Alice in Wonderland
1: Down the Rabbit-Hole
from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
The author invented this story for a little girl named Alice Liddell and
her two sisters. He told it to them while drifting down a river on a
golden afternoon in summer more than a hundred years ago. It has been a
favorite ever since.
Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the
bank, and of having nothing to do: once or twice she had peeped into the
book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in
it, “and what is the use of a book,” thought Alice, “without pictures or
conversations?”
So she was considering, in her own mind (as well as she could, for the
hot day made her feel very sleepy and stupid), whether the pleasure of
making a daisy-chain would be worth the trouble of getting up and
picking the daisies, when suddenly a white rabbit with pink eyes ran
close by her.
There was nothing so very remarkable in that; nor did Alice think it
so very much out of the way to hear the Rabbit say to itself, “Oh
dear! Oh dear! I shall be too late!” (when she thought it over
afterwards, it occurred to her that she ought to have wondered at this,
but at the time it all seemed quite natural); but when the Rabbit
actually took a watch out of its waistcoat-pocket, and looked at it,
and then hurried on, Alice started to
her feet, for it flashed across her mind that she had
never before seen a rabbit with either a waistcoatpocket, or a watch
to take out of it, and, burning with curiosity, she ran across the
field after it, and was just in time to see it pop down a large
rabbit-hole under the hedge.In another moment down went Alice after it, never
once considering how in the w’orld she was to get out again.
The rabbit-hole went straight on like a tunnel for some way, and then
dipped suddenly down, so suddenly that Alice had not a moment to think
about stopping herself before she found herself falling down what seemed
to be a very deep well.
Either the well was very deep, or she fell very slowly, for she had
plenty of time as she went down to look about her, and to wonder what
was going to happen next. First, she tried to look down and make out
what she was coming to, but it was too dark to see anything: then she
looked at the sides of the well, and noticed that they were filled with
cupboards and bookshelves: here and there she saw maps and pictures hung
upon pegs. She took down a jar from one of the shelves as she passed: it
was labeled “ORANGE MARMALADE,” but to her great disappointment it was
empty: she did not like to drop the jar, for fear of killing somebody
underneath, so managed to put it into one of the cupboards as she fell
past it.
“Well!” thought Alice to herself, “after such a fall as this, I shall
think nothing of tumbling downstairs! How brave they’ll all think me at
home! Why, I wouldn’t say
of
come
to an end? “I wonder how many miles I’ve fallen
anything about it, even if I fell off the top the house!” (Which was
very likely true.)Down, down, down. Would the fall never
by this time?” she said aloud. “I must be getting somewhere near the
centre of the earth. Let me see: that would be four thousand miles down,
I think—” (for, you see, Alice had learnt several things of this sort
in her lessons in the schoolroom, and though this was not a very good
opportunity for showing off her knowledge, as there was no one to listen
to her, still it was good practice to say it over) “—yes, that’s about
the right distance—but then I wonder what Latitude or Longitude I’ve
got to?” (Alice had not the slightest idea what Latitude was, or
Longitude either, but she thought they were nice grand words to say.)
Presently she began again. “I wonder if I shall fall right through the
earth! How funny it’ll seem to come out among the people that walk with
their heads downwards! The Antipathies, I think—” (she was rather glad
there was no one listening, this time, as it didn’t
sound at all the right word) “—but I shall have to ask them what the
name of the country is, you know. Please, Ma’am, is this New Zealand or
Australia?” (and she tried to curtsey as she spoke—fancy curtseying
as you’re falling through the air! Do you think you could manage it?)
“And what an ignorant little girl she’ll think me for asking! No, it’ll
never do to ask: perhaps I shall see it written up somewhere.”
Down, down, down. There was nothing else to do, so Alice soon began
talking again. “Dinah’ll miss me very much to-night, I should think!”
