Alice in Wonderland, Retold in Words of One SyllableCarroll, Lewis
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Alice in Wonderland, Retold in Words of One Syllable
Carroll, Lewis
Alice (Fictitious character from Carroll) -- Juvenile fiction; Children's stories; Fantasy fiction; Imaginary places -- Juvenile fiction
Al-ice could see quite well that the ju-rors all wrote down "stu-pid
things!" on their slates, she could e-ven make out that one of them
didn't know how to spell "stu-pid" and that he asked the one by his side
to tell him, "A nice mud-dle their slates will be in by the time the
tri-al's ended," thought Al-ice.
One of the ju-rors had a pen-cil that squeaked as he wrote. This, of
course, Al-ice could _not_ stand, so she went round near him, and soon
found a chance to get it from him. This she did in such a way that the
poor ju-ror (it was Bill, the Liz-ard) could not make out at all where
it was, so he wrote with one fin-ger for the rest of the day. Of course,
this was of no use, as it left no mark on the slate.
"Read the charge!" said the King.
On this the White Rab-bit blew three blasts on the trum-pet, and then
from the pa-per in his hand read:
"The Queen of Hearts, she made some tarts,
All on a sum-mer day:
The Knave of Hearts, he stole those tarts,
And took them quite a-way!"
"The ju-ry will now take the case," said the King.
"Not yet, not yet!" the Rab-bit said in haste. "There is a great deal
else to come first."
[Illustration]
"Call the first wit-ness," said the King, and the White Rab-bit blew
three blasts on the trum-pet, and called out, "First wit-ness."
The first to come was the Hat-ter. He came in with a tea cup in one hand
and a piece of bread and but-ter in the oth-er.
"I beg par-don, your ma-jes-ty," he said, "but I had to bring these in,
as I was not quite through with my tea when I was sent for."
"You ought to have been through," said the King. "When did you be-gin?"
The Hat-ter looked at the March Hare, who had just come in-to court,
arm in arm with the Dor-mouse. "Fourth of March, I think it was," he
said.
"Fifth," said the March Hare.
"Sixth," add-ed the Dor-mouse.
"Write that down," said the King to the ju-ry, and they wrote down all
three dates on their slates, and then added them up and changed the sum
to shil-lings and pence.
"Take off your hat," the King said to the Hat-ter.
"It isn't mine," said the Hat-ter.
"Stole it!" cried the King, as he turned to the jury, who at once wrote
it down.
"I keep them to sell," the Hat-ter added. "I've none of my own. I'm a
hat-ter."
Here the Queen put on her eye-glass-es and stared hard at the Hat-ter,
who turned pale with fright.
"Tell what you know of this case," said the King; "and don't be
nerv-ous, or I'll have your head off on the spot."
This did not seem to calm him at all, he shift-ed from one foot to the
other and looked at the Queen, and in his fright he bit a large piece
out of his tea-cup in place of the bread and but-ter.
Just then Al-ice felt a strange thrill, the cause of which she could not
make out till she saw she had be-gun to grow a-gain.
"I wish you wouldn't squeeze so," said the Dor-mouse. "I haven't room to
breathe."
"I can't help it," said Al-ice; "I'm grow-ing."
"You've no right to grow here," said the Dor-mouse.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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