Page:Carroll - Tangled Tale.djvu/131

Rh By making two mistakes in this line, she brings out $$\scriptstyle y\ =\ \frac{3}{2}$$. Try it again, oh ! Away with : infuse a little more : and you will bring out the correct (though uninteresting) result, 0 = 0! This will show you that it is hopeless to try to coax any one of these 3 unknowns to reveal its separate value. The other competitor, who is wrong throughout, is either J. M. C. or T. M. C.: but, whether he be a Juvenile Mis-Calculator or a True Mathematician Confused, he makes the answers 7d. and 1s. 5d. He assumes, with Too Much Confidence, that biscuits were ½d. each, and that Clara paid for 8, though she only ate 7!

We will now consider the 13 whose working is wrong, though the answer is right: and, not to measure their demerits too exactly, I will take them in alphabetical order. finds (rightly) that "1 sandwich and 3 biscuits cost 3d." and proceeds "therefore 1 sandwich = 1½d., 3 biscuits = 1½d., 1 lemonade = 6d." begins like : and thence proves (rightly) that a biscuit costs less than a 1d.: whence she concludes (wrongly) that it must cost ½d. F. C. W. is so beautifully resigned to the certainty of a verdict of "guilty," that I have hardly the heart to utter the word, without adding a "recommended to mercy owing to extenuating circumstances." But really, you know, where are the extenuating