CHAPTER IX.
MORE OF “ALICE THROUGH THE LOOKING-GLASS.”
ix years had passed since Alice took her trip through Wonderland, and, strange to say, she had not grown very much older, for Time has the trick of standing still in Fairyland, and when Lewis Carroll pushed her through the Looking-Glass she told everyone she met on the other side that she was seven years and six months old, not very much older, you see, than the Alice of Long Ago, with the elf-locks and the dreamy eyes. The real Alice was in truth six years older now, but real people never count in Fairyland, and surely no girl of a dozen years or more would have been able to squeeze through the other side of a Looking-Glass. Still, though so very young, Alice was quite used to travel, and knew better how to deal with all the queer people she met after her experiences in Wonderland.
Mirrors are strange things. Alice had often wondered what lay behind the big one over the parlor mantel, and wondering with Alice meant doing, for presto! up she climbed to the mantelshelf. It was easy enough to push through, for she did not have to use the slightest force, and the glass melted at her touch into a sheet of mist and there she was on the other side!
In the interval between the two “Alices,” a certain poetic streak had become strongly marked in Lewis Carroll. To him a child’s soul was like the mirror behind which little Alice peeped out from its “other side,” and gave us the reflection of her child-thoughts.
“Only a dream,” we may say, but then child-life is dream-life. So much is “make-believe” that “every day” is dipped in its golden light. It was a dainty fancy to hold us spellbound at the mirror, and many a little girl, quite “unbeknownst” to the “grown-ups,” has tried her small best to squeeze through the looking-glass just as Alice did. In the days of our grandmothers, when the cheval glass swung in a frame, the “make believe” came easier, for one could creep under it or behind it, instead of through it, with much the same result. But nowadays, with looking-glasses built in the walls, how can one pretend properly!
If fairies only knew what examples they were to the average small girl and small boy, they would be very careful about the things they did. Fortunately they are old-fashioned fairies, and have not yet learned to ride in automobiles or flying-machines, else there’s no telling what might happen.
Alice was always lucky in finding herself in the very best society—nothing more or less than royalty itself. But the Royal Court of Cards was not to be compared with the Royal Court of Chessmen, which she found behind the fireplace when she jumped down on the other side of the mantel. Of course, it was only “pretending” from the beginning; a romp with the kittens toward the close of a short winter’s day, a little girl curled up in an armchair beside the fire with the kitten in her lap, while Dinah, the mother cat, sat near by washing little Snowdrop’s face, the snow falling softly without, Alice was just the least bit drowsy, and so she talked to keep awake.