herself and others by prating of things above her comprehension. So Alice set out for her solitary ramble, taking with her Pepper and Ginger, which (although the former was often found in a pretty pickle, and would have been wholly inappropriate in a bream tart; and the latter, judging by the appearance of a very red tongue, was decidedly “hot i’ the mouth”) were not a couple of spicy condiments, but a brace of Skye terriers. The dogs were in charming spirits, which they displayed by running after and barking at respectable blackbirds seeking their frugal “diet of worms;” coming back in eccentric and violent circles, to twitch the ends of Alice’s boa and the corners of her shawl, only to dash away again and lose themselves, by forcing burglarious entrances into forbidden rabbit-burrows, with the vicious intention of worrying the timid inmates, in their little brown coats with practical jokes of tails. And here be it observed parenthetically, that of all the freaks of nature, the unexpected way in which she has seen fit to turn up rabbits’ tails, and to line them with white, to the great disfigurement and personal hazard of the owners, has always appeared to us one of the strangest, and only to be accounted for by the hypothesis of a chronic practical joke. Whether this idea enhanced the fun Pepper and Ginger had with the rabbits during that expedition, or whether it never occurred to them, is more than we can tell; but the extent to which those dogs persisted in burying themselves alive, and harassing their mistress by a succession of these amateur extramural interments, almost justifies us in supposing it must have done so.