A Grice Brie-Party

There was virtually a table set out under a tree in front of the house, and the Zany Mother Friendly Meant and the Mad Latter were having Brie cheese at it: a soft Lit-Rat was sitting between them, fast asleep, and the other two were using it as a cushion, resting their elbows on it, and All Ways And Every Which Way talking over its head. `Very uncomfortable for the Lit-Rat,' thought Alice; `only, as it's asleep, I suppose it doesn't mind.'

The table was a large one, but the three were all crowded together at one corner of it: `No room! No room!' they cried out when they saw Alice coming. `There's PLENTY of room!' said Alice indignantly, and she sat down in a large arm-chair at one end of the table.

`Have some tea,' the Zany Mother Friendly Meant said in an encouraging tone.

Alice looked all round the table, but there was nothing on it but Brie cheese and hot grits. `I don't see any tea,' she remarked.

`There isn't any,' said the Zany Mother Friendly Meant.

`Then it wasn't very civil of you to offer it,' said Alice angrily.

`Don't assume that I implied as much! It wasn't very civil of you to sit down without being invited,' said the Zany Mother Friendly Meant, throwing knowing glances and silent kissy brackets {over the snoozing Lit-Rat} in the direction of the Mad Latter.

`I didn't know it was VIRTUALLY YOUR table,' said Alice; `it's laid for a great many more than three.'

`Your hair wants cutting,' said the Latter. He had been looking at Alice for some time with great curiosity, and this was his first speech.

`You should learn not to make personal remarks,' Alice said with some severity; `it's very rude.'

The Latter opened his eyes very wide on hearing this; but all he SAID was, `Why is a raven like a writing-desk?'

`Come, we shall have some fun now!' thought Alice. `I'm glad they've begun asking a Liddell.--I believe I can guess that,' she added aloud.

`Do you mean that you think you can find out the answer to it?' said the Zany Mother Friendly Meant.

`Exactly so,' said Alice.

`Then you should see what you mean,' the Zany Mother Friendly Meant went on, demonstratively undoing the square brackets around the [Brie], which--she was sure--in her Implicature was Conversationally the Implicatee.

`I do,' Alice hastily replied; `at least--at least I mean what I see--that's the same thing, you know.'

`Not the same thing a bit!' said the Latter, lifting his nose for this zweck out of his Oxford Etymologickall Lexicon of Archaisms Usefull in a Pinch. `You might just as well see that "I say what I eat" is the same thing, though a tad on the side of the monotonic, as "I eat what I say"!' Upon saying this he distributed generous portions of Brie to virtually all of the empty plates around the table.

`You might just as well add,' added the Zany Mother Friendly Meant, `that "I like what I get" is the same thing as "I get what I like"!' It should be added that she appeared indeed to like what she got of the Implicated Brie.

`You might just as well add,' added the Lit-Rat, who seemed to be adding in his sleep, `that "I add when I sleep" is the same thing as "I sleep when I add"!'

`It IS the same thing with you,' said the Latter, and here the conversation dropped, and the party sat silent for a minute, while Alice thought over all she could remember about ravens and writing-desks, which wasn't much, except that her little friend Euphemia's uncle, Edgar Allan Poe (in fact related to the distinguished English Allans), had written on both.

The Latter was the first to break the silence. `What day of the month is it?' he said, turning to Alice: he had taken his watch out of his pocket, and was looking at it uneasily, shaking it every now and then, and holding it to his ear.

Alice considered a little, and then said `The fourth.'

`Two days wrong!' sighed the Latter. `I told you beer wouldn't suit the works!' he added looking angrily at the Zany Mother Friendly Meant.

`It was the BEST GERMAN beer,' the Zany Mother Friendly Meant meekly replied.

`Yes, but some Camb. Black Holes must have got in as Well, and I don't mean Camembert,' the Latter grumbled: `you should have put it in with the bread-knife.'

The Zany Mother Friendly Meant took the watch and looked at it gloomily: then she pressed it face down into her Brie, and looked at it again and then at the impression it had made in her Brie: but she could think of nothing better to say than her first remark, `It was the BEST GERMAN beer, you know.'

Alice had been looking over her shoulder with some curiosity. `What a funny watch!' she remarked. `It tells the day of the month, and doesn't tell what o'clock it is!'

`Why should it?' muttered the Latter. `Does YOUR watch tell you what year it is?'

`Of course not,' Alice replied very readily: `but that's because it stays the same year for such a long time together.'

`Which is just the case with MINE,' said the Latter.

Alice felt dreadfully puzzled. The Mad Latter's remark seemed to have no sort of meaning in it, and yet it was certainly English, well, at least Anglo-Speranglish. `I don't quite understand you,' she said, as politely as she could.

