID want it,' the Queen said. 'The rule is, jam
+to-morrow and jam yesterday--but never jam to-day.'
+
+'It MUST come sometimes to "jam to-day,"' Alice objected.
+
+'No, it can't,' said the Queen. 'It's jam every OTHER day: to-day isn't any
+OTHER day, you know.'
+
+'I don't understand you,' said Alice. 'It's dreadfully confusing!'
+
+'That's the effect of living backwards,' the Queen said kindly: 'it always
+makes one a little giddy at first--'
+
+'Living backwards!' Alice repeated in great astonishment. 'I never heard of
+such a thing!'
+
+'--but there's one great advantage in it, that one's memory works both ways.'
+
+'I'm sure MINE only works one way,' Alice remarked. 'I can't remember things
+before they happen.'
+
+'It's a poor sort of memory that only works backwards,' the Queen remarked.
+
+'What sort of things do YOU remember best?' Alice ventured to ask.
+
+'Oh, things that happened the week after next,' the Queen replied in a careless
+tone. 'For instance, now,' she went on, sticking a large piece of plaster
+[band-aid] on her finger as she spoke, 'there's the King's Messenger. He's in
+prison now, being punished: and the trial doesn't even begin till next
+Wednesday: and of course the crime comes last of all.'
+
+'Suppose he never commits the crime?' said Alice.
+
+'That would be all the better, wouldn't it?' the Queen said, as she bound the
+plaster round her finger with a bit of ribbon.
+
+Alice felt there was no denying THAT. 'Of course it would be all the better,'
+she said: 'but it wouldn't be all the better his being punished.'
+
+'You're wrong THERE, at any rate,' said the Queen: 'were YOU ever punished?'
+
+'Only for faults,' said Alice.
+
+'And you were all the better for it, I know!' the Queen said triumphantly.
+
+'Yes, but then I HAD done the things I was punished for,' said Alice: 'that
+makes all the difference.'
+
+'But if you HADN'T done them,' the Queen said, 'that would have been better
+still; better, and better, and better!' Her voice went higher with each
+'better,' till it got quite to a squeak at last.
+
+Alice was just beginning to say 'There's a mistake somewhere--,' when the Queen
+began screaming so loud that she had to leave the sentence unfinished. 'Oh, oh,
+oh!' shouted the Queen, shaking her hand about as if she wanted to shake it
+off. 'My finger's bleeding! Oh, oh, oh, oh!'
+
+Her screams were so exactly like the whistle of a steam-engine, that Alice had
+to hold both her hands over her ears.
+
+'What IS the matter?' she said, as soon as there was a chance of making herself
+heard. 'Have you pricked your finger?'
+
+'I haven't pricked it YET,' the Queen said, 'but I soon shall-- oh, oh, oh!'
+
+'When do you expect to do it?' Alice asked, feeling very much inclined to
+laugh.
+
+'When I fasten my shawl again,' the poor Queen groaned out: 'the brooch will
+come undone directly. Oh, oh!' As she said the words the brooch flew open, and
+the Queen clutched wildly at it, and tried to clasp it again.
+
+'Take care!' cried Alice. 'You're holding it all crooked!' And she caught at
+the brooch; but it was too late: the pin had slipped, and the Queen had pricked
+her finger.
+
+'That accounts for the bleeding, you see,' she said to Alice with a smile. 'Now
+you understand the way things happen here.'
+
+'But why don't you scream now?' Alice asked, holding her hands ready to put
+over her ears again.
+
+'Why, I've done all the screaming already,' said the Queen. 'What would be the
+good of having it all over again?'
+
+By this time it was getting light. 'The crow must have flown away, I think,'
+said Alice: 'I'm so glad it's gone. I thought it was the night coming on.'
+
+'I wish _{I}_ could manage to be glad!' the Queen said. 'Only I never can
+remember the rule. You must be very happy, living in this wood, and being glad
+whenever you like!'
+
+'Only it is so VERY lonely here!' Alice said in a melancholy voice; and at the
+thought of her loneliness two large tears came rolling down her cheeks.
+
+'Oh, don't go on like that!' cried the poor Queen, wringing her hands in
+despair. 'Consider what a great girl you are. Consider what a long way you've
+come to-day. Consider what o'clock it is. Consider anything, only don't cry!'
+
+Alice could not help laughing at this, even in the midst of her tears. 'Can YOU
+keep from crying by considering things?' she asked.
+
+'That's the way it's done,' the Queen said with great decision: 'nobody can do
+two things at once, you know. Let's consider your age to begin with--how old
+are you?'
+
+'I'm seven and a half exactly.'
+
+'You needn't say "exactually,"' the Queen remarked: 'I can believe it without
+that. Now I'll give YOU something to believe. I'm just one hundred and one,
+five months and a day.'
+
+'I can't believe THAT!' said Alice.
+
+'Can't you?' the Queen said in a pitying tone. 'Try again: draw a long breath,
+and shut your eyes.'
+
+Alice laughed. 'There's no use trying,' she said: 'one CAN'T believe impossible
+things.'
+
+'I daresay you haven't had much practice,' said the Queen. 'When I was your
+age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as
+many as six impossible things before breakfast. There goes the shawl again!'
+
+The brooch had come undone as she spoke, and a sudden gust of wind blew the
+Queen's shawl across a little brook. The Queen spread out her arms again, and
+went flying after it, and this time she succeeded in catching it for herself.
+'I've got it!' she cried in a triumphant tone. 'Now you shall see me pin it on
+again, all by myself!'
+
+'Then I hope your finger is better now?' Alice said very politely, as she
+crossed the little brook after the Queen.
+
+poem{
+
+* * * * ~#
+
+ * * * ~#
+
+* * * * ~#
+
+}poem
+
+'Oh, much better!' cried the Queen, her voice rising to a squeak as she went
+on. 'Much be-etter! Be-etter! Be-e-e-etter! Be-e-ehh!' The last word ended in a
+long bleat, so like a sheep that Alice quite started.
+
+She looked at the Queen, who seemed to have suddenly wrapped herself up in
+wool. Alice rubbed her eyes, and looked again. She couldn't make out what had
+happened at all. Was she in a shop? And was that really--was it really a SHEEP
+that was sitting on the other side of the counter? Rub as she could, she could
+make nothing more of it: she was in a little dark shop, leaning with her elbows
+on the counter, and opposite to her was an old Sheep, sitting in an arm-chair
+knitting, and every now and then leaving off to look at her through a great
+pair of spectacles.
+
+'What is it you want to buy?' the Sheep said at last, looking up for a moment
+from her knitting.
+
+'I don't QUITE know yet,' Alice said, very gently. 'I should like to look all
+round me first, if I might.'
+
+'You may look in front of you, and on both sides, if you like,' said the Sheep:
+'but you can't look ALL round you--unless you've got eyes at the back of your
+head.'
+
+But these, as it happened, Alice had NOT got: so she contented herself with
+turning round, looking at the shelves as she came to them.
+
+The shop seemed to be full of all manner of curious things-- but the oddest
+part of it all was, that whenever she looked hard at any shelf, to make out
+exactly what it had on it, that particular shelf was always quite empty: though
+the others round it were crowded as full as they could hold.
+
+'Things flow about so here!' she said at last in a plaintive tone, after she
+had spent a minute or so in vainly pursuing a large bright thing, that looked
+sometimes like a doll and sometimes like a work-box, and was always in the
+shelf next above the one she was looking at. 'And this one is the most
+provoking of all--but I'll tell you what--' she added, as a sudden thought
+struck her, 'I'll follow it up to the very top shelf of all. It'll puzzle it to
+go through the ceiling, I expect!'
+
+But even this plan failed: the 'thing' went through the ceiling as quietly as
+possible, as if it were quite used to it.
+
+'Are you a child or a teetotum?' the Sheep said, as she took up another pair of
+needles. 'You'll make me giddy soon, if you go on turning round like that.' She
+was now working with fourteen pairs at once, and Alice couldn't help looking at
+her in great astonishment.
+
+'How CAN she knit with so many?' the puzzled child thought to herself. 'She
+gets more and more like a porcupine every minute!'
+
+'Can you row?' the Sheep asked, handing her a pair of knitting- needles as she
+spoke.
+
+'Yes, a little--but not on land--and not with needles--' Alice was beginning to
+say, when suddenly the needles turned into oars in her hands, and she found
+they were in a little boat, gliding along between banks: so there was nothing
+for it but to do her best.
+
+'Feather!' cried the Sheep, as she took up another pair of needles.
+
+This didn't sound like a remark that needed any answer, so Alice said nothing,
+but pulled away. There was something very queer about the water, she thought,
+as every now and then the oars got fast in it, and would hardly come out again.
+
+'Feather! Feather!' the Sheep cried again, taking more needles. 'You'll be
+catching a crab directly.'
+
+'A dear little crab!' thought Alice. 'I should like that.'
+
+'Didn't you hear me say "Feather"?' the Sheep cried angrily, taking up quite a
+bunch of needles.
+
+'Indeed I did,' said Alice: 'you've said it very often--and very loud. Please,
+where ARE the crabs?'
+
+'In the water, of course!' said the Sheep, sticking some of the needles into
+her hair, as her hands were full. 'Feather, I say!'
+
+'WHY do you say "feather" so often?' Alice asked at last, rather vexed. 'I'm
+not a bird!'
+
+'You are,' said the Sheep: 'you're a little goose.'
+
+This offended Alice a little, so there was no more conversation for a minute or
+two, while the boat glided gently on, sometimes among beds of weeds (which made
+the oars stick fast in the water, worse then ever), and sometimes under trees,
+but always with the same tall river-banks frowning over their heads.
+
+'Oh, please! There are some scented rushes!' Alice cried in a sudden transport
+of delight. 'There really are--and SUCH beauties!'
+
+'You needn't say "please" to ME about 'em,' the Sheep said, without looking up
+from her knitting: 'I didn't put 'em there, and I'm not going to take 'em
+away.'
+
+'No, but I meant--please, may we wait and pick some?' Alice pleaded. 'If you
+don't mind stopping the boat for a minute.'
+
+'How am _I_ to stop it?' said the Sheep. 'If you leave off rowing, it'll stop
+of itself.'
+
+So the boat was left to drift down the stream as it would, till it glided
+gently in among the waving rushes. And then the little sleeves were carefully
+rolled up, and the little arms were plunged in elbow-deep to get the rushes a
+good long way down before breaking them off--and for a while Alice forgot all
+about the Sheep and the knitting, as she bent over the side of the boat, with
+just the ends of her tangled hair dipping into the water--while with bright
+eager eyes she caught at one bunch after another of the darling scented rushes.
+
+'I only hope the boat won't tipple over!' she said to herself. 'Oh, WHAT a
+lovely one! Only I couldn't quite reach it.' 'And it certainly DID seem a
+little provoking ('almost as if it happened on purpose,' she thought) that,
+though she managed to pick plenty of beautiful rushes as the boat glided by,
+there was always a more lovely one that she couldn't reach.
+
+'The prettiest are always further!' she said at last, with a sigh at the
+obstinacy of the rushes in growing so far off, as, with flushed cheeks and
+dripping hair and hands, she scrambled back into her place, and began to
+arrange her new-found treasures.
+
+What mattered it to her just then that the rushes had begun to fade, and to
+lose all their scent and beauty, from the very moment that she picked them?
