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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=447671" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>Preface to Hunting of the Snark</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=447671" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">PREFACE</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=447671" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> If---and the thing is wildly possible---the charge of writing <br> nonsense were ever brought against the author of this brief but <br> instructive poem, it would be based, I feel convinced, on the line </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=447671" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> ``Then the bowsprit got mixed with the rudder sometimes'' </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=447671" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> In view of this painful possibility, I will not (as I might) appeal <br> indignantly to my other writings as a proof that I am incapable of <br> such a deed: I will not (as I might) point to the strong moral <br> purpose of this poem itself, to the arithmetical principles so <br> cautiously inculcated in it, or to its noble teachings in Natural <br> History---I will take the more prosaic course of simply explaining <br> how it happened. </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=447671" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> The Bellman, who was almost morbidly sensitive about appearances, <br> used to have the bowsprit unshipped once or twice a week to be <br> revarnished, and it more than once happened, when the time came for <br> replacing it, that no one on board could remember which end of the <br> ship it belonged to. They knew it was not of the slightest use to <br> appeal to the Bellman about it---he would only refer to his Naval <br> Code, and read out in pathetic tones Admiralty Instructions which <br> none of them had ever been able to understand---so it generally ended <br> in its being fastened on, anyhow, across the rudder. The helmsman <br> used to stand by with tears in his eyes: he knew it was all wrong, <br> but alas! Rule 42 of the Code, ``No one shall speak to the Man at the <br> Helm'', had been completed by the Bellman himself with the words <br> ``and the Man at the Helm shall speak to no one''. So remonstrance <br> was impossible, and no steering could be done till the next <br> varnishing day. During these bewildering intervals the ship usually <br> sailed backwards. </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=447671" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> This office was usually undertaken by the Boots, who found in it <br> a refuge from the Baker's constant complaints about the insufficient <br> blacking of his three pairs of boots. </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=447671" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> As this poem is to some extent connected with the lay of the <br> Jabberwock, let me take this opportunity of answering a question that <br> has often been asked me, how to pronounce ``slithy toves''. The <br> ``i'' in ``slithy'' is long, as in ``writhe''; and ``toves'' is <br> pronounced so as to rhyme with ``groves''. Again, the first ``o'' in <br> ``borogoves'' is pronounced like the ``o'' in ``borrow''. I have <br> heard people try to give it the sound of the ``o'' in ``worry''. <br> Such is Human Perversity. </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=447671" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> This also seems a fitting occasion to notice the other hard words in <br> that poem. Humpty-Dumpty's theory, of two meanings packed into one <br> word like a portmanteau, seems to me the right explanation for all. </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=447671" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> For instance, take the two words ``fuming'' and ``furious''. Make up <br> your mind that you will say both words, but leave it unsettled which <br> you will say first. Now open your mouth and speak. If your thoughts <br> incline ever so little towards ``fuming'', you will say <br> ``fuming-furious''; if they turn, by even a hair's breadth, towards <br> ``furious'', you will say ``furious-fuming''; but if you have that <br> rarest of gifts, a perfectly balanced mind, you will say <br> ``frumious''. </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=447671" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> Supposing that, when Pistol uttered the well-known words--- </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=447671" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> ``Under which king, Bezonian? Speak or die!'' </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=447671" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> Justice Shallow had felt certain that it was either William or <br> Richard, but had not been able to settle which, so that he could not <br> possibly say either name before the other, can it be doubted that, <br> rather than die, he would have gasped out ``Rilchiam!''. </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=447671" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br>'Lewis Carroll'</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><a href="http://poems.citatepedia.com/">poem</a> by <strong><a rel="author" href="http://authors.citatepedia.com/by.php?a=Lewis+Carroll">Lewis Carroll</a></strong></div>