(Dinah was the cat.) “I hope they’ll remember her saucer of milk at
tea-time. Dinah, my dear! I wish you were down here with me! There are
no mice in the air, I’m afraid, but you might catch a bat, and that’s
very like a mouse, you know. But do cats eat bats, I wonder?” And here
Alice began to get rather sleepy, and went on saying to herself, in a
dreamy sort of way, “Do cats eat bats? Do cats eat bats?” and sometimes,
“Do bats eat cats?” for, you see, as she couldn’t answer either
question, it didn’t much matter which way she put it. She felt that she
was dozing off, and had just begun to dream that she was walking hand in
hand with Dinah, and was saying to her, very earnestly, “Now, Dinah,
tell me the truth: did you ever eat a bat?” when suddenly, thump! thump!
down she came upon a heap of sticks and dry leaves, and the fall was
over.
Alice was not a bit hurt, and she jumped up on to her feet in a moment:
she looked up, but it was all dark overhead; before her was another long
passage, and the White Rabbit was still in sight, hurrying down it.
There was not a moment to be lost: away went Alice like the wind, and
was just in time to hear it say, as it turned a corner, “Oh my ears and
whiskers, how late it’s getting!” She was close behind it when she
turned the corner, but the Rabbit was no longer to be seen: she found
herself in a long, low hall, which was lit up by a row of lamps hanging
from the roof.
There were doors all round the hall, but they were all
locked; and when Alice had been all the way down one side and up the
other, trying every door, she walked sadly down the middle, wondering
how she was ever to get out again.
Suddenly she came upon a little three-legged table, all made of solid
glass: there was nothing on it but a tiny golden key, and Alice’s first
idea was that this might belong to one of the doors of the hall; but,
alas! either the locks were too large, or the key was too small, but at
any rate it would not open any of them. However, on the second time
round, she came upon a low curtain she had not noticed before, and
behind it was a little door about fifteen inches high: she tried the
little golden key in the lock, and to her great delight it fitted!
Alice opened the door and found that it led into a small passage, not
much larger than a rat-hole: she knelt down and looked along the passage
into the loveliest garden you ever saw. How she longed to get out of
that dark hall, and wander about among those beds of bright flowers and
those cool fountains, but she could not even get her head through the
doorway; “and even if my head would go through,” thought poor Alice,
“it would be of very little use without my shoulders. Oh, how I wish I
could shut up like a telescope! I think I could, if I only knew how to
begin.” For, you see, so many out-of-the-way things had happened lately
that Alice
had begun to think that very few things indeed were really impossible.
There seemed to be no use in waiting by the little door, so she went
back to the table, half hoping she might find another key on it, or at
any rate a book of rules for shutting people up like telescopes: this
time she found a little bottle on it (“which certainly was not here
before,” said Alice), and tied round the neck of the bottle was a
paper label with the words “DRINK ME” beautifully printed on it in
large letters.It was all very well to say “Drink me,” but the wise little Alice was
not going to do that in a hurry. “No, I’ll look first,” she said,
“and see whether it’s marked ‘poison’ or not;” for she had read
several nice little stories about children who had got burnt, and
eaten up by wild beasts, and other unpleasant things, all because they
would not remember the simple rules their friends had taught them:
such as, that a red-hot poker will burn you if you hold it too long;
and that, if you cut your finger very deeply with a knife, it
usually bleeds; and she had never forgotten that, if you drink much
from a bottle marked “poison,” it is almost certain to disagree with
you, sooner or later.However, this bottle was not marked “poison,” so
Alice ventured to taste it, and, finding it very nice (it had, in fact,
a sort of mixed flavour of cherry-tart, custard, pineapple, roast
turkey, toffy, and hot buttered toast), she very soon finished it off.
“What a curious feeling!” said Alice. “I must be shutting up like a
telescope!”
And so it was indeed: she was now only ten inches high, and her face
brightened up at the thought that she was now the right size for going
through the little door into that lovely garden. First, however, she
waited for a few minutes to see if she was going to shrink any further:
she felt a little nervous about this; “for it might end, you know,” said
Alice to herself, “in my going out altogether, like a candle. I wonder
what I should be like then?” And she tried to fancy what the flame of a
candle looks like after the candle is blown out, for she could not
remember ever having seen such a thing.
