Through the Looking-Glass
Lewis Carroll
Drawings by John Tenniel
CHAPTER 2
The Garden of Live Flowers
'I should see the garden far better,' said Alice to herself,
'if I could get to the top of that hill: and here's a path that
leads straight to it at least, no, it doesn't do that' (after
going a few yards along the path, and turning several sharp
corners), 'but I suppose it will at last. But how curiously it
twists! It's more like a corkscrew than a path! Well, this turn
goes to the hill, I suppose no, it doesn't! This goes straight
back to the house! Well then, I'll try it the other way.'
And so she did: wandering up and down, and trying turn after
turn, but always coming back to the house, do what she would.
Indeed, once, when she turned a corner rather more quickly than
usual, she ran against it before she could stop herself.
'It's no use talking about it,' Alice said, looking up at the
house and pretending it was arguing with her. 'I'm not going in
again yet. I know I should have to get through the Looking-glass
again back into the old room and there'd be an end of all my
adventures!'
So, resolutely turning her back upon the house, she set out once
more down the path, determined to keep straight on till she got
to the hill. For a few minutes all went on well, and she was just
saying, 'I really shall do it this time' when the path gave a
sudden twist and shook itself (as she described it afterwards),
and the next moment she found herself actually walking in at the
door.
'Oh, it's too bad!' she cried. 'I never saw such a house for
getting in the way! Never!'
However, there was the hill full in sight, so there was nothing
to be done but start again. This time she came upon a large
flower-bed, with a border of daisies, and a willow-tree growing
in the middle.
'O Tiger-lily,' said Alice, addressing herself to one that was
waving gracefully about in the wind, 'I wish you could talk!'
'We can talk,' said the Tiger-lily: 'when there's anybody worth
talking to.'
Alice was so astonished that she could not speak for a minute:
it quite seemed to take her breath away. At length, as the
Tiger-lily only went on waving about, she spoke again, in a timid
voice almost in a whisper. 'And can all the flowers talk?'
'As well as you can,' said the Tiger-lily. 'And a great deal
louder.'
'It isn't manners for us to begin, you know,' said the Rose,
'and I really was wondering when you'd speak! Said I to myself,
"Her face has got some sense in it, though it's not a clever
one!" Still, you're the right colour, and that goes a long
way.'
'I don't care about the colour,' the Tiger-lily remarked. 'If
only her petals curled up a little more, she'd be all right.'
Alice didn't like being criticised, so she began asking
questions. 'Aren't you sometimes frightened at being planted out
here, with nobody to take care of you?'
'There's the tree in the middle,' said the Rose: 'what else is it
good for?'
'But what could it do, if any danger came?' Alice asked.
'It says "Bough-wough!" cried a Daisy: 'that's why its branches
are called boughs!'
'Didn't you know that?' cried another Daisy, and here they all
began shouting together, till the air seemed quite full of little
shrill voices. 'Silence, every one of you!' cried the Tigerlily,
waving itself passionately from side to side, and trembling with
excitement. 'They know I can't get at them!' it panted, bending
its quivering head towards Alice, 'or they wouldn't dare to do
it!'
'Never mind!' Alice said in a soothing tone, and stooping down to
the daisies, who were just beginning again, she whispered, 'If
you don't hold your tongues, I'll pick you!'
There was silence in a moment, and several of the pink daisies
turned white.
'That's right!' said the Tiger-lily. 'The daisies are worst of
all. When one speaks, they all begin together, and it's enough to
make one wither to hear the way they go on!'
'How is it you can all talk so nicely?' Alice said, hoping to
get it into a better temper by a compliment. 'I've been in many
gardens before, but none of the flowers could talk.'
'Put your hand down, and feel the ground,' said the Tiger-lily.
'Then you'll know why.
Alice did so. 'It's very hard,' she said, 'but I don't see
what that has to do with it.'
'In most gardens,' the Tiger-lily said, 'they make the beds too
soft so that the flowers are always asleep.'
This sounded a very good reason, and Alice was quite pleased
to know it. 'I never thought of that before!' she said.
'It's my opinion that you never think at all,' the Rose said in a
rather severe tone.
'I never saw anybody that looked stupider,' a Violet said, so
suddenly, that Alice quite jumped; for it hadn't spoken
before.
'Hold your tongue!' cried the Tiger-lily. 'As if you ever saw
anybody! You keep your head under the leaves, and snore away
there, till you know no more what's going on in the world, than
if you were a bud!'
'Are there any more people in the garden besides me?' Alice
said, not choosing to notice the Rose's last remark.
