A Christmas Fantasy




                          The Escape of Alice

                          A Christmas Fantasy

                                  By

                           Vincent Starrett


                            [Illustration]


                         PRIVATELY PRINTED AT
                         CEDAR RAPIDS IOWA FOR
                         THE FRIENDS OF LUTHER
                         ALBERTUS AND ELINORE
                         TAYLOR BREWER CHRISTMAS
                         NINETEEN NINETEEN




                            Copyright 1919
                          By Vincent Starrett




                            TO OUR FRIENDS


It has been well said, that a friend in need is a friend indeed.

Such a friend, Vincent Starrett, of Chicago, has proven to be to us.

Last year, more to our regret than to the regret of our friends, we
were compelled reluctantly to forego the pleasure and privilege of
holding a session with them around our fireplace or beneath our reading
lamp.

And a similar situation was imminent at this Christmas time――when our
good fairy, Mr. Starrett, one morning dropped on our desk _The Escape
of Alice_ with the cheerful message, “It is yours, Brewer, for your
Christmas booklet, if you want it.”

So here it is――a pleasant Christmas fantasy――sent to our friends of old
and to some new ones, with all the best greetings of the season.

                                                          THE BREWERS

December 25 1919




                          THE ESCAPE OF ALICE


The red linen covers opened slightly, and a little girl slipped out,
leaving behind her a curious vacancy in one of the familiar pictures
signed with Mr. Tenniel’s initials. She looked about her with bright,
alert eyes, hoping no one had been a witness to her desertion, and then
carefully began to climb down. She need not have alarmed herself, for
she was no bigger than a minute, and clearer eyes than those of the
rheumatic old antiquarian who kept the shop would have been needed to
comprehend her departure. Fortunately, the shelf onto which she had
emerged was not high, and by exercising great caution the little girl
was able to reach the floor without mishap.

Still watching the old man closely, she reached a hand into the pocket
of her print dress and produced a few crumbs of cake, which she
immediately ate. Almost instantly she began to grow, and, in a moment,
from a tiny little mite of three or four inches, she had shot up into
as tall a schoolgirl of thirteen as the proudest parent could wish. The
ascent, indeed, was so rapid that before she quite realized what had
happened, there was her head on a level with the shelf upon which, only
an instant before, she had been standing; and there was the prison
from which she had escaped. “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,” read
the gold letters over the door.

She plucked the volume from its place, and advanced with it toward the
guardian of the bookshop.

“If it is not too high,” said Alice, “I think I shall take this.”

The old bookseller, whose wits had been woolgathering for many years,
would not have admitted for worlds that he had not heard her enter the
shop. He took the book from her hand.

“You choose wisely,” he said, and patted the red covers lovingly.
“Alice――the ageless child! It is one of the greatest compendiums of
wit and sense in literature. There are only two books to match it. You
shall have it for fifteen cents, for it is far from new, and I see what
I had not noticed before, that the frontispiece is missing.”

“And what are the other two?” asked Alice, eagerly.

“When you are older you will read them,” said the old bookman. “They
are called ‘Don Quixote’ and ‘The Pickwick Papers’.”

Then very suddenly Alice blushed, for she remembered that she could not
pay. Timidly, she handed back the red-covered volume.

“I am sorry,” she said, “but I have no money. I don’t know why I was so
stupid as to come away without any.”

“Money!” cried the antiquarian. “Did I ask you money for this book?
Forgive me! It is a habit I have fallen into for which I am very
sorry. Money is the least important thing in the world. Only the
worthless things are to be had for money. Those things which are beyond
price――thank God!――are to be had for the asking. Take it, child!
Tomorrow is Christmas day. I should be grieved indeed if there were no
_Alice_ for you on Christmas day――as grieved as if there were no Santa
Claus.”

There was something so unearthly about this strange old man that Alice
wondered if she were not yet in Wonderland. With a sobriety quite out
of keeping with her usually merry disposition, she thanked him and went
forth into the snow-clad streets.