After a while, finding that nothing more happened, she decided on going
into the garden at once; but, alas for poor Alice! when she got to the
door, she found she had forgotten the little golden key, and when she
went back to the table for it, she found she could not possibly reach
it: she could see it quite plainly through the glass, and she tried her
best to climb up one of the legs of the table, but it was too slippery;
and when she had tired herself out with trying, the poor little thing
sat down and cried.
“Come, there’s no use in crying like that!” said Alice to herself,
rather sharply. “I advise you to leave off this minute!” She generally
gave herself very good advice (though she very seldom followed it), and
sometimes she scolded herself so severely as to bring tears into her
eyes; and once she remembered trying to box her own ears for having
cheated herself in a game of croquet she was playing against herself,
for this curious child was very fond of pretending to be two people.
“But it’s no use now,” thought poor Alice, “to pretend to be two people!
Why, there’s hardly enough of me left to make one respectable person!”
Soon her eye fell on a little glass box that was lying under the table:
she opened it, and found in it a very small cake, on which the words
“EAT ME” were beautifully marked in currants. “Well, I’ll eat it,” said
Alice, “and if it makes me grow larger, I can reach the key; and if it
makes me grow smaller, I can creep under the door: so either way I’ll
get into the garden, and I don’t care which happens!”
She ate a little bit, and said anxiously to herself, “Which way? Which
way?” holding her hand on the top of her head to feel which way it was
growing, and she was quite surprised to find that she remained the same
size. To be sure, this is what generally happens when one eats cake; but
Alice had got so much into the way of expecting nothing but
out-of-the-way things to happen, that it seemed quite dull and stupid
for life to go on in the common way.
So she set to work, and very soon finished off the cake.
2: The Pool of Tears
“Curiouser and curiouser!” cried Alice (she was so much surprised, that
for the moment she quite forgot how to speak good English). “Now I’m
opening out like the largest telescope that ever was! Good-bye, feet!”
(for when she looked down at her feet, they seemed to be almost out of
sight, they were getting so far off). “Oh, my poor little feet, I wonder
who will put on your shoes and stockings for you now, dears? I’m sure
I shan’t be able! I shall be a great deal too far off to trouble
myself about you: you must manage the best way you can—but I must be
kind to them,” thought Alice, “or perhaps they won’t walk the way I want
to go! Let me see: I’ll give them a new pair of boots every Christmas.”
And she went on planning to herself how she would manage it. “They must
go by the carrier,” she thought; “and how funny it’ll seem, sending
presents to one’s own feet! And how odd the directions will look!
A lice’s Right Foot, Esq. Hearthrug, near the Fender, (with Alice’s
love).
Oh dear, what nonsense I’m talking!”
Just at this moment her head struck against the roof of the hall: in
fact she was now rather more than nine feet high, and she at once took
up the little golden key and hurried off to the garden door.
Poor Alice! It was as much as she could do, lying down on one side, to
look through into the garden with one eye; but to get through was more
hopeless than ever: she sat down and began to cry again.
“You ought to be ashamed of yourself,” said Alice, “a great girl like
you,” (she might well say this), “to go on crying in this way! Stop this
moment, I tell you!” But she went on all the same, shedding gallons of
tears, until there was a large pool all round her, about four inches
deep and reaching half down the hall.
After a time she heard a little pattering of feet in the distance, and
she hastily dried her eyes to see what was coming. It was the White
Rabbit returning, splendidly dressed, with a pair of white kid gloves in
one hand and a large fan in the other: he came trotting along in a great
hurry, muttering to himself as he came, “Oh! The Duchess, the Duchess!
Oh! Won’t she be savage if I’ve kept her waiting!” Alice felt so
desperate that she was ready to ask help of anyone: so, when the Rabbit
came near her she began, in a low, timid voice, “If you please, Sir—”
The Rabbit started violently, dropped the white
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kid gloves and the fan, and scurried away into the darkness as hard as
he could go.
