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Alice's Adventures in Wonderland Lewis Carroll (contributed by C Shawn Green) Either the well was very deep, or she fell very slowly. "Do cats eat bats?" and sometimes "Do bats eat cats?" for, you see, as she couldn't answer either question, it didn't much matter which way she put it. "Oh, how I wish I could shut up like a telescope! I think I could, if I only knew how to begin." And she tried to fancy what the flame of a candle looks like after the candle is blown out, for she could not remember ever having seen such a thing. "It was much pleasanter at home," thought poor Alice, "when one wasn't always growing larger and smaller, and being ordered about by mice and rabbits." "What size do you want to be?" it asked. "Oh, I'm not particular as to size," Alice hastily replied: "only one doesn't like changing so often, you know." "If everybody minded their own business," the Duchess said in a hoarse growl, "the world would go round a deal faster than it does." "If it had grown up," she said to herself, "it would have made a dreadfully ugly child: but it makes rather a handsome pig, I think." "Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?" "That depends a good deal on where you want to get to," said the Cat. "I don't much care where --" said Alice. "Then it doesn't much matter which way you go," said the Cat. "--- so long as I get somewhere," Alice added as an explanation. "Oh, you're sure to do that," said the Cat, "if only you walk long enough." "Well, then," the Cat went on, "you see a dog growls when it's angry, and wags its tail when it's pleased. Now I growl when I'm pleased, and wag my tail when I'm angry. Therefore I'm mad." "I call it purring, not growling," said Alice. "Call it what you like," said the Cat. "Do you play croquet with the Queen to-day?" "By-the-bye, what became of the baby?" said the Cat. "I'd nearly forgotten to ask." "It turned into a pig," Alice answered very quietly, just as if the Cat had come back in a natural way. "I thought it would," said the Cat, and vanished again. "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. "It wasn't very civil of you to sit down without being invited," said the March Hare. "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 as 'I eat what I see'!" "What a funny watch!" she remarked. "It tells the day of the month, and it 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. "You're thinking about something, my dear, and that makes you forget to talk. I can't tell you just now what the moral of that is, but I shall remember it in a bit." "Perhaps it hasn't one," Alice ventured to remark. "Tut, tut, child,!" said the Duchess. "Everything's got a moral, if only you can find it." "'Be what you would seem to be' -- or, if you'd like it put more simply -- 'Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it might appear to others that what you were or might have been was not otherwise than what you had been would have appeared to them to be otherwise.'" "I think I should understand that better," Alice said very politely, "if I had it written down: but I can't quite follow it as you say it." "Reeling and Writhing of course, to begin with," the Mock Turtle replied, "and then the different branches of Arithmetic - Ambition, Distraction, Uglification, and Derision." One of the jurors had a pencil that squeaked. This, of course, Alice could not stand, and she went round the court and got behind him, and very soon found an opportunity of taking it away. She did it so quickly that the poor little juror (it was Bill the Lizard) could not make out at all what had become of it, so, after hunting all about for it, he was obliged to write with one finger for the rest of the day, and this was of very little use, as it left no mark on the slate. "You've got no right to grow here," said the Dormouse. "Don't talk nonsense," said Alice more boldly: "you know you're growing too." "Yes, but I grow at a reasonable pace," said the Dormouse: "not in that ridiculous fashion." Alice looked at the jury-box, and saw that, in her haste, she had put the Lizard in head downwards, and the poor little thing was waving its tail about in a melancholy way, being quite unable to move. She soon got it out again, and put it right : "not that it signifies much, " she said to herself; "I should think it would be quite as much use in the trial one way up as the other."

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