                   *       *       *       *       *

The plethora of Santa Clauses spending the holiday week-end in the city
bewildered Alice, and now, after a long afternoon in the hurly-burly
of metropolitan life, she was becoming tired. The number of Santa
Clauses resident upon earth appalled her, and the extravagance of their
promises, while pleasant enough, almost frightened her. Without any
questions asked――even her address, which, had it been requested, would
have taxed her wits rather severely――they accepted her commissions and
guaranteed immediate delivery. The final excursion through the great
department stores had been adventurous and diverting, but now――toward
nightfall――was becoming monotonous, what with its profusion of Kris
Kringles and street hawkers, and its babble of eleventh hour shoppers.
It was like witnessing a really thrilling movie drama for the second
time, thought Alice, who had initiated herself into the delights of
moving-picture entertainment for the first time that day, and wondered
at its remarkable duplication. By five o’clock the little girl knew
just what each and every Santa Claus was going to say to her, and what
was coming next, and that one――at least――of the three remaining Santas
would want to kiss her. She had been kissed almost to death, as it was,
and that was beginning to bore her, too.

It occurred to Alice, who was a shrewd little girl and not one of your
bleating lambs, that Santa Claus, despite his profusion――or because of
it――might be something of an old fraud, after all. She was entirely
certain that not one of him resembled the jolly old saint of her mental
picture. The cottony fellow at Wanacooper’s was not a bit red and
chubby, nor very jovial either; and she hoped that the others――at the
Emporium, and the Bargain Store, and the Bon Marché――would agree more
sympathetically, as to corpulence, with the merry and very dear old
gentleman of her favorite poem.

She repeated the first lines, softly, under her breath:

    _’Twas the night before Christmas,
      And all through the house
    Not a creature was stirring,
      Not even a mouse...._

Well, that was not not surprising. Obviously, all the creatures who
might otherwise have been stirring about the house on the night before
Christmas were crowding and jostling each other in department stores,
buying useless presents for people they didn’t like. Alice thought it
odd that this hadn’t occurred to her before. It made the beginning of
the poem quite clear.

The Santa Claus at the Emporium was entirely surrounded by children.
Entirely surrounded? Why not? The schoolroom definition of an island
is authority for it: “An island is a body of land entirely surrounded
by water.” Sticklers for accuracy will have it that the “entirely” is
extraneous. If, they say, if he――or it――that is, Santa Claus or the
island――is surrounded by anything (whether water or children), he――or
it――is surrounded, and that is all there is to it. Not “entirely
surrounded”; just surrounded. Happily, Alice knew nothing of this.
As for us, we are nothing if not independent, and care nothing for
grammarians――nothing at all. The Santa Claus at the Emporium was
entirely surrounded by children, just like all his duplicates, and, in
the midst of an alarming racket, was writing long lists of juvenile
wants in a big bookkeeper’s ledger. The big bookkeeper was nowhere
about, and so the old fellow went right ahead, just as if it had been
his own ledger, and filled as many columns as a child wished, in the
most amiable manner in the world. He was the nicest Santa Claus Alice
had yet seen.

He did not immediately notice Alice, who was neither larger nor smaller
than most of the other children shouting around him; but when he did
notice her he liked her right away. He liked the old-fashioned way of
her, and her last century clothes, and from the way she looked at him
he was sure that _she_, at least, believed in him, and wasn’t dropping
in just to see how much she could get out of him. And then he hurried,
so that he could finish quickly with the others and get around to
Alice. It wasn’t very long until there she was――right up beside him,
with his dear old whiskers tickling her shell-like ears (one of them,
anyway), and his pen poised over a perfectly blank page, ready to write
down anything that Alice asked him to. And his voice, too, was very
pleasant.

“Now,” said this kindly old saint, adjusting his eyebrows with some
care, for they were slightly moth-eaten and appeared to be falling
off――and no wonder, either, for some hundreds of boys and girls had
been leaning against them all day――“Now,” said this nice old man, “what
do you wish me to bring _you_ for Christmas, little Golden-hair?”

