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 starting to feel very bored sitting next to her sister on the riverbank, with nothing to do. Once or twice she had glanced at the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it. "And what good is a book," Alice wondered, "without pictures or conversations?"

She was trying to decide, in a sleepy and foggy way (since the hot day made her feel drowsy and dull), whether making a daisy chain would be worth the effort of getting up to pick the daisies—when suddenly a White Rabbit with pink eyes dashed past her.

That alone wasn't very strange. Alice didn't even think it was odd when she heard the Rabbit mutter to itself, "Oh dear! Oh dear! I'll be late!" (Looking back on it later, she realized she probably should have found that strange, but at the time it had seemed perfectly normal.) But then the Rabbit actually pulled a watch out of its waistcoat pocket, checked it, and hurried on. That was when Alice jumped to her feet, suddenly realizing she had never seen a rabbit with a pocket in its waistcoat, 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 beneath the hedge.

A moment later, Alice went down the hole after it, without ever stopping to think about how she would get back out again.

The rabbit hole ran straight like a tunnel for a while, then dropped suddenly downward—so suddenly that Alice had no chance to stop herself before she found herself falling down what seemed to be a very deep well.

Either the well was extremely deep, or she was falling 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 downward to see what she was falling toward, but it was too dark to make anything out. Then she examined 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 picked up a jar labeled "ORANGE MARMALADE"—but to her disappointment, it was empty. Not wanting to drop it and hurt someone below, she managed to place it in a cupboard as she continued falling past.

"Well!" Alice thought to herself. "After a fall like this, tumbling down the stairs at home will feel like nothing! Everyone will think I'm so brave! Why, I wouldn't even mention it if I fell off the roof!" (Which 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 picked up bits of information like this from her schoolwork, and even though there was no one around to be impressed, it was still good practice to say such things aloud) "—yes, that sounds about right—but then, I wonder what latitude or longitude I've reached?" (In truth, Alice had no idea what latitude or longitude actually meant—she just liked how important the words sounded.)

After a pause, she started talking to herself again. "I wonder if I'll fall straight through the earth! Wouldn't it be funny to come out where people walk upside-down! I think they're called the Antipathies—" (she was actually a little relieved no one was listening, since that clearly wasn't the right word) "—but I suppose I'll have to ask them what their country is called. Excuse me, ma'am, is this New Zealand, or Australia?" (She even attempted a curtsy as she said this—just imagine curtsying while falling through the air! Do you think you could manage it?) "And she'll probably think I'm a very silly little girl for asking! No, better not to ask—maybe I'll spot a sign somewhere."

Down, down, down. Since there was nothing else to do, Alice kept talking to herself. "I bet Dinah will really miss me tonight." (Dinah was her cat.) "I hope they remember to give her milk at teatime. Dinah, dear, I wish you were down here with me! There aren't any mice in the air, sadly, but you might be able to catch a bat—they're a lot like mice, after all. But do cats even eat bats, I wonder?" By this point Alice was starting to feel drowsy, 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 felt herself drifting into a dream where she was walking hand in hand with Dinah, asking her very seriously, "Now, Dinah, tell me honestly—have you ever eaten a bat?"—when suddenly, thump! thump! She landed on a pile of sticks and dry leaves. The fall was over.

Alice wasn't hurt at all, and she hopped right back up. She looked upward, but it was too dark to see anything above her. Ahead of her stretched another long passage, and she could still see the White Rabbit hurrying down it. There wasn't a second to waste—Alice took off running and reached the corner just in time to hear the Rabbit 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 now stood in a long, low hallway lit by a row of hanging lamps.

Doors lined the hall on every side, but all of them were locked. After walking down one side and back up the other, testing every door, Alice walked sadly down the middle of the hall, wondering how she would ever get out.

Suddenly she noticed a small three-legged table made entirely of glass. On it sat nothing but a tiny golden key. Alice's first thought was that it must open one of the hallway doors—but sadly, either the locks were too big or the key was too small, because it didn't fit any of them. However, on her second trip around the hall, she spotted 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 its lock, and to her delight, it fit perfectly!

Alice opened the door and discovered it led to a small passage, not much bigger than a rat hole. Kneeling down, she peered through it into the most beautiful garden she had ever seen. She longed to escape the dark hallway and wander among the bright flowerbeds and cool fountains—but she couldn't even fit her head through the doorway. "And even if my head did fit," poor Alice thought, "it wouldn't do much good without my shoulders too. Oh, how I wish I could fold up like a telescope! I bet I could, if only I knew how to start." After all the strange things that had already happened that day, Alice was starting to believe that almost nothing was truly impossible.

Since there was no point waiting by the tiny door, she returned to the glass table, half-hoping to find another key—or maybe a rulebook explaining how to shrink like a telescope. Instead, she found a small bottle sitting there. ("That definitely wasn't here before," Alice said to herself.) Tied around its neck was a paper tag reading "DRINK ME" in neat, fancy letters.

It was easy enough to say "Drink me," but clever little Alice wasn't about to do that without thinking first. "No, I'll check it first," she said, "to make sure it's not marked poison." She had read plenty of cautionary stories about children who got burned or eaten by wild animals, all because they ignored basic safety rules their families had taught them—like the fact that a red-hot poker will burn you if held too long, or that a deep cut from a knife will usually bleed. She hadn't forgotten, either, that drinking a lot from a bottle labeled "poison" tends to cause trouble sooner or later.

But since this bottle had no such warning, Alice decided to try a sip. It tasted wonderful—like a blend of cherry pie, custard, pineapple, roasted turkey, toffee, and warm buttered toast all at once—so she quickly drank the whole thing.

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"What a strange feeling!" said Alice. "I must be shrinking, just like a telescope folding up."

And she was right: she was now only ten inches tall, and her face lit up at the thought that she was now just the right size to fit through the tiny door into that lovely garden. Still, she waited a few minutes first to make sure she wouldn't keep shrinking. This made her a little nervous. "It might not stop," she thought, "and I could disappear completely, like a candle burning 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 recall ever actually seeing one up close.

After waiting a while and noticing nothing else happened, she decided to head for the garden right away. But to her dismay, when she reached the door, she realized she had left the golden key behind on the table—and when she went back for it, she found she could no longer reach it at all. She could see it clearly through the glass tabletop and tried hard to climb up one of the table's legs, but it was much too slippery. Exhausted from trying, poor Alice finally sat down and cried.

"Come now, there's no use crying like this!" Alice told herself sternly. "I suggest you stop this instant!" She often gave herself excellent advice (though she rarely followed it), and sometimes scolded herself so harshly that it brought tears to her eyes. Once, she even remembered trying to box her own ears after cheating in a game of croquet she was playing against herself—since this unusual child loved pretending to be two people at once. "But there's no use pretending to be two people now," poor Alice thought. "There's barely enough of me left to make one decent person!"

Soon she spotted a small glass box lying under the table. Opening it, she found a tiny cake with the words "EAT ME" spelled out neatly in currants. "Well, I'll eat it," Alice decided. "If it makes me grow bigger, I can reach the key. If it makes me shrink, 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 nervously asked herself, "Which way? Which way?"—resting her hand on top of her head to feel which direction she was changing. To her surprise, she stayed exactly the same size. Of course, that's usually what happens when someone eats cake—but Alice had grown so used to expecting unusual things that ordinary results now seemed dull and disappointing.

So she went ahead and finished off the rest of the cake.

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CHAPTER II. The Pool of Tears

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