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Through
the Looking-Glass
and what Alice
found there
Kapitel 1:
Looking-glass house, Lewis Carroll, Seite 2 ( von 6 )
Suppose they had saved up all
my
punishments!" she went on, talking more to herself than the kitten.
"What would
they do at the end of a year? I should be sent to prison, I suppose, when the
day came. Or - let me see - suppose each punishment was to be going without a
dinner: then, when the miserable day came, I should have to go without fifty
dinners at once! Well, I shouldn't mind
that much! I'd
far rather go without them than eat them!
"Do you hear the snow against the window-panes, Kitty? How nice and soft
it sounds! Just as if some one was kissing the window all over outside. I
wonder if the snow loves the trees and
fields, that it kisses them so gently? And then it covers them up snug, you
know, with a white quilt; and perhaps it says, 'Go to sleep, darlings, till the
summer comes again.' And when they wake up in the summer, Kitty, they dress
themselves all in green, and dance about - whenever the wind blows - oh, that's
very pretty!" cried Alice, dropping the ball of worsted to clap her hands.
"And I do so wish it was true!
I'm sure the woods look sleepy in the autumn, when the leaves are getting
brown.
"Kitty, can you play chess? Now, don't smile, my dear, I'm asking it
seriously. Because, when we were playing just now, you watched just as if you
understood it: and when I said 'Check!' you purred! Well, it
was a nice
check, Kitty, and really I might have won, if it hadn't been for that nasty
Knight, that came wriggling down among my pieces. Kitty, dear, let's pretend
-" And here I wish I could tell you half the things Alice used to say,
beginning with her favourite phrase "Let's pretend." She had had
quite a long argument with her sister only the day before - all because Alice
had begun with "Let's pretend we're kings and queens;" and her
sister, who liked being very exact, had argued that they couldn't, because
there were only two of them, and Alice had been reduced at last to say,
"Well, you
can be one of them then, and
I'll be all the
rest." And once she had really frightened her old nurse by shouting
suddenly in her ear, "Nurse! Do let's pretend that I'm a hungry hyaena,
and you're a bone!"
But this is taking us away from Alice's speech to the kitten. "Let's
pretend that you're the Red Queen, Kitty! Do you know, I think if you sat up
and folded your arms, you'd look exactly like her. Now do try, there's a
dear!" And Alice got the Red Queen off the table, and set it up before the
kitten as a model for it to imitate: however, the thing didn't succeed,
principally, Alice said, because the kitten wouldn't fold its arms properly.
So, to punish it, she held it up to the Looking-glass, that it might see how
sulky it was -" and if you're not good directly," she added,
"I'll put you through into Looking-glass House. How would you like
that?
"Now, if you'll only attend, Kitty, and not talk so much, I'll tell you
all my ideas about Looking-glass House. First, there's the room you can see
through the glass - that's just the same as our drawing-room. only the things
go the other way. I can see all of it when I get upon a chair - all but the bit
just behind the fireplace. Oh! I do so wish I could see
that bit! I want
so much to know whether they've a fire in the winter: you never
can tell, you
know, unless our fire smokes, and then smoke comes up in that room too - but
that may be only pretence, just to make it look as if they had a fire. Well
then, the books are something like our books, only the words go the wrong way;
I know that, because I've held up one of our books to the glass, and then they
hold up one in the other room.
"How would you like to live in Looking-glass House, Kitty? I wonder if
they'd give you milk in there? Perhaps Looking-glass milk isn't good to drink -
But oh, Kitty! now we come to the passage. You can just see a little
peep of the
passage in Looking-glass House, if you leave the door of our drawing-room wide
open: and it's very like our passage as far as you can see, only you know it
may be quite different on beyond.
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