INTRODUCTION

ALICE IN DOWNING STREET

“Have you ever seen an Ineptitude?” asked the Cheshire Cat suddenly; the Cat was nothing if not abrupt.

“CAN YOU TELL ME WHAT YOU ARE DOING HERE?” ALICE INQUIRED POLITELY.

“Not in real life,” said Alice. “Have you any about here?”

“A few,” answered the Cat comprehensively. “Over there, for instance,” it added, contracting its pupils to the requisite focus, “is the most perfect specimen we have.”

Alice followed the direction of its glance and noticed for the first time a figure sitting in a very uncomfortable attitude on nothing in particular. Alice had no time to wonder how it managed to do it, she was busy taking in the appearance of the creature, which was something like a badly-written note of interrogation and something like a guillemot, and seemed to have been trying to preen its rather untidy plumage with whitewash. “What a dreadful mess it’s in!” she remarked, after gazing at it for a few moments in silence. “What is it, and why is it here?”

“It hasn’t any meaning,” said the Cat, “it simply is.”

“Can it talk?” asked Alice eagerly.

“It has never done anything else,” chuckled the Cat.

“Can you tell me what you are doing here?” Alice inquired politely. The Ineptitude shook its head with a deprecatory motion and commenced to drawl, “I haven’t an idea.”

“It never has, you know,” interrupted the Cheshire Cat rudely, “but in its leisure moments” (Alice thought it must have a good many of them) “when it isn’t playing with a gutta-percha ball it unravels the groundwork of what people believe—or don’t believe, I forget which.”

THE QUEEN.

with apologies to Sir John Tenniel

“It really doesn’t matter which,” said the Ineptitude, with languid interest.

“Of course it doesn’t,” the Cat went on cheerfully, “because the unravelling got so tangled that no one could follow it. Its theory is,” he continued, seeing that Alice was waiting for more, “that you mustn’t interfere with the Inevitable. Slide and let slide, you know.”

“But what do you keep it here for?” asked Alice.

“Oh, somehow you can’t help it; it’s so perfectly harmless and amiable and says the nastiest things in the nicest manner, and the King just couldn’t do without it. The King is only made of pasteboard, you know, with sharp edges; and the Queen”—here the Cat sank its voice to a whisper—“the Queen comes from another pack, made of Brummagem ware, without polish, but absolutely indestructible; always pushing, you know; but you can’t push an Ineptitude. Might as well try to hustle a glacier.”

“That’s why you keep so many of them about,” said Alice.

“Of course. But its temper is not what it used to be. Lots of things have happened to worry it.”

“What sort of things?”