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A Mad Tea Party
From
Alice in Wonderland
Lewis
Carroll
There was a table set out under
a tree in front of the house, and the March Hare and the Hatter were having tea
at it: a Dormouse was sitting between them, fast asleep, and the other two were
using it as a cushion, resting their elbows on it, and talking over its head. "Very uncomfortable for the
Dormouse," thought Alice; "only as it's
asleep, I suppose it doesn't mind."
The table was a large one, but
the three were all crowded together at one corner of it. "No room! No room!"
they cried out when they saw Alice coming. "There's plenty of room!" said Alice indignantly, and she sat down in a
large armchair at one end of the table.
"Have some wine," the March
Hare said in an encouraging tone.
Alice looked all round the
table, but there was nothing on it but tea, "I don't see any wine," she
remarked.
"There isn't
any," said
the March Hare.
"Then it wasn't very civil
of you to offer it," said Alice angrily.
"I didn't know it was your
table," said Alice: "it's laid for a great many more than three."
"Your hair wants
cutting,"
said the Hatter. He had been looking at Alice for some time with great
curiosity, and this was his first speech.
"You should learn not to make
personal remarks," Alice said with some severity: "it's very rude."
The Hatter opened his eyes very
wide on hearing this; but all he said
was "Why is a raven like a writing desk?
"Come, we shall have some fun
now!" thought Alice. I'm glad they've begun asking riddles—"I believe
I can guess that," she added aloud.
"Do you mean that you think
you can find out the answer to it?" said the March Hare.
"Exactly so," said Alice.
"Then you should say what you
mean," the March Hare went on.
"I do," Alice hastily
replied; "at least—at least I mean what I say—that's the same thing, you
know."
"Not the same thing a
bit!"
said the Hatter. "Why, you might just as well say that ‘I see what I eat'
is the same thing as ‘I eat what I see'!"
"You might just as will
say," added the March Hare, "that ‘I like what I get' is the same thing
as ‘I get what I like'!"
"You might just as well
say," added the Dormouse, which seemed to be talking in its sleep, "that
‘I breathe when I sleep' is the same thing as ‘I sleep when I breathe'!"
"It is the same thing with you," said the Hatter, and here the
conversation dropped, and the party sat silent for a minute, while Alice thought
over all she could remember about ravens and writing desks, which wasn't much.
The Hatter was the first to
break the silence. "What day of the month is it?" he said, turning to Alice:
he had taken his watch out of his pocket, and was looking at it uneasily,
shaking it every now and then, and holding it to his ear.
Alice considered a little, and
then said, "The fourth."
"Two days wrong!" sighed the
Hatter. "I told you butter wouldn't suit the works!" he added, looking
angrily at the March Hare.
"It was the best butter," the March Hare meekly replied.
"Yes, but some crumbs must
have got in as well," the Hatter grumbled: "you shouldn't have put it in
with the bread knife."
The March Hare took the watch
and liked at it gloomily: then he dipped it into his cup of tea, and looked at
it again: but he could think of nothing better to say than his first remark, "It was the best butter, you
know."
Alice had been looking over his
shoulder with some curiosity. "What a funny watch!" she remarked. "It
tells the day of the month, and doesn't tell what o'clock it is!"
"Why should it?" muttered
the Hatter. "Does your watch tell
you what year it is?"
"Of course not," Alice
replied very readily: "but that's because it stays the same year for such a
long time together."
"Which is just the case with mine,"
said the Hatter.
Alice felt dreadfully puzzled.
The Hatter's remark seemed to her to have no sort of meaning in it, and yet it
was certainly English. "I don't quite understand you," she said, as
politely as she could.
"The Dormouse is asleep
again," said the Hatter, and he poured a little hot tea upon its nose.
The Dormouse shook its head
impatiently, and said, without opening its eyes, "Of course, of course: just
what I was going to remark myself."
"Have you guessed the riddle
yet?" the Hatter said, turning to Alice again.
"No, I give it
up," Alice
replied. "What's the answer?"
"I haven't the slightest
idea," said the Hatter.
"Nor I, " said the March
Hare.
Alice sighed wearily.
"I think
you might do something better with time," she said, "than wasting it in
asking it riddles that have no answers."
"If you knew Time as well as I
do," said the Hatter, "you wouldn't talk about wasting it. It's him."
"I don't know what you
mean," said Alice.
"Of course you
don't!
" the Hatter said, tossing his head contemptuously."I dare say you never even
spoke to Time!"
"Perhaps not," Alice
cautiously replied; "but I know I have to beat time when I learn music."
"Ah! That accounts for
it,"
said the Hatter. "He won't stand beating. Now, if you only kept on good
terms with him, he'd do almost anything you liked with the clock. For
instance, suppose it were nine o'clock in the morning, just time to begin
lessons: you'd only have to whisper a hint to Time, and round goes the clock
in a twinkling! Half past one, time for dinner!"
("I only wish it
was," the
March Hare said to itself in a whisper.)
"That would be grand,
certainly," said Alice thoughtfully; "but then—I shouldn't be hungry for
it, you know."
"Not at first
perhaps," said
the Hatter: "but you could keep it to half past one as long as you liked."
"Is that the way you
manage?" Alice asked.
The Hatter shook his head
mournfully. "Not I!" he replied. "We quarreled last March—just before he
went mad, you know—" (pointing with his teaspoon at the March Hare) "—it
was at the great concert given by the Queen of Hearts, and I had to sing
Twinkle, twinkle, little bat!
How I wonder what
you're at!
You know the song,
perhaps?"