'There's one other flower in the garden that can move about like
you,' said the Rose. 'I wonder how you do it' ('You're always
wondering,' said the Tiger-lily), 'but she's more bushy than you
are.'
'Is she like me?' Alice asked eagerly, for the thought crossed
her mind, 'There's another little girl in the garden,
somewhere!'
'Well, she has the same awkward shape as you,' the Rose said,
'but she's redder and her petals are shorter, I think.'
'Her petals are done up close, almost like a dahlia,' the
Tiger-lily interrupted: 'not tumbled about anyhow, like
yours.'
'But that's not your fault,' the Rose added kindly: 'you're
beginning to fade, you know and then one can't help one's petals
getting a little untidy.'
Alice didn't like this idea at all: so, to change the subject,
she asked 'Does she ever come out here?'
'I daresay you'll see her soon,' said the Rose. 'She's one of the
thorny kind.'
'Where does she wear the thorns?' Alice asked with some
curiosity.
'Why all round her head, of course,' the Rose replied. 'I was
wondering you hadn't got some too. I thought it was the regular
rule.'
'She's coming!' cried the Larkspur. 'I hear her footstep,
thump, thump, thump, along the gravel-walk!'
Alice looked round eagerly, and found that it was the Red Queen.
'She's grown a good deal!' was her first remark. She had indeed:
when Alice first found her in the ashes, she had been only three
inches high and here she was, half a head taller than Alice
herself!
'It's the fresh air that does it,' said the Rose: 'wonderfully
fine air it is, out here.'
'I think I'll go and meet her,' said Alice, for, though the
flowers were interesting enough, she felt that it would be far
grander to have a talk with a real Queen.
'You can't possibly do that,' said the Rose: 'I should
advise you to walk the other way.'
This sounded nonsense to Alice, so she said nothing, but set off
at once towards the Red Queen. To her surprise, she lost sight of
her in a moment, and found herself walking in at the front-door
again.
A little provoked, she drew back, and after looking everywhere
for the queen (whom she spied out at last, a long way off), she
thought she would try the plan, this time, of walking in the
opposite direction.
It succeeded beautifully. She had not been walking a minute
before she found herself face to face with the Red Queen, and
full in sight of the hill she had been so long aiming at.
'Where do you come from?' said the Red Queen. 'And where are
you going? Look up, speak nicely, and don't twiddle your fingers
all the time.'
Alice attended to all these directions, and explained, as well as
she could, that she had lost her way.
'I don't know what you mean by your way,' said the Queen: 'all
the ways about here belong to me but why did you come out here
at all?' she added in a kinder tone. 'Curtsey while you're
thinking what to say, it saves time.'
Alice wondered a little at this, but she was too much in awe of
the Queen to disbelieve it. 'I'll try it when I go home,' she
thought to herself. 'the next time I'm a little late for dinner.'
'It's time for you to answer now,' the Queen said, looking at
her watch: 'open your mouth a little wider when you speak, and
always say "your Majesty."'
'I only wanted to see what the garden was like, your Majesty'
'That's right,' said the Queen, patting her on the head, which
Alice didn't like at all, 'though, when you say "garden," I've
seen gardens, compared with which this would be a
wilderness.'
Alice didn't dare to argue the point, but went on: and I
thought I'd try and find my way to the top of that hill'
'When you say "hill,"' the Queen interrupted, 'I could show
you hills, in comparison with which you'd call that a
valley.'
'No, I shouldn't,' said Alice, surprised into contradicting her
at last: 'a hill can't be a valley, you know. That would be
nonsense'
The Red Queen shook her head, 'You may call it "nonsense" if
you like,' she said, 'but I've heard nonsense, compared with
which that would be as sensible as a dictionary!'
Alice curtseyed again, as she was afraid from the Queen's tone
that she was a little offended: and they walked on in silence
till they got to the top of the little hill.
For some minutes Alice stood without speaking, looking out in
all directions over the country and a most curious country it
was. There were a number of tiny little brooks running straight
across it from side to side, and the ground between was divided
up into squares by a number of little green hedges, that reached
from brook to brook.
'I declare it's marked out just like a large chessboard!' Alice
said at last. 'There ought to be some men moving about somewhere
and so there are!' She added in a tone of delight, and her
heart began to beat quick with excitement as she went on. 'It's a
great huge game of chess that's being played all over the
world if this is the world at all, you know. Oh, what fun it is!
How I wish I was one of them! I wouldn't mind being a Pawn, if
only I might join though of course I should like to be a Queen,
best.'