+Even real scented rushes, you know, last only a very little while--and these,
+being dream-rushes, melted away almost like snow, as they lay in heaps at her
+feet-- but Alice hardly noticed this, there were so many other curious things
+to think about.
+
+They hadn't gone much farther before the blade of one of the oars got fast in
+the water and WOULDN'T come out again (so Alice explained it afterwards), and
+the consequence was that the handle of it caught her under the chin, and, in
+spite of a series of little shrieks of 'Oh, oh, oh!' from poor Alice, it swept
+her straight off the seat, and down among the heap of rushes.
+
+However, she wasn't hurt, and was soon up again: the Sheep went on with her
+knitting all the while, just as if nothing had happened. 'That was a nice crab
+you caught!' she remarked, as Alice got back into her place, very much relieved
+to find herself still in the boat.
+
+'Was it? I didn't see it,' Said Alice, peeping cautiously over the side of the
+boat into the dark water. 'I wish it hadn't let go--I should so like to see a
+little crab to take home with me!' But the Sheep only laughed scornfully, and
+went on with her knitting.
+
+'Are there many crabs here?' said Alice.
+
+'Crabs, and all sorts of things,' said the Sheep: 'plenty of choice, only make
+up your mind. Now, what DO you want to buy?'
+
+'To buy!' Alice echoed in a tone that was half astonished and half
+frightened--for the oars, and the boat, and the river, had vanished all in a
+moment, and she was back again in the little dark shop.
+
+'I should like to buy an egg, please,' she said timidly. 'How do you sell
+them?'
+
+'Fivepence farthing for one--Twopence for two,' the Sheep replied.
+
+'Then two are cheaper than one?' Alice said in a surprised tone, taking out her
+purse.
+
+'Only you MUST eat them both, if you buy two,' said the Sheep.
+
+'Then I'll have ONE, please,' said Alice, as she put the money down on the
+counter. For she thought to herself, 'They mightn't be at all nice, you know.'
+
+The Sheep took the money, and put it away in a box: then she said 'I never put
+things into people's hands--that would never do--you must get it for yourself.'
+And so saying, she went off to the other end of the shop, and set the egg
+upright on a shelf.
+
+'I wonder WHY it wouldn't do?' thought Alice, as she groped her way among the
+tables and chairs, for the shop was very dark towards the end. 'The egg seems
+to get further away the more I walk towards it. Let me see, is this a chair?
+Why, it's got branches, I declare! How very odd to find trees growing here! And
+actually here's a little brook! Well, this is the very queerest shop I ever
+saw!'
+
+poem{
+
+* * * * ~#
+
+ * * * ~#
+
+* * * * ~#
+
+}poem
+
+So she went on, wondering more and more at every step, as everything turned
+into a tree the moment she came up to it, and she quite expected the egg to do
+the same.
+
+CHAPTER VI - Humpty Dumpty
+
+However, the egg only got larger and larger, and more and more human: when she
+had come within a few yards of it, she saw that it had eyes and a nose and
+mouth; and when she had come close to it, she saw clearly that it was HUMPTY
+DUMPTY himself. 'It can't be anybody else!' she said to herself. 'I'm as
+certain of it, as if his name were written all over his face.'
+
+It might have been written a hundred times, easily, on that enormous face.
+Humpty Dumpty was sitting with his legs crossed, like a Turk, on the top of a
+high wall--such a narrow one that Alice quite wondered how he could keep his
+balance--and, as his eyes were steadily fixed in the opposite direction, and he
+didn't take the least notice of her, she thought he must be a stuffed figure
+after all.
+
+'And how exactly like an egg he is!' she said aloud, standing with her hands
+ready to catch him, for she was every moment expecting him to fall.
+
+'It's VERY provoking,' Humpty Dumpty said after a long silence, looking away
+from Alice as he spoke, 'to be called an egg-- VERY!'
+
+'I said you LOOKED like an egg, Sir,' Alice gently explained. 'And some eggs
+are very pretty, you know' she added, hoping to turn her remark into a sort of
+a compliment.
+
+'Some people,' said Humpty Dumpty, looking away from her as usual, 'have no
+more sense than a baby!'
+
+Alice didn't know what to say to this: it wasn't at all like conversation, she
+thought, as he never said anything to HER; in fact, his last remark was
+evidently addressed to a tree--so she stood and softly repeated to herself:--
+
+poem{
+
+ 'Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall:
+ Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
+ All the King's horses and all the King's men
+ Couldn't put Humpty Dumpty in his place again.'
+
+}poem
+
+'That last line is much too long for the poetry,' she added, almost out loud,
+forgetting that Humpty Dumpty would hear her.
+
+'Don't stand there chattering to yourself like that,' Humpty Dumpty said,
+looking at her for the first time, 'but tell me your name and your business.'
+
+'My NAME is Alice, but--'
+
+'It's a stupid enough name!' Humpty Dumpty interrupted impatiently. 'What does
+it mean?'
+
+'MUST a name mean something?' Alice asked doubtfully.
+
+'Of course it must,' Humpty Dumpty said with a short laugh: 'MY name means the
+shape I am--and a good handsome shape it is, too. With a name like yours, you
+might be any shape, almost.'
+
+'Why do you sit out here all alone?' said Alice, not wishing to begin an
+argument.
+
+'Why, because there's nobody with me!' cried Humpty Dumpty. 'Did you think I
+didn't know the answer to THAT? Ask another.'
+
+'Don't you think you'd be safer down on the ground?' Alice went on, not with
+any idea of making another riddle, but simply in her good-natured anxiety for
+the queer creature. 'That wall is so VERY narrow!'
+
+'What tremendously easy riddles you ask!' Humpty Dumpty growled out. 'Of course
+I don't think so! Why, if ever I DID fall off-- which there's no chance of--but
+IF I did--' Here he pursed his lips and looked so solemn and grand that Alice
+could hardly help laughing. 'IF I did fall,' he went on, 'THE KING HAS PROMISED
+ME--WITH HIS VERY OWN MOUTH--to--to--'
+
+'To send all his horses and all his men,' Alice interrupted, rather unwisely.
+
+'Now I declare that's too bad!' Humpty Dumpty cried, breaking into a sudden
+passion. 'You've been listening at doors--and behind trees-- and down
+chimneys--or you couldn't have known it!'
+
+'I haven't, indeed!' Alice said very gently. 'It's in a book.'
+
+'Ah, well! They may write such things in a BOOK,' Humpty Dumpty said in a
+calmer tone. 'That's what you call a History of England, that is. Now, take a
+good look at me! I'm one that has spoken to a King, _{I}_ am: mayhap you'll
+never see such another: and to show you I'm not proud, you may shake hands with
+me!' And he grinned almost from ear to ear, as he leant forwards (and as nearly
+as possible fell off the wall in doing so) and offered Alice his hand. She
+watched him a little anxiously as she took it. 'If he smiled much more, the
+ends of his mouth might meet behind,' she thought: 'and then I don't know what
+would happen to his head! I'm afraid it would come off!'
+
+'Yes, all his horses and all his men,' Humpty Dumpty went on. 'They'd pick me
+up again in a minute, THEY would! However, this conversation is going on a
+little too fast: let's go back to the last remark but one.'
+
+'I'm afraid I can't quite remember it,' Alice said very politely.
+
+'In that case we start fresh,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'and it's my turn to choose
+a subject--' ('He talks about it just as if it was a game!' thought Alice.) 'So
+here's a question for you. How old did you say you were?'
+
+Alice made a short calculation, and said 'Seven years and six months.'
+
+'Wrong!' Humpty Dumpty exclaimed triumphantly. 'You never said a word like it!'
+
+'I though you meant "How old ARE you?"' Alice explained.
+
+'If I'd meant that, I'd have said it,' said Humpty Dumpty.
+
+Alice didn't want to begin another argument, so she said nothing.
+
+'Seven years and six months!' Humpty Dumpty repeated thoughtfully. 'An
+uncomfortable sort of age. Now if you'd asked MY advice, I'd have said "Leave
+off at seven"--but it's too late now.'
+
+'I never ask advice about growing,' Alice said indignantly.
+
+'Too proud?' the other inquired.
+
+Alice felt even more indignant at this suggestion. 'I mean,' she said, 'that
+one can't help growing older.'
+
+'ONE can't, perhaps,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'but TWO can. With proper assistance,
+you might have left off at seven.'
+
+'What a beautiful belt you've got on!' Alice suddenly remarked.
+
+(They had had quite enough of the subject of age, she thought: and if they
+really were to take turns in choosing subjects, it was her turn now.) 'At
+least,' she corrected herself on second thoughts, 'a beautiful cravat, I should
+have said--no, a belt, I mean--I beg your pardon!' she added in dismay, for
+Humpty Dumpty looked thoroughly offended, and she began to wish she hadn't
+chosen that subject. 'If I only knew,' she thought to herself, 'which was neck
+and which was waist!'
+
+Evidently Humpty Dumpty was very angry, though he said nothing for a minute or
+two. When he DID speak again, it was in a deep growl.
+
+'It is a--MOST--PROVOKING--thing,' he said at last, 'when a person doesn't know
+a cravat from a belt!'
+
+'I know it's very ignorant of me,' Alice said, in so humble a tone that Humpty
+Dumpty relented.
+
+'It's a cravat, child, and a beautiful one, as you say. It's a present from the
+White King and Queen. There now!'
+
+'Is it really?' said Alice, quite pleased to find that she HAD chosen a good
+subject, after all.
+
+'They gave it me,' Humpty Dumpty continued thoughtfully, as he crossed one knee
+over the other and clasped his hands round it, 'they gave it me--for an
+un-birthday present.'
+
+'I beg your pardon?' Alice said with a puzzled air.
+
+'I'm not offended,' said Humpty Dumpty.
+
+'I mean, what IS an un-birthday present?'
+
+'A present given when it isn't your birthday, of course.'
+
+Alice considered a little. 'I like birthday presents best,' she said at last.
+
+'You don't know what you're talking about!' cried Humpty Dumpty. 'How many days
+are there in a year?'
+
+'Three hundred and sixty-five,' said Alice.
+
+'And how many birthdays have you?'
+
+'One.'
+
+'And if you take one from three hundred and sixty-five, what remains?'
+
+'Three hundred and sixty-four, of course.'
+
+Humpty Dumpty looked doubtful. 'I'd rather see that done on paper,' he said.
+
+Alice couldn't help smiling as she took out her memorandum- book, and worked
+the sum for him:
+
+code{
+
+ 365
+ 1
+ ___
+
+ 364
+ ___
+
+}code
+
+Humpty Dumpty took the book, and looked at it carefully. 'That seems to be done
+right--' he began.
+
+'You're holding it upside down!' Alice interrupted.
+
+'To be sure I was!' Humpty Dumpty said gaily, as she turned it round for him.
+'I thought it looked a little queer. As I was saying, that SEEMS to be done
+right--though I haven't time to look it over thoroughly just now--and that
+shows that there are three hundred and sixty-four days when you might get
+un-birthday presents--'
+
+'Certainly,' said Alice.
+
+'And only ONE for birthday presents, you know. There's glory for you!'
+
+'I don't know what you mean by "glory,"' Alice said.
+
+Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. 'Of course you don't-- till I tell you. I
+meant "there's a nice knock-down argument for you!"'
+
+'But "glory" doesn't mean "a nice knock-down argument,"' Alice objected.
