Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

by Lewis Carroll

Contents

• CHAPTER I. Down the Rabbit-Hole
• CHAPTER II. The Pool of Tears
• CHAPTER III. A Caucus-Race and a Long Tale
• CHAPTER IV. The Rabbit Sends in a Little Bill
• CHAPTER V. Advice from a Caterpillar
• CHAPTER VI. Pig and Pepper
• CHAPTER VII. A Mad Tea-Party
• CHAPTER VIII. The Queen's Croquet-Ground
• CHAPTER IX. The Mock Turtle's Story
• CHAPTER X. The Lobster Quadrille
• CHAPTER XI. Who Stole the Tarts?
• CHAPTER XII. Alice's Evidence

CHAPTER I.

Down the Rabbit-Hole

Alice was getting very tired of sitting next to her sister on the riverbank with nothing to do. Once or twice she had peeked at the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it. "What good is a book," thought Alice, "without pictures or conversations?"

She was trying to decide (though the hot day made her feel sleepy and a little slow-witted) whether making a daisy chain would be worth the trouble of getting up to pick the daisies. Suddenly, a White Rabbit with pink eyes ran right past her.

That wasn't really so strange. And Alice didn't think it was that odd to hear the Rabbit say to itself, "Oh dear! Oh dear! I shall be late!" (Later, when she thought back on it, she realized she should have found this surprising—but at the time, it all seemed perfectly normal.) But then the Rabbit actually pulled a watch out of its waistcoat pocket—a little vest with a pocket—looked at it, and hurried on. Alice jumped to her feet. It suddenly hit her that she had never seen a rabbit with a pocket, let alone a watch to keep in it! Bursting with curiosity, she ran across the field after it, just in time to see it disappear down a large rabbit hole under the hedge.

In another moment, Alice went down the hole after it, never once stopping to think about how she would get back out.

The rabbit hole went straight like a tunnel for a while, then dipped down suddenly—so suddenly that Alice had no time to stop herself before she was falling down a very deep well.

Either the well was very deep, or she fell very slowly, because she had plenty of time on the way down to look around and wonder what would happen next. First she tried looking down to see what was below her, but it was too dark. Then she looked at the sides of the well and noticed they were lined with cupboards and bookshelves, with maps and pictures hanging here and there on pegs. As she passed one shelf, she grabbed a jar labeled "ORANGE MARMALADE"—but to her disappointment, it was empty. She didn't want to drop it in case it hit someone below, so she managed to set it inside a cupboard as she continued falling.

"Well!" Alice thought to herself. "After a fall like this, tumbling down the stairs at home will seem like nothing! How brave everyone will think I am! Why, I wouldn't even mention it if I fell off the roof!" (This was probably true.)

Down, down, down she fell. Would it never end? "I wonder how many miles I've fallen by now?" she said out loud. "I must be getting close to the center of the earth. Let's see—that would be about four thousand miles down, I think—" (Alice had learned things like this in school, and even though there was no one around to be impressed, it was still good practice to say it out loud) "—yes, that sounds about right—but then, what Latitude or Longitude am I at?" (Alice didn't actually know what those words meant, but she thought they sounded very grand and important.)

After a moment, she started talking again. "I wonder if I'll fall straight through the earth! Won't it be funny to come out where people walk upside-down! I think they're called Antipathies—" (she was glad no one was listening this time, because that didn't sound quite like the right word) "—but I'll have to ask them the name of the country. Excuse me, is this New Zealand or Australia?" (She tried to curtsy as she said this—just imagine curtsying while falling through the air! Could you manage it?) "And she'll think I'm such a silly little girl for asking! No, I'd better not ask—maybe I'll see the name written somewhere."

Down, down, down. There was nothing else to do, so Alice began talking to herself again. "Dinah will really miss me tonight!" (Dinah was her cat.) "I hope they remember to give her milk at teatime. Dinah, I wish you were here with me! There aren't any mice in the air, but maybe you could catch a bat—that's a lot like a mouse. But do cats eat bats, I wonder?" By now Alice was getting sleepy, and she kept murmuring dreamily, "Do cats eat bats? Do cats eat bats?" and sometimes, "Do bats eat cats?" Since she couldn't answer either question, it didn't really matter which way she asked it. She began to doze off and dream that she was walking hand in hand with Dinah, asking her seriously, "Now Dinah, tell me the truth—did you ever eat a bat?" Suddenly—thump! thump!—she landed on a pile of sticks and dry leaves, and the fall was over.

