The Complete Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

Author:Lewis Carroll [Carroll, Lewis]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wonderland Imprints
Published: 2010-12-12T08:00:00+00:00

Alice ran to the side of the ditch to look for him. She was rather startled by the fall, as for some time he had kept on very well, and she was afraid that he really was hurt this time. However, though she could see nothing but the soles of his feet, she was much relieved to hear that he was talking on in his usual tone. “All kinds of fastness,” he repeated: “but it was careless of him to put another man’s helmet on—with the man in it, too.”

“How can you go on talking so quietly, head downwards?” Alice asked, as she dragged him out by the feet, and laid him in a heap on the bank.

The Knight looked surprised at the question. “What does it matter where my body happens to be?” he said. “My mind goes on working all the same. In fact, the more head-downwards I am, the more I keep inventing new things.”

“Now the cleverest thing of the sort that I ever did,” he went on after a pause, “was inventing a new pudding during the meat-course.”

“In time to have it cooked for the next course?” said Alice. “Well, that was quick work, certainly!”

“Well, not the next course,” the Knight said in a slow thoughtful tone: “no, certainly not the next course.”

“Then it would have to be the next day. I suppose you wouldn’t have two pudding-courses in one dinner?”

“Well, not the next day,” the Knight repeated as before: “not the next day. In fact,” he went on, holding his head down, and his voice getting lower and lower, “I don’t believe that pudding ever was cooked! In fact, I don’t believe that pudding ever will be cooked! And yet it was a very clever pudding to invent.”

“What did you mean it to be made of?” Alice asked, hoping to cheer him up, for the poor Knight seemed quite low-spirited about it.

“It began with blotting-paper,” the Knight answered with a groan.

“That wouldn’t be very nice, I’m afraid —”

“Not very nice alone,” he interrupted, quite eagerly: “but you’ve no idea what a difference it makes, mixing it with other things—such as gunpowder and sealing-wax. And here I must leave you.” They had just come to the end of the wood.

Alice could only look puzzled: she was thinking of the pudding.

“You are sad,” the Knight said in an anxious tone: “let me sing you a song to comfort you.”

“Is it very long?” Alice asked, for she had heard a good deal of poetry that day.

“It’s long,” said the Knight, “but it’s very, very beautiful. Everybody that hears me sing it—either it brings the tears into their eyes, or else —”

“Or else what?” said Alice, for the Knight had made a sudden pause.

“Or else it doesn’t, you know. The name of the song is called ‘Haddocks’ Eyes’.”

“Oh, that’s the name of the song, is it?” Alice said, trying to feel interested.

“No, you don’t understand,” the Knight said, looking a little vexed. “That’s what the name is called. The name really is ‘The Aged Aged Man’.

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