Songs for April

The Caterpillar

Alice in Wonderland

Alice was tired of sitting on the bank. She had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures in it. "What is the use of a book without pictures in it?" thought Alice.

It was a hot day and she was sleepy. Suddenly a white rabbit with pink eyes ran close to her. Alice heard him say, "Oh dear! Oh dear! I shall be late!" And he took a watch out of his pocket, looked at it, and then hurried on. Alice had never before seen a rabbit with a watch. She ran across the field after it, and was just in time to see it pop down a large rabbit hole under the hedge.

In another moment in went Alice after it, and she found herself falling down a very steep well.

Either the well was very deep or she fell very slowly, for she had plenty of time as she went down to look about her.

Down, down, down. Would the fall never come to an end? "I wonder how many miles I've fallen by this time?" she said aloud. "I must be getting near the center of the earth. I wonder if I shall fall right through the earth! How funny it will seem to come out among the people who walk with their heads downwards!"

Suddenly, thump! thump! and Alice came down upon a heap of sticks and dry leaves, and the fall was over. She was not a bit hurt and jumped to her feet in a moment. She looked up, but it was dark overhead. Before her was another long passage, and the White Rabbit was still in sight, hurrying down it. There was not a moment to be lost. Away went Alice like the wind, and she was just in time to hear the rabbit say as it turned the corner, "Oh, my ears and whiskers, how late it's getting!"

Alice was close behind it when she turned the corner, but the rabbit was nowhere to be seen. She found herself in a long hall, which was lighted up by a row of lamps hanging from the roof.

There were doors all round the hall, but they were locked. Alice went down one side and up the other. Then she walked down the middle, wondering how she was ever to get out again.

Suddenly she came upon a little three-legged table of solid glass. There was nothing on it but a tiny golden key. Alice first thought that this might belong to one of the doors of the hall; but alas! either the locks were too large or the key was too small, for it would not open any of them. On the second time round, she came upon a curtain she had not seen before, and behind it was a little door about fifteen inches high. She tried the golden key in the lock, and it fitted.

Alice opened the door and found that it led into a small passage, not much larger than a rat hole. She knelt down and looked along the passage into the loveliest garden you ever saw. How she longed to get out of that dark hall and wander about among those bright flowers and those cool fountains. But she could not even get her head through the doorway.

"And even if my head would go through," thought Alice, "it would be of very little use without my shoulders. Oh, how I wish I could shut up like a telescope. I think I could, if I only knew how to begin."

There seemed to be no use in waiting by the little door, so she went back to the table. She hoped she might find another key on it, or a book of rules for shutting people up, like telescopes. This time she found a little bottle on it, and tied round the neck of it was a paper label, with the words "Drink Me," printed on it in large letters.

"I'll look first," she said, "and see whether it's marked 'poison' or not."

It was not marked "poison," so Alice tasted it, and finding it a nice flavor of cherry tart, custard, pine-apple, roast turkey, candy, and hot buttered toast, she very soon finished it.

"What a curious feeling!" said Alice. "I must be shutting up like a telescope!"

And so she was indeed. She was now only ten inches high, and her face brightened up at the thought that she was now the right size for going through the door into that lovely garden. She waited for a few minutes to see if she were going to shrink any more. She felt a little nervous about this, "For it might end, you know, in my going out like a candle," said she. "I wonder what I should be like then?"

Alice tried to fancy what the flame of a candle looks like after the candle is blown out, for she could not remember ever having seen such a thing.

After a while, finding that nothing more happened, she decided to go into the garden. But, alas for poor Alice! when she got to the door she found she had forgotten the little golden key. When she went back to the table for it she could not reach it. She tried to climb up one of the legs of the table, but it was too slippery.

Soon her eye fell on a little glass box that was lying under the table. She opened it and found in it a very small cake, on which the words "Eat Me" were marked in currants.

"Well, I'll eat it," said Alice, "and if it makes me grow larger, I can reach the key. If it makes me grow smaller, I can creep under the door. So either way I'll get into the garden, and I don't care which happens!"

She ate a little bit and said to herself, "Which way? Which way?"

She held her hand on the top of her head to feel which way she was growing:

"Curiouser and Curiouser!" cried Alice. She was so much surprised that for a moment she forgot how to speak good English. "Now I'm opening out like the largest telescope that ever was! Good-bye, feet!" For when she looked down at her feet they seemed to be almost out of sight, they were getting so far away. "Oh, my poor little feet; I wonder who will put on your shoes and stockings for you now, dears? I'm sure I shan't be able! I shall be a great deal too far off to trouble myself about you. You must manage the best way you can. But I must be kind to them," thought Alice, "or perhaps they won't walk the way I want to go! Let me see; I'll give them a new pair of boots for Christmas. How funny it will seem, sending presents to my feet! How odd the directions will look!