Alice took up the fan and gloves, and, as the hall was very hot, she
kept fanning herself all the time she went on talking. “Dear, dear! How
queer everything is to-day! And yesterday things went on just as usual.
I wonder if I’ve been changed in the night? Let me think: was I the
same when I got up this morning? I almost think I can remember feeling a
little different. But if I’m not the same, the next question is, ‘Who in
the world am I?’ Ah,
that\’s the great puzzle!” And she began thinking over all the
children she knew that were of the same age as herself, to see if she
could have been changed for any of them.
“I’m sure I’m not Ada,” she said, “for her hair goes in such long
ringlets, and mine doesn’t go in ringlets at all; and I’m sure I can’t
be Mabel, for I know all sorts of things, and she, oh! she knows such a
very little! Besides, she\’s she, and I’m I, and—oh dear, how
puzzling it all is! I’ll try if I know all the things I used to know.
Let me see: four times five is twelve, and four times six is thirteen,
and four times seven is—oh dear! I shall never get to twenty at that
rate! However, the Multiplication Table doesn’t signify: let’s try
Geography. London is the capital of Paris, and Paris is the capital of
Rome, and Rome—no, that\’s all wrong, I’m certain! I must have been
changed for Mabel! I’ll try and say ‘How doth the little—and she
crossed her hands on her lap, as if she were saying lessons, and began
to repeat it, but her voice sounded hoarse and strange, and the words
did not come the same as they used to do:—
“How doth the little crocodile Improve his shining tail, And pour the
waters of the Nile On every golden scale!
“How cheerfully he seems to grin, How neatly spreads his claws, And
welcomes little fishes in With gently smiling jaws!”
“I’m sure those are not the right words,” said poor Alice, and her eyes
filled with tears again as she went on, “I must be Mabel after all, and
I shall have to go and live in that poky little house, and have next to
no toys to play with, and oh! ever so many lessons to learn! No, I’ve
made up my mind about it: if I’m Mabel, I’ll stay down here! It’ll be no
use their putting their heads down and saying, ‘Come up again, dear!’ I
shall only look
up and say, ‘Who am I, then? Tell me that first, and then, if I like
being that person, I’ll come up: if not, I’ll stay down here till I’m
somebody else’—but, oh dear!” cried Alice, with a sudden burst of
tears, “I do wish they would put their heads down! I am so very
tired of being all alone here!”
As she said this, she looked down at her hands, and was surprised to see
that she had put on one of the Rabbit’s little white kid gloves while
she was talking. “How can I have done that?” she thought. “I must be
growing small again.” She got up and went to the table to measure
herself by it, and found that, as nearly as she could guess, she was now
about two feet high, and was going on shrinking rapidly: she soon found
out that the cause of this was the fan she was holding, and she dropped
it hastily, just in time to save herself from shrinking away altogether.
“That was a narrow escape!” said Alice, a good deal frightened at the
sudden change, but very glad to find herself still in existence. “And
now for the garden!” And she ran with all speed back to the little door;
but, alas! the little door was shut again, and the little golden key was
lying on the glass table as before, “and things are worse than ever,”
thought the poor child, “for I never was so small as this before, never!
And I declare it’s too bad, that it is!”
As she said these words her foot slipped, and in another moment, splash!
she was up to her chin in salt water. Her first idea was that she had
somehow fallen into the sea, “and in that case I can go back by
railway,” she said to herself. (Alice had been to the seaside once in
her life, and had come to the general conclusion that, wherever you go
to on the English coast, you find a number of bathing machines in the
sea, some children digging in the sand with wooden spades, then a row of
lodging-houses, and behind them a railway station.) However, she soon
made out that she was in the pool of tears which she had wept when she
was nine feet high.
