Alice did not feel encouraged to ask any more questions about it, so she turned to the Mock Turtle, and said `What else had you to learn?’
`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 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 Classics master, though. He was an old crab, HE was.’
`I never went to him,’ the Mock Turtle said with a sigh: `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 lessen from day to day.’
This was quite a new idea to Alice, and she thought it over a little before she made her next remark. `Then the eleventh day must have been a holiday?’
`Of course it was,’ said the Mock Turtle.
`And how did you manage on the twelfth?’ Alice went on eagerly.
`That’s enough about lessons,’ the Gryphon interrupted in a very decided tone: `tell her something about the games now.’
[From Lewis Carroll's Alice In Wonderland, illustrated in 1998 by students at the Dalton School. Daniel, describes his work posted above.]
