Context: Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, a lecturer in mathematics at Oxford University, is better known by his pen name, Lewis Carroll, the author of children's fantasies, the central character of which is a little friend, Alice Liddell. In Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Alice slips away from her sister, who is reading a book, and chases a White Rabbit until she trips, falling a great distance down the rabbit hole. At the end of the fall, Alice finds herself in a queer land where many strange, magical events occur. She meets the Duchess, who first appears to be unpleasantly hot-tempered, but who later seems quite amiable as she strolls with Alice around the palace grounds of the Queen of Hearts. The Duchess, discovering Alice lost in thought, comments that Alice has forgotten to talk because she is thinking and that there is some moral to this, though she cannot remember it. She adds: