“‘Swim after them!’ screamed the Gryphon.
“‘Turn a somersault in the sea!’ cried the Mock Turtle, capering wildly about.
“‘Change lobsters again!’ yelled the Gryphon at the top of its voice.
“‘Back to land again, and—that’s all the first figure,’ said the Mock Turtle, suddenly dropping his voice, and the two creatures who had been jumping about like mad things all this time sat down again, very sadly and quietly, and looked at Alice.”
Who could read this without laughing, with no reason for the laugh but sheer delight and sympathy with the story-teller, and with dancing and motion and all the rest of it. If anyone begins to hunt for the reasons why we like “Alice in Wonderland” that person is either very, very sleepy, or she has left her youth so far behind her that, like the Lory, she absolutely refuses to tell her age, in which case she must be as old as the hills.
Then the dance, which the two gravely performed for the little girl, and who can forget the song of the Mock Turtle?
“Will you walk a little faster!” said a whiting to a snail,
“There’s a porpoise close behind us, and he’s treading on my tail.
See how eagerly the lobsters and the turtles all advance!
They are waiting on the shingle—will you come and join the dance?
Will you, won’t you, will you, won’t you, will you join the dance?
Will you, won’t you, will you, won’t you, won’t you join the dance?
“You can really have no notion how delightful it will be
When they take us up and throw us, with the lobsters, out to sea!”
But the snail replied, “Too far, too far!” and gave a look askance—
Said he thanked the whiting kindly, but he would not join the dance.
Would not, could not, would not, could not, would not join the dance.
Would not, could not, would not, could not, could not join the dance.
“What matters it how far we go?” his scaly friend replied,
“There is another shore, you know, upon the other side,
The farther off from England the nearer is to France;
Then turn not pale, beloved snail, but come and join the dance.
Will you, won’t you, will you, won’t you, will you join the dance?
Will you, won’t you, will you, won’t you, won’t you join the dance?”
Then Alice tried to repeat “’Tis the voice of the Sluggard,” but she was so full of the Lobster Quadrille that the words came like this:
’Tis the voice of the lobster, I heard him declare,
“You have baked me too brown, I must sugar my hair.”
As a duck with its eyelids, so he with his nose
Trims his belt and his buttons, and turns out his toes.
The whole time she was in Wonderland she never by any chance recited anything correctly, and through all of her wanderings she never met anything in the shape of a little boy, except the infant son of the Duchess, who after all turned out to be a pig and vanished in the woods. The “roundabouts” played no parts in “Alice in Wonderland,” and yet—to a man—they love it to this day.