There was something charming about the way he emphasized the _you_ that
put Alice at ease immediately. So she told him all about the lovely
doll, and the darling kitten, and the sweet bird she wanted, and had
been wanting for a long time, and all about the books she needed with
which to catch up on the world. For she had been locked away for so
long that she felt a bit out of date, and such phrases as “League of
Nations” and “Maple Nut Sundae” simply meant nothing to her, while they
were the common property of every other girl and boy in the land.

The good-natured old soul wrote them all down very carefully, and then
kissed Alice just as she had expected he would. He promised faithfully
to deliver every one of her orders, in person, and warned her about
seeing that the hearth fire was extinguished before midnight.

“Because promptly at midnight,” he said, “I shall come down the
chimley.”

Alice giggled at that.

“You mean the chimney, don’t you?” she asked.

“Chimney, indeed!” snorted Santa Claus. “After all these years, don’t
you think I know the difference between a chimney and a chimley? No,
sir! I come down a chimley, every time. I’ll leave it to everyone here.”

And turning to the crowd of boys and girls around him, he asked: “How
do I get into the house, children?”

“Down the chimley!” roared the chorus.

“You see?” said Santa Claus.

Alice did see, and felt very much ashamed of her display of ignorance.

“Never mind,” said Santa Claus, kindly. “But I think,” he added, “you
had better go with my assistant, and be quite sure we have all these
things in stock. He’ll be glad to show you around. It’s all free, you
know. Just look around as long as you like, and if you see anything
else you want, come right back and tell me about it.”

There was a little boy standing beside Santa Claus, with a metal tag
on his collar, and the generous old gentleman turned to him and told
him to go and fetch his――that is, Santa Claus’s――assistant. While Alice
was waiting, a lot of other children pushed forward, and Alice was
pretty nearly forgotten. But after a while she heard some one say,
“He’s coming now. He’ll be here in just a minute, now,” and at the same
moment she saw Santa Claus’s assistant coming toward her.

He was a sprightly little fellow, and Alice decided to like him. He
came up in a sort of blue-green light, which danced all around him, and
without the slightest hesitation Alice took his hand and walked away
with him.

The little man’s fingers were so cold and hard, though, that Alice was
surprised, and when she was sure he wasn’t looking she looked him over
earnestly. After she had done that, she almost screamed, used as she
was to odd things in Wonderland. For the little man was made of wood.
Everything was wood, and Alice was holding on to his wooden fingers,
and he was talking out of his wooden mouth, and the whole affair was
the most wooden episode Alice could remember. His remarks concerning
some of the books Alice wanted, the little girl thought, were the most
wooden thing about him. But the little man’s face was rather nice, for
it was highly painted in blue and green, and he had bright yellow eyes
that fairly sparkled with enamel.

“Let’s see,” said the wooden man. “Dolls were first on the list,
weren’t they? Well, here we are. We call this room ‘The Kingdom of
Dolls,’ although as a matter of fact it is ruled by a Queen, and never
did have a King, because the Queen is rather old and nobody will marry
her. And as she won’t allow any of the other dolls to marry until she
herself finds a King, it makes it hard for the younger ones.”

“Dear me,” said Alice. “Do you suppose I might get a peep at the Queen,
without being seen?”

“Easy enough,” said the wooden man, “for there she is――that long-haired
doll with the purple robe. She likes to be looked at, and I need hardly
remark that her hair is false. She’s awfully stuck up, though, and we
won’t tarry long, for she’d only snub us.”

“What a funny crown she is wearing,” laughed Alice, turning her head to
look back.

“You may well say so,” said the wooden man, ironically, “for it is made
of kistletoe. She never takes it off!”

“Kistletoe!” said Alice, and then, forgetting her humiliating experience
about the chimley, “Don’t you mean mistletoe?”

“No, I mean kistletoe,” replied the wooden man, rather impatiently.
“Everybody knows what kistletoe is. But then, perhaps you are too
young. When you are older you will know more.”

“I’m thirteen,” said Alice, with proper dignity.

“Thirteen!” shrieked the wooden man, so loudly that Alice felt sure
she had offended again. “What a dreadfully unlucky number! I should be
frightened to death to be thirteen. How long have you been thirteen?”

