ALICE'S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND
AND THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS
Chapter II: The Garden of Live Flowers
LEWIS CARROL, 1865, 1871
Alice never could quite make out, in thinking it over afterwards,
how it was that they began: all she remembers is, that they were
running hand in hand, and the Queen went so fast that it was all
she could do to keep up with her: and still the Queen kept crying
"Faster! Faster!" but Alice felt she could not go faster, though
she had no breath left to say so.
The most curious part of the thing was, that the trees and the other
things round them never changed their places at all: however fast
they went, they never seemed to pass anything. "I wonder if all the
things move along with us?" thought poor puzzled Alice. And the
Queen seemed to guess her thoughts, for she cried, "Faster! Don't
try to talk!"
Not that Alice had any idea of doing that. She felt as if she would
never be able to talk again, she was getting so much out of breath:
and still the Queen cried, "Faster! Faster!" and dragged her along.
"Are we nearly there?" Alice managed to pant out at last.
"Nearly there!" the Queen repeated. "Why, we passed it ten
minutes ago! Faster!" And they ran on for a time in silence, with the
wind whistling in Alice's ears, and almost blowing her hair off her
head, she fancied.
"Now! Now!" cried the Queen. "Faster! Faster!" And they went
so fast that at last they seemed to skim through the air, hardly touching
the ground with their feet, till suddenly, just as Alice was getting
quite exhausted, they stopped, and she found herself sitting on the
ground, breathless and giddy.
The Queen propped her against a tree, and said kindly, "You may
rest a little, now."
Alice looked round her in great surprise. "Why, I do believe we've
been under this tree the whole time! Everything's just as it was!"
"Of course it is," said the Queen: "what would you have it?"
"Well, in our country," said Alice, still panting a little,
"you'd generally get to somewhere else - if you ran very fast for a
long time, as we've been doing."
"A slow sort of country!" said the Queen. "Now, here, you see,
it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you
want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast
as that!"
The Blind Men and the Elephant
Five Weeks in a Balloon
The first man I saw
Perfection can't be rushed
The man higher up
Brains
Other