+
+'When _{I}_ use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, 'it
+means just what I choose it to mean--neither more nor less.'
+
+'The question is,' said Alice, 'whether you CAN make words mean so many
+different things.'
+
+'The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'which is to be master-- that's all.'
+
+Alice was too much puzzled to say anything, so after a minute Humpty Dumpty
+began again. 'They've a temper, some of them-- particularly verbs, they're the
+proudest--adjectives you can do anything with, but not verbs--however, _{I}_
+can manage the whole lot of them! Impenetrability! That's what _{I}_ say!'
+
+'Would you tell me, please,' said Alice 'what that means?'
+
+'Now you talk like a reasonable child,' said Humpty Dumpty, looking very much
+pleased. 'I meant by "impenetrability" that we've had enough of that subject,
+and it would be just as well if you'd mention what you mean to do next, as I
+suppose you don't mean to stop here all the rest of your life.'
+
+'That's a great deal to make one word mean,' Alice said in a thoughtful tone.
+
+'When I make a word do a lot of work like that,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'I always
+pay it extra.'
+
+'Oh!' said Alice. She was too much puzzled to make any other remark.
+
+'Ah, you should see 'em come round me of a Saturday night,' Humpty Dumpty went
+on, wagging his head gravely from side to side: 'for to get their wages, you
+know.'
+
+(Alice didn't venture to ask what he paid them with; and so you see I can't
+tell YOU.)
+
+'You seem very clever at explaining words, Sir,' said Alice. 'Would you kindly
+tell me the meaning of the poem called "Jabberwocky"?'
+
+'Let's hear it,' said Humpty Dumpty. 'I can explain all the poems that were
+ever invented--and a good many that haven't been invented just yet.'
+
+This sounded very hopeful, so Alice repeated the first verse:
+
+poem{
+
+ 'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
+ Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
+ All mimsy were the borogoves,
+ And the mome raths outgrabe.
+
+}poem
+
+'That's enough to begin with,' Humpty Dumpty interrupted: 'there are plenty of
+hard words there. "BRILLIG" means four o'clock in the afternoon--the time when
+you begin BROILING things for dinner.'
+
+'That'll do very well,' said Alice: 'and "SLITHY"?'
+
+'Well, "SLITHY" means "lithe and slimy." "Lithe" is the same as "active." You
+see it's like a portmanteau--there are two meanings packed up into one word.'
+
+'I see it now,' Alice remarked thoughtfully: 'and what are "TOVES"?'
+
+'Well, "TOVES" are something like badgers--they're something like lizards--and
+they're something like corkscrews.'
+
+'They must be very curious looking creatures.'
+
+'They are that,' said Humpty Dumpty: 'also they make their nests under
+sun-dials--also they live on cheese.'
+
+'And what's the "GYRE" and to "GIMBLE"?'
+
+'To "GYRE" is to go round and round like a gyroscope. To "GIMBLE" is to make
+holes like a gimlet.'
+
+'And "THE WABE" is the grass-plot round a sun-dial, I suppose?' said Alice,
+surprised at her own ingenuity.
+
+'Of course it is. It's called "WABE," you know, because it goes a long way
+before it, and a long way behind it--'
+
+'And a long way beyond it on each side,' Alice added.
+
+'Exactly so. Well, then, "MIMSY" is "flimsy and miserable" (there's another
+portmanteau for you). And a "BOROGOVE" is a thin shabby-looking bird with its
+feathers sticking out all round-- something like a live mop.'
+
+'And then "MOME RATHS"?' said Alice. 'I'm afraid I'm giving you a great deal of
+trouble.'
+
+'Well, a "RATH" is a sort of green pig: but "MOME" I'm not certain about. I
+think it's short for "from home"--meaning that they'd lost their way, you
+know.'
+
+'And what does "OUTGRABE" mean?'
+
+'Well, "OUTGRABING" is something between bellowing and whistling, with a kind
+of sneeze in the middle: however, you'll hear it done, maybe--down in the wood
+yonder--and when you've once heard it you'll be QUITE content. Who's been
+repeating all that hard stuff to you?'
+
+'I read it in a book,' said Alice. 'But I had some poetry repeated to me, much
+easier than that, by--Tweedledee, I think it was.'
+
+'As to poetry, you know,' said Humpty Dumpty, stretching out one of his great
+hands, '_I_ can repeat poetry as well as other folk, if it comes to that--'
+
+'Oh, it needn't come to that!' Alice hastily said, hoping to keep him from
+beginning.
+
+'The piece I'm going to repeat,' he went on without noticing her remark, 'was
+written entirely for your amusement.'
+
+Alice felt that in that case she really OUGHT to listen to it, so she sat down,
+and said 'Thank you' rather sadly.
+
+poem{
+
+ 'In winter, when the fields are white,
+ I sing this song for your delight--
+
+}poem
+
+only I don't sing it,' he added, as an explanation.
+
+'I see you don't,' said Alice.
+
+'If you can SEE whether I'm singing or not, you've sharper eyes than most.'
+Humpty Dumpty remarked severely. Alice was silent.
+
+poem{
+
+ 'In spring, when woods are getting green,
+ I'll try and tell you what I mean.'
+
+}poem
+
+'Thank you very much,' said Alice.
+
+poem{
+
+ '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.'
+
+}poem
+
+'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.'
+
+poem{
+
+ '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--"'
+
+}poem
+
+'I'm afraid I don't quite understand,' said Alice.
+
+'It gets easier further on,' Humpty Dumpty replied.
+
+poem{
+
+ 'I sent to them again to say
+ "It will be better to obey."
+
+ The fishes answered with a grin,
+ "Why, what a temper you are in!"
+
+ I told them once, I told them twice:
+ They would not listen to advice.
+
+ I took a kettle large and new,
+ Fit for the deed I had to do.
+
+ My heart went hop, my heart went thump;
+ I filled the kettle at the pump.
+
+ Then some one came to me and said,
+ "The little fishes are in bed."
+
+ I said to him, I said it plain,
+ "Then you must wake them up again."
+
+ I said it very loud and clear;
+ I went and shouted in his ear.'
+
+}poem
+
+Humpty Dumpty raised his voice almost to a scream as he repeated this verse,
+and Alice thought with a shudder, 'I wouldn't have been the messenger for
+ANYTHING!'
+
+poem{
+
+ 'But he was very stiff and proud;
+ He said "You needn't shout so loud!"
+
+ And he was very proud and stiff;
+ He said "I'd go and wake them, if--"
+
+ I took a corkscrew from the shelf:
+ I went to wake them up myself.
+
+ And when I found the door was locked,
+ I pulled and pushed and kicked and knocked.
+
+ And when I found the door was shut,
+ I tried to turn the handle, but--'
+
+}poem
+
+There was a long pause.
+
+'Is that all?' Alice timidly asked.
+
+'That's all,' said Humpty Dumpty. 'Good-bye.'
+
+This was rather sudden, Alice thought: but, after such a VERY strong hint that
+she ought to be going, she felt that it would hardly be civil to stay. So she
+got up, and held out her hand. 'Good-bye, till we meet again!' she said as
+cheerfully as she could.
+
+'I shouldn't know you again if we DID meet,' Humpty Dumpty replied in a
+discontented tone, giving her one of his fingers to shake; 'you're so exactly
+like other people.'
+
+'The face is what one goes by, generally,' Alice remarked in a thoughtful tone.
+
+'That's just what I complain of,' said Humpty Dumpty. 'Your face is the same as
+everybody has--the two eyes, so--' (marking their places in the air with this
+thumb) 'nose in the middle, mouth under. It's always the same. Now if you had
+the two eyes on the same side of the nose, for instance--or the mouth at the
+top--that would be SOME help.'
+
+'It wouldn't look nice,' Alice objected. But Humpty Dumpty only shut his eyes
+and said 'Wait till you've tried.'
+
+Alice waited a minute to see if he would speak again, but as he never opened
+his eyes or took any further notice of her, she said 'Good-bye!' once more,
+and, getting no answer to this, she quietly walked away: but she couldn't help
+saying to herself as she went, 'Of all the unsatisfactory--' (she repeated this
+aloud, as it was a great comfort to have such a long word to say) 'of all the
+unsatisfactory people I EVER met--' She never finished the sentence, for at
+this moment a heavy crash shook the forest from end to end.
+
+CHAPTER VII - The Lion and the Unicorn
+
+The next moment soldiers came running through the wood, at first in twos and
+threes, then ten or twenty together, and at last in such crowds that they
+seemed to fill the whole forest. Alice got behind a tree, for fear of being run
+over, and watched them go by.
+
+She thought that in all her life she had never seen soldiers so uncertain on
+their feet: they were always tripping over something or other, and whenever one
+went down, several more always fell over him, so that the ground was soon
+covered with little heaps of men.
+
+Then came the horses. Having four feet, these managed rather better than the
+foot-soldiers: but even THEY stumbled now and then; and it seemed to be a
+regular rule that, whenever a horse stumbled the rider fell off instantly. The
+confusion got worse every moment, and Alice was very glad to get out of the
+wood into an open place, where she found the White King seated on the ground,
+busily writing in his memorandum-book.
+
+'I've sent them all!' the King cried in a tone of delight, on seeing Alice.
+'Did you happen to meet any soldiers, my dear, as you came through the wood?'
+
+'Yes, I did,' said Alice: 'several thousand, I should think.'
+
+'Four thousand two hundred and seven, that's the exact number,' the King said,
+referring to his book. 'I couldn't send all the horses, you know, because two
+of them are wanted in the game. And I haven't sent the two Messengers, either.
+They're both gone to the town. Just look along the road, and tell me if you can
+see either of them.'
+
+'I see nobody on the road,' said Alice.
+
+'I only wish _{I}_ had such eyes,' the King remarked in a fretful tone. 'To be
+able to see Nobody! And at that distance, too! Why, it's as much as _{I}_ can
+do to see real people, by this light!'
+
+All this was lost on Alice, who was still looking intently along the road,
+shading her eyes with one hand. 'I see somebody now!' she exclaimed at last.
+'But he's coming very slowly--and what curious attitudes he goes into!' (For
+the messenger kept skipping up and down, and wriggling like an eel, as he came
+along, with his great hands spread out like fans on each side.)
+
+'Not at all,' said the King. 'He's an Anglo-Saxon Messenger-- and those are
+Anglo-Saxon attitudes. He only does them when he's happy. His name is Haigha.'
+(He pronounced it so as to rhyme with 'mayor.')
+
+'I love my love with an H,' Alice couldn't help beginning, 'because he is
+Happy. I hate him with an H, because he is Hideous. I fed him with--with--with
+Ham-sandwiches and Hay. His name is Haigha, and he lives--'
+
+'He lives on the Hill,' the King remarked simply, without the least idea that
+he was joining in the game, while Alice was still hesitating for the name of a
+town beginning with H. 'The other Messenger's called Hatta. I must have TWO,
+you know--to come and go. One to come, and one to go.'
+
+'I beg your pardon?' said Alice.
+
+'It isn't respectable to beg,' said the King.
+
+'I only meant that I didn't understand,' said Alice. 'Why one to come and one
+to go?'
+
+'Didn't I tell you?' the King repeated impatiently. 'I must have Two--to fetch
+and carry. One to fetch, and one to carry.'
