upon it: they looked so good, that it made Alice quite hungry to look at

them—“I wish they’d get the trial done,” she thought,

“and hand round the refreshments!” But there seemed to be no chance

of this, so she began looking at everything about her, to pass away the time.


Alice had never been in a court of justice before, but she had read about them

in books, and she was quite pleased to find that she knew the name of nearly

everything there. “That’s the judge,” she said to herself,

“because of his great wig.”


The judge, by the way, was the King; and as he wore his crown over the wig,

(look at the frontispiece if you want to see how he did it,) he did not look at

all comfortable, and it was certainly not becoming.


“And that’s the jury-box,” thought Alice, “and those

twelve creatures,” (she was obliged to say “creatures,” you

see, because some of them were animals, and some were birds,) “I suppose

they are the jurors.” She said this last word two or three times over to

herself, being rather proud of it: for she thought, and rightly too, that very

few little girls of her age knew the meaning of it at all. However,

“jury-men” would have done just as well.


The twelve jurors were all writing very busily on slates. “What are they

doing?” Alice whispered to the Gryphon. “They can’t have

anything to put down yet, before the trial’s begun.”


“They’re putting down their names,” the Gryphon whispered in

reply, “for fear they should forget them before the end of the

trial.”


“Stupid things!” Alice began in a loud, indignant voice, but she

stopped hastily, for the White Rabbit cried out, “Silence in the

court!” and the King put on his spectacles and looked anxiously round, to

make out who was talking.


Alice could see, as well as if she were looking over their shoulders, that all

the jurors were writing down “stupid things!” on their slates, and

she could even make out that one of them didn’t know how to spell