“Alice did not like the tone of this remark and thought it would be well to introduce some other subject of conversation.”
Then the Cook began throwing things about, and the Duchess, to quiet the howling Baby, sang the following beautiful lullaby, which she emphasized by a violent shake at the end of every line. Considering Lewis Carroll’s rather strong feeling on the boy question, they were most appropriate lines, indeed.
Speak roughly to your little boy,
And beat him when he sneezes;
He only does it to annoy,
Because he know it teases.
Chorus.
(In which the Cook and the Baby joined.)
Wow! wow! wow!
I speak severely to my boy,
I beat him when he sneezes,
For he can thoroughly enjoy
The pepper when he pleases!
Chorus.
Wow! wow! wow!
Imagine the quiet “don” beating time to this beautiful measure, his blue eyes gleaming with fun, his expressive voice shaded to just the right tones to give color to the chorus, while the little girls chimed in at the proper moment. It was no trouble for him to make rhymes, being endowed with this wonderful gift of nonsense, and in conversation he was equally clever. He gave the Duchess quite the air of a learned lady, even though she did not know that mustard was a vegetable. When Alice suggested that it was a mineral, she was quite ready to agree. “‘There’s a large mustard mine near here,’ she observed, ‘and the moral of that is’ [the Duchess had a moral for everything], ‘The more there is of mine—the less there is of yours.’ ‘Oh, I know!’ exclaimed Alice, who had not attended to this last remark, ‘it’s a vegetable. It doesn’t look like one but it is.’
“‘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 to put it 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,’ said Alice, 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 pleasant tone.
Alice’s talk with the Cheshire Cat, which had the remarkable power of appearing and vanishing in portions, the table gossip at the Mad Tea Party, to which she was an uninvited guest, are too well-known to quote. Many a time the Mad Tea Party has been the theme of some nursery play or school entertainment. The Mad Hatter and the March Hare were certainly the maddest things that ever were. When the Hatter complained of his watch being two days wrong, he turned angrily to the March Hare, saying:
“‘I told you butter wouldn’t suit the works.’
“‘It was the best butter,’ the March Hare meekly replied.