“Nearly two months now,” Alice confessed, miserably. Then she
brightened. “But everybody has to be thirteen sometime. Weren’t you
ever thirteen?”

“Never!” declared the wooden man, firmly. “When my thirteenth birthday
approached, I tore off an entire year of the calendar, and passed
right into my fourteenth year. Of course, there was a fearful row
about it! But it’s really just like skipping a grade at school. If
you’re smart enough you can do it. We have some very nice calendars,”
he added, professionally.

Alice was frankly bewildered, but she had forgotten her wounded
dignity. In a moment her attention was attracted by a succession of
melodious sounds, ending on a queer upward inflection that seemed to
leave the phrase unfinished, and hanging in the air.

“Do listen!” she exclaimed. “Isn’t that too sweet? It sounds like a
bird singing.”

“Most birds do,” said the wooden man, drily. “That’s your bird,” he
added, more politely. “You asked for a bird, you know.”

“But why does it end its song so abruptly?” asked Alice. “It doesn’t
seem to finish.”

“Confinement,” answered the little guide, briefly. “Its cage is too
small. Its notes only reach the top of the cage, and then echo back
into its own ears, which naturally surprises it into silence. It’s too
bad, for it’s losing its upper register. It once sang very well.”

“I shall let it go when I get it,” declared Alice, with decision.

“You may do as you please, of course,” agreed the wooden man, “but
you’ll only be wanting another one, next Christmas.”

They hurried forward, pressing through the crowd about the cage. It
was humorous the way the people fell back on either side of the wooden
man’s sharp-elbows. What they saw, when they reached the cage, was a
beautiful yellow bird with black wings, and big black eyes, swinging
and singing on a perch of gold.

“Wound up too tightly,” muttered the wooden man. “One of the monkeys
has been monkeying with the key.”

With a ferocious glare at the children around him, he reached in a
hand, and Alice heard a sharp click. The bird stopped singing in the
middle of a note. Then the wooden man lifted the little creature from
its perch and brought it forth with as little concern as if it were
made of wood, too.

“Oh!” cried Alice, in distress. “You mustn’t hurt the bird! It wasn’t
its fault that somebody monkeyed with the key.”

The word _monkeyed_ puzzled her, but she supposed it was all right,
since that was what the wooden man had said.

But the wooden man only laughed and held out the bird for her
inspection. Then Alice saw that it was not a real bird at all, but was
made of thin metal so skilfully painted as to look real.

“You forget this is Toyland,” grinned the wooden man. “This bird is no
more real than I am, than these children are――than you are!”

“Ain’t I real?” asked Alice, in alarm. Quickly correcting herself, she
said: “Am I not real?”

“Real enough,” said the wooden man, casually. “A real nuisance,” he
muttered, under his breath; but fortunately Alice did not hear this
rude remark. He continued, more pleasantly: “Oh, the bird is real
enough, too. But it’s been wound up too tightly. It doesn’t know what
it is singing, or why it is singing. It lacks a soul.”

This remark was too deep for Alice, so she made no reply. After a
minute, she asked:

“Aren’t there any more animals?”

“Birds aren’t animals,” sneered the wooden man, and then he was very
much ashamed of himself. “I beg your pardon,” he said, contritely. “I
had forgotten you are only thirteen.” (He shuddered as he mentioned
the sinister number.) “Well, yes, there is the Performing Pony, and
the Whistling Toad, and the Talking Dog, and the Teddy Bear, and the
Laughing Hyena, and the Sorrowful Snake, and the Ingenious Ibex, and
the Loquacious Lynx, and――Oh, we have quite a menagerie!”

He looked quizzically at Alice, and suddenly began to sing:

    _O, ferocious and atrocious is the beast they call the lynx;
    And fierce his howl, and black his scowl, and red his jowl,
        methinks...._

“You have a very nice voice,” said Alice, as the singer paused.

“I wish you wouldn’t interrupt,” snapped the wooden man. “First you
want to hear about the animals, and then you don’t.” He stopped short.
“Do you really like my voice?” he asked eagerly. Then his head drooped
woodenly, for he saw that Alice was no longer paying attention.

“I haven’t much of a voice myself,” mused the little girl, “but I think
I could speak a piece.”