"I've heard something like
it," said Alice.
"It goes on, you know," the Hatter continued, "in this way:—
Up above the world you fly,
Like a tea tray in the sky.
Twinkle,
twinkle—"
Here the Dormouse shook itself,
and began singing in its sleep "Twinkle, twinkle, twinkle, twinkle—" and
went on so long that they had to pinch it to make it stop.
"Well, I'd hardly finished
the first verse," said the Hatter, "when the Queen bawled out ‘He's
murdering the time! Off with his head!'"
"How dreadfully
savage!"
exclaimed Alice.
"And ever since
that," the
Hatter went on in a mournful tone, "he won't do a thing I ask! It's always
six o'clock now."
A bright idea came into
Alice's head. "Is that the reason so many tea things are put out here?"
she asked.
"Yes, that's
it," said the
Hatter with a sigh: "it's always teatime, and we've no time to wash the
things between whiles."
"Then you keep moving round, I
suppose?" said Alice.
"Exactly so," said the
Hatter: "as the things get used up."
"But what happens when you
come to the beginning again?" Alice ventured to ask.
"Suppose we change the
subject," the March Hare interrupted, yawning. "I'm getting tired of this.
I vote the young lady tells us a story."
"I'm afraid I
don't know
one," said Alice, rather alarmed at the proposal.
"Then the Dormouse
shall!"
they both cried. "Wake up, Dormouse!" And they pinched it on both sides at
once.
The Dormouse slowly opened its
eyes. "I wasn't asleep," it said in a hoarse, feeble voice, "I heard
every word you fellows were saying."
"Tell us a story!" said the
March Hare.
"Yes, please do!" pleaded
Alice.
"And be quick about
it,"
added the Hatter, "or you'll be asleep again before it's done."
"Once upon a time there were
three little sisters," the Dormouse began in a great hurry; "and their names
were Elsie, Laxie, and Tillie; and they lived at the bottom of a well—"
"What did they live
on?"
said Alice, who always took a great interest in questions of eating and
drinking.
"They lived on
treacle,"
said the Dormouse, after thinking a minute or two.
"They couldn't have done
that, you know," Alice gently remarked. "They'd have been ill."
"So they were," said the
Dormouse; "very ill."
Alice tried a little to fancy to
herself what such an extraordinary way of living would be like, but it puzzled
her too much: so she went on: "But why did they live at the bottom of a well?"
"Take some more
tea," the
March Hare said to Alice, very earnestly.
"I've had nothing
yet,"
Alice replied in an offended tone: "so I can't take more."
"You mean you can't take less,"
said the Hatter: "it's very easy to take more
than nothing."
"Nobody asked your
opinion," said Alice.
"Who's making personal
remarks now?" the Hatter asked triumphantly.
Alice did not quite know what
to say to this: so she helped herself to some tea and bread and butter, and then
turned to the Dormouse, and repeated her question. "Why did they live at the
bottom of a well?"
The Dormouse again took a minute
or two to think about it, and then said, "It was a treacle well."
"There's no such
thing!"
Alice was beginning very angrily, but the Hatter and the March Hare went "Sh!
Sh!" and the Dormouse sulkily remarked, "If you can't be civil, you'd
better finish the story yourself."
"No, please go
on!" Alice
said very humbly. "I won't interrupt you again. I dare say there may be one."
"One, indeed!" said the
Dormouse indignantly. However, he consented to go on. "And so these three
little sisters—they were learning to draw, you know—"
"What did they
draw?" said
Alice, quite forgetting her promise.
"Treacle," said the
Dormouse, without considering at all, this time.
"I want a clean
cup,"
interrupted the Hatter: "Let's all move one place on."
He moved on as he spoke, and the
Dormouse followed him; the March Hare moved into the Dormouse's place, and
Alice rather unwillingly took the place of the March Hare. The Hatter was the
only one who go any advantage from the change; and Alice was a good deal worse
off than before, as the March Hare had upset the milk jug into his plate.
Alice did not wish to offend the
Dormouse again, so she began very cautiously: "But I don't understand. Where
did they draw the treacle from?"
"You can draw water out of a
water well," said the Hatter; "so I should think you could draw treacle out
of a treacle well—eh, stupid?"
"But they were in
the well," Alice said to the Dormouse, not choosing to notice this last
remark.
"Of course they
were," said
the Dormouse; "well in."
This answer so confused poor
Alice, that she let the Dormouse go on for some time without interrupting it.
"They were learning to
draw," the Dormouse went on, yawning and rubbing its eyes, for it was getting
very sleepy; "and they drew all manner of things—everything that begins with
an M—"
"Why with an M?" said Alice.
"Why not?" said the March
Hare.
Alice was silent.
The Dormouse had closed its eyes
by this time, and was going off into a doze; but, on being pinched by the
Hatter, it woke up again with a little shriek, and went on : "—that begins
with an M, such as mousetraps, and the moon, and memory, and muchness—you know
you say things are ‘much of a muchness'—did you ever see such a thing as a
drawing of a muchne4ss!"
"Really, now you ask
me,"
said Alice, very much confused, "I don't think—"
"Then you shouldn't
talk,"
said the Hatter.
This piece of rudeness was more
than Alice could bear: she got up in great disgust, and walked off: the Dormouse
fell asleep instantly, and neither of the others took the least notice of her
going, though she looked back once or twice, half hoping that they would call
after her: the last time she saw them, they were trying to put the Dormouse into
the teapot.
"At any rate I'll never go
there again!" said Alice, as she picked her way through the wood, "It's
the stupidest tea party I ever was at in all my life!"
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