Through the Looking-Glass: And What Alice Found There by Lewis Carroll

Author:Lewis Carroll
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: Fantasy literature
Publisher: Standard Ebooks
Published: 2017-10-31T00:52:28+00:00

“That last line is much too long for the po­etry,” she ad­ded, al­most out loud, for­get­ting that Humpty Dumpty would hear her.

“Don’t stand there chat­ter­ing to your­self like that,” Humpty Dumpty said, look­ing at her for the first time, “but tell me your name and your busi­ness.”

“My name is Alice, but—”

“It’s a stu­pid enough name!” Humpty Dumpty in­ter­rup­ted im­pa­tiently. “What does it mean?”

“Must a name mean some­thing?” Alice asked doubt­fully.

“Of course it must,” Humpty Dumpty said with a short laugh: “my name means the shape I am—and a good hand­some shape it is, too. With a name like yours, you might be any shape, al­most.”

“Why do you sit out here all alone?” said Alice, not wish­ing to be­gin an ar­gu­ment.

“Why, be­cause there’s nobody with me!” cried Humpty Dumpty. “Did you think I didn’t know the an­swer to that? Ask an­oth­er.”

“Don’t you think you’d be safer down on the ground?” Alice went on, not with any idea of mak­ing an­oth­er riddle, but simply in her good-natured anxi­ety for the queer creature. “That wall is so very nar­row!”

“What tre­mend­ously easy riddles you ask!” Humpty Dumpty growled out. “Of course I don’t think so! Why, if ever I did fall off—which there’s no chance of—but if I did—” Here he pursed his lips and looked so sol­emn and grand that Alice could hardly help laugh­ing. “If I did fall,” he went on, “the King has prom­ised me—ah, you may turn pale, if you like! You didn’t think I was go­ing to say that, did you? The King has prom­ised me—with his very own mouth—to—to—”

“To send all his horses and all his men,” Alice in­ter­rup­ted, rather un­wisely.

“Now I de­clare that’s too bad!” Humpty Dumpty cried, break­ing in­to a sud­den pas­sion. “You’ve been listen­ing at doors—and be­hind trees—and down chim­neys—or you couldn’t have known it!”

“I haven’t, in­deed!” Alice said very gently. “It’s in a book.”

“Ah, well! They may write such things in a book,” Humpty Dumpty said in a calmer tone. “That’s what you call a His­tory of Eng­land, that is. Now, take a good look at me! I’m one that has spoken to a King, I am: may­hap you’ll nev­er see such an­oth­er: and to show you I’m not proud, you may shake hands with me!” And he grinned al­most from ear to ear, as he leant for­wards (and as nearly as pos­sible fell off the wall in do­ing so) and offered Alice his hand. She watched him a little anxiously as she took it. “If he smiled much more, the ends of his mouth might meet be­hind,” she thought: “and then I don’t know what would hap­pen to his head! I’m afraid it would come off!”

“Yes, all his horses and all his men,” Humpty Dumpty went on. “They’d pick me up again in a minute, they would! How­ever, this con­ver­sa­tion is go­ing on a little too fast: let’s go back to the last re­mark but one.”

“I’m afraid I can’t quite re­mem­ber it,” Alice said very po­litely.

“In that case we start fresh,” said Humpty

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