+
+At this moment the Messenger arrived: he was far too much out of breath to say
+a word, and could only wave his hands about, and make the most fearful faces at
+the poor King.
+
+'This young lady loves you with an H,' the King said, introducing Alice in the
+hope of turning off the Messenger's attention from himself--but it was no
+use--the Anglo-Saxon attitudes only got more extraordinary every moment, while
+the great eyes rolled wildly from side to side.
+
+'You alarm me!' said the King. 'I feel faint--Give me a ham sandwich!'
+
+On which the Messenger, to Alice's great amusement, opened a bag that hung
+round his neck, and handed a sandwich to the King, who devoured it greedily.
+
+'Another sandwich!' said the King.
+
+'There's nothing but hay left now,' the Messenger said, peeping into the bag.
+
+'Hay, then,' the King murmured in a faint whisper.
+
+Alice was glad to see that it revived him a good deal. 'There's nothing like
+eating hay when you're faint,' he remarked to her, as he munched away.
+
+'I should think throwing cold water over you would be better,' Alice suggested:
+'or some sal-volatile.'
+
+'I didn't say there was nothing BETTER,' the King replied. 'I said there was
+nothing LIKE it.' Which Alice did not venture to deny.
+
+'Who did you pass on the road?' the King went on, holding out his hand to the
+Messenger for some more hay.
+
+'Nobody,' said the Messenger.
+
+'Quite right,' said the King: 'this young lady saw him too. So of course Nobody
+walks slower than you.'
+
+'I do my best,' the Messenger said in a sulky tone. 'I'm sure nobody walks much
+faster than I do!'
+
+'He can't do that,' said the King, 'or else he'd have been here first. However,
+now you've got your breath, you may tell us what's happened in the town.'
+
+'I'll whisper it,' said the Messenger, putting his hands to his mouth in the
+shape of a trumpet, and stooping so as to get close to the King's ear. Alice
+was sorry for this, as she wanted to hear the news too. However, instead of
+whispering, he simply shouted at the top of his voice 'They're at it again!'
+
+'Do you call THAT a whisper?' cried the poor King, jumping up and shaking
+himself. 'If you do such a thing again, I'll have you buttered! It went through
+and through my head like an earthquake!'
+
+'It would have to be a very tiny earthquake!' thought Alice. 'Who are at it
+again?' she ventured to ask.
+
+'Why the Lion and the Unicorn, of course,' said the King.
+
+'Fighting for the crown?'
+
+'Yes, to be sure,' said the King: 'and the best of the joke is, that it's MY
+crown all the while! Let's run and see them.' And they trotted off, Alice
+repeating to herself, as she ran, the words of the old song:--
+
+poem{
+
+ '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.'
+
+}poem
+
+'Does--the one--that wins--get the crown?' she asked, as well as she could, for
+the run was putting her quite out of breath.
+
+'Dear me, no!' said the King. 'What an idea!'
+
+'Would you--be good enough,' Alice panted out, after running a little further,
+'to stop a minute--just to get--one's breath again?'
+
+'I'm GOOD enough,' the King said, 'only I'm not strong enough. You see, a
+minute goes by so fearfully quick. You might as well try to stop a
+Bandersnatch!'
+
+Alice had no more breath for talking, so they trotted on in silence, till they
+came in sight of a great crowd, in the middle of which the Lion and Unicorn
+were fighting. They were in such a cloud of dust, that at first Alice could not
+make out which was which: but she soon managed to distinguish the Unicorn by
+his horn.
+
+They placed themselves close to where Hatta, the other messenger, was standing
+watching the fight, with a cup of tea in one hand and a piece of
+bread-and-butter in the other.
+
+'He's only just out of prison, and he hadn't finished his tea when he was sent
+in,' Haigha whispered to Alice: 'and they only give them oyster-shells in
+there--so you see he's very hungry and thirsty. How are you, dear child?' he
+went on, putting his arm affectionately round Hatta's neck.
+
+Hatta looked round and nodded, and went on with his bread and butter.
+
+'Were you happy in prison, dear child?' said Haigha.
+
+Hatta looked round once more, and this time a tear or two trickled down his
+cheek: but not a word would he say.
+
+'Speak, can't you!' Haigha cried impatiently. But Hatta only munched away, and
+drank some more tea.
+
+'Speak, won't you!' cried the King. 'How are they getting on with the fight?'
+
+Hatta made a desperate effort, and swallowed a large piece of bread-and-butter.
+'They're getting on very well,' he said in a choking voice: 'each of them has
+been down about eighty-seven times.'
+
+'Then I suppose they'll soon bring the white bread and the brown?' Alice
+ventured to remark.
+
+'It's waiting for 'em now,' said Hatta: 'this is a bit of it as I'm eating.'
+
+There was a pause in the fight just then, and the Lion and the Unicorn sat
+down, panting, while the King called out 'Ten minutes allowed for
+refreshments!' Haigha and Hatta set to work at once, carrying rough trays of
+white and brown bread. Alice took a piece to taste, but it was VERY dry.
+
+'I don't think they'll fight any more to-day,' the King said to Hatta: 'go and
+order the drums to begin.' And Hatta went bounding away like a grasshopper.
+
+For a minute or two Alice stood silent, watching him. Suddenly she brightened
+up. 'Look, look!' she cried, pointing eagerly. 'There's the White Queen running
+across the country! She came flying out of the wood over yonder--How fast those
+Queens CAN run!'
+
+'There's some enemy after her, no doubt,' the King said, without even looking
+round. 'That wood's full of them.'
+
+'But aren't you going to run and help her?' Alice asked, very much surprised at
+his taking it so quietly.
+
+'No use, no use!' said the King. 'She runs so fearfully quick. You might as
+well try to catch a Bandersnatch! But I'll make a memorandum about her, if you
+like--She's a dear good creature,' he repeated softly to himself, as he opened
+his memorandum-book. 'Do you spell "creature" with a double "e"?'
+
+At this moment the Unicorn sauntered by them, with his hands in his pockets. 'I
+had the best of it this time?' he said to the King, just glancing at him as he
+passed.
+
+'A little--a little,' the King replied, rather nervously. 'You shouldn't have
+run him through with your horn, you know.'
+
+'It didn't hurt him,' the Unicorn said carelessly, and he was going on, when
+his eye happened to fall upon Alice: he turned round rather instantly, and
+stood for some time looking at her with an air of the deepest disgust.
+
+'What--is--this?' he said at last.
+
+'This is a child!' Haigha replied eagerly, coming in front of Alice to
+introduce her, and spreading out both his hands towards her in an Anglo-Saxon
+attitude. 'We only found it to-day. It's as large as life, and twice as
+natural!'
+
+'I always thought they were fabulous monsters!' said the Unicorn. 'Is it
+alive?'
+
+'It can talk,' said Haigha, solemnly.
+
+The Unicorn looked dreamily at Alice, and said 'Talk, child.'
+
+Alice could not help her lips curling up into a smile as she began: 'Do you
+know, I always thought Unicorns were fabulous monsters, too! I never saw one
+alive before!'
+
+'Well, now that we HAVE seen each other,' said the Unicorn, 'if you'll believe
+in me, I'll believe in you. Is that a bargain?'
+
+'Yes, if you like,' said Alice.
+
+'Come, fetch out the plum-cake, old man!' the Unicorn went on, turning from her
+to the King. 'None of your brown bread for me!'
+
+'Certainly--certainly!' the King muttered, and beckoned to Haigha. 'Open the
+bag!' he whispered. 'Quick! Not that one-- that's full of hay!'
+
+Haigha took a large cake out of the bag, and gave it to Alice to hold, while he
+got out a dish and carving-knife. How they all came out of it Alice couldn't
+guess. It was just like a conjuring-trick, she thought.
+
+The Lion had joined them while this was going on: he looked very tired and
+sleepy, and his eyes were half shut. 'What's this!' he said, blinking lazily at
+Alice, and speaking in a deep hollow tone that sounded like the tolling of a
+great bell.
+
+'Ah, what IS it, now?' the Unicorn cried eagerly. 'You'll never guess! _{I}_
+couldn't.'
+
+The Lion looked at Alice wearily. 'Are you animal--vegetable --or mineral?' he
+said, yawning at every other word.
+
+'It's a fabulous monster!' the Unicorn cried out, before Alice could reply.
+
+'Then hand round the plum-cake, Monster,' the Lion said, lying down and putting
+his chin on this paws. 'And sit down, both of you,' (to the King and the
+Unicorn): 'fair play with the cake, you know!'
+
+The King was evidently very uncomfortable at having to sit down between the two
+great creatures; but there was no other place for him.
+
+'What a fight we might have for the crown, NOW!' the Unicorn said, looking
+slyly up at the crown, which the poor King was nearly shaking off his head, he
+trembled so much.
+
+'I should win easy,' said the Lion.
+
+'I'm not so sure of that,' said the Unicorn.
+
+'Why, I beat you all round the town, you chicken!' the Lion replied angrily,
+half getting up as he spoke.
+
+Here the King interrupted, to prevent the quarrel going on: he was very
+nervous, and his voice quite quivered. 'All round the town?' he said. 'That's a
+good long way. Did you go by the old bridge, or the market-place? You get the
+best view by the old bridge.'
+
+'I'm sure I don't know,' the Lion growled out as he lay down again. 'There was
+too much dust to see anything. What a time the Monster is, cutting up that
+cake!'
+
+Alice had seated herself on the bank of a little brook, with the great dish on
+her knees, and was sawing away diligently with the knife. 'It's very
+provoking!' she said, in reply to the Lion (she was getting quite used to being
+called 'the Monster'). 'I've cut several slices already, but they always join
+on again!'
+
+'You don't know how to manage Looking-glass cakes,' the Unicorn remarked. 'Hand
+it round first, and cut it afterwards.'
+
+This sounded nonsense, but Alice very obediently got up, and carried the dish
+round, and the cake divided itself into three pieces as she did so. 'NOW cut it
+up,' said the Lion, as she returned to her place with the empty dish.
+
+'I say, this isn't fair!' cried the Unicorn, as Alice sat with the knife in her
+hand, very much puzzled how to begin. 'The Monster has given the Lion twice as
+much as me!'
+
+'She's kept none for herself, anyhow,' said the Lion. 'Do you like plum-cake,
+Monster?'
+
+But before Alice could answer him, the drums began.
+
+Where the noise came from, she couldn't make out: the air seemed full of it,
+and it rang through and through her head till she felt quite deafened. She
+started to her feet and sprang across the little brook in her terror,
+
+poem{
+
+* * * * ~#
+
+ * * * ~#
+
+* * * * ~#
+
+}poem
+
+and had just time to see the Lion and the Unicorn rise to their feet, with
+angry looks at being interrupted in their feast, before she dropped to her
+knees, and put her hands over her ears, vainly trying to shut out the dreadful
+uproar.
+
+'If THAT doesn't "drum them out of town,"' she thought to herself, 'nothing
+ever will!'
+
+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 her head in some alarm. There was no one to be
+seen, and her first thought was that she must have been dreaming about the Lion
+and the Unicorn and those queer Anglo-Saxon Messengers. However, there was the
+great dish still lying at her feet, on which she had tried to cut the plum-
+cake, 'So I wasn't dreaming, after all,' she said to herself, 'unless--unless
+we're all part of the same dream. Only I do hope it's MY dream, and not the Red
+King's! I don't like belonging to another person's dream,' she went on in a
+rather complaining tone: 'I've a great mind to go and wake him, and see what
+happens!'
