Lewis Carroll

THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS
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Chapter VI
Humpty Dumpty

However, the egg only got larger and larger, and more and more human: when she had come within a few yards of it, she saw that it had eyes and a nose and mouth; and when she had come close to it, she saw clearly that it was HUMPTY DUMPTY himself. `It can't be anybody else!' she said to herself. `I'm as certain of it, as if his name were written all over his face.'

It might have been written a hundred times, easily, on that enormous face. Humpty Dumpty was sitting with his legs crossed, like a Turk, on the top of a high wall -- such a narrow one that Alice quite wondered how he could keep his balance -- and, as his eyes were steadily fixed in the opposite direction, and he didn't take the least notice of her, she thought he must be a stuffed figure after all.

`And how exactly like an egg he is!' she said aloud, standing with her hands ready to catch him, for she was every moment expecting him to fall.

`It's VERY provoking,' Humpty Dumpty said after a long silence, looking away from Alice as he spoke, `to be called an egg -- VERY!'

`I said you LOOKED like an egg, Sir,' Alice gently explained. `And some eggs are very pretty, you know, she added, hoping to turn her remark into a sort of a compliment.

`Some people,' said Humpty Dumpty, looking away from her as usual, `have no more sense than a baby!'

Alice didn't know what to say to this: it wasn't at all like conversation, she thought, as he never said anything to HER; in fact, his last remark was evidently addressed to a tree -- so she stood and softly repeated to herself: --

            `Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall:
             Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
             All the King's horses and all the King's men
             Couldn't put Humpty Dumpty in his place again.'
 

`That last line is much too long for the poetry,' she added, almost out loud, forgetting that Humpty Dumpty would hear her.

`Don't stand there chattering to yourself like that,' Humpty Dumpty said, looking at her for the first time,' but tell me your name and your business.'

`My NAME is Alice, but -- '

`It's a stupid name enough!' Humpty Dumpty interrupted impatiently. `What does it mean?'

`MUST a name mean something?' Alice asked doubtfully.

`Of course it must,' Humpty Dumpty said with a sort laugh: `MY name means the shape I am -- and a good handsome shape it is, too. With a name like your, you might be any shape, almost.'

`Why do you sit out here all alone?' said Alice, not wishing to begin an argument.

`Why, because there's nobody with me!' cried Humpty Dumpty. `Did you think I didn't know the answer to THAT? Ask another.'

`Don't you think you'd be safer down on the ground?' Alice went on, not with any idea of making another riddle, but simply in her good-natured anxiety for the queer creature. `That wall is so VERY narrow!'

`What tremendously easy riddles you ask!' Humpty Dumpty growled out. `Of course I don't think so! Why, if ever I DID fall off - - which (...)

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