She glanced rather shyly at the real Queen as she said this,
but her companion only smiled pleasantly, and said, 'That's
easily managed. You can be the White Queen's Pawn, if you like,
as Lily's too young to play; and you're in the Second Square to
begin with: when you get to the Eighth Square you'll be a Queen
' Just at this moment, somehow or other, they began to run.
Alice never could quite make out, in thinking it over afterwards,
how it was that they began: all she remembers is, that they were
running hand in hand, and the Queen went so fast that it was all
she could do to keep up with her: and still the Queen kept crying
'Faster! Faster!' but Alice felt she could not go faster, though
she had not breath left to say so.
The most curious part of the thing was, that the trees and the
other things round them never changed their places at all:
however fast they went, they never seemed to pass anything. 'I
wonder if all the things move along with us?' thought poor
puzzled Alice. And the Queen seemed to guess her thoughts, for
she cried, 'Faster! Don't try to talk!'
Not that Alice had any idea of doing that. She felt as if she
would never be able to talk again, she was getting so much out of
breath: and still the Queen cried 'Faster! Faster!' and dragged
her along. 'Are we nearly there?' Alice managed to pant out at
last.
'Nearly there!' the Queen repeated. 'Why, we passed it ten
minutes ago! Faster!' And they ran on for a time in silence, with
the wind whistling in Alice's ears, and almost blowing her hair
off her head, she fancied.
'Now! Now!' cried the Queen. 'Faster! Faster!' And they went so
fast that at last they seemed to skim through the air, hardly
touching the ground with their feet, till suddenly, just as Alice
was getting quite exhausted, they stopped, and she found herself
sitting on the ground, breathless and giddy.
The Queen propped her up against a tree, and said kindly, 'You
may rest a little now.'
Alice looked round her in great surprise. 'Why, I do believe
we've been under this tree the whole time! Everything's just as
it was!'
'Of course it is,' said the Queen, 'what would you have
it?'
'Well, in our country,' said Alice, still panting a little,
'you'd generally get to somewhere else if you ran very fast for
a long time, as we've been doing.'
'A slow sort of country!' said the Queen. 'Now, here, you see,
it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place.
If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as
fast as that!'
'I'd rather not try, please!' said Alice. 'I'm quite content to
stay here only I am so hot and thirsty!'
'I know what you'd like!' the Queen said good-naturedly,
taking a little box out of her pocket. 'Have a biscuit?'
Alice thought it would not be civil to say 'No,' though it wasn't
at all what she wanted. So she took it, and ate it as well as she
could: and it was very dry; and she thought she had never been so
nearly choked in all her life.
'While you're refreshing yourself,' said the Queen, 'I'll just
take the measurements.' And she took a ribbon out of her pocket,
marked in inches, and began measuring the ground, and sticking
little pegs in here and there.
'At the end of two yards,' she said, putting in a peg to mark the
distance, 'I shall give you your directions have another
biscuit?'
'No, thank you,' said Alice,: 'one's quite enough!'
'Thirst quenched, I hope?' said the Queen.
Alice did not know what to say to this, but luckily the Queen
did not wait for an answer, but went on. 'At the end of three
yards I shall repeat them for fear of your forgetting them. At
then end of four, I shall say good-bye. And at then end of five,
I shall go!'
She had got all the pegs put in by this time, and Alice looked on
with great interest as she returned to the tree, and then began
slowly walking down the row.
At the two-yard peg she faced round, and said, 'A pawn goes
two squares in its first move, you know. So you'll go very
quickly through the Third Square by railway, I should think and
you'll find yourself in the Fourth Square in no time. Well, that
square belongs to Tweedledum and Tweedledee the Fifth is mostly
water the Sixth belongs to Humpty Dumpty But you make no
remark?'
'I I didn't know I had to make one just then,' Alice faltered
out.
'You should have said,' "It's extremely kind of you to tell
me all this" however, we'll suppose it said the Seventh Square
is all forest however, one of the Knights will show you the
way and in the Eighth Square we shall be Queens together, and
it's all feasting and fun!' Alice got up and curtseyed, and sat
down again.
At the next peg the Queen turned again, and this time she said,
'Speak in French when you can't think of the English for a thing
turn out your toes as you walk and remember who you are!' She
did not wait for Alice to curtsey this time, but walked on
quickly to the next peg, where she turned for a moment to say
'good-bye,' and then hurried on to the last.
How it happened, Alice never knew, but exactly as she came to
the last peg, she was gone. Whether she vanished into the air, or
whether she ran quickly into the wood ('and she can run very
fast!' thought Alice), there was no way of guessing, but she was
gone, and Alice began to remember that she was a Pawn, and that
it would soon be time for her to move.
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