+
+At this moment her thoughts were interrupted by a loud shouting of 'Ahoy! Ahoy!
+Check!' and a Knight dressed in crimson armour came galloping down upon her,
+brandishing a great club. Just as he reached her, the horse stopped suddenly:
+'You're my prisoner!' the Knight cried, as he tumbled off his horse.
+
+Startled as she was, Alice was more frightened for him than for herself at the
+moment, and watched him with some anxiety as he mounted again. As soon as he
+was comfortably in the saddle, he began once more 'You're my--' but here
+another voice broke in 'Ahoy! Ahoy! Check!' and Alice looked round in some
+surprise for the new enemy.
+
+This time it was a White Knight. He drew up at Alice's side, and tumbled off
+his horse just as the Red Knight had done: then he got on again, and the two
+Knights sat and looked at each other for some time without speaking. Alice
+looked from one to the other in some bewilderment.
+
+'She's MY prisoner, you know!' the Red Knight said at last.
+
+'Yes, but then _I_ came and rescued her!' the White Knight replied.
+
+'Well, we must fight for her, then,' said the Red Knight, as he took up his
+helmet (which hung from the saddle, and was something the shape of a horse's
+head), and put it on.
+
+'You will observe the Rules of Battle, of course?' the White Knight remarked,
+putting on his helmet too.
+
+'I always do,' said the Red Knight, and they began banging away at each other
+with such fury that Alice got behind a tree to be out of the way of the blows.
+
+'I wonder, now, what the Rules of Battle are,' she said to herself, as she
+watched the fight, timidly peeping out from her hiding-place: 'one Rule seems
+to be, that if one Knight hits the other, he knocks him off his horse, and if
+he misses, he tumbles off himself--and another Rule seems to be that they hold
+their clubs with their arms, as if they were Punch and Judy--What a noise they
+make when they tumble! Just like a whole set of fire- irons falling into the
+fender! And how quiet the horses are! They let them get on and off them just as
+if they were tables!'
+
+Another Rule of Battle, that Alice had not noticed, seemed to be that they
+always fell on their heads, and the battle ended with their both falling off in
+this way, side by side: when they got up again, they shook hands, and then the
+Red Knight mounted and galloped off.
+
+'It was a glorious victory, wasn't it?' said the White Knight, as he came up
+panting.
+
+'I don't know,' Alice said doubtfully. 'I don't want to be anybody's prisoner.
+I want to be a Queen.'
+
+'So you will, when you've crossed the next brook,' said the White Knight. 'I'll
+see you safe to the end of the wood--and then I must go back, you know. That's
+the end of my move.'
+
+'Thank you very much,' said Alice. 'May I help you off with your helmet?' It
+was evidently more than he could manage by himself; however, she managed to
+shake him out of it at last.
+
+'Now one can breathe more easily,' said the Knight, putting back his shaggy
+hair with both hands, and turning his gentle face and large mild eyes to Alice.
+She thought she had never seen such a strange-looking soldier in all her life.
+
+He was dressed in tin armour, which seemed to fit him very badly, and he had a
+queer-shaped little deal box fastened across his shoulder, upside-down, and
+with the lid hanging open. Alice looked at it with great curiosity.
+
+'I see you're admiring my little box.' the Knight said in a friendly tone.
+'It's my own invention--to keep clothes and sandwiches in. You see I carry it
+upside-down, so that the rain can't get in.'
+
+'But the things can get OUT,' Alice gently remarked. 'Do you know the lid's
+open?'
+
+'I didn't know it,' the Knight said, a shade of vexation passing over his face.
+'Then all the things must have fallen out! And the box is no use without them.'
+He unfastened it as he spoke, and was just going to throw it into the bushes,
+when a sudden thought seemed to strike him, and he hung it carefully on a tree.
+'Can you guess why I did that?' he said to Alice.
+
+Alice shook her head.
+
+'In hopes some bees may make a nest in it--then I should get the honey.'
+
+'But you've got a bee-hive--or something like one--fastened to the saddle,'
+said Alice.
+
+'Yes, it's a very good bee-hive,' the Knight said in a discontented tone, 'one
+of the best kind. But not a single bee has come near it yet. And the other
+thing is a mouse-trap. I suppose the mice keep the bees out--or the bees keep
+the mice out, I don't know which.'
+
+'I was wondering what the mouse-trap was for,' said Alice. 'It isn't very
+likely there would be any mice on the horse's back.'
+
+'Not very likely, perhaps,' said the Knight: 'but if they DO come, I don't
+choose to have them running all about.'
+
+'You see,' he went on after a pause, 'it's as well to be provided for
+EVERYTHING. That's the reason the horse has all those anklets round his feet.'
+
+'But what are they for?' Alice asked in a tone of great curiosity.
+
+'To guard against the bites of sharks,' the Knight replied. 'It's an invention
+of my own. And now help me on. I'll go with you to the end of the wood--What's
+the dish for?'
+
+'It's meant for plum-cake,' said Alice.
+
+'We'd better take it with us,' the Knight said. 'It'll come in handy if we find
+any plum-cake. Help me to get it into this bag.'
+
+This took a very long time to manage, though Alice held the bag open very
+carefully, because the Knight was so VERY awkward in putting in the dish: the
+first two or three times that he tried he fell in himself instead. 'It's rather
+a tight fit, you see,' he said, as they got it in a last; 'There are so many
+candlesticks in the bag.' And he hung it to the saddle, which was already
+loaded with bunches of carrots, and fire-irons, and many other things.
+
+'I hope you've got your hair well fastened on?' he continued, as they set off.
+
+'Only in the usual way,' Alice said, smiling.
+
+'That's hardly enough,' he said, anxiously. 'You see the wind is so VERY strong
+here. It's as strong as soup.'
+
+'Have you invented a plan for keeping the hair from being blown off?' Alice
+enquired.
+
+'Not yet,' said the Knight. 'But I've got a plan for keeping it from FALLING
+off.'
+
+'I should like to hear it, very much.'
+
+'First you take an upright stick,' said the Knight. 'Then you make your hair
+creep up it, like a fruit-tree. Now the reason hair falls off is because it
+hangs DOWN--things never fall UPWARDS, you know. It's a plan of my own
+invention. You may try it if you like.'
+
+It didn't sound a comfortable plan, Alice thought, and for a few minutes she
+walked on in silence, puzzling over the idea, and every now and then stopping
+to help the poor Knight, who certainly was NOT a good rider.
+
+Whenever the horse stopped (which it did very often), he fell off in front; and
+whenever it went on again (which it generally did rather suddenly), he fell off
+behind. Otherwise he kept on pretty well, except that he had a habit of now and
+then falling off sideways; and as he generally did this on the side on which
+Alice was walking, she soon found that it was the best plan not to walk QUITE
+close to the horse.
+
+'I'm afraid you've not had much practice in riding,' she ventured to say, as
+she was helping him up from his fifth tumble.
+
+The Knight looked very much surprised, and a little offended at the remark.
+'What makes you say that?' he asked, as he scrambled back into the saddle,
+keeping hold of Alice's hair with one hand, to save himself from falling over
+on the other side.
+
+'Because people don't fall off quite so often, when they've had much practice.'
+
+'I've had plenty of practice,' the Knight said very gravely: 'plenty of
+practice!'
+
+Alice could think of nothing better to say than 'Indeed?' but she said it as
+heartily as she could. They went on a little way in silence after this, the
+Knight with his eyes shut, muttering to himself, and Alice watching anxiously
+for the next tumble.
+
+'The great art of riding,' the Knight suddenly began in a loud voice, waving
+his right arm as he spoke, 'is to keep--' Here the sentence ended as suddenly
+as it had begun, as the Knight fell heavily on the top of his head exactly in
+the path where Alice was walking. She was quite frightened this time, and said
+in an anxious tone, as she picked him up, 'I hope no bones are broken?'
+
+'None to speak of,' the Knight said, as if he didn't mind breaking two or three
+of them. 'The great art of riding, as I was saying, is--to keep your balance
+properly. Like this, you know--'
+
+He let go the bridle, and stretched out both his arms to show Alice what he
+meant, and this time he fell flat on his back, right under the horse's feet.
+
+'Plenty of practice!' he went on repeating, all the time that Alice was getting
+him on his feet again. 'Plenty of practice!'
+
+'It's too ridiculous!' cried Alice, losing all her patience this time. 'You
+ought to have a wooden horse on wheels, that you ought!'
+
+'Does that kind go smoothly?' the Knight asked in a tone of great interest,
+clasping his arms round the horse's neck as he spoke, just in time to save
+himself from tumbling off again.
+
+'Much more smoothly than a live horse,' Alice said, with a little scream of
+laughter, in spite of all she could do to prevent it.
+
+'I'll get one,' the Knight said thoughtfully to himself. 'One or two--several.'
+
+There was a short silence after this, and then the Knight went on again. 'I'm a
+great hand at inventing things. Now, I daresay you noticed, that last time you
+picked me up, that I was looking rather thoughtful?'
+
+'You WERE a little grave,' said Alice.
+
+'Well, just then I was inventing a new way of getting over a gate--would you
+like to hear it?'
+
+'Very much indeed,' Alice said politely.
+
+'I'll tell you how I came to think of it,' said the Knight. 'You see, I said to
+myself, "The only difficulty is with the feet: the HEAD is high enough
+already." Now, first I put my head on the top of the gate--then I stand on my
+head--then the feet are high enough, you see--then I'm over, you see.'
+
+'Yes, I suppose you'd be over when that was done,' Alice said thoughtfully:
+'but don't you think it would be rather hard?'
+
+'I haven't tried it yet,' the Knight said, gravely: 'so I can't tell for
+certain--but I'm afraid it WOULD be a little hard.'
+
+He looked so vexed at the idea, that Alice changed the subject hastily. 'What a
+curious helmet you've got!' she said cheerfully. 'Is that your invention too?'
+
+The Knight looked down proudly at his helmet, which hung from the saddle.
+'Yes,' he said, 'but I've invented a better one than that--like a sugar loaf.
+When I used to wear it, if I fell off the horse, it always touched the ground
+directly. So I had a VERY little way to fall, you see--But there WAS the danger
+of falling INTO it, to be sure. That happened to me once--and the worst of it
+was, before I could get out again, the other White Knight came and put it on.
+He thought it was his own helmet.'
+
+The knight looked so solemn about it that Alice did not dare to laugh. 'I'm
+afraid you must have hurt him,' she said in a trembling voice, 'being on the
+top of his head.'
+
+'I had to kick him, of course,' the Knight said, very seriously. 'And then he
+took the helmet off again--but it took hours and hours to get me out. I was as
+fast as--as lightning, you know.'
+
+'But that's a different kind of fastness,' Alice objected.
+
+The Knight shook his head. 'It was all kinds of fastness with me, I can assure
+you!' he said. He raised his hands in some excitement as he said this, and
+instantly rolled out of the saddle, and fell headlong into a deep ditch.
+
+Alice ran to the side of the ditch to look for him. She was rather startled by
+the fall, as for some time he had kept on very well, and she was afraid that he
+really WAS hurt this time. However, though she could see nothing but the soles
+of his feet, she was much relieved to hear that he was talking on in his usual
+tone. 'All kinds of fastness,' he repeated: 'but it was careless of him to put
+another man's helmet on--with the man in it, too.'