Alice wasn't hurt at all, and she jumped right up. She looked up, but it was too dark to see anything above her. Ahead of her was another long passage, and she could still see the White Rabbit hurrying down it. There was no time to lose—Alice ran like the wind and reached the corner just in time to hear it say, "Oh my ears and whiskers, how late it's getting!" She was right behind it as she turned the corner, but the Rabbit had vanished. She found herself in a long, low hallway lit by a row of lamps hanging from the ceiling.

Doors lined the hallway, but they were all locked. Alice walked down one side and back up the other, trying every door, then walked sadly down the middle, wondering how she would ever get out.

Suddenly she noticed a little three-legged table made entirely of glass. On it sat a tiny golden key. Alice thought it might open one of the doors, but the locks were all too big, or the key was too small—it didn't fit any of them. However, on her second trip around the hall, she found a low curtain she hadn't noticed before. Behind it was a tiny door, only about fifteen inches tall. She tried the golden key in the lock, and to her delight, it fit perfectly!

Alice opened the door and found a small passage, not much bigger than a rat hole. Kneeling down, she looked through it into the most beautiful garden she had ever seen. She longed to escape the dark hallway and wander among the bright flower beds and cool fountains, but she couldn't even fit her head through the doorway. "And even if my head did fit," thought poor Alice, "it wouldn't do much good without my shoulders! Oh, how I wish I could fold up like a telescope! I bet I could, if only I knew how to start." So many strange things had been happening lately that Alice had begun to think almost nothing was truly impossible.

There seemed no point waiting by the tiny door, so she went back to the table, hoping to find another key—or maybe a book of instructions for shrinking like a telescope. This time, she found a little bottle on the table. ("That definitely wasn't here before," said Alice.) Tied around its neck was a paper label that read "DRINK ME" in beautiful large letters.

It was easy to say "Drink me," but clever little Alice wasn't going to do that without being careful first. "No, I'll check first," she said, "to see if it says 'poison' anywhere." She had read plenty of stories about children who got hurt—burned, eaten by wild animals, and other terrible things—all because they forgot the simple safety rules their families had taught them. Things like: a red-hot poker will burn you if you hold it too long, and a deep cut from a knife will usually bleed. She also remembered that drinking from a bottle marked "poison" will almost always make you feel sick sooner or later.

But this bottle wasn't marked "poison," so Alice decided to try a taste. It turned out to be delicious—it tasted like a mix of cherry tart, custard, pineapple, roast turkey, toffee, and warm buttered toast—so she quickly drank the whole thing.

—

"What a strange feeling!" said Alice. "I must be shrinking like a telescope!"

And she was right—she was now only ten inches tall! Her face lit up at the thought that she was finally the right size to fit through the tiny door into that lovely garden. But first, she waited a few minutes to see if she would keep shrinking. This made her a little nervous. "Because it might not stop," she said to herself, "and I could shrink away completely, like a candle going out. I wonder what that would even look like?" She tried to picture what happens to a candle's flame after it's blown out, but she couldn't remember ever seeing such a thing.

After a while, when nothing else happened, she decided to head for the garden right away. But oh no—when she reached the door, she realized she'd left the golden key on the table! She hurried back to get it, but now that she was so small, she couldn't reach it at all. She could see it clearly through the glass table, and she tried climbing up one of the table's legs, but it was much too slippery. Exhausted from trying, poor Alice sat down and cried.

"Now, there's no use crying like this!" Alice told herself sternly. "I really think you should stop this instant!" She often gave herself excellent advice (though she rarely followed it), and sometimes she scolded herself so harshly that it brought tears to her eyes. She even remembered once trying to box her own ears for cheating during a game of croquet she was playing against herself—because this curious girl loved pretending to be two people at once. "But it's no use pretending to be two people now," thought poor Alice. "There's hardly enough of me left to make even one whole person!"

Soon she spotted a small glass box under the table. Inside was a tiny cake with the words "EAT ME" spelled out beautifully in currants. "Well, I'll eat it," said Alice. "If it makes me grow bigger, I can reach the key. And if it makes me grow smaller, I can slip under the door. Either way, I'll get into the garden—so it doesn't matter which happens!"

She took a small bite and waited nervously, asking herself, "Which way? Which way?" while holding a hand on top of her head to feel which direction she was growing. To her surprise, she stayed exactly the same size. Normally, that's exactly what happens when someone eats cake—but Alice had gotten so used to expecting unusual things that it felt strange and boring for something ordinary to happen instead.

So she went ahead and finished the whole cake.

—

CHAPTER II.

The Pool of Tears

"Curiouser and curiouser!" cried Alice (she was so...