rate.'

'You couldn't have it if you DID want it,' the Queen said. 'The rule is,
jam to-morrow and jam yesterday--but never jam to-day.'

'It MUST come sometimes to "jam to-day,"' Alice objected.

'No, it can't,' said the Queen. 'It's jam every OTHER day: to-day isn't
any OTHER day, you know.'

'I don't understand you,' said Alice. 'It's dreadfully confusing!'

'That's the effect of living backwards,' the Queen said kindly: 'it
always makes one a little giddy at first--'

'Living backwards!' Alice repeated in great astonishment. 'I never heard
of such a thing!'

'--but there's one great advantage in it, that one's memory works both
ways.'

'I'm sure MINE only works one way,' Alice remarked. 'I can't remember
things before they happen.'

'It's a poor sort of memory that only works backwards,' the Queen
remarked.

'What sort of things do YOU remember best?' Alice ventured to ask.

'Oh, things that happened the week after next,' the Queen replied in a
careless tone. 'For instance, now,' she went on, sticking a large piece
of plaster [band-aid] on her finger as she spoke, 'there's the King's
Messenger. He's in prison now, being punished: and the trial doesn't
even begin till next Wednesday: and of course the crime comes last of
all.'

'Suppose he never commits the crime?' said Alice.

'That would be all the better, wouldn't it?' the Queen said, as she
bound the plaster round her finger with a bit of ribbon.

Alice felt there was no denying THAT. 'Of course it would be all
the better,' she said: 'but it wouldn't be all the better his being
punished.'

'You're wrong THERE, at any rate,' said the Queen: 'were YOU ever
punished?'

'Only for faults,' said Alice.

'And you were all the better for it, I know!' the Queen said
triumphantly.

'Yes, but then I HAD done the things I was punished for,' said Alice:
'that makes all the difference.'

'But if you HADN'T done them,' the Queen said, 'that would have been
better still; better, and better, and better!' Her voice went higher
with each 'better,' till it got quite to a squeak at last.

Alice was just beginning to say 'There's a mistake somewhere--,' when
the Queen began screaming so loud that she had to leave the sentence
unfinished. 'Oh, oh, oh!' shouted the Queen, shaking her hand about as
if she wanted to shake it off. 'My finger's bleeding! Oh, oh, oh, oh!'

Her screams were so exactly like the whistle of a steam-engine, that
Alice had to hold both