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“Herald! read the accusation!” said the King.

On this the white rabbit blew three blasts on the trumpet, and then unrolled the parchment scroll, and read as follows:

“The Queen of Hearts she made some tarts

All on a summer day:

The Knave of Hearts he stole those tarts,

And took them quite away!”

“Now for the evidence,” said the King, “and then the sentence.”

“No!” said the Queen, “first the sentence, and then the evidence!”

“Nonsense!” cried Alice, so loudly that everybody jumped, “the idea of having the sentence first!”

“Hold your tongue!” said the Queen.

“I won’t!” said Alice, “you’re nothing but a pack of cards! Who cares for you?”

At this the whole pack rose up into the air, and came flying down upon her: she gave a little scream of fright, and tried to beat them off, and found herself lying on the bank, with her head in the lap of her sister, who was gently brushing away some leaves that had fluttered down from the trees on to her face.

“Wake up! Alice dear!” said her sister, “what a nice long sleep you’ve had!”

“Oh, I’ve had such a curious dream!” said Alice, and she told her sister all her Adventures Under Ground, as you have read them, and when she had finished, her sister kissed her and said “it was a curious dream, dear, certainly! But now run in to your tea: it’s getting late.”

So Alice ran off, thinking while she ran (as well she might) what a wonderful dream it had been.

But her sister sat there some while longer, watching the setting sun, and thinking of little Alice and her Adventures, till she too began dreaming after a fashion, and this was her dream:

She saw an ancient city, and a quiet river winding near it along the plain, and up the stream went slowly gliding a boat with a merry party of children on board — she could hear their voices and laughter like music over the water — and among them was another little Alice, who sat listening with bright eager eyes to a tale that was being told, and she listened for the words of the tale, and lo! it was the dream of her own little sister. So the boat wound slowly along, beneath the bright summer-day, with its merry crew and its music of voices and laughter, till it passed round one of the many turnings of the stream, and she saw it no more.

Then she thought, (in a dream within the dream, as it were,) how this same little Alice would, in the after-time, be herself a grown woman: and how she would keep, through her riper years, the simple and loving heart of her childhood: and how she would gather around her other little children, and make their eyes bright and eager with many a wonderful tale, perhaps even with these very adventures of the little Alice of long-ago: and how she would feel with all their simple sorrows, and find a pleasure in all their simple joys, remembering her own child-life, and the happy summer days.

“ALICE” ON THE STAGE

(The Theatre, April, 1887)

“Look here; here’s all this Judy’s clothes falling to pieces again.” Such were the pensive words of Mr. Thomas Codlin; and they may fitly serve as a motto for a writer who has set himself the unusual task of passing in review a set of puppets that are virtually his own—the stage embodiments of his own dream-children.

Not that the play itself is in any sense mine. The arrangements, in dramatic form, of a story written without the slightest idea that it would be so adapted, was a task that demanded powers denied to me, but possessed in an eminent degree, so far as I can judge, by Mr. Savile Clarke. I do not feel myself qualified to criticise his play as a play; nor shall I venture on any criticism of the players as players.

What is it, then, I have set myself to do? And what possible claim have I to be heard? My answer must be that, as the writer of the two stories thus adapted, and the originator (as I believe, for at least I have not consciously borrowed them) of the “airy nothings” for which Mr. Saville Clarke has so skilfully provided, if not a name, at least, a “local habitation,” I may without boastfulness