Part 10 (2/2)

Noel. You are very poetical, but I am sorry to say it will not do.

Alice. Nothing will ever make your hair curl, so it's no use. Some people say it's more important to tidy up as you go along. I don't mean you in particular, but every one.

H. O. We never said you were tubby, but the Editor does not know any cure.

Noel. If there is any of the paper over when this newspaper is finished, I will exchange it for your shut-up inkstand, or the knife that has the useful thing in it for taking stones out of horses' feet, but you can't have it without.

H. O. There are many ways how your steam engine might stop working.

You might ask d.i.c.ky. He knows one of them. I think it is the way yours stopped.

Noel. If you think that by filling the garden with sand you can make crabs build their nests there you are not at all sensible.

You have altered your poem about the battle of Waterloo so often, that we cannot read it except where the Duke waves his sword and says some thing we can't read either. Why did you write it on blotting-paper with purple chalk?--ED. (Because YOU KNOW WHO sneaked my pencil.--NOEL.)

------------ POETRY

The a.s.syrian came down like a wolf on the fold, And the way he came down was awful, I'm told; But it's nothing to the way one of the Editors comes down on me, If I crumble my bread-and-b.u.t.ter or spill my tea.

NOEL.

------------ CURIOUS FACTS

If you hold a guinea-pig up by his tail his eyes drop out.

You can't do half the things yourself that children in books do, making models or soon. I wonder why?--ALICE.

If you take a date's stone out and put in an almond and eat them together, it is prime. I found this out.--SUB-EDITOR.

If you put your wet hand into boiling lead it will not hurt you if you draw it out quickly enough. I have never tried this.--DORA.

------------ THE PURRING CLa.s.s

(Instructive Article)

If I ever keep a school everything shall be quite different. n.o.body shall learn anything they don't want to. And sometimes instead of having masters and mistresses we will have cats, and we will dress up in cat skins and learn purring. 'Now, my dears,' the old cat will say, 'one, two, three all purr together,' and we shall purr like anything.

She won't teach us to mew, but we shall know how without teaching.

Children do know some things without being taught.--ALICE.

------------ POETRY (Translated into French by Dora)

Quand j'etais jeune et j'etais fou J'achetai un violon pour dix-huit sous Et tous les airs que je jouai Etait over the hills and far away.

Another piece of it

Mercie jolie vache qui fait Bon lait pour mon dejeuner Tous les matins tous les soirs Mon pain je mange, ton lait je boire.

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