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“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 ca’n’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!”9

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.

JA BBER WOCKY11

’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves12

Did gyre and gimble13 in the wabe:

All mimsy14 were the borogoves,

And the mome raths15 outgrabe.16

“Beware the Jabberwock,17 my son!

The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!

Beware the Jubjub bird,18 and shun

The frumious Bandersnatch!”19

He took his vorpal20 sword in hand:

Long time the manxome21 foe he sought—

So rested he by the Tumtum tree, 22

And stood awhile in thought.

And, as in uffish thought23 he stood,

The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,

Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,24

And burbled25 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 galumphing26 back.

“And, hast thou slain the Jabberwock?

Come to my arms, my beamish27 boy!

O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!”28

He chortled 29 in his joy.

’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

Did 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 fll my head with ideas—only I don’t exactly know what they are! How ever, somebody killed something:30 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