In the middle of the day, as usual, Isa had her dinner: but this time it was grander than usual. There was a dish of “Meringues” (this is pronounced “Marangs”), which Isa thought so good that she would have liked to live on them all the rest of her life.
They took a little walk in the afternoon, and in the middle of Broad Street they saw a cross buried in the ground, very near the place where the Martyrs were burned. Then they went into the gardens of Trinity College (built in 1554) to see the “Lime Walk”, a pretty little avenue of lime-trees. The great iron “gates” at the end of the garden are not real gates, but all done in one piece: and they couldn’t open them, even if you knocked all day. Isa thought them a miserable sham.
Then they went into the “Parks” (this word doesn’t mean “parks of grass, with trees and deer,” but “parks” of guns: that is, great rows of cannons, which stood there when King Charles the First was in Oxford, and Oliver Cromwell fighting against him.
They saw “Mansfield College”, a new College just begun to be built, with such tremendously narrow windows that Isa was afraid the young gentlemen who come there will not be able to see to learn their lessons, and will go away from Oxford just as wise as they came.
Then they went to the evening service at New College, and heard some beautiful singing and organ-playing. Then back to Ch. Ch., in pouring rain. Isa tried to count the drops: but, when she had counted four millions, three hundred and seventy-eight thousand, two hundred and forty-seven, she got tired of counting, and left off.
After dinner, Isa got somebody or other (she is not sure who it was) to finish this story for her. Then she went to bed, and dreamed she was fixed in the middle of Oxford, with her feet fast to the ground, and her head between the bars of a cellar-window, in a sort of final tableau. Then she dreamed the curtain came down, and the people all called out “encore!” But she cried out “Oh, not again! It would be too dreadful to have my visit all over again!” But, on second thoughts, she smiled in her sleep, and said “Well, do you know, after all, I think I wouldn’t mind so very much if I did have it all over again!”.
Lewis Carroll.
THE END