December 28, 1929

In our crash-and-panic we have reached for Alice's small bottle with "DRINK ME" printed in large and beautiful letters--but the liars did not mark it "poison," so we drink, and we are all shutting up like telescopes. And as we diminish, I also worry that we will go out altogether, and, like Alice, I dare to wonder "what the flame of a candle is like after the candle is blown out."

The French have found Georges Méliès in his wife's toy-and-candy stall at Montparnasse station. They have decided that he is a National Treasure, and will no doubt cram him with a cake on which "EAT ME" is written in currants, and he will stretch like a giraffe, curiouser and curiouser, until he can no longer enter the beautiful garden, his eye pressed to the door as though it were an arcade peep-show--as I did summer last at Coney Island, bent over the dingy Mutoscope, peering at the grainy Méliès imps and planets jumping and prestidigitating while at my back the ocean whispered beneath the Skee-Ball thunder and clatter--and the old magician will cry, and make an ocean of his tears, and sail away (I wish I could go with him), his Long Tale winding to a point, until Méliès is beloved once more, but tiny, with a Duck and a Dodo, a Lory and an Eaglet, safe at last in Wonderland.