"Have you guessed the riddle yet?" the Hatter said, turning to Alice again.

"No, I give it up," Alice replied: "what's the answer?" "I haven't the slightest idea," said the Hatter.

"Nor I," said the March Hare.

Alice sighed wearily. "I think you might do something better with the time," she said, "than wasting it in asking riddles that have no answers."

"If you knew Time as well as I do," said the Hatter, "you wouldn't talk about wasting it. It's him."

"I don't know what you mean," said Alice.

"Of course you don't!" the Hatter said, tossing his head contemptuously. "I dare say you never even spoke to Time!" "Perhaps not," Alice cautiously replied: "but I know I have to beat time when I learn music.

"Ah! that accounts for it," said the Hatter. "He won't stand beating. Now, if you only kept on good terms with him, he'd do almost anything you liked with the clock. For instance, suppose it were nine o'clock in the morning, just time to begin lessons: you'd only have to whisper a hint to Time, and round goes the clock in a twinkling! Half-past one, time for dinner!"

("I only wish it was," the March Hare said to itself in a whisper.)

"That would be grand, certainly," said Alice, thoughtfully : "but then I shouldn't be hungry for it, you know."

"Not at first, perhaps," said the Hatter; "but you could keep it to half-past one as long as you liked."

"Is that the way you manage?" Alice asked.

The Hatter shook his head mournfully. "Not I," he replied. "We quarreled last March—just before he went mad, you know" (pointing with his teaspoon at the March Hare,) "it was at the great concert given by the Queen of Hearts, and I had to sing.

"Twinkle, twinkle, little bat!

How I wonder what you're at!

You know the song perhaps?"

"I've heard something like it," said Alice.

"It goes on, you know," the Hatter continued, "in this way:

"Up above the world you fly,

Like a tea tray in the sky.

Twinkle, twinkle"

Here the Dormouse shook itself, and began singing in its sleep, "Twinkle, twinkle, twinkle, twinkle" and went on

so long that they had to pinch it to make it stop.

"Well, I'd hardly finished the first verse," said the Hatter, "when the Queen bawled out' He's murdering the time! Off with his head !'"

"How dreadfully savage!" exclaimed Alice.

"And ever since that," the Hatter went on in a mournful tone, "he won't do a thing I ask! It's always six o'clock

now."

A bright idea came into Alice's head.

"Is that the reason

so many tea things are put out here?" she asked.

"Yes, that's it," said the Hatter, with a sigh; "it's always tea time, and we've no time to wash the things between whiles." "Then you keep moving around, I suppose?" said Alice. "Exactly so," said the Hatter: "as the things get used up." "But when you come to the beginning again?” Alice ventured to ask.

"Suppose we change the subject," the March Hare interrupted, yawning. "I'm getting tired of this. I vote the young lady tells us a story."

"I'm afraid I don't know one," said Alice, rather alarmed at the proposal.

"Then the Dormouse shall!" they both cried. "Wake up, Dormouse!" And they pinched it on both sides at once.

The Dormouse slowly opened his eyes. "I wasn't asleep," he said in a hoarse, feeble voice: "I heard every word you fellows were saying."

"Tell us a story!" said the March Hare.

"Yes, please do!" pleaded Alice.

"And be quick about it," added the Hatter, "or you'll be asleep again before it's done."

"Once upon a time there were three little sisters," the Dormouse began in a great hurry; "and their names were Elsie, Lacie, and Tillie; and they lived at the bottom of a well

"What did they live on?" said Alice, who always took a great interest in questions of eating and drinking.

"They lived on treacle," said the Dormouse, after thinking a minute or two.

"They couldn't have done that, you know," Alice gently remarked "they'd have been ill.”

"So they were," said the Dormouse; "very ill.”

Alice tried a little to fancy to herself what such an extraordinary way of living would be like, but it puzzled her too much, so she went on: "But why did they live at the bottom of a well?"

"Take some more tea," the March Hare said to Alice, very earnestly.

66

"I've had nothing yet," Alice replied in an offended tone, so I can't take more.

"You mean, you can't take less," said the Hatter; "it's very easy to take more than nothing.'

"Nobody asked your opinion," said Alice.

"Who's making personal remarks now?" the Hatter asked triumphantly.

