XII. Alice in Wonderland
Alice never forgot the time she went to California with her grandpapa. Grandpapa was going back to California. The first time he went in an ox-wagon, when he was ten years old. Now he was going back from New York City in a palace car. Grandpapa was seventy and Alice was ten. She was young enough to be foolish, and grandpapa was old enough to forget that he had ever been wise. So they went to California together, and they had a perfectly grand time.
Part of the fun came from grandpapa's pretending. You know a great many grown people can't pretend a bit. Grandpapa pretended that everything would look as it did when he was a boy. He told Alice Chicago would be a little city of twenty thousand people. He asked the colored porter of the car how big it was.
" 'Bout two million people, suh!"
"My, my, how it has grown since I was a boy," said grandpapa. Alice laughed and grandpapa's eyes twinkled. He pretended to be surprised all the time. Om-a-ha was a big city too. There was no fort, no fur-trading post, no Indians—there were no buffaloes. The grassy plains were covered with wheat and cornfields and busy towns. In front of the mountain wall was Denver, a city of more than one hundred thousand people.
The iron horse climbed right over the mountains. The railroad looped around the curves. It ran along the edges of cliffs, and through long snow-shed tunnels. "Now," said grandpapa, "you'll see bears that are bears. Don't the bears come down to the stations, and give you bear hugs, sometimes?" he asked the porter.
"No, suh, not that I evah noticed, suh. I reckon they done gone fah back in the mountains, suh!"
"Too bad, too bad," said grandpapa. "No bears, no big-horn sheep, no deer, no elk. Well, hello, there are some prairie dogs, barking at the train!" There were a few Indians at the station too, and flocks of woolly sheep on the mountain sides, with shepherds and collie dogs, and in the valleys were cattle, and cowboys on ponies. The snow peaks were there, and the dusty desert. But every once in a while they came to a mining town high up on a
