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Alice did not feel encouraged to ask any more questions about it, so she turned to the Mock Turtle, and said `What else had you to learn?' `Well, there was Mystery,' `What was THAT like?' said Alice. `Well, I can't show it you myself,' the Mock Turtle said: `I'm too stiff. And the Gryphon never learnt it.' `Hadn't time,' said the Gryphon: `I went to the Classics master, though. He was an old crab, HE was.' `I never went to him,' the Mock Turtle said with a sigh: `he taught Laughing and Grief, they used to say.'
`And how many hours a day did you do lessons?' said Alice, in a hurry to change the subject. `Ten hours the first day,' said the Mock Turtle: `nine the next, and so on.' `What a curious plan!' exclaimed Alice. `That's the reason they're called lessons,' the Gryphon remarked: `because they lessen from day to day.' This was quite a new idea to Alice, and she thought it over a little before she made her next remark. `Then the eleventh day must have been a holiday?' `Of course it was,' said the Mock Turtle. `And how did you manage on the twelfth?' Alice went on eagerly. `That's enough about lessons,' the Gryphon interrupted in a very decided tone: `tell her something about the games now.' |
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the
Mock Turtle replied, counting off the subjects on his flappers, `--Mystery,
ancient and modern, with Seaography: then Drawling--the Drawling-master
was an old conger-eel, that used to come once a week: HE taught us Drawling,
Stretching, and Fainting in Coils.'
`So
he did, so he did,' said the Gryphon, sighing in his turn; and both creatures
hid their faces in their paws.