“Let’s hear it,” urged the wooden man. And moment Alice heard herself
reciting:

    _I thought I heard a parson swear
      Because his eyes were sore;
    I turned around, and saw it was
      The watchdog’s honest snore.
    “Alas,” he whispered, tearfully,
      “That two times two is four!”_

    _I thought I saw a mastodon
      Upon the pantry shelf;
    I looked again, and saw it was
      A picture of myself.
    “O dear,” I said, “the albatross
      Is eating all the pelf!”_

“What’s pelf?” demanded the wooden man, critically.

“Pelf is――I think it’s something to eat,” explained Alice. “But I
didn’t have to say pelf, could have said elf, or delf――”

“Or skjelf!” jeered the wooden man. “Poetic license is a dangerous
thing for a girl of thirteen. I shall see that yours is revoked at
once.”

Alice began to cry with shame and humiliation.

“There, there,” cried the wooden man, ashamed of himself again. “I was
only plaguing you. You rhyme beautifully――much better than I do. Now,
let’s go and see P. D.”

“P. D.?” queried Alice, drying her tears. “Who is P. D.?”

“Why the Plausible Donkey, to be sure,” laughed the wooden man. “You
said you wanted to see some more animals.”

“Why don’t you call him D. P.?” asked Alice, after a moment, as they
walked toward the menagerie.

“Why?” The wooden man seemed suspicious.

“Democratic Party,” giggled Alice; and then stopped as she caught sight
of the wooden man’s face, which was contorted with pain. “I beg your
pardon,” she added, hastily.

But the wooden man wouldn’t speak another word until they had arrived
at the Donkey Shelter, when he became cheerful once more.

“Let me introduce you to the Plausible Donkey,” he said, gallantly.

“Pleased to meet you, Mr. Donkey,” said Alice, timidly. “What beautiful
eyes you have.”

“The better to see you with, my child,” quoted the Plausible Donkey,
just to show that he was not such a donkey as he looked. “What can I do
for you to-day?”

“Can you sing?” asked Alice, innocently.

“Heavens!” groaned the wooden man, in her ear. “Now you’ve done it! He
has no more voice than a crow!”

But the Plausible Donkey was pleased by the question.

“It is not surprising that you do not know my ability in that respect,”
he smiled, “since this is your first visit. The fact is――” He blushed
modestly. “The fact is, I am descended from that notable singer,
Maxwelton.”

“Maxwelton!” echoed Alice, in surprise. “I thought that was a song.”

“It was originally,” the Plausible Donkey said plausibly. “My ancestor
was named after the song because his brays were bonnie.”

“Oh,” said Alice, politely; but the wooden man snickered and spoiled it
all.

“You’re making fun of me,” she cried, with tears in her voice, “and I
don’t want to hear you sing now.”

She hurried away, leaving the wooden man to apologize as best he could
for Alice’s impoliteness. He was puffing mightily when he overtook her.

“I think we’ve had enough of animals,” he said between gasps. “Let’s
go over and see the books.” It was evident, even to Alice, that he was
getting tired of his charge.

They were in the book department before they knew it――before Alice
knew it, at any rate. All around them were books――heaps and heaps of
them――on tables and shelves, and piled on long counters, and hung up in
booths; and in the very center of the immense room, whose horizon could
not be seen for the stacks of books, was a great American Eagle, made
entirely of books, the work of the chief window-dresser, who was a very
literary man.

“Have you ‘The Young Visiters’?” asked Alice.

“Young visitors!” echoed the wooden man. “Santa Claus has dozens of
them――hundreds――every day. Thousands, I guess!”

“Silly! It’s a book,” said Alice. “It was written by a friend of mine,
Daisy Ashford, when she was only nine years old.”

The wooden man looked very suspiciously at his charge.

“Nobody could write a book at nine,” he said with finality.

“Daisy could, and did,” declared Alice.

“Nobody could get it published, anyway,” sneered the wooden man. “Of
course, anybody could write one.”

“And she had it published, and here it is!” cried Alice, triumphantly.
She snatched a book from a long counter, and presented it to her
companion.

