'Chorus again!' cried the Gryphon, and the Mock Turtle

'Chorus again!' cried the Gryphon, and the Mock Turtle had just begun  to repeat it, when a cry of 'The trial's beginning!' was heard in the  distance. 'Come on!' cried the Gryphon, and, taking Alice by the hand, it hurried  off, without waiting for the end of the song. 'What trial is it?' Alice panted as she ran; but the Gryphon only  answered 'Come on!' and ran the faster, while more and more faintly  came, carried on the breeze that followed them, the melancholy words:— 'Soo—oop of the e—e—evening,       Beautiful, beautiful Soup!' The King and Queen of Hearts were seated on their throne when they  arrived, with a great crowd assembled about them—all sorts of little  birds and beasts, as well as the whole pack of cards: the Knave was  standing before them, in chains, with a soldier on each side to guard  him; and near the King was the White Rabbit, with a trumpet in one hand,  and a scroll of parchment in the other. In the very middle of the court  was a table, with a large dish of tarts upon it: they looked so good,  that it made Alice quite hungry to look at them—'I wish they'd get the  trial done,' she thought, 'and hand round the refreshments!' But there  seemed to be no chance of this, so she began looking at everything about  her, to pass away the time. Alice had never been in a court of justice before, but she had read  about them in books, and she was quite pleased to find that she knew  the name of nearly everything there. 'That's the judge,' she said to  herself, 'because of his great wig.' The judge, by the way, was the King; and as he wore his crown over the  wig, (look at the frontispiece if you want to see how he did it,) he did  not look at all comfortable, and it was certainly not becoming. 'And that's the jury-box,' thought Alice, 'and those twelve creatures,'  (she was obliged to say 'creatures,' you see, because some of them were  animals, and some were birds,) 'I suppose they are the jurors.' She said  this last word two or three times over to herself, being rather proud of  it: for she thought, and rightly too, that very few little girls of her  age knew the meaning of it at all. However, 'jury-men' would have done  just as well. The twelve jurors were all writing very busily on slates. 'What are they  doing?' Alice whispered to the Gryphon. 'They can't have anything to put  down yet, before the trial's begun.' 'They're putting down their names,' the Gryphon whispered in reply, 'for  fear they should forget them before the end of the trial.' 'Stupid things!' Alice began in a loud, indignant voice, but she stopped  hastily, for the White Rabbit cried out, 'Silence in the court!' and the  King put on his spectacles and looked anxiously round, to make out who  was talking. Alice could see, as well as if she were looking over their shoulders,  that all the jurors were writing down 'stupid things!' on their slates,  and she could even make out that one of them didn't know how to spell  'stupid,' and that he had to ask his neighbour to tell him. 'A nice  muddle