Through the Looking Glass

“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-book 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 look 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.