The wooden man cautiously took it, turned it over, and handed it back.

“Where does it say she is only nine years old?” he demanded.

“In the preface, of course,” answered Alice. “She’s older now, but she
was only nine when she wrote it.”

She whirled over the leaves until she found the place.

“There it is! Sir James Barrie himself says so, in the preface.”

“Humph!” said the wooden man. “He probably wrote it himself. And he
wasn’t nine when he wrote it, either, although he’s pretty childish, at
that. He’s writing introductions, now, for anybody.”

“He would at least know how to spell visitors, wouldn’t he?”

The wooden man stared at the cover. At sight of the title he was
visibly shaken.

“It might be a typographical error,” he ventured. “But, if you know
this Daisy Ashford, what’s her book about?”

“It’s about a man who――who was in love with――with a young woman,”
lucidly explained Alice. “He was rather an old man, and――”

“Then Barrie wrote it!” interrupted the wooden man. “That ends _that_!”

“It doesn’t end anything,” cried Alice, almost in tears. “And he
doesn’t write as many introductions as H. G. Wells, anyway!”

“O-ho!” said the wooden man. “Well?”

“Wells!” said Alice, sharply. “Wells, Wells! How many wells make a
river?”

“Really,” admonished the wooden man, “you mustn’t get out of temper. I
don’t like Wells any more than you do. I find it difficult to get to
the bottom of them....” He fell to singing:

    _Mr. Britling saw it through,
    That was more than I could do!
    Central, ring up Heaven’s bells――
    Get me God, for H. G. Wells._

Alice appeared shocked at this levity.

“You should not be so Leviticus,” she said, “even in a good cause.”

“I don’t mean to be irrelevant,” replied the wooden man. “I was only
reviewing Mr. Wells in rhyme. Would you like to hear the next verse?
It’s about Amy Lowell.”

“I don’t believe I’d better,” answered Alice, nervously. “Is she
anything like Daisy Ashford?”

“They’re not exactly as like as twins,” admitted the wooden man. “Your
Daisy is rather――er――slender, is she not?”

“Oh, very!”

“Then she’s not,” said the wooden man, with conviction. “I have never
seen Amy Lowell, but Mr. Bitter Wynner, who was here one day last week,
told me that he had got up in a street car and offered to be one of
three men to give Miss Lowell a seat.”

“Dear me!” exclaimed Alice. “She needs some of my cake.”

“Cake?” asked the wooden man.

But Alice, fearing she had betrayed herself, would say no more about it.

“Well,” said the wooden man, “we’ve checked on the doll, and the bird,
and the books. There was to be a kitten, I believe. That means that
we’ll have to go back to the menagerie.”

“I won’t go back to the menagerie,” Alice said firmly, “and if the
kittens are no more polite than the donkeys, I won’t have one.”

“You’ll have to ask Santa Claus to strike it off the list then, or
you’ll have it sure tomorrow morning. And we’ll have to hustle, too,
for the old boy closes up at eight o’clock. He went on strike for a
shorter day, last month――seven hundred of him――and after eight o’clock
he won’t do a lick of work.”

“Let’s hurry,” cried Alice, breathlessly.

So they hurried back through the teeming aisles, past the Plausible
Donkey, who brayed after them jeeringly, past the Singing Bird, which
offered to finish its song if they would only tarry, past the stuck-up
Queen of the Dolls, who ogled the Wooden Man, shamefully, and at length
arrived at the cottony dwelling of Santa Claus. But――alas!――the door
now was closed, and tacked to the outer panel was a large sign, “Gone
to the Races. Back Next Year.”

“Oh!” said Alice, “isn’t it provoking! Now I shall have to have a
kitten, after all――and I suppose it will eat the bird, and scratch the
doll, and tear up the books, and make me angry all day long.”

“No doubt,” said the wooden man, callously.

“But what does he mean by the races?” asked curious Alice.

“The reindeer races,” replied the wooden man. “They race annually on
Saturn’s race track, and the winning Santa Claus is the boss Santa
Claus of the year, and makes the rounds on Christmas eve. It doesn’t
take a minute to get there, and probably by this time the races are
over.”

