Through the Looking-Glass
‘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.”
“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 rattle-_snake_, 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