Alice found the state of affairs in the lovely garden not at all so beautiful as she had expected. But after the game of croquet, the Queen said to Alice, "Have you seen the Mock Turtle yet?"
"No," said Alice. "I don't even know what a mock turtle is."
"It's the thing mock turtle soup is made from," said the Queen.
"Come on, then," said the Queen, "and he shall tell you his history."
They very soon came upon a gryphon, lying fast asleep in the sun.
"Up, lazy thing!" said the Queen; "and take this young lady to see the Mock Turtle, and to hear his history. I must go back and see after some executions I have ordered." And she walked off, leaving Alice alone with the Gryphon.
Alice and the Gryphon had not gone far before they saw the Mock Turtle in the distance, sitting sad and lonely on a little ledge of rock, and, as they came nearer, Alice could hear him sighing as if his heart would break.
So they went up to the Mock Turtle, who looked at them with large eyes full of tears.
"This here young lady," said the Gryphon, "she wants for to know your history."
"Once," said the Mock Turtle at last, with a deep sigh, "I was a real turtle. When we were little, we went to school in the sea. The master was an old turtle. We had the best of educations. Reeling and Writhing, of course, to begin with, and then the different branches of Arithmetic--Ambition, Distraction, Uglification, and Derision."
"I never heard of 'Uglification,'" Alice ventured to say. "What is it?"
The Gryphon lifted up both its paws in surprise.
"Never heard of uglifying!" it exclaimed. "You know what to beautify is, I suppose?"
"Yes," said Alice doubtfully, "it means to--make--anything--prettier."
"Well, then," the Gryphon went on, "if you don't know what to uglify is, you _are_ a simpleton."
Alice did not feel encouraged to ask any more questions about it, so she turned to the Mock Turtle, and said, "What else had you to learn?"
"Well, there was Mystery," the Mock Turtle replied, counting out the subjects on his flappers--"Mystery, ancient and modern, with Seaography; then Drawling--the Drawing-master was an old conger-eel, that used to come once a week; _he_ taught us Drawling, Stretching, and Fainting in Coils. The Classical master taught Laughing and Grief, they used to say."