law (through the looking glass)

“ ....

' I don't understand you,' said Alice. 'It's dreadfully confusing!'

'That's the effect of living backwards,' the Queen said kindly: 'it always makes one a little giddy at first -'

'Living backwards! Alice repeated in great astonishment. 'I never heard of such a thing!'

' - but there's one great advantage in it, that one's memory works both ways.'

'I'm sure mine works one way,' Alice remarked. 'I can't remember things before they happen.'

'It's a poor sort of memory that only works backwards,' the Queen remarked.

'What sort of things do you remember best?' Alice ventured to ask.

'Oh, things that happened the week after next,' the Queen replied in a careless tone. 'For instance, now,' she went on, sticking a large piece of plaster on her finger as she spoke,' there's the King's Messenger. He's in prison now, being punished: and the trial doesn't even begin next Wednesday: and of course the crime comes last of all.'

'Suppose he never commits the crime?' said Alice.

'That would be all the better, wouldn't it?' the Queen said, as she bound the plaster round her finger with a bit of ribbon.

Alice felt there was not denying that. 'Of course it would be all the better,' she said: 'but it wouldn't be all the better his being punished.'

'You're wrong there, at any rate,' said the Queen: were you ever punished?'

'Only for faults,' said Alice.

'And you were all the better for it, I know!' the Queen said triumphantly.

'Yes, but then I had done the things I was pushed for,' said Alice: 'that makes all the difference.'

'But if you hadn't done them,' the Queen said, 'that would have been better still; better and better and better!' Her voice went higher with each better,' till it got quite to a squeak at last.

Alice was just beginning to say 'There's a mistake somewhere -,' when the Queen began screaming so loud that she had to leave the sentence unfinished. 'Oh, oh, oh!' shouted the Queen, shaking her hand about as if she wanted to shake it off. 'My finger's bleeding! Oh, oh, oh, oh!'

......”