Alice did not quite know what to say to this: so she helped herself to some tea and bread and butter, and then turned to the Dormouse, and repeated her question. "Why did they live at the bottom of a well?"

The Dormouse again took a minute or two to think about it, and then said, "It was a treacle well."

"There's no such thing!" Alice was beginning very angrily, but the Hatter and the March Hare went "Sh! sh!" and the Dormouse sulkily remarked, "If you can't be civil, you'd better finish the story for yourself."

"No, please go on!" Alice said very humbly: "I won't interrupt you again. I dare say there may be one."

"One, indeed!" said the Dormouse, indignantly. However, he consented to go on. "And so these three little sisters -they were learning to draw, you know"

"What did they draw?" said Alice, quite forgetting her promise.

"Treacle," said the Dormouse, without considering at all this time.

"I want a clean cup," interrupted the Hatter: "let's all move one place on."

He moved on as he spoke, and the Dormouse followed him: the March Hare moved into the Dormouse's place, and Alice rather unwillingly took the place of the March Hare. The Hatter was the only one who got any advantage from the change and Alice was a good deal worse off than before, as the March Hare had just upset the milk jug into his plate.

Alice did not wish to offend the Dormouse again, so she

began very cautiously: "But I don't understand. Where did they draw the treacle from?"

"You can draw water out of a water well," said the Hatter; "so I should think you could draw treacle out of a treacle well -eh, stupid?"

"But they were in the well," Alice said to the Dormouse, not choosing to notice this last remark.

"Of course they were," said the Dormouse, "well in." This answer so confused poor Alice, that she let the Dormouse go on for some time without interrupting it.

66

They were learning to draw," the Dormouse went on, yawning and rubbing its eyes, for it was getting very sleepy; "and they drew all manner of things—everything that begins with an M

"Why with an M?" said Alice.

"Why not?" said the March Hare.

Alice was silent.

The Dormouse had closed its eyes by this time, and was going off into a doze, but, on being pinched by the Hatter, it woke up again with a little shriek, and went on: "-that begins with an M, such as mouse traps, and the moon, and memory, and muchness—you know you say things are 'much of a muchness'- did you ever see such a thing as a drawing of

a muchness?"

"Really, now you ask me,” said Alice, very much confused, "I don't think

"Then you shouldn't talk," said the Hatter.

This piece of rudeness was more than Alice could bear: she got up in great disgust, and walked off: the Dormouse fell asleep instantly, and neither of the others took the least notice of her going, though she looked back once or twice, half hoping that they would call after her: the last time she saw them, they were trying to put the Dormouse into the teapot. "At any rate I'll never go there again!" said Alice as she picked her way through the wood. party I ever was at in all my life!"

"It's the stupidest tea

THE RAINY DAY.

BY HENRY W. LONGFELLOW.

THE day is cold, and dark, and dreary;
It rains, and the wind is never weary;
The vine still clings to the moldering wall,
But at every gust the dead leaves fall,
And the day is dark and dreary.

My life is cold, and dark, and dreary;
It rains, and the wind is never weary;

My thoughts still cling to the moldering Past,
But the hopes of youth fall thick in the blast,
And the days are dark and dreary.

Be still, sad heart! and cease repining;
Behind the clouds is the sun still shining;
Thy fate is the common fate of all,
Into each life some rain must fall,

Some days must be dark and dreary.

FROM "DREAM LIFE."

BY DONALD G. MITCHELL.

[DONALD GRANT MITCHELL: An American essayist and novelist; born in Norwich, Conn., April 12, 1822. He graduated at Yale (1841); studied law; was United States consul at Venice (1853-1855); and has since lived on his estate, Edgewood, near New Haven, Conn. Under the pseudonym of "Ik Marvel" he has published "Reveries of a Bachelor" (1850), his best-known work; "Dream Life" (1851); "My Farm at Edgewood"; "Wet Days at Edgewood"; "English Lands, Letters, and Kings" (1889-1895).]

BOY SENTIMENT.

WEEKS and even years of your boyhood roll on, in the which your dreams are growing wider and grander,—even as the Spring, which I have made the type of the boy age, is stretching its foliage farther and farther, and dropping longer and heavier shadows on the land.

Nelly, that sweet sister, has grown into your heart strangely; and you think that all they write in their books about love, can