+
+'How CAN you go on talking so quietly, head downwards?' Alice asked, as she
+dragged him out by the feet, and laid him in a heap on the bank.
+
+The Knight looked surprised at the question. 'What does it matter where my body
+happens to be?' he said. 'My mind goes on working all the same. In fact, the
+more head downwards I am, the more I keep inventing new things.'
+
+'Now the cleverest thing of the sort that I ever did,' he went on after a
+pause, 'was inventing a new pudding during the meat- course.'
+
+'In time to have it cooked for the next course?' said Alice. 'Well, not the
+NEXT course,' the Knight said in a slow thoughtful tone: 'no, certainly not the
+next COURSE.'
+
+'Then it would have to be the next day. I suppose you wouldn't have two
+pudding-courses in one dinner?'
+
+'Well, not the NEXT day,' the Knight repeated as before: 'not the next DAY. In
+fact,' he went on, holding his head down, and his voice getting lower and
+lower, 'I don't believe that pudding ever WAS cooked! In fact, I don't believe
+that pudding ever WILL be cooked! And yet it was a very clever pudding to
+invent.'
+
+'What did you mean it to be made of?' Alice asked, hoping to cheer him up, for
+the poor Knight seemed quite low-spirited about it.
+
+'It began with blotting paper,' the Knight answered with a groan.
+
+'That wouldn't be very nice, I'm afraid--'
+
+'Not very nice ALONE,' he interrupted, quite eagerly: 'but you've no idea what
+a difference it makes mixing it with other things--such as gunpowder and
+sealing-wax. And here I must leave you.' They had just come to the end of the
+wood.
+
+Alice could only look puzzled: she was thinking of the pudding.
+
+'You are sad,' the Knight said in an anxious tone: 'let me sing you a song to
+comfort you.'
+
+'Is it very long?' Alice asked, for she had heard a good deal of poetry that
+day.
+
+'It's long,' said the Knight, 'but very, VERY beautiful. Everybody that hears
+me sing it--either it brings the TEARS into their eyes, or else--'
+
+'Or else what?' said Alice, for the Knight had made a sudden pause.
+
+'Or else it doesn't, you know. The name of the song is called "HADDOCKS'
+EYES."'
+
+'Oh, that's the name of the song, is it?' Alice said, trying to feel
+interested.
+
+'No, you don't understand,' the Knight said, looking a little vexed. 'That's
+what the name is CALLED. The name really IS "THE AGED AGED MAN."'
+
+'Then I ought to have said "That's what the SONG is called"?' Alice corrected
+herself.
+
+'No, you oughtn't: that's quite another thing! The SONG is called "WAYS AND
+MEANS": but that's only what it's CALLED, you know!'
+
+'Well, what IS the song, then?' said Alice, who was by this time completely
+bewildered.
+
+'I was coming to that,' the Knight said. 'The song really IS "A-SITTING ON A
+GATE": and the tune's my own invention.'
+
+So saying, he stopped his horse and let the reins fall on its neck: then,
+slowly beating time with one hand, and with a faint smile lighting up his
+gentle foolish face, as if he enjoyed the music of his song, he began.
+
+Of all the strange things that Alice saw in her journey Through The
+Looking-Glass, this was the one that she always remembered most clearly. Years
+afterwards she could bring the whole scene back again, as if it had been only
+yesterday--the mild blue eyes and kindly smile of the Knight--the setting sun
+gleaming through his hair, and shining on his armour in a blaze of light that
+quite dazzled her--the horse quietly moving about, with the reins hanging loose
+on his neck, cropping the grass at her feet--and the black shadows of the
+forest behind--all this she took in like a picture, as, with one hand shading
+her eyes, she leant against a tree, watching the strange pair, and listening,
+in a half dream, to the melancholy music of the song.
+
+'But the tune ISN'T his own invention,' she said to herself: 'it's "I GIVE THEE
+ALL, I CAN NO MORE."' She stood and listened very attentively, but no tears
+came into her eyes.
+
+poem{
+
+ 'I'll tell thee everything I can;
+ There's little to relate.
+ I saw an aged aged man,
+ A-sitting on a gate.
+ "Who are you, aged man?" I said,
+ "and how is it you live?"
+ And his answer trickled through my head
+ Like water through a sieve.
+
+ He said "I look for butterflies
+ That sleep among the wheat:
+ I make them into mutton-pies,
+ And sell them in the street.
+ I sell them unto men," he said,
+ "Who sail on stormy seas;
+ And that's the way I get my bread--
+ A trifle, if you please."
+
+ But I was thinking of a plan
+ To dye one's whiskers green,
+ And always use so large a fan
+ That they could not be seen.
+ So, having no reply to give
+ To what the old man said,
+ I cried, "Come, tell me how you live!"
+ And thumped him on the head.
+
+ His accents mild took up the tale:
+ He said "I go my ways,
+ And when I find a mountain-rill,
+ I set it in a blaze;
+ And thence they make a stuff they call
+ Rolands' Macassar Oil--
+ Yet twopence-halfpenny is all
+ They give me for my toil."
+
+ But I was thinking of a way
+ To feed oneself on batter,
+ And so go on from day to day
+ Getting a little fatter.
+ I shook him well from side to side,
+ Until his face was blue:
+ "Come, tell me how you live," I cried,
+ "And what it is you do!"
+
+ He said "I hunt for haddocks' eyes
+ Among the heather bright,
+ And work them into waistcoat-buttons
+ In the silent night.
+ And these I do not sell for gold
+ Or coin of silvery shine
+ But for a copper halfpenny,
+ And that will purchase nine.
+
+ "I sometimes dig for buttered rolls,
+ Or set limed twigs for crabs;
+ I sometimes search the grassy knolls
+ For wheels of Hansom-cabs.
+ And that's the way" (he gave a wink)
+ "By which I get my wealth--
+ And very gladly will I drink
+ Your Honour's noble health."
+
+ I heard him then, for I had just
+ Completed my design
+ To keep the Menai bridge from rust
+ By boiling it in wine.
+ I thanked him much for telling me
+ The way he got his wealth,
+ But chiefly for his wish that he
+ Might drink my noble health.
+
+ And now, if e'er by chance I put
+ My fingers into glue
+ Or madly squeeze a right-hand foot
+ Into a left-hand shoe,
+ Or if I drop upon my toe
+ A very heavy weight,
+ I weep, for it reminds me so,
+ Of that old man I used to know--
+
+ Whose look was mild, whose speech was slow,
+ Whose hair was whiter than the snow,
+ Whose face was very like a crow,
+ With eyes, like cinders, all aglow,
+ Who seemed distracted with his woe,
+ Who rocked his body to and fro,
+ And muttered mumblingly and low,
+ As if his mouth were full of dough,
+ Who snorted like a buffalo--
+ That summer evening, long ago,
+ A-sitting on a gate.'
+
+}poem
+
+As the Knight sang the last words of the ballad, he gathered up the reins, and
+turned his horse's head along the road by which they had come. 'You've only a
+few yards to go,' he said, 'down the hill and over that little brook, and then
+you'll be a Queen-- But you'll stay and see me off first?' he added as Alice
+turned with an eager look in the direction to which he pointed. 'I shan't be
+long. You'll wait and wave your handkerchief when I get to that turn in the
+road? I think it'll encourage me, you see.'
+
+'Of course I'll wait,' said Alice: 'and thank you very much for coming so
+far--and for the song--I liked it very much.'
+
+'I hope so,' the Knight said doubtfully: 'but you didn't cry so much as I
+thought you would.'
+
+So they shook hands, and then the Knight rode slowly away into the forest. 'It
+won't take long to see him OFF, I expect,' Alice said to herself, as she stood
+watching him. 'There he goes! Right on his head as usual! However, he gets on
+again pretty easily--that comes of having so many things hung round the
+horse--' So she went on talking to herself, as she watched the horse walking
+leisurely along the road, and the Knight tumbling off, first on one side and
+then on the other. After the fourth or fifth tumble he reached the turn, and
+then she waved her handkerchief to him, and waited till he was out of sight.
+
+'I hope it encouraged him,' she said, as she turned to run down the hill: 'and
+now for the last brook, and to be a Queen! How grand it sounds!' A very few
+steps brought her to the edge of the brook. 'The Eighth Square at last!' she
+cried as she bounded across,
+
+poem{
+
+* * * * ~#
+
+ * * * ~#
+
+* * * * ~#
+
+}poem
+
+and threw herself down to rest on a lawn as soft as moss, with little
+flower-beds dotted about it here and there. 'Oh, how glad I am to get here! And
+what IS this on my head?' she exclaimed in a tone of dismay, as she put her
+hands up to something very heavy, and fitted tight all round her head.
+
+'But how CAN it have got there without my knowing it?' she said to herself, as
+she lifted it off, and set it on her lap to make out what it could possibly be.
+
+It was a golden crown.
+
+CHAPTER IX - Queen Alice
+
+'Well, this IS grand!' said Alice. 'I never expected I should be a Queen so
+soon--and I'll tell you what it is, your majesty,' she went on in a severe tone
+(she was always rather fond of scolding herself), 'it'll never do for you to be
+lolling about on the grass like that! Queens have to be dignified, you know!'
+
+So she got up and walked about--rather stiffly just at first, as she was afraid
+that the crown might come off: but she comforted herself with the thought that
+there was nobody to see her, 'and if I really am a Queen,' she said as she sat
+down again, 'I shall be able to manage it quite well in time.'
+
+Everything was happening so oddly that she didn't feel a bit surprised at
+finding the Red Queen and the White Queen sitting close to her, one on each
+side: she would have liked very much to ask them how they came there, but she
+feared it would not be quite civil. However, there would be no harm, she
+thought, in asking if the game was over. 'Please, would you tell me--' she
+began, looking timidly at the Red Queen.
+
+'Speak when you're spoken to!' The Queen sharply interrupted her.
+
+'But if everybody obeyed that rule,' said Alice, who was always ready for a
+little argument, 'and if you only spoke when you were spoken to, and the other
+person always waited for YOU to begin, you see nobody would ever say anything,
+so that--'
+
+'Ridiculous!' cried the Queen. 'Why, don't you see, child--' here she broke off
+with a frown, and, after thinking for a minute, suddenly changed the subject of
+the conversation. 'What do you mean by "If you really are a Queen"? What right
+have you to call yourself so? You can't be a Queen, you know, till you've
+passed the proper examination. And the sooner we begin it, the better.'
+
+'I only said "if"!' poor Alice pleaded in a piteous tone.
+
+The two Queens looked at each other, and the Red Queen remarked, with a little
+shudder, 'She SAYS she only said "if"--'
+
+'But she said a great deal more than that!' the White Queen moaned, wringing
+her hands. 'Oh, ever so much more than that!'
+
+'So you did, you know,' the Red Queen said to Alice. 'Always speak the
+truth--think before you speak--and write it down afterwards.'
+
+'I'm sure I didn't mean--' Alice was beginning, but the Red Queen interrupted
+her impatiently.
+
+'That's just what I complain of! You SHOULD have meant! What do you suppose is
+the use of child without any meaning? Even a joke should have some meaning--and
+a child's more important than a joke, I hope. You couldn't deny that, even if
+you tried with both hands.'
