Then he explained why it was that the name “Boojum” made him faint. It seems that a dear uncle, after whom he was named, gave him some wholesome advice about the way to hunt a snark, and this uncle seemed to be a man of much influence:
“‘You may seek it with thimbles, and seek it with care;
You may hunt it with forks and hope;
You may threaten its life with a railway-share;
You may charm it with smiles and soap——’”
“‘That’s exactly the method,’ the Bellman bold
In a hasty parenthesis cried,
‘That’s exactly the way I have always been told
That the capture of Snarks should be tried!’”
“‘But, oh, beamish nephew, beware of the day,
If your Snark be a Boojum! For then
You will softly and suddenly vanish away,
And never be met with again!’”
This of course was a very sad thing to think of, for the man with no name, who was named after his uncle, and called in courtesy the Baker, had grown to be a great favorite with the crew; but they had no time to waste in sentiment—they were in the Snark’s own land, they had the Bellman’s orders in Fit the Fourth—the Hunting:
“To seek it with thimbles, to seek it with care;
To pursue it with forks and hope;
To threaten its life with a railway share;
To charm it with smiles and soap!
“For the Snark’s a peculiar creature, that won’t
Be caught in a commonplace way.
Do all that you know, and try all that you don’t:
Not a chance must be wasted to-day!”
Then they all went to work according to their own special way, just as we would do now in our hunt for happiness through the chasms and crags of every day.
Fit the Fifth is the Beaver’s Lesson, when the Butcher discourses wisely on arithmetic and natural history, two subjects a butcher should know pretty thoroughly, and this is proved:
“While the Beaver confessed, with affectionate looks
More eloquent even than tears,
It had learned in ten minutes far more than all books
Would have taught it in seventy years.”
The Barrister’s Dream occupied Fit the Sixth, and here our poet’s keen wit gave many a slap at the law and the lawyers.
The Banker’s Fate in Fit the Seventh was sad enough; he was grabbed by the Bandersnatch (that “frumious” “portmanteau” creature that we met before in the Lay of the Jabberwocky) and worried and tossed about until he completely lost his senses. Some bankers are that way in the pursuit of fortune, which means happiness to them; but fortune may turn, like the Bandersnatch, and shake their minds out of their bodies, and so they left this Banker to his fate. That is the way of people when bankers are in trouble, because they were reckless and not always careful to
“Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch.”