"Well, there was Mystery," the Mock Turtle replied, counting off the subjects on his flappers,–
"Mystery, ancient and modern, with Seaography: then Drawling – the Drawling-master was an old conger-eel, that used to come once a week: he taught us Drawling, Stretching, and Fainting in Coils."
"What was that like?" said Alice.
"Well I can't show it to you, myself," the Mock Turtle said: "I'm too stiff. And the Gryphon never learnt it."
"Hadn't time," said the Gryphon: "I went to the Classical master, though. He was an old crab, he was."
"I never went to him," the Mock Turtle said with a sign. "He taught Laughing and Grief, they used to say."
"So he did, so he did," said the Gryphon , sighing in his turn; and both creatures hid their faces in their paws.
"And how many hours a day did you do lessons?" said Alice, in a hurry to change the subject.
"Ten hours the first day," said the Mock Turtle: "nine the next, and so on."
"What a curious plan!" exclaimed Alice.
"That's the reason they're called lessons," the Gryphon remarked: "because they lesson from day to day."
This was quite a new idea to Alice, and she thought it over before she made her next remark.
"Then the eleventh day must have been a holiday?"
"Of course it was," said the Mock Turtle.
–from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll
If only Uncle Wiggly was so witty!
song: White Rabbit • artist: Jefferson Airplane
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