Through The Looking Glass

‘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:

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

This was the poem that Alice read:

JABBERWOCKY

‘Twas brillig, and the slithy tovesDid 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 shunThe 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 whiffing through the tulgey wood,And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! And through and throughThe vorpal blade went snicker-snack!He left it dead, and with its headHe 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 tovesDid gyre and gimble in the wabe:All mimsy were the borogoves,And the mome raths outgrabe.

‘It seems very pretty,’ she said when she had finished it, ‘but it’s rather hard to understand!’ (You see she didn’t like to confess even to herself, that she couldn’t make it out at all.) ‘Somehow it seems to fill my head with ideas – only I don’t exactly know what they are! However, somebody killed something: that’s clear, at any rate – ‘But oh!’ thought Alice, suddenly jumping up, ‘if I don’t make haste I shall have to go back through the Looking-Glass, before I’ve seen what the rest of the house is like! Let’s have a look at the garden first!’ She was out of the room in a moment, and ran down stairs – or, at least, it wasn’t exactly running, but a new invention 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 doorpost. 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 2 The Garden of Live Flowers (#ulink_9d9f7168-4420-5623-91f5-8129c98ca461)

‘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 couldn’t 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 could bark,’ said the Rose.

‘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.