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 growing tired of sitting beside 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 dialogue in it. "And what good is a book," Alice thought, "without pictures or conversations?"

So she was turning over in her mind—as best she could, since the hot day had made her drowsy and dull-witted—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 ran right past her.

That alone wasn't especially strange. Nor did Alice find it odd to hear the Rabbit mutter to itself, "Oh dear! Oh dear! I shall be late!" (Looking back on it later, she realized she should have found this puzzling, but at the time it had seemed perfectly ordinary.) But when the Rabbit actually pulled a watch out of its waistcoat pocket, glanced at it, and hurried on, Alice jumped to her feet. It suddenly struck her that she had never seen a rabbit with a waistcoat pocket, much less a watch to keep in it. Burning with curiosity, she raced across the field after it, just in time to see it disappear down a large rabbit hole under the hedge.

Alice followed without a second thought about how she would ever get back out.

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 fell very slowly, because she had plenty of time on the way down to look around and wonder what would happen next. She tried peering downward to see what lay ahead, but it was too dark. 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 took down a jar labeled "ORANGE MARMALADE"—but it was empty, much to her disappointment. She didn't want to drop it for fear of hurting someone below, so she managed to set it in a cupboard as she continued falling past.

"Well!" Alice thought. "After a fall like this, tumbling down the stairs at home will seem like nothing! They'll all 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 aloud. "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 knowledge like this from her lessons, and though there was no one around to be impressed, it was good practice to say it aloud) "—yes, that sounds about right—but then, what latitude or longitude am I at?" (She had no real idea what those words meant, but they sounded impressively grown-up.)

She started talking to herself again. "I wonder if I'll fall straight through the earth! How funny it would be to come out among people who walk with their heads pointing down! I think they're called the Antipathies—" (she was glad no one was listening, since that clearly wasn't the right word) "—but I'll have to ask them what their country is called. Excuse me, is this New Zealand or Australia?" (She even attempted a curtsy as she spoke—just imagine curtsying while falling through the air! Could you manage it?) "And she'll think I'm a very ignorant little girl for asking! No, better not ask—maybe I'll see it written somewhere."

Down, down, down. With nothing else to do, Alice began talking again. "Dinah will miss me terribly tonight!" (Dinah was her cat.) "I hope they remember her saucer of milk at teatime. Dinah, my dear, I wish you were here with me! There aren't any mice in midair, I'm afraid, but you might catch a bat—they're rather like mice. But do cats eat bats, I wonder?" Growing sleepy, 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 hardly mattered which way she asked it. She began to doze off and had just started dreaming that she was walking hand in hand with Dinah, asking her earnestly, "Now, Dinah, tell me honestly—have you ever eaten a bat?"—when suddenly, thump! thump! She landed on a heap of sticks and dry leaves. The fall was over.

Alice wasn't hurt at all, and she sprang to her feet at once. She looked up, but overhead was only darkness. Ahead of her stretched another long passage, and she could still see the White Rabbit hurrying down it. There wasn't a moment to lose—Alice dashed after it like the wind and arrived just in time to hear it say, as it rounded a corner, "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 hall lit by a row of hanging lamps.

Doors lined the hall on every side, but all were locked. After trying every single one, Alice walked sadly back down the middle, wondering how she would ever escape.

Suddenly she noticed a small three-legged table made entirely of glass. On it lay nothing but a tiny golden key, and Alice guessed at once that it must belong to one of the doors. But no matter which lock she tried, either it was too large or the key was too small—it fit none of them. On her second pass around the hall, though, she discovered a low curtain she'd missed before. Behind it was a little door about fifteen inches high. She tried the golden key in its lock, and to her delight, it fit perfectly!

Alice opened the door to find a small passage, barely wider than a rat hole. Kneeling down, she peered through it into the loveliest garden imaginable. She longed to escape the dark hall and wander among the bright flowerbeds and cool fountains, but she couldn't even fit her head through the opening. "And even if my head did fit," she thought, "it would be useless without my shoulders. Oh, how I wish I could collapse like a telescope! I'm sure I could, if only I knew how to start." After all, so many strange things had happened lately that Alice had begun to believe almost nothing was truly impossible.

Since waiting by the door seemed pointless, she returned to the table, half hoping to find another key, or perhaps a guidebook on how to fold oneself up like a telescope. This time, she found a small bottle sitting there. ("That definitely wasn't here before," Alice said.) Tied around its neck was a paper label reading "DRINK ME" in elegant lettering.

It was easy enough to say "Drink me," but sensible Alice wasn't about to do that carelessly. "No, I'll check first," she said, "to see if it's marked poison." She had read several cautionary stories about children who had been burned or eaten by wild animals, all because they ignored the simple safety rules their friends had taught them—rules 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 had never forgotten that drinking heavily from a bottle marked "poison" will almost certainly cause trouble sooner or later.

Since this bottle bore no such warning, Alice risked a taste. She found it delicious—a blend of cherry tart, custard, pineapple, roast turkey, toffee, and hot buttered toast—and quickly finished it off.

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

And indeed she was—now only ten inches tall, her face lit up at the thought that she was finally the right size to pass through the little door into that beautiful garden. First, though, she waited a few minutes to see whether she would keep shrinking. This made her a little uneasy. "It might end," she told herself, "with me disappearing completely, like a candle flame going out. I wonder what that would be like?" She tried to picture what a candle flame looks like after it's blown out, but couldn't recall ever having seen such a thing.

After waiting a while longer with nothing happening, she decided to head for the garden right away. But—oh, poor Alice!—when she reached the door, she realized she'd left the golden key behind. Returning to the table for it, she found she couldn't reach it at all. She could see it clearly through the glass tabletop and tried climbing one of the table's legs, but it was far too slippery. Exhausted from trying, she finally sat down and cried.

"Come now, there's no use crying like this!" Alice told herself sharply. "I insist you stop this instant!" She often gave herself excellent advice, though she rarely followed it, and sometimes scolded herself so harshly it brought tears to her eyes. She even remembered once trying to box her own ears for cheating in a game of croquet she was playing against herself—for this peculiar child loved to pretend she was 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 even one proper person!"

Soon her gaze landed on a small glass box lying beneath the table. Inside was a tiny cake with the words "EAT ME" spelled out beautifully 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 nibbled a small bite, anxiously asking herself, "Which way? Which way?"—pressing her hand to the top of her head to feel which direction she was growing. To her surprise, she stayed exactly the same size. Of course, this is usually what happens when someone eats cake, but Alice had grown so used to extraordinary things happening that ordinary, everyday life now seemed dull and disappointing by comparison.

So she went ahead and finished the entire cake.

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CHAPTER II. The Pool of Tears

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