The White Knight
39% Curiosity, 29% Madness and 16% Energy!
`How
can you go on talking so quietly, head downwards?' Alice asked, as she dragged him out by the feet, and laid him in a heap on the bank.
The Knight looked surprised at the question. `What does it matter where my body happens to be?' he said. `My mind goes on working all the same. In fact, the more head-downwards I am, the more I keep inventing new things.'
`Now the cleverest thing of the sort that I ever did,' he went on after a pause, `was inventing a new pudding during the meat-course.'
`In time to have it cooked for the next course?' said Alice. `Well, that
was quick work, certainly!'
`Well, not the
next course,' the Knight said in a slow thoughtful tone: `no, certainly not the next
course.'
`Then it would have to be the next day. I suppose you wouldn't have two pudding-courses in one dinner?'
`Well, not the
next day,' the Knight repeated as before: `not the next
day. In fact,' he went on, holding his head down, and his voice getting lower and lower, `I don't believe that pudding ever
was cooked! In fact, I don't believe that pudding ever
will be cooked! And yet it was a very clever pudding to invent.'
[...] Alice could only look puzzled: she was thinking of the pudding.
`You are sad,' the Knight said in an anxious tone: `let me sing you a song to comfort you.'
`Is it very long?' Alice asked, for she had heard a good deal of poetry that day.
`It's long,' said the Knight, `but it's very,
very beautiful. Everybody that hears me sing it -- either it brings the
tears into their eyes, or else --'
`Or else what?' said Alice, for the Knight had made a sudden pause.
`Or else it doesn't, you know.