+
+'I don't deny things with my HANDS,' Alice objected.
+
+'Nobody said you did,' said the Red Queen. 'I said you couldn't if you tried.'
+
+'She's in that state of mind,' said the White Queen, 'that she wants to deny
+SOMETHING--only she doesn't know what to deny!'
+
+'A nasty, vicious temper,' the Red Queen remarked; and then there was an
+uncomfortable silence for a minute or two.
+
+The Red Queen broke the silence by saying to the White Queen, 'I invite you to
+Alice's dinner-party this afternoon.'
+
+The White Queen smiled feebly, and said 'And I invite YOU.'
+
+'I didn't know I was to have a party at all,' said Alice; 'but if there is to
+be one, I think _{I}_ ought to invite the guests.'
+
+'We gave you the opportunity of doing it,' the Red Queen remarked: 'but I
+daresay you've not had many lessons in manners yet?'
+
+'Manners are not taught in lessons,' said Alice. 'Lessons teach you to do sums,
+and things of that sort.'
+
+'And you do Addition?' the White Queen asked. 'What's one and one and one and
+one and one and one and one and one and one and one?'
+
+'I don't know,' said Alice. 'I lost count.'
+
+'She can't do Addition,' the Red Queen interrupted. 'Can you do Subtraction?
+Take nine from eight.'
+
+'Nine from eight I can't, you know,' Alice replied very readily: 'but--'
+
+'She can't do Subtraction,' said the White Queen. 'Can you do Division? Divide
+a loaf by a knife--what's the answer to that?'
+
+'I suppose--' Alice was beginning, but the Red Queen answered for her.
+'Bread-and-butter, of course. Try another Subtraction sum. Take a bone from a
+dog: what remains?'
+
+Alice considered. 'The bone wouldn't remain, of course, if I took it--and the
+dog wouldn't remain; it would come to bite me --and I'm sure I shouldn't
+remain!'
+
+'Then you think nothing would remain?' said the Red Queen.
+
+'I think that's the answer.'
+
+'Wrong, as usual,' said the Red Queen: 'the dog's temper would remain.'
+
+'But I don't see how--'
+
+'Why, look here!' the Red Queen cried. 'The dog would lose its temper, wouldn't
+it?'
+
+'Perhaps it would,' Alice replied cautiously.
+
+'Then if the dog went away, its temper would remain!' the Queen exclaimed
+triumphantly.
+
+Alice said, as gravely as she could, 'They might go different ways.' But she
+couldn't help thinking to herself, 'What dreadful nonsense we ARE talking!'
+
+'She can't do sums a BIT!' the Queens said together, with great emphasis.
+
+'Can YOU do sums?' Alice said, turning suddenly on the White Queen, for she
+didn't like being found fault with so much.
+
+The Queen gasped and shut her eyes. 'I can do Addition, if you give me
+time--but I can do Subtraction, under ANY circumstances!'
+
+'Of course you know your A B C?' said the Red Queen.
+
+'To be sure I do.' said Alice.
+
+'So do I,' the White Queen whispered: 'we'll often say it over together, dear.
+And I'll tell you a secret--I can read words of one letter! Isn't THAT grand!
+However, don't be discouraged. You'll come to it in time.'
+
+Here the Red Queen began again. 'Can you answer useful questions?' she said.
+'How is bread made?'
+
+'I know THAT!' Alice cried eagerly. 'You take some flour--'
+
+'Where do you pick the flower?' the White Queen asked. 'In a garden, or in the
+hedges?'
+
+'Well, it isn't PICKED at all,' Alice explained: 'it's GROUND--'
+
+'How many acres of ground?' said the White Queen. 'You mustn't leave out so
+many things.'
+
+'Fan her head!' the Red Queen anxiously interrupted. 'She'll be feverish after
+so much thinking.' So they set to work and fanned her with bunches of leaves,
+till she had to beg them to leave off, it blew her hair about so.
+
+'She's all right again now,' said the Red Queen. 'Do you know Languages? What's
+the French for fiddle-de-dee?'
+
+'Fiddle-de-dee's not English,' Alice replied gravely.
+
+'Who ever said it was?' said the Red Queen.
+
+Alice thought she saw a way out of the difficulty this time. 'If you'll tell me
+what language "fiddle-de-dee" is, I'll tell you the French for it!' she
+exclaimed triumphantly.
+
+But the Red Queen drew herself up rather stiffly, and said 'Queens never make
+bargains.'
+
+'I wish Queens never asked questions,' Alice thought to herself.
+
+'Don't let us quarrel,' the White Queen said in an anxious tone. 'What is the
+cause of lightning?'
+
+'The cause of lightning,' Alice said very decidedly, for she felt quite certain
+about this, 'is the thunder--no, no!' she hastily corrected herself. 'I meant
+the other way.'
+
+'It's too late to correct it,' said the Red Queen: 'when you've once said a
+thing, that fixes it, and you must take the consequences.'
+
+'Which reminds me--' the White Queen said, looking down and nervously clasping
+and unclasping her hands, 'we had SUCH a thunderstorm last Tuesday--I mean one
+of the last set of Tuesdays, you know.'
+
+Alice was puzzled. 'In OUR country,' she remarked, 'there's only one day at a
+time.'
+
+The Red Queen said, 'That's a poor thin way of doing things. Now HERE, we
+mostly have days and nights two or three at a time, and sometimes in the winter
+we take as many as five nights together--for warmth, you know.'
+
+'Are five nights warmer than one night, then?' Alice ventured to ask.
+
+'Five times as warm, of course.'
+
+'But they should be five times as COLD, by the same rule--'
+
+'Just so!' cried the Red Queen. 'Five times as warm, AND five times as
+cold--just as I'm five times as rich as you are, AND five times as clever!'
+
+Alice sighed and gave it up. 'It's exactly like a riddle with no answer!' she
+thought.
+
+'Humpty Dumpty saw it too,' the White Queen went on in a low voice, more as if
+she were talking to herself. 'He came to the door with a corkscrew in his
+hand--'
+
+'What did he want?' said the Red Queen.
+
+'He said he WOULD come in,' the White Queen went on, 'because he was looking
+for a hippopotamus. Now, as it happened, there wasn't such a thing in the
+house, that morning.'
+
+'Is there generally?' Alice asked in an astonished tone.
+
+'Well, only on Thursdays,' said the Queen.
+
+'I know what he came for,' said Alice: 'he wanted to punish the fish,
+because--'
+
+Here the White Queen began again. 'It was SUCH a thunderstorm, you can't
+think!' ('She NEVER could, you know,' said the Red Queen.) 'And part of the
+roof came off, and ever so much thunder got in--and it went rolling round the
+room in great lumps--and knocking over the tables and things--till I was so
+frightened, I couldn't remember my own name!'
+
+Alice thought to herself, 'I never should TRY to remember my name in the middle
+of an accident! Where would be the use of it?' but she did not say this aloud,
+for fear of hurting the poor Queen's feeling.
+
+'Your Majesty must excuse her,' the Red Queen said to Alice, taking one of the
+White Queen's hands in her own, and gently stroking it: 'she means well, but
+she can't help saying foolish things, as a general rule.'
+
+The White Queen looked timidly at Alice, who felt she OUGHT to say something
+kind, but really couldn't think of anything at the moment.
+
+'She never was really well brought up,' the Red Queen went on: 'but it's
+amazing how good-tempered she is! Pat her on the head, and see how pleased
+she'll be!' But this was more than Alice had courage to do.
+
+'A little kindness--and putting her hair in papers--would do wonders with
+her--'
+
+The White Queen gave a deep sigh, and laid her head on Alice's shoulder. 'I AM
+so sleepy?' she moaned.
+
+'She's tired, poor thing!' said the Red Queen. 'Smooth her hair --lend her your
+nightcap--and sing her a soothing lullaby.'
+
+'I haven't got a nightcap with me,' said Alice, as she tried to obey the first
+direction: 'and I don't know any soothing lullabies.'
+
+'I must do it myself, then,' said the Red Queen, and she began:
+
+poem{
+
+ '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!
+
+}poem
+
+'And now you know the words,' she added, as she put her head down on Alice's
+other shoulder, 'just sing it through to ME. I'm getting sleepy, too.' In
+another moment both Queens were fast asleep, and snoring loud.
+
+'What AM I to do?' exclaimed Alice, looking about in great perplexity, as first
+one round head, and then the other, rolled down from her shoulder, and lay like
+a heavy lump in her lap. 'I don't think it EVER happened before, that any one
+had to take care of two Queens asleep at once! No, not in all the History of
+England--it couldn't, you know, because there never was more than one Queen at
+a time. Do wake up, you heavy things!' she went on in an impatient tone; but
+there was no answer but a gentle snoring.
+
+The snoring got more distinct every minute, and sounded more like a tune: at
+last she could even make out the words, and she listened so eagerly that, when
+the two great heads vanished from her lap, she hardly missed them.
+
+She was standing before an arched doorway over which were the words QUEEN ALICE
+in large letters, and on each side of the arch there was a bell-handle; one was
+marked 'Visitors' Bell,' and the other 'Servants' Bell.'
+
+'I'll wait till the song's over,' thought Alice, 'and then I'll
+ring--the--WHICH bell must I ring?' she went on, very much puzzled by the
+names. 'I'm not a visitor, and I'm not a servant. There OUGHT to be one marked
+"Queen," you know--'
+
+Just then the door opened a little way, and a creature with a long beak put its
+head out for a moment and said 'No admittance till the week after next!' and
+shut the door again with a bang.
+
+Alice knocked and rang in vain for a long time, but at last, a very old Frog,
+who was sitting under a tree, got up and hobbled slowly towards her: he was
+dressed in bright yellow, and had enormous boots on.
+
+'What is it, now?' the Frog said in a deep hoarse whisper.
+
+Alice turned round, ready to find fault with anybody. 'Where's the servant
+whose business it is to answer the door?' she began angrily.
+
+'Which door?' said the Frog.
+
+Alice almost stamped with irritation at the slow drawl in which he spoke. 'THIS
+door, of course!'
+
+The Frog looked at the door with his large dull eyes for a minute: then he went
+nearer and rubbed it with his thumb, as if he were trying whether the paint
+would come off; then he looked at Alice.
+
+'To answer the door?' he said. 'What's it been asking of?' He was so hoarse
+that Alice could scarcely hear him.
+
+'I don't know what you mean,' she said.
+
+'I talks English, doesn't I?' the Frog went on. 'Or are you deaf? What did it
+ask you?'
+
+'Nothing!' Alice said impatiently. 'I've been knocking at it!'
+
+'Shouldn't do that--shouldn't do that--' the Frog muttered. 'Vexes it, you
+know.' Then he went up and gave the door a kick with one of his great feet.
+'You let IT alone,' he panted out, as he hobbled back to his tree, 'and it'll
+let YOU alone, you know.'
+
+At this moment the door was flung open, and a shrill voice was heard singing:
+
+poem{
+
+ '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."'
+
+}poem
+
+And hundreds of voices joined in the chorus:
+
+poem{
+
+ '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!'
+
+}poem
+
+Then followed a confused noise of cheering, and Alice thought to herself,
+'Thirty times three makes ninety. I wonder if any one's counting?' In a minute
+there was silence again, and the same shrill voice sang another verse;
+
+poem{
+
+ '"O Looking-Glass creatures," quothe 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!"'
