The Silent Readers Part 2

THE NEW WONDERLAND

You have probably, like Betty, the little girl in this story, read "Alice in Wonderland". If you haven't, you will find out, before you have read very far on this page, when Alice lived. Glance at the first part of the story and see.

Alice, in the book that Betty had been reading, had wonderful adventures in a strange country, where rabbits and caterpillars talked, and where certain kinds of cake made you grow taller or shorter, and where people put pepper in tea. Anybody would think a country like that was a Wonderland; but you will see that Alice found our everyday, twentieth-century world is a Wonderland, too.

See if you can tell why she thought so.

Betty laid down her book with a sigh. It had been a lovely book, and she was sorry it was finished. "Such a humdrum old world!" she said discontentedly. "I wish I had a chance to go to Wonderland, like Alice."

"Why," said a voice from the doorway, "isn't this Wonderland, then?"

Betty looked up, startled. She saw a little girl of about her own age, with long, light, straight hair hanging to her waist, with wide, wondering blue eyes, and dressed in the simplest, most old-fas.h.i.+oned of little white frocks.

"Who are you?" inquired Betty.

"Why, don't you know me? I'm Alice," said the quaint little girl.

"How did you get here? I thought you lived a long time ago, in 1850 or so."

"Oh, yes, I did begin to live then; but you see I've been traveling in Wonderland so long that I've never had time to grow up."

"Aren't you sorry to have come back to real life, and begin to do lessons, and mind what the older people say, and all?"

"Oh, but I haven't! Of course, I suppose the people in Wonderland don't know they are queer, and so that's why you don't know you live there."

"Well," said Betty scornfully, "I'm sure I don't see anything to wonder at in this old place--" Just then a bell rang sharply, and Betty hurried to answer the telephone. It was her father speaking. She took his message and returned to her guest.

"What in the world," said Alice, "made you talk into that little black cup?"

"Why, that's the telephone."

"What's a telephone? We didn't have them in my time, I'm sure."

"Oh, everybody has one now. It lets you talk to somebody 'way off, over an electric wire."

"Of course, we read about Franklin and his kite and all that. Let me try it." But when the operator's voice saying "Number, please?" came to Alice's ear, she was so frightened that she dropped the receiver.

"I can show you lots more things we do with electricity," said Betty, beginning to understand that things which were commonplace to her were wonders to her visitor. "You see it's getting dark? Now watch." Going to the push-b.u.t.ton in the wall she snapped on the light; Alice jumped at its suddenness.

"Why, at home we had to find matches and light a lamp," she said in amazement.

"That's nothing," said Betty. "Come along." She led her new friend into the dining room, and showed her how, by pressing a b.u.t.ton, the rack could be heated for toasting bread, or heat supplied for the coffee pot. Then they went on into the kitchen, and she showed Alice the gas stove, where a flame sprang into life at the turning of a handle; and the was.h.i.+ng-machine, where the pressing of another b.u.t.ton set the clothes to churning up and down in the suds; and the electric iron, heated by the pressing of still another b.u.t.ton.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BETTY SHOWED HER THE VICTROLA]

"Why, n.o.body needs to do any work at all," said Alice admiringly, while Betty began to feel that after all she had a great many remarkable things in her house, which she had never thought much about because they had always been there. As they walked back into the hall, they heard a click-clicking sound.

"What's that?" said Alice.

"Oh, it's just my big brother's wireless apparatus catching a message.

If he were here he could tell us what it says."

"What's a wireless?"

"Why, you don't know anything much, do you?" Betty explained as well as she could about the wireless telegraph.

"Goodness! That's like real magic. You must feel as if you were living in a fairy story."

Betty had never thought of life in that way, and was about to tell Alice how really dull a time she had, when a sound of music interrupted them.

"Oh, how lovely! Somebody's singing!"

"No, you little goose, that's only the victrola," answered Betty.

"What's a victrola?"

Betty tried to explain that it was a machine that caught and imprisoned somebody's voice or the music of some instrument. But Alice couldn't understand. Even when Betty showed her the victrola, and the record, she could hardly believe that a real singer wasn't hidden somewhere making fun of her.

While she was still unpersuaded, Betty heard her father's key in the lock. She knew the car must still be before the door.

"Father, father," she cried, "this is Alice--from Wonderland, you know. Won't you take us for a ride?"

"A little one," said Betty's father. Alice clapped her hands, for she loved to go driving. But when the two little girls were safely seated in the back seat, she began to wonder again.

"Where are the horses?" she inquired.

"Horses! Why, it's an automobile."

"What's an automobile?"

"Why, a carriage that runs of itself." The car started, and Alice understood without further explaining. She couldn't ask any more questions, because the rapid motion quite took away her breath.

Betty asked Alice to spend the night with her, and promised that next morning she would take her to town and show her some more of the sights of the New Wonderland. She went to sleep feeling that after all it wasn't such a humdrum world, and that she had taken for granted a great many things that, when you came to think of it, really made life a fairy tale, and the world Wonderland.

--_Mabel Dodge Holmes._

QUESTIONS

1. Alice was no more surprised than any little girl of 1850 would be. What has happened in the world since that time to make it a Wonderland?

2. Why was the telephone a wonder to Alice?

3. Make a list of the wonders Betty showed Alice. Add to this list any similar wonders that you could show her in your house.

4. Can you think of some of the wonders that Betty showed Alice in their trip to the city?