large eyes full of tears, but said nothing.
“This here young lady,” said the Gryphon, “she wants for to know
your history, she do.”
“I’ll tell it her,” said the Mock Turtle in a deep, hollow tone.
“Sit down, both of you, and don’t speak a word till I’ve
finished.”
So they sat down, and nobody spoke for some minutes. Alice
thought to herself, “I don’t see how he can ever finish, if he
doesn’t begin.” But she waited patiently.
“Once,” said the Mock Turtle at last, with a deep sigh, “I was a
real Turtle.”
These words were followed by a very long silence, broken only by
an occasional exclamation of “Hjckrrh!” from the Gryphon, and the
constant heavy sobbing of the Mock Turtle. Alice was very nearly
getting up and saying, “Thank you, Sir, for your interesting
story,” but she could not help thinking there must be more to come,
so she sat still and said nothing.
“When we were little,” the Mock Turtle went on at last, more
calmly, though still sobbing a little now and then, “we went to
school in the sea. The master was an old Turtle—we used to call him
Tortoise——”
“Why did you call him Tortoise, if he wasn’t one?” Alice
asked.
“We called him Tortoise because he taught us,” said the Mock
Turtle angrily. “Really you are very dull!”
“You ought to be ashamed of yourself for asking such a simple
question,” added the Gryphon; and then they both sat silent and
looked at poor Alice, who felt ready to sink into the earth. At
last the Gryphon said to the Mock Turtle “Drive on, old fellow!
Don’t be all day about it!”, and he went on in these words:—
“Yes, we went to school in the sea, though you mayn’t believe
it——”
“I never said I didn’t!” interrupted Alice.
“You did,” said the Mock Turtle.
“Hold your tongue!” added the Gryphon, before Alice could speak
again. The Mock Turtle went on.
“We had the best of educations—in fact, we went to school every
day——”
“I’ve been to a day-school, too,” said Alice; “you needn’t be so
proud as all that.”
“With extras?” asked the Mock Turtle, a little anxiously.proud as all that.”
“With extras?” asked the Mock Turtle, a little anxiously.
“Yes,” said Alice, “we learned French and music.”
“And washing?” said the Mock Turtle.
“Certainly not!” said Alice indignantly.
“Ah! then yours wasn’t a really good school,” said the Mock
Turtle in a tone of great relief. “Now, at ours, they had at the
end of the bill, ‘French, music, and washing—extra.’”
“You couldn’t have wanted it much,” said Alice; “living at the
bottom of the sea.”
“I couldn’t afford to learn it,” said the Mock Turtle with a
sigh. “I only took the regular course.”
“What was that?” inquired Alice.
“Reeling and Writhing, of course, to begin with,” the Mock
Turtle replied; “and then the different branches of
Arithmetic—Ambition, Distraction, Uglification, and Derision.”
“I never heard of ‘Uglification,’” Alice ventured to say. “What
is it?”
The Gryphon lifted up both its paws in surprise. “What! Never
heard of uglifying!” it exclaimed. “You know what to beautify is, I
suppose?”
“Yes,” said Alice doubtfully: “it
means—to—make—anything—prettier.”
“Well, then,” the Gryphon went on, “if you don’t know what to
uglify is, you are a simpleton.”
Alice did not feel encouraged to ask any more questions about
it: so she turned to the Mock Turtle, and said “What else had you
to learn?”
“Well, there was Mystery,” the Mock Turtle replied, counting off
the subjects on his flappers,—“Mystery, ancient and modern, with
Seaography: then Drawling—the Drawling-master was an old
conger-eel, that used to come once a week: he taught us Drawling,
Stretching, and Fainting in Coils.”
“What was that like?” said Alice.
“Well, I ca’n’t show it you myself,” the Mock Turtle said: “I’m
too stiff. And the Gryphon never learnt it.”
“Hadn’t time,” said the Gryphon: “I went to the Classical
master, though. He was an old crab, he was.”
“I never went to him,” the Mock Turtle said with a sigh. “He
taught Laughing and Grief, they used to say.”
“So he did, so he did,” said the Gryphon, sighing in his turn;
and both creatures hid their faces in their paws.and both creatures hid their faces in their paws.
“And how many hours a day did you do lessons?” said Alice, in a
hurry to change the subject.
“Ten hours the first day,” said the Mock Turtle: “nine the next,
and so on.”
“What a curious plan!” exclaimed Alice.
“That’s the reason they’re called lessons,” the Gryphon
remarked: “because they lessen from day to day.”
This was quite a new idea to Alice, and she thought it over a
little before she made her next remark. “Then the eleventh day must
have been a holiday?”
“Of course it was,” said the Mock Turtle.
“And how did you manage on the twelfth?” Alice went on
eagerly.
“That’s enough about lessons,” the Gryphon interrupted in a very
decided tone. “Tell her something about the games now.”