+
+}poem
+
+Then came the chorus again:--
+
+poem{
+
+ '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!'
+
+}poem
+
+'Ninety times nine!' Alice repeated in despair, 'Oh, that'll never be done! I'd
+better go in at once--' and there was a dead silence the moment she appeared.
+
+Alice glanced nervously along the table, as she walked up the large hall, and
+noticed that there were about fifty guests, of all kinds: some were animals,
+some birds, and there were even a few flowers among them. 'I'm glad they've
+come without waiting to be asked,' she thought: 'I should never have known who
+were the right people to invite!'
+
+There were three chairs at the head of the table; the Red and White Queens had
+already taken two of them, but the middle one was empty. Alice sat down in it,
+rather uncomfortable in the silence, and longing for some one to speak.
+
+At last the Red Queen began. 'You've missed the soup and fish,' she said. 'Put
+on the joint!' And the waiters set a leg of mutton before Alice, who looked at
+it rather anxiously, as she had never had to carve a joint before.
+
+'You look a little shy; let me introduce you to that leg of mutton,' said the
+Red Queen. 'Alice--Mutton; Mutton--Alice.' The leg of mutton got up in the dish
+and made a little bow to Alice; and Alice returned the bow, not knowing whether
+to be frightened or amused.
+
+'May I give you a slice?' she said, taking up the knife and fork, and looking
+from one Queen to the other.
+
+'Certainly not,' the Red Queen said, very decidedly: 'it isn't etiquette to cut
+any one you've been introduced to. Remove the joint!' And the waiters carried
+it off, and brought a large plum-pudding in its place.
+
+'I won't be introduced to the pudding, please,' Alice said rather hastily, 'or
+we shall get no dinner at all. May I give you some?'
+
+But the Red Queen looked sulky, and growled 'Pudding--Alice; Alice--Pudding.
+Remove the pudding!' and the waiters took it away so quickly that Alice
+couldn't return its bow.
+
+However, she didn't see why the Red Queen should be the only one to give
+orders, so, as an experiment, she called out 'Waiter! Bring back the pudding!'
+and there it was again in a moment like a conjuring-trick. It was so large that
+she couldn't help feeling a LITTLE shy with it, as she had been with the
+mutton; however, she conquered her shyness by a great effort and cut a slice
+and handed it to the Red Queen.
+
+'What impertinence!' said the Pudding. 'I wonder how you'd like it, if I were
+to cut a slice out of YOU, you creature!'
+
+It spoke in a thick, suety sort of voice, and Alice hadn't a word to say in
+reply: she could only sit and look at it and gasp.
+
+'Make a remark,' said the Red Queen: 'it's ridiculous to leave all the
+conversation to the pudding!'
+
+'Do you know, I've had such a quantity of poetry repeated to me to-day,' Alice
+began, a little frightened at finding that, the moment she opened her lips,
+there was dead silence, and all eyes were fixed upon her; 'and it's a very
+curious thing, I think-- every poem was about fishes in some way. Do you know
+why they're so fond of fishes, all about here?'
+
+She spoke to the Red Queen, whose answer was a little wide of the mark. 'As to
+fishes,' she said, very slowly and solemnly, putting her mouth close to Alice's
+ear, 'her White Majesty knows a lovely riddle--all in poetry--all about fishes.
+Shall she repeat it?'
+
+'Her Red Majesty's very kind to mention it,' the White Queen murmured into
+Alice's other ear, in a voice like the cooing of a pigeon. 'It would be SUCH a
+treat! May I?'
+
+'Please do,' Alice said very politely.
+
+The White Queen laughed with delight, and stroked Alice's cheek. Then she
+began:
+
+poem{
+
+ '"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?'
+
+}poem
+
+'Take a minute to think about it, and then guess,' said the Red Queen.
+'Meanwhile, we'll drink your health--Queen Alice's health!' she screamed at the
+top of her voice, and all the guests began drinking it directly, and very
+queerly they managed it: some of them put their glasses upon their heads like
+extinguishers, and drank all that trickled down their faces--others upset the
+decanters, and drank the wine as it ran off the edges of the table--and three
+of them (who looked like kangaroos) scrambled into the dish of roast mutton,
+and began eagerly lapping up the gravy, 'just like pigs in a trough!' thought
+Alice.
+
+'You ought to return thanks in a neat speech,' the Red Queen said, frowning at
+Alice as she spoke.
+
+'We must support you, you know,' the White Queen whispered, as Alice got up to
+do it, very obediently, but a little frightened.
+
+'Thank you very much,' she whispered in reply, 'but I can do quite well
+without.'
+
+'That wouldn't be at all the thing,' the Red Queen said very decidedly: so
+Alice tried to submit to it with a good grace.
+
+('And they DID push so!' she said afterwards, when she was telling her sister
+the history of the feast. 'You would have thought they wanted to squeeze me
+flat!')
+
+In fact it was rather difficult for her to keep in her place while she made her
+speech: the two Queens pushed her so, one on each side, that they nearly lifted
+her up into the air: 'I rise to return thanks--' Alice began: and she really
+DID rise as she spoke, several inches; but she got hold of the edge of the
+table, and managed to pull herself down again.
+
+'Take care of yourself!' screamed the White Queen, seizing Alice's hair with
+both her hands. 'Something's going to happen!'
+
+And then (as Alice afterwards described it) all sorts of things happened in a
+moment. The candles all grew up to the ceiling, looking something like a bed of
+rushes with fireworks at the top. As to the bottles, they each took a pair of
+plates, which they hastily fitted on as wings, and so, with forks for legs,
+went fluttering about in all directions: 'and very like birds they look,' Alice
+thought to herself, as well as she could in the dreadful confusion that was
+beginning.
+
+At this moment she heard a hoarse laugh at her side, and turned to see what was
+the matter with the White Queen; but, instead of the Queen, there was the leg
+of mutton sitting in the chair. 'Here I am!' cried a voice from the soup
+tureen, and Alice turned again, just in time to see the Queen's broad
+good-natured face grinning at her for a moment over the edge of the tureen,
+before she disappeared into the soup.
+
+There was not a moment to be lost. Already several of the guests were lying
+down in the dishes, and the soup ladle was walking up the table towards Alice's
+chair, and beckoning to her impatiently to get out of its way.
+
+'I can't stand this any longer!' she cried as she jumped up and seized the
+table-cloth with both hands: one good pull, and plates, dishes, guests, and
+candles came crashing down together in a heap on the floor.
+
+'And as for YOU,' she went on, turning fiercely upon the Red Queen, whom she
+considered as the cause of all the mischief--but the Queen was no longer at her
+side--she had suddenly dwindled down to the size of a little doll, and was now
+on the table, merrily running round and round after her own shawl, which was
+trailing behind her.
+
+At any other time, Alice would have felt surprised at this, but she was far too
+much excited to be surprised at anything NOW. 'As for YOU,' she repeated,
+catching hold of the little creature in the very act of jumping over a bottle
+which had just lighted upon the table, 'I'll shake you into a kitten, that I
+will!'
+
+CHAPTER X - Shaking
+
+She took her off the table as she spoke, and shook her backwards and forwards
+with all her might.
+
+The Red Queen made no resistance whatever; only her face grew very small, and
+her eyes got large and green: and still, as Alice went on shaking her, she kept
+on growing shorter--and fatter--and softer--and rounder--and--
+
+CHAPTER XI - Waking
+
+--and it really WAS a kitten, after all.
+
+CHAPTER XII - Which Dreamed it?
+
+'Your majesty shouldn't purr so loud,' Alice said, rubbing her eyes, and
+addressing the kitten, respectfully, yet with some severity. 'You woke me out
+of oh! such a nice dream! And you've been along with me, Kitty--all through the
+Looking-Glass world. Did you know it, dear?'
+
+It is a very inconvenient habit of kittens (Alice had once made the remark)
+that, whatever you say to them, they ALWAYS purr. 'If they would only purr for
+"yes" and mew for "no," or any rule of that sort,' she had said, 'so that one
+could keep up a conversation! But how CAN you talk with a person if they always
+say the same thing?'
+
+On this occasion the kitten only purred: and it was impossible to guess whether
+it meant 'yes' or 'no.'
+
+So Alice hunted among the chessmen on the table till she had found the Red
+Queen: then she went down on her knees on the hearth-rug, and put the kitten
+and the Queen to look at each other. 'Now, Kitty!' she cried, clapping her
+hands triumphantly. 'Confess that was what you turned into!'
+
+('But it wouldn't look at it,' she said, when she was explaining the thing
+afterwards to her sister: 'it turned away its head, and pretended not to see
+it: but it looked a LITTLE ashamed of itself, so I think it MUST have been the
+Red Queen.')
+
+'Sit up a little more stiffly, dear!' Alice cried with a merry laugh. 'And
+curtsey while you're thinking what to--what to purr. It saves time, remember!'
+And she caught it up and gave it one little kiss, 'just in honour of having
+been a Red Queen.'
+
+'Snowdrop, my pet!' she went on, looking over her shoulder at the White Kitten,
+which was still patiently undergoing its toilet, 'when WILL Dinah have finished
+with your White Majesty, I wonder? That must be the reason you were so untidy
+in my dream-- Dinah! do you know that you're scrubbing a White Queen? Really,
+it's most disrespectful of you!
+
+'And what did DINAH turn to, I wonder?' she prattled on, as she settled
+comfortably down, with one elbow in the rug, and her chin in her hand, to watch
+the kittens. 'Tell me, Dinah, did you turn to Humpty Dumpty? I THINK you
+did--however, you'd better not mention it to your friends just yet, for I'm not
+sure.
+
+'By the way, Kitty, if only you'd been really with me in my dream, there was
+one thing you WOULD have enjoyed--I had such a quantity of poetry said to me,
+all about fishes! To-morrow morning you shall have a real treat. All the time
+you're eating your breakfast, I'll repeat "The Walrus and the Carpenter" to
+you; and then you can make believe it's oysters, dear!
+
+'Now, Kitty, let's consider who it was that dreamed it all. This is a serious
+question, my dear, and you should NOT go on licking your paw like that--as if
+Dinah hadn't washed you this morning! You see, Kitty, it MUST have been either
+me or the Red King. He was part of my dream, of course--but then I was part of
+his dream, too! WAS it the Red King, Kitty? You were his wife, my dear, so you
+ought to know--Oh, Kitty, DO help to settle it! I'm sure your paw can wait!'
+But the provoking kitten only began on the other paw, and pretended it hadn't
+heard the question.
+
+Which do YOU think it was?
+
+poem{
+
+ A boat beneath a sunny sky,
+ Lingering onward dreamily
+ In an evening of July--
+
+ Children three that nestle near,
+ Eager eye and willing ear,
+ Pleased a simple tale to hear--
+
+ Long has paled that sunny sky:
+ Echoes fade and memories die.
+ Autumn frosts have slain July.
+
+ Still she haunts me, phantomwise,
+ Alice moving under skies
+ Never seen by waking eyes.
+
+ Children yet, the tale to hear,
+ Eager eye and willing ear,
+ Lovingly shall nestle near.
+
+ In a Wonderland they lie,
+ Dreaming as the days go by,
+ Dreaming as the summers die:
+
+ Ever drifting down the stream--
+ Lingering in the golden gleam--
+ Life, what is it but a dream?
+
+}poem
+
+THE END