Oh dear, what nonsense I'm talking!"

Just at this moment her head struck against the roof of the hall. In fact she was now more than nine feet high, and she at once took up the little golden key and hurried off to the garden door.

Poor Alice! To get through was more hopeless than ever, so she sat down and began to cry again.

"You ought to be ashamed of yourself," said Alice; "a great girl like you, to go on crying in this way! Stop this moment, I tell you!" But she went on all the same, shedding gallons of tears, until there was a large pool all around her, about four inches deep.

After a time she heard a little patter of feet in the distance and she dried her eyes to see what was coming. It was the White Rabbit, splendidly dressed, with a pair of white kid gloves in one hand and a fan in the other. He came trotting along in a great hurry, muttering to himself as he came, "Oh! the Queen, the Queen! Oh! Won't she be savage if I have kept her waiting!" Alice felt so hopeless that she was ready to ask help of anyone. So, when the rabbit came near her, she began in a low, timid voice, "If you please, sir,—" The Rabbit dropped the white kid gloves and the fan, and skurried away into the darkness as hard as he could go.

Alice took up the fan and gloves. The hall was very hot and she kept on fanning herself all the time she went on talking. "Dear, dear! How queer everything is to-day! I wonder if I've been changed in the night? But if I am changed the next question is, Who in the World am I? And that's the great puzzle." And she began thinking over all the children she knew, to see if she could have changed into any of them.

Alice looked down at her hands and was surprised to find that she had put on one of the Rabbit's kid gloves. "How can I have done that?" she thought. "I must be growing small again." She got up and went to the table to measure herself by it, and found that she was now about two feet high, and was still shrinking. She soon found out that the cause of this was the fan she was holding. She dropped it hastily, just in time to save herself from shrinking away altogether.

"That was a narrow escape!" said Alice, glad to find herself still alive. "Now for the garden!" And she ran back to the little door, but the little door was shut and the little golden key was lying on the glass table as before. "Things are worse than ever," thought the poor child, "for I never was so small as this before." As she said this her foot slipped. Splash! she was up to her chin in salt water.

"I wish I had not cried so much!" said Alice, as she swam about, trying to find her way out. "I shall be punished for it now, I suppose, by being drowned in my own tears! That will be a queer thing, to be sure! However, everything is queer to-day."

She swam around for a little while. Then she swam to the shore. Poor Alice looked about her and began to cry, for she was very lonely.

After awhile she heard the patter of little feet. She looked, and there was the White Rabbit, trotting slowly back again and looking about as he went, as if he had lost something. She heard him muttering, "The Queen! the Queen! Oh, my dear paws! Oh, my fur and whiskers! Where can I have dropped them, I wonder?" Alice guessed in a moment that he was looking for the fan and the pair of white kid gloves, and she, too, began hunting about for them, but they were nowhere to be seen.

Soon the Rabbit noticed Alice and called out to her in an angry tone: "Why, Mary Ann, what are you doing here? Run home this moment and fetch me a pair of gloves and a fan! Quick!" Alice was so frightened that she ran off in the direction he pointed to, without trying to explain the mistake.

"He took me for his housemaid," she said to herself as she ran. "How surprised he will be when he finds out who I am! But I'd better take him his fan and gloves." As she said this, she came upon a neat little house. On the door was a bright brass plate with the name "W. Rabbit" upon it. She went in without knocking and went upstairs. She feared she should meet the real Mary Ann, and be turned out of the house before she had found the fan and gloves. "How queer it seems," Alice said to herself, "to be going messages for a rabbit!"

Alice had found her way into a tidy little room with a table in the window, and on it was a fan and two or three pairs of tiny white kid gloves. She took up the fan and a pair of the gloves, and was just about to leave the room when her eyes fell upon a little bottle near the looking glass. There was no label this time with the words "Drink Me." However, she put it to her lips. "I know something strange is sure to happen," she said to herself, "whenever I eat or drink anything; so I'll just see what this bottle does. I do hope it will make me grow large again, for I'm quite tired of being so small."

It did so. Before she had drunk half the bottle she found her head pressing against the ceiling, and she had to stoop to save her neck from being broken. She put down the bottle, saying to herself, "That's quite enough. I hope I shan't grow any more. I do wish I hadn't drunk quite so much."