`The Lit-Rat is asleep again,' said the Latter, and he rubbed a little Brie cheese upon its nose.

The Lit-Rat shook its head impatiently, and said, without opening its eyes, `Of course, of course; just what I was going to remark myself.'

`Have you guessed the riddle yet?' the Latter said, turning to Alice again.

`No, I give it up,' Alice replied: `what's the answer?'

`I haven't the slightest idea,' said the Latter.

`Nor I,' said the Zany Mother Friendly Meant.

Alice sighed wearily. `I think you might do something better with your time,' she said, `than waste it in discussing Gricean implicatures of simple hypothetical sentences.'

`If you knew Grice as well as I do,' said the Latter, `you couldn't talk about wasting TIME. It's HIM.'

`I don't know what you mean,' said Alice.

`Of course you don't!' the Latter said, tossing his head contemptuously. `I dare say you never even spoke to Time!'

`Perhaps not,' Alice cautiously replied: `but I know I have to beat time when I learn music.'

`Ah! that accounts for it,' said the Latter. `He won't stand beating and doesn't take kindly to being trounced, rhetorically speaking. Now, if you only kept on good terms, Gricean technical terms, with him, you could do almost anything you liked with the clock. For instance, suppose it were nine o'clock in the morning, just time to begin lessons: you'd only have to whisper a hint to Time, and round goes the clock in a twinkling; you would change your time zone, just like that! Half-past one, time for dinner!'

(`I only wish it was,' the Zany Mother Friendly Meant said to herself in a whisper.)

`That would be grand, certainly,' said Alice thoughtfully: `but then--I shouldn't be hungry for it, you know.'

`Not at first, perhaps,' said the Mad Latter: `but you could keep it to half-past one as long as you liked.'

`Is that the way YOU manage?' Alice asked.

The Latter shook his head mournfully. `Not I!' he replied. `We quarrelled last month--just before SHE went mad, you know--'(pointing with his Griessbrei spoon at the Zany Mother Friendly Meant,) `--it was at the great lecture given by Bultinek on Scalar Implicatures and Their Use in the Edjukayshun of Childers, and I was invited to play the organ and to Griceanically sing

"Twinkle, twinkle, little bat!
How I wonder what you're at!"

You know the song, perhaps?'

`I've heard something like it,' said Alice.

`It goes on, you know,' the Latter continued, `in this way:--

"Up above the world it flies,
Like a Brie with name of Grice.
Twinkle, twinkle--"'

Here the Lit-Rat shook itself, and began singing in its sleep `Twinkle, twinkle, twinkle, twinkle--' and went on so long that they had to pinch it to make it stop.

`Well, I'd hardly finished the first verse,' said the Latter, `when the Erin, the Queen of Philosophy, jumped up and bawled out, "He's murdering the time! Off with his head!"'

`How dreadfully savage!' exclaimed Alice.

`And EVERY TIME since that,' the Latter went on in a mournful tone, `EVERY TIME I write an adverbial expression concerning time, it ALL WAYS majasculates and I ALL WAYS abuse people's eyes! It's ALL WAYS six o'clock NOW.'

A bright idea came into Alice's head. `Is that the reason so many Brie- and Brei-things are put out here?' she asked.

`Yes, that's it,' said the Latter with a sigh: `it's ALL WAYS Grice-Brie-and Griessbrei-time, and we've no time to wash or change the things between whiles.'

`Then you keep moving round, I suppose?' said Alice.

`Exactly so,' said the Latter: `as the things get used up. Plus I keep repeating myself,' repeated the Latter, repetitively.

`But what happens when you come to the beginning again?' Alice ventured to ask.

`Suppose we change the subject,' the Zany Mother Friendly Meant interrupted, yawning. `I'm getting tired of this. I vote the young lady tells us a story.'

`I'm afraid I don't know one,' said Alice, rather alarmed at the proposal.

`Then the Lit-Rat shall!' they both cried. `Wake up, Lit-Rat!' And they pinched it on both sides at once.

The Lit-Rat slowly opened his eyes. `I wasn't asleep,' he said in a hoarse, feeble voice: `I heard every word you folks were saying.'

`Tell us a story!' said the Zany Mother Friendly Meant.

`Yes, please do!' pleaded Alice.

`And be quick about it,' added the Latter, `or you'll be asleep again before it's done.'

`Once upon a time there were three famous rats living on three famous rivers,' the Lit-Rat began in a great hurry; `and their names, to a rat and river, were Mississippi, Jordan, and Thames; and they all grew up at the bottoms of dirty holes and traveled, respectively, into the Gulf, the Dead Sea, and the Channel--'

`What did they live on?' said Alice, who always took a great interest in questions of eating and drinking.

`They lived on grits, that is to say, on Griessbrie, Grice Grits, a groatsworth apiece, per diem,' said the Lit-Rat, after thinking a minute or two.

