Paul Grimstad
The Number 42

From Tether 4, pages 72–77

When Alice is dozing in her sister’s lap, thinking about and ultimately rejecting the idea of setting out to collect flowers to make a daisy chain, she sees a White Rabbit take a watch from its waistcoat pocket.  John Tenniel’s crosshatched image of the Rabbit is the first of forty-two illustrations in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland andLewis Carroll, it seems, was particularly drawn to this number. As Martin Gardner put it, the number 42 had “some sort of special significance for him.”