It was too late to wish that. She went on growing and growing, and very soon had to kneel on the floor. In another minute there was not even room for this, and she tried to lie down, with one elbow against the floor and the other arm curled round her head. Still she went on growing. At last she put one arm out of the window and one foot up the chimney and said to herself, "Now I can do no more, whatever happens. What will become of me?"

Luckily for Alice, the magic bottle had now had its full effect, and she grew no larger. Still it was very uncomfortable, and there seemed no chance of her getting out of the room again. No wonder she felt unhappy.

"It was much pleasanter at home," thought poor Alice. "I almost wish I hadn't gone down that rabbit hole. Yet this sort of life is curious. When I grow up I'll write a book about it. But I'm grown up now," she added; "at least there's no room to grow any more here."

"Mary Ann! Mary Ann!" said a voice outside, "bring my gloves this moment!" Then came a little pattering of feet on the stairs. Alice knew it was the Rabbit coming to look for her, and she trembled till she shook the house.

Presently, the Rabbit came up to the door and tried to open it, but Alice's elbow was pressed against it; she heard him say to himself, "Then I'll go round and get in at the window."

"That you won't!" thought Alice, and waiting till she heard the Rabbit just under the window, she suddenly spread out her hand and made a snatch in the air. She did not get hold of anything, but she heard a little shriek and a fall.

Next came the Rabbit's angry voice, "Pat! Pat! Where are you?"

And then came a voice she had never heard before, "Sure, then, I'm here, digging for apples, yer honor!"

"Digging for apples!" said the Rabbit. "Come and help me out of this! Now tell me, Pat, what's that in the window?"

"Sure, it's an arm, your honor!"

"An arm, you goose! Who ever saw one so big. Why, it fills the whole window!"

"Sure it does, yer honor; but it's an arm for all that."

"Well, it has no business there. Go and take it away!"

There was a long silence after this, and Alice could hear whispers, "Sure, I don't like it, yer honor, at all!"

"Do as I tell you!" said the Rabbit.

At last she spread out her hand again and made another snatch in the air. This time there were two little shrieks. "I wonder what they'll do next?" thought Alice.

She waited for some time, without hearing anything more. At last came a rumble of little cart wheels, and the sound of many voices. She made out the words: "Where's the other ladder?—Who's to go down the chimney? Bill's got to go down. Here, Bill! the master says you've got to go down the chimney!"

"I wouldn't be in Bill's place for a good deal," thought Alice. "This fireplace is narrow, but I think I can kick a little."

She drew her foot as far down the chimney as she could, and waited till she heard a scratching in the chimney. Then she gave one sharp kick, and waited to see what would happen next.

The first thing she heard was, "There goes Bill! Catch him, you by the hedge! Hold up his head—How was it, old fellow? What happened to you? Tell us about it."

Then a little voice said, "All I know is, something came to me like a Jack-in-the-box, and up I went like a skyrocket!"

There was a dead silence, and Alice thought to herself, "I wonder what they will do next! If they had any sense, they'd take the roof off." After a minute or two they began moving about again, and Alice heard the Rabbit say, "A barrowful will do."

"A barrowful of what?" thought Alice; but she had not long to wonder, for the next moment a shower of little pebbles came in at the window, and some of them hit her in the face. "I'll put a stop to this," she said to herself, and shouted out, "you'd better not do that again!"

Alice saw the pebbles turn into little cakes as they lay on the floor. A bright idea came into her head. "If I eat one of these cakes, it may make me smaller. It can't make me any larger," so she ate one of the cakes and began to shrink.

As soon as she was small enough to get through the door, she ran out of the house. She found a crowd of little animals and birds outside. The poor little lizard, Bill, was in the middle, being held up by two guinea-pigs who were giving it something out of a bottle. They all made a rush at Alice, but she ran off as hard as she could and soon found herself safe in the thick wood.

"The first thing I've got to do," said Alice to herself, as she wandered about in the Wood, "is to grow to my right size again; and the second thing is to find my way into that lovely garden."

Just as she said this, she noticed that one of the trees had a door leading right into it. "That's very curious!" she thought. "But everything is curious to-day. I think I may as well go in at once." And in she went.

Once more she found herself in the long hall and close to the little glass table. "Now, I'll do better this time," she thought, and she took the little golden key, and unlocked the door that led into the garden. Then she nibbled the cake till she was about a foot high; and she walked down a little passage into the beautiful garden, among the bright flower-beds and the cool fountains.

Soon she heard her sister say, "Wake up, Alice dear. What a long sleep you have had."