“I hope our Santa Claus won, don’t you?” cried Alice.

“What’s the difference?” asked the wooden man. “They all look alike.”

“That’s so,” said Alice, reflectively, “but this one was very nice.”

“They’re paid to be nice,” said the wooden man cynically. “I’m paid to
be nice. You don’t think I’ve been piloting _you_ round all afternoon
for fun, do you?”

“Well,” said Alice, with spirit, “I like that! I’m sure if I knew
who paid you, I’d report you and you wouldn’t get a penny. You don’t
deserve it, for you haven’t been nice. I shall leave you, this minute.”

“Good-bye,” grinned the wooden man, mockingly. “Close the door after
you as you go out.”

                   *       *       *       *       *

“That was a very rude wooden man,” thought Alice to herself, as, half
blinded with tears, she hurried through the snowy streets. “It is very
evident that he tore off his thirteenth year. That is the year when
people learn to be polite. And he said I was not real! I never knew
till I was thirteen how real I was.”

Without quite knowing where she was going, unconsciously her footsteps
strayed toward the shop of the old bookman, the only friend she had
found who seemed to be genuine. The precious volume, which once she had
thought a prison, was safe beneath her arm. Well, she knew now what she
would do. She would give it back, and if the old man were so kind as to
let her, she would creep back into the pages, and be happy there again
forever....

“Poor child,” smiled the old bookman, when she had related her
adventures, and cried over them. “Indeed he did need his thirteenth
year. That is the age at which one best appreciates what reality is.
Once learned, it is a lesson never to be forgotten. To the child of
thirteen, all things are real if they are beautiful, and all things
are unreal which are ugly. Anything is real that we want to be real.
Sensible writers, like Barrie, learn this at thirteen and tear off
_all_ the remaining years of the calendar. Time passes, but they remain
thirteen; they improve their style, their appreciation of beautiful
things deepens, their outlook is broader and finer, but at heart they
are still children. They have never escaped from their thirteenth year,
and they never will――and they are very glad about it.”

To this astonishing harangue, Alice had no reply, for truth to tell she
understood very little of it; but it sounded real, and she liked the
look on the old bookman’s face as he said it.

“Would you mind, sir,” she timidly asked, “if I were to creep back into
my book, and hide again on your shelf?”

“Are you quite sure you can manage it?” asked the old man.

“Oh, yes,” said Alice, “for I still have a piece of cake that I brought
with me. I had two pieces――one to make me grow, and one to make me
small again. Just watch me!”

Then she took a few crumbs of cake from her pocket and began to eat
them; and the old bookman standing by, saw her shrink down and down and
down, until she was such a tiny little thing at his feet that his eyes
could barely find her.

He picked her up gently, and opened the book lying on the counter.

“You must find the place,” he said: “Do you remember it?”

With a little sigh of relief, Alice slipped into the right picture,
where, to her great joy, she fitted like a glove――and suddenly the
picture was complete again, and the old bookman turning the leaves over
could not find her――there were so many of her, and he did not know
which one was really _her_.

Suddenly the book fell from his hand, and clattered onto the floor,
striking his foot as it fell. At the same instant, of course, he awoke,
sitting in his chair near the old stove. He smiled a little, but was
not surprised, for he was used to dreaming strange and pleasant dreams.
As he stooped to pick up the book, a customer entered the store.

“What have you there?” asked the stranger, looking at the book in the
old man’s hand. “‘Alice in Wonderland?’ Charming thing! What do you ask
for it?”

“Not this copy,” said the old man, firmly. “This is my personal copy.
This is one book you cannot buy.”




                    TWO HUNDRED COPIES OF THIS BOOK
                    WERE PRINTED BY THE TORCH PRESS
                    CEDAR RAPIDS IOWA IN THE MONTH
                    OF DECEMBER NINETEEN NINETEEN


                   *       *       *       *       *


 Transcriber’s Notes:

 ――Text in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_).

 ――Printer’s, punctuation, and spelling inaccuracies were silently
   corrected.

 ――Archaic and variable spelling has been preserved.