“I wish I hadn’t cried so much!” said Alice, as she swam about, trying
to find her way out. “I shall be punished for it now, I suppose, by
being drowned in my own tears! That will be a queer thing, to be
sure! However, everything is queer to-day.”Just then she heard something splashing about in the pool a little way
off, and she swam nearer to make out what it was: at first she thought
it must be a walrus or hippopotamus, but then she remembered how small
she was now, and she soon made out that it was only a mouse, that had
slipped in like herself.“Would it be of any use, now,” thought Alice, “to speak to this mouse?
Everything is so out-of-the-way down here, that I should think very
likely it can talk: at any rate, there’s no harm in trying.” So she
began: “0 Mouse, do you know the way out of this pool? I am very tired
of swimming about here, 0 Mouse!” (Alice thought
this must be the right way of speaking to a mouse: she had never done
such a thing before, but she remembered having seen, in her brother’s
Latin Grammar, “A mouse—of a mouse—to a mouse—a mouse—0 mouse!”)
The mouse looked at her rather inquisitively, and seemed to her to wink
with one of its little eyes, but it said nothing.
“Perhaps it doesn’t understand English,” thought Alice. “I daresay it’s
a French mouse, come over with William the Conqueror.” (For, with all
her knowledge of history, Alice had no very clear notion how long ago
anything had happened.) So she began again: “Ou est ma chatte?” which
was the first sentence in her French lesson-book. The Mouse gave a
sudden leap out of the water, and seemed to quiver all over with fright.
“Oh, I beg your pardon!” cried Alice hastily, afraid she had
hurt the poor animal’s feelings. “I quite forgot you didn’t like cats.”
“Not like cats!” cried the Mouse in a shrill, passionate voice. “Would
you like cats, if you were me?”
“Well, perhaps not,” said Alice in a soothing tone: “don’t be angry
about it. And yet I wish I could show you our cat Dinah. I think you’d
take a fancy to cats, if you could only see her. She is such a dear
quiet thing,” Alice went on, half to herself, as she swam lazily about
in the pool, “and she sits purring so nicely by the fire, licking her
paws and washing her face—and she is such a nice soft thing to
nurse—and she’s such a capital one for catching mice—oh, I beg your
pardon!” cried Alice again, for this time the Mouse was bristling all
over, and she felt certain it must be really offended. “We won’t talk
about her any more, if you’d rather not.”
“We, indeed!” cried the Mouse, who was trembling down to the end of his
tail. “As if I would talk on such a subject! Our family always hated
cats: nasty, low, vulgar things! Don’t let me hear the name again!”
“I won’t indeed!” said Alice, in a great hurry to change the subject of
conversation. “Are you—are you fond—of—of dogs?” The Mouse did not
answer, so Alice went on eagerly: “There is such a nice little dog near
our house I should like to show you! A little bright-eyed terrier, you
know, with oh, such long curly brown hair! And it’ll fetch things when
you throw them, and it’ll sit up and beg for its dinner, and all sorts
of things—I can’t remember half of them—and it belongs to a farmer,
you know, and he says it’s so useful, it’s worth a hundred pounds! He
says it kills all the rats and—oh dear!” cried Alice in a sorrowful
tone. “I’m afraid I’ve offended it again!” For the Mouse was swimming
away from her as hard as it could go, and making quite a commotion in
the pool as it went.
So she called softly after it, “Mouse dear! Do come back again, and we
won’t talk about cats, or dogs either, if you don’t like them!” When the
Mouse heard this, it turned round and swam slowly back to her: its face
was quite pale (with passion, Alice thought), and it said, in a low,
trembling voice, “Let us get to the shore, and then I’ll tell you my
history, and you’ll understand why it is I hate cats and dogs.”
It was high time to go, for the pool was getting quite crowded with the
birds and animals that had fallen into it: there was a Duck and a Dodo,
a Lory and an Eaglet, and several other curious creatures. Alice led the
way, and the whole party swam to the shore.
5YE
Alice has many more adventures in Wonderland before she finds herself
back with her sister. And her fantastic adventures are continued in
another book, Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There.
