1) 'Curiouser and curiouser!' cried Alice.
2) 'But then,' thought Alice. 'shall
I never get any older than I am now? That'll be a comfort, one way--never to be an old woman--but then--always
to have lessons to learn!'
3) `Who are YOU?' said the Caterpillar. This was not an encouraging opening for a conversation.
Alice replied, rather shyly, `I--I hardly know, sir, just at present-- at least I know who I WAS when
I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then.'
4) `Keep your temper,' said the Caterpillar.
5) `But I don't want to go among mad
people,' Alice remarked. `Oh, you can't help that,' said the Cat: `we're all mad here. I'm mad.
You're mad.' `How do you know I'm mad?' said Alice. `You must be,' said the Cat, `or you wouldn't
have come here.' Alice didn't think that proved it at all; however, she went on` And how do you know
that you're mad?' `To begin with,' said the Cat, `a dog's not mad. You grant that?' `I suppose
so,' said Alice. `Well, then,' the Cat went on, `you see, a dog growls when it's angry, and wags
its tail when it's pleased. Now I growl when I'm pleased, and wag my tail when I'm angry.
Therefore I'm mad.' 6) The
Queen turned crimson with fury, and, after glaring at her for a moment like a wild beast, screamed `Off
with her head! Off--' `Nonsense!'
said Alice, very loudly and decidedly, and the Queen was silent. The King laid his hand upon her
arm, and timidly said `Consider, my dear: she is only a child!'
7) `Get to your places!' shouted the Queen in a voice of thunder, and people began running about in
all directions, tumbling up against each other; however, they got settled down in a minute or two, and
the game began. Alice thought she had never seen such a curious croquet-ground in her life; it
was all ridges and furrows; the balls were live hedgehogs, the mallets live flamingoes, and the soldiers
had to double themselves up and to stand on their hands and feet, to make the arches.
The chief difficulty Alice found at first was in managing
her flamingo: she succeeded in getting its body tucked away, comfortably enough, under her arm, with
its legs hanging down, but generally, just as she had got its neck nicely straightened out, and was
going to give the hedgehog a blow with its head, it WOULD twist itself round and look up in her face,
with such a puzzled expression that she could not help bursting out laughing: and when she had got its
head down, and was going to begin again, it was very provoking to find that the hedgehog had unrolled
itself, and was in the act of crawling away: besides all this, there was generally a ridge or furrow
in the way wherever she wanted to send the hedgehog to, and, as the doubled-up soldiers were always
getting up and walking off to other parts of the ground, Alice soon came to the conclusion that it was
a very difficult game indeed.
The players all played at once without waiting for turns, quarrelling all the while, and fighting for
the hedgehogs; and in a very short time the Queen was in a furious passion, and went stamping about,
and shouting `Off with his head!' or `Off with her head!' about once in a minute.
8) `A cat may look at a king,' said Alice. `I've
read that in some book, but I don't remember where.'
`Tut, tut, child!' said the Duchess. `Everything's got a moral, if only you can find it.' And
she squeezed herself up closer to Alice's side as she spoke.
9) `I quite agree with you,' said the Duchess; `and the moral of that is--Be what you would seem to
be--or if you'd like it put more simply--Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it might
appear to others that what you were or might have been was not otherwise than what you had been would
have appeared to them to be otherwise.'
`I think I should understand that better,' Alice said very politely, `if I had it written down: but
I can't quite follow it as you say it.'
`That's nothing to what I could say if I chose,' the Duchess replied, in a pleased tone.
10) `Now, I give you fair warning,' shouted
the Queen, stamping on the ground as she spoke; `either you or your head must be off, and that in about
half no time! Take your choice!'
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