Alice's Adventures in Wonderland: The Lobster Quadrille

The Mock Turtle finally stopped crying and said that under the sea, everyone learns to dance something called the Lobster Quadrille.He and the Gryphon explained it together, both talking at once: first you form two lines along the shore and clear away the jellyfish.Then you advance twice, each with a lobster as your partner, and change lobsters as you go.

Next, they said, you throw the lobsters as far out to sea as you can, swim after them, turn a somersault in the water, and swim back to land — and that was only the first figure.Alice said it must be a very pretty dance, so the Mock Turtle offered to show her, even without real lobsters to dance with.The two creatures began dancing solemnly around her, waving their flippers and treading on her toes, while the Mock Turtle sang a slow, sad song about a whiting who begged a snail to join the dance.

When the song ended, Alice said politely that she liked the part about the whiting, which led to a long, puzzling talk about fish and shoes and why no wise fish ever goes anywhere without a “porpoise.”“Porpoise” sounded exactly like “purpose,” and Alice could not tell if the Mock Turtle was joking or simply mixing up his words.The Gryphon then asked Alice to stand and recite a poem, so she tried “‘Tis the voice of the Lobster” — but her head was so full of the dance that, just like every poem she had tried in Wonderland, the words came out strange and wrong.

The Mock Turtle kept interrupting to ask what the odd lines meant, and Alice grew more and more flustered trying to explain something that made no sense even to her.At last the Gryphon said there was no use in reciting more poems that nobody could explain, and asked the Mock Turtle to sing his favorite song instead.So the Mock Turtle sighed deeply and, in a voice choked with sobs, began to sing about “beautiful, beautiful Soup” — how no one would give up even a spoonful of it for any other dish in the world.

Just as the Gryphon called for the chorus to be sung all over again, a cry rang out in the distance: “The trial’s beginning!”The Gryphon seized Alice’s hand and rushed off at once, without waiting to hear the rest of the song.“What trial is it?” Alice asked breathlessly as they ran, but the Gryphon only called back “Come on!” and ran even faster.

Behind them, fainter and fainter, came the Mock Turtle’s mournful voice, still singing about the beautiful Soup.Alice had no idea what trial the Gryphon meant, but she was quite sure her strange adventures in Wonderland were not over yet.