The Modern Library Children's Classics

by Kenneth Grahame

  “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-book8 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.9

  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.10

  ’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 borogroves,

  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 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 flowerbed, 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:1 “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 ca’n’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 Violet2 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.”

  “They’re done up close, like a dahlia,” said the Tiger-lily: “not tumbled about, like yours.”

  “But that’s not your fault,” the Rose added kindly: “you’re beginning to fade, you know—and then one ca’n’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 kind that has nine spikes, you know.”

  “Where does she wear them?” 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, 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 ca’n’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.3

  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 po
int, 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 ca’n’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 chess-board!” 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 no breath left to say so.