Choice Illustrations

ALICE. Let’s pretend the glass has gone all soft like gauze, so that we can get through. Why, it’s turning into a sort of mist now, I declare! It’ll be easy enough to get through – (She is up on the chimney-piece as she says this, and certainly the glass is beginning to melt away, just like a bright silvery mist. In another moment ALICE is through the glass, and jumps lightly down into the Looking-glass room.)

ALICE. I declare it’s marked out just like a large chessboard! 

GUARD. (Putting his head in at the window.) Tickets please!

ALICE. ...dear me, what a state your hair is in!

WHITE QUEEN. (Sighing.) The brush has got entangled in it! And I lost the comb yesterday.

(ALICE carefully releases the brush and does her best to get the WHITE QUEEN’S hair in order, altering most of the pins.)

(ALICE looks at the QUEEN, who seems to have suddenly wrapped herself up in wool. ALICE rubs her eyes, and looks again. She is in a little dark shop, leaning with her elbows on the counter, and opposite to her is an old SHEEP, sitting in an arm-chair knitting, and every now and then leaving off to look at her through a great pair of spectacles.)

(The needles turn into oars in her hands, and ALICE sees that they are in a little boat, gliding along between banks.)

(ALICE forgets about the SHEEP and the knitting, as she bends over the side of the boat, with just the ends of her tangled hair dipping into the water – while she catches at one bunch after another of the scented rushes.)

(Soldiers run through the wood, at first in twos and threes, then ten or twenty together, and at last in such crowds that they seemed to fill the whole forest. ALICE gets behind a tree, for fear of being run over, and watches them go by. The soldiers are quite uncertain on their feet: always tripping over something or other, and whenever one goes down, several more fall over him, so that the ground is soon covered with little heaps of men....)

(ALICE notices that the WHITE KNIGHT is dressed in tin armor, which fits him very badly...)

(ALICE watches the horse walk leisurely along the road, and the KNIGHT tumble off, first on one side and then on the other. After the fourth or fifth tumble he reaches the turn, and then she waves her handkerchief to him...)

ALICE. Oh, how glad I am to get here! (Putting her hands up to something very heavy, and fitted tight all round her head.) And what is this on my head? (To herself, lifting it off and setting it on her lap.) But how can it have got there without my knowing it? (It is a golden crown.)

(ALICE is standing before an arched doorway over which were the words “Queen Alice” in large letters, on each side of the arch there is a bell-handle; one is marked “Visitors' Bell,” and the other “Servants' Bell.”... The FROG looks at the door with his large dull eyes: then he goes nearer and rubs it with his thumb, as if he were trying whether the paint would come off.)