CHAPTER XV

ALICE IN WONDERLAND--THROUGH THE LOOKING-GLASS--THE GOLDEN AGE--WIND IN THE WILLOWS--FOUR BOOKS BY A. A. MILNE--RIP VAN WINKLE

The story begins with a chapter called Down the Rabbit-Hole. Alice was feeling sleepy, you remember, when suddenly she saw a white rabbit with pink eyes running by close beside her. She thought nothing of that. She was not surprised even when she heard the rabbit saying to itself, "Oh dear! Oh dear! I shall be too late!" But when the rabbit took a watch out of its waist-coat pocket, looked at it and then hurried on, Alice started to her feet, ran across the field, and was just in time to see the Rabbit pop down a large rabbit-hole under the hedge.

The name of the story, as most of you know, is _Alice in Wonderland_. All over the English-speaking world, children, and older people as well, seem to know Alice.

When you hear someone talking about the Mad Hatter at the tea party, or a blue caterpillar smoking a hookah, or the Duchess losing her temper, or the cat vanishing but the smile remaining, and you ask what it means, you will be told, if you have not guessed already, that all these odd phrases belong to _Alice in Wonderland_.

Alice followed the White Rabbit down the hole, falling down a very long way without hurting {98} herself a bit. Then she found herself in a hall where there was a three-legged table with a tiny gold key on it, and she discovered a little door that she opened with the tiny gold key, but she was too big to go through the door, although she could see that it led into the loveliest garden. Then, as you may remember, she found a bottle with "Drink me" printed on it, and when she saw that it was not marked poison, she tasted it, and since it had a very good taste, she drank it all, and after that she was only ten inches high. Then she had forgotten the key, and now she was too small to reach to the top of the table, but under the table she saw a glass box and in the box a cake with "Eat me" marked on it beautifully in currants. And so, finally, with the help of the cake, and then with the help of a fan, of which you must read for yourselves, Alice found her way into the garden; and after that she had the most curious adventures.

Perhaps no one can explain the exact reason why we enjoy _Alice in Wonderland_ so much. The story is so precisely what we should like it to be, that we take it as it is, and hurry on through its pages in a sort of breathless happiness, wanting to know only what comes next. There is nothing puzzling or difficult in the story, no hidden meanings, nothing to make one sad or discontented, only laughter and curious, amusing incidents. It is a perfect story about the strange adventures of a little girl, and most people find delight in it. There is a sequel to the story of Alice, called _Through the Looking-Glass_.

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Lewis Carroll is the name you will find printed on the title pages of these stories, but this is a pen name. The author's real name was Dodgson. He did not like people to know that he wrote children's books. Lewis Carroll seems to have been a quiet, shy man, a mathematician who wrote difficult books for students, but he was wonderfully fond of children and understood how to write stories that they would like.

Most of the books spoken of in this chapter ought to be read aloud. They are generally called children's stories, but without exception they are also books that are loved and keenly enjoyed by older people. You will not need to think of giving them up when you grow older. They really belong to all ages. If you take the trouble to learn how to read aloud well, perhaps you may be the first to read _Alice in Wonderland_ to some small person, younger than you are. It is great pleasure to introduce anyone to a really delightful book.

_The Golden Age_ and _The Wind in the Willows_ are two stories written for boys and girls by Kenneth Grahame. The first story is about Harold, Charlotte, Edward, Selina, and the boy who tells the story. They lived with their uncles and aunts in a small town or village. The children, perhaps, were rather lonely, but they made games and adventures for themselves, and it is pleasant to read about them. They had pets like many other children, and they made games from the books they were reading, like _The Arabian Nights_, and the _Story of Ulysses_, and _King Arthur and his Round Table_. _The Golden Age_ is an English story. It is one of the books {100} that will tell you accurately and delightfully of the lives of boys and girls who live in the country in England, in the same way that _Tom Sawyer_ and _Huckleberry Finn_ tell us about boys in the United States. But, of course, we know that all boys in the States do not live as Tom and Huckleberry did. Girls and boys in England live in different ways also. It depends a good deal on the part of the country the author is writing about and on the circumstances of the families to which the boys and girls belong. Miss L. M. Montgomery's stories of Prince Edward Island in the same way tell a good deal about the lives of boys and girls in Canada.

_The Wind in the Willows_ is a wise, delightful and amusing story about animals,--a mole, a rabbit, a water rat, a badger, an otter, a toad, hedgehogs, field mice, stoats and weasels. We hear a good deal about birds too, especially swallows. Toad, Badger, Mole and Water Rat were great friends, and we are as much interested in their doings as if they were friends of ours as well.

Books have many curious and strange characteristics. Some books, as we have learned, live for thousands of years. Homer's songs and the books of the Bible were kept at first, not in print, but in various other ways. But, now-a-days, hundreds of books are printed every year which in a little while are forgotten and no one reads them again. It is deeply interesting to ponder over what makes a book live. We think we can recognize sometimes which of the new books will continue to be read, and which, although they may be pleasant enough to read once, are not likely to {101} be known for more than a few years. The truth is that no one can foretell accurately how long a book will last, or which books will last longest. For instance, it is not likely that when Lewis Carrol wrote _Alice in Wonderland_ he had any idea that the story would make him famous when his other books were forgotten. Only one thing can test this lasting quality in a book; that one thing is time. So you can think of time, if you like, as a great umpire deciding which books will keep on living, and which will be forgotten.

There are four little books that have been written in the last few years which may last a long while, although, of course, no one can be sure about this until time decides. These four little books are _When We were Very Young_, _Winnie the Pooh_, _Now We Are Six_, and _The House at Pooh Corner_, two books in poetry and two in prose, by A. A. Milne. They tell about Christopher Robin and his toys. These are very delightful books to read aloud to little people. But they belong also to people of all ages.

An American writer, called Washington Irving, who was born as long ago as 1783, in New York, once wrote a story called _Rip Van Winkle_, which is not exactly a fairy story, or a story of magic; and yet it has a great deal of magic in it. The tale is about a man who was what is called a ne'er-do-well. He liked to hunt and shoot, but not to work. One day, he went off into the mountains with his dog Wolf. He heard sounds like thunder, and he met an odd, square-built old fellow who asked him by signs to help him carry a keg up the mountain. Then they came on a group of {102} men, all dressed in a by-gone fashion, who were playing bowls. None of these men spoke to Rip Van Winkle, who helped himself several times from the keg, and by and by fell asleep. When he awoke, he found his way back to the mountain village where his home was, and discovered that he had been asleep twenty years. _Rip Van Winkle_ is one of the very few tales of magic which has been written of any part of the North American continent. Most of the stories of this character of which we have been speaking belong to older countries.

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