“Do you hear the snow against the window panes, Kitty? How nice and soft it sounds! Just as if some one was kissing the window all over outside. I wonder if the snow loves the trees and fields that it kisses them so gently? And then it covers them up snug you know with a white quilt; and perhaps it says, ‘Go to sleep, darlings, till the summer comes again,’ and when they wake up in the summer, Kitty, they dress themselves all in green, and dance about whenever the wind blows. ‘Oh, that’s very pretty!’ cried Alice, dropping the ball of worsted to clap her hands. ‘I do so wish it was true. I’m sure the woods look sleepy in the autumn when the leaves are getting brown.’”
We are sure, too, Alice was getting sleepy in the glow of the firelight with the black kitten purring a lullaby on her lap. She had probably been playing with the Chessmen and pretending as usual, so it is small wonder that the heavy eyes closed, and the black kitten grew into the shape of the Red Queen—and so the story began.
It was the work of a few minutes to be on speaking terms with the whole Chess Court which Alice found assembled. The back of the clock on the mantelshelf looked down upon the scene with the grinning face of an old man, and even the vase wore a smiling visage. There was a good fire burning in this looking-glass grate, but the flames went the other way of course, and down among the ashes, back of the grate, the Chessmen were walking about in pairs.
Sir John Tenniel’s picture of the assembled Chessmen is very clever. The Red King and the Red Queen are in the foreground. The White Bishop is taking his ease on a lump of coal, with a smaller lump for a footstool, while the two Castles are enjoying a little promenade near by. In the background are the Red and White Knights and Bishops and all the Pawns. He has put so much life and expression into the faces of the little Chessmen that we cannot help regarding them as real people, and we cannot blame Alice for taking them very much in earnest.
She naturally found difficulty in accustoming herself to Looking-Glass Land, and the first thing she had to learn was how to read Looking-Glass fashion. She happened to pick up a book that she found on a table in the Looking-Glass Room, but when she tried to read it, it seemed to be written in an unknown language. Here is what she saw:
Then a bright thought occurred to her, and holding the book up before a looking-glass, this is what she read in quite clear English, no matter how it looks, for there is certainly no intelligent child who could fail to understand it.
JABBERWOCKY.
’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
“Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!”
He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought—
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.
And, as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled 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 galumphing back.
“And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!”
He chortled 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.
Alice of course puzzled over this for a long time.
“‘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 fill my head with ideas, only I don’t exactly know what they are! However, somebody killed something—that’s clear at any rate.’”