`They couldn't have done that, you know,' Alice gently remarked; `they'd have been ill.'

`So they were,' said the Lit-Rat; `VERY ill.'

Alice tried to fancy to herself what such an extraordinary ways of living would be like, but it puzzled her too much, so she went on: `But why did they live at the bottoms of a dirty holes?'

`Take some more Brie,' the Zany Mother Friendly Meant said to Alice, very earnestly.

`I've had nothing yet,' Alice replied in an offended tone, `so I can't take more.'

`You mean you can't take LESS,' said the Latter: `it's very easy to take MORE than nothing.'

`Nobody asked YOUR opinion,' said Alice.

`That's NO BODY, young lady, according to the protocol, and who's making personal remarks now?' the Latter asked triumphantly.

Alice did not quite know what to say to this: so she helped herself to some Brie and bread-and-butter, and then turned to the Lit-Rat, and repeated her question. `Why did they live at the bottoms of dirty holes?'

The Lit-Rat again took a minute or two to think about it, and then said, `They were Grice Holes.'

`There's no such thing!' Alice was beginning very angrily, but the Mad Latter and the Zany Mother Friendly Meant went `Sh! sh!' and the Lit-Rat sulkily remarked, `If you can't be civil, you'd better finish the story for yourself.'

`No, please go on!' Alice said very humbly; `I won't interrupt again. I dare say there may be ONE.'

`One, indeed!' said the Lit-Rat indignantly. However, he consented to go on. `And so these three little rats--they were learning to draw, you know--'

`What did they draw?' said Alice, quite forgetting her premise, 'Conclusions?'

`Implicatura,' said the Lit-Rat, without considering at all this time.

`I want a clean slice of Grice Brie,' interrupted the Latter: `let's all move one place on.'

He moved on as he spoke, and the Lit-Rat followed him: the Zany Mother Friendly Meant moved into the Lit-Rat's place, and Alice rather unwillingly took the place of the Zany Mother Friendly Meant. The Mad Latter was the only one who got any advantage from the change since EVERY BODY found THEIR SELVES sticking their noses in more of the same, old, stale, semi-regurgitated Grice Brie, mixed, if they were unlucky this move, in tepid Griessbrei, or grits: and Alice was a good deal worse off than before, as the Zany Mother Friendly Meant had just upset the milk-jug into
her plate.

Alice did not wish to offend the Lit-Rat again, so she began very cautiously: `But I don't understand. Where did they draw the Inferences or Implicatura from?'

`You can draw water out of a water-hole,' said the Latter; `so I should think you could draw inferences or implicatures out of a dirty hole--eh, stoopid?'

`But they were IN the dirty holes,' Alice said to the Lit-Rat, not choosing to notice this last remark.

`Of course they were', said the Lit-Rat; `--in deep.'

This answer so confused poor Alice, that she let the Lit-Rat go on for some time without interrupting it.

`They were learning to draw inferences,' the Lit-Rat went on, yawning and rubbing its eyes, for it was getting very sleepy; `and they drew all manner of implicating things--everything that begins with a Q--'

`Why with a Q?' queried Alice.

`Why not?' queried the Zany Mother Friendly Meant.

Alice was silent.

The Lit-Rat had closed its eyes by this time, and was going off into a doze; but, on being pinched by the Latter, it woke up again with a little shriek, and went on: `--that begins with a Q, such as queries, and queers, and Quatch, and quark-- you know you say things are "quite quizzical"--did you ever see such a thing as a drawing of quizzicalness?'

`Really, now you ask me,' said Alice, very much confused, `I don't think--'

`Then you shouldn't talk,' said the Latter.

This piece of rudeness was more than Alice could bear: she got up in great disgust, and walked off; the Lit-Rat fell asleep instantly, and neither of the others took the least notice of her going, though she looked back once or twice, half hoping that
they would call after her: the last time she saw them, they were trying to put the Lit-Rat into the bowl of Grice grits.

`At any rate I'll never go THERE again!' said Alice as she picked her way through the wood. `It's the stoopidest Grice Brie-party I ever was at in all my life!'

Just as she said this, she noticed that one of the trees had a door leading right into it. `That's very curious!' she thought. `But everything's curious today. I think I may as well go in at once.' And, figuring 'Anywent went,' in she went.

Once more she found herself in the long hall, and close to the little glass table. `Now, I'll manage better this time,' she said to herself, and began by taking the little golden key, and unlocking the door that led into the garden. Then she went to
work nibbling at the mushroom (she had kept a piece of it in her pocket) till she was about a foot high: then she walked down the little passage: and THEN--she found herself at last in the beautiful philosophical garden, among the brightly literate flower-beds and the cool clear fountains.