chapter i. down the rabbit hole
alice was starting to get tired of sitting next to her sister on the shore and not having anything to do: once or twice she had looked in the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations, “ And what good is a book, Alice thought, without pictures or conversations?
so she was considering in her own mind (as best she could, because the hot day made her feel very sleepy and stupid), if the pleasure of making a daisy chain would be worth getting up and picking the daisies for, when Suddenly a white rabbit with pink eyes ran near her.
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There was nothing so very remarkable about that; Alice also didn’t think it was so very out of the way to hear the rabbit say to himself, “OMG! oh dear! I’m going to be late!” (When he thought about it afterwards, it occurred to him that he should have wondered about this, but at the time it all seemed quite natural); but when the rabbit actually pulled a watch out of his vest pocket, and looked at it, and then hurried off, alice jumped to her feet, because it crossed her mind that she had never seen a rabbit with a waistcoat pocket or a watch to take out of it, and burning with curiosity, ran across the field after him, fortunately arriving just in time to see him fall down a large burrow under the hedge.
another time, alice went down after him, not once considering how the hell she was going to get out again.
The rabbit hole went straight on like a tunnel somehow, and then suddenly plunged, so suddenly that Alice didn’t have a moment to think about stopping before she found herself falling into a very deep well.
Either the well was very deep or she fell very slowly, because she had a lot of time while she was going down to look around and wonder what was going to happen next. first, she tried to look down and see where she was going, but she was too dark to see anything; then she looked at the sides of the well and noticed that they were full of cupboards and shelves; here and there she saw maps and pictures hanging on pegs. she took a bottle from one of the shelves as she passed; it was labeled “orange marmalade”, but to her great disappointment it was empty: she didn’t like to drop the jar for fear of killing someone underneath, so she managed to put it in one of the cupboards as she passed by. the.
“good!” she thought to herself, “after a fall like this, i won’t even think about falling down the stairs! How brave everyone at home will consider me! why, I wouldn’t say anything about it, even if I fell off the top of the house! (which was most likely true).
down, down, down. Would the fall never come to an end? “I wonder how many miles I’ve fallen at this point.” she said out loud. “I must be getting somewhere near the center of the earth. let me see: that would be four thousand miles down, i think…” (because, you see, alice had learned several such things in her classroom lessons, and while this was not a very i > good opportunity to show her knowledge, since no one was there to hear her, still it was good practice to say it again) “—yeah, that’s the right distance—but then I wonder what latitude or longitude do I have to? (Alice had no idea what latitude was, and neither did longitude, but she thought those were great words to say.)
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now she started again. “I wonder if I’ll fall right through the earth! what fun it will seem to go out among people who walk with their heads down! dislikes, I think…” (she was quite glad that no one was listening, this time, since it didn’t sound like the right word at all) “…but I’ll have to ask what the name of the country is, you know. please ma’am is this new zealand or australia? (and she tried to bow as she spoke, can you imagine bowing while falling through the air! do you think you could do it?) asking! no, it won’t do any good to ask: maybe you’ll see it written somewhere.
down, down, down. there was nothing else to do, so alice soon started talking again. I think Dinah will miss me a lot tonight. (dinah was the cat). “I hope you remember your saucer of milk at tea time. say dear! Wish you were here with me! there are no mice in the air, I’m afraid, but you can catch a bat, and that’s very much like a mouse, you know. but I wonder if cats eat bats. and here alicia started to get a little sleepy, and she kept saying to herself, like in a dream, “do cats eat bats? Do cats eat bats? and sometimes “do bats eat cats?” because she, she’ll see, since she couldn’t answer either question, it didn’t much matter which way she phrased it. she felt that she was falling asleep and had just begun to dream that she was walking hand in hand with dinah and saying to her very seriously: “now, dinah, tell me the truth: have you ever eaten a bat?” when suddenly, pump! beat! As she descended, she bumped into a pile of branches and dry leaves, and the fall ended.
Alice didn’t hurt herself one bit, and she jumped to her feet in no time: she looked up, but it was all dark upstairs; Before her was another long passage, and the white rabbit was still in sight, hurrying down it. there was no time to waste: she was gone Alice like the wind, and he was just in time to hear her say, as she rounded a corner, “oh my ears and my whiskers, how late it is getting!” she was very close to him when she turned the corner, but the rabbit was no longer in sight: she found herself in a long, low hallway, which was lit by a row of lamps hanging from the ceiling.
there were doors around the corridor, but they were all locked; And when Alice had gone all the way this way and that, trying all the doors, he walked sadly down the middle, wondering how he was ever going to get out.
Suddenly he found a three-legged table, all made of solid glass; There was nothing on it except a small golden key, and Alicia’s first thought was that it might belong to one of the doors in the hall; but alas! either the locks were too big, or the key was too small, but it wouldn’t open any of them anyway. however, on the second turn, he came upon a low curtain which he had not seen before, and behind it was a little door about fifteen inches high: he tried the little gold key in the lock, and to his great delight it fitted! !
alice opened the door and found it led into a small hallway, not much bigger than a rat hole – she knelt down and looked down the hallway into the most beautiful garden she had ever seen. how he wanted to get out of that dark hall and wander among those bright flower beds and cool fountains, but he couldn’t even get his head out the door; And even if my head got through, thought poor Alice, I would be of little use without my shoulders. Oh how I wish I could shut up like a telescope! I think I could, if I knew how to start.” because, you see, so much out of the ordinary had happened lately, that alice had begun to think that very few things were really impossible.
it seemed useless to wait by the little door, so he went back to the table, half expecting to find another key, or at least a rule book to shut people up like telescopes: this time he found a little bottle in it (” which certainly wasn’t here before,” Alice said), and around the neck of the bottle was a paper label, with the words “drink me” beautifully printed in large letters. .
it was all very well to say “drink me”, but the wise alice was not going to do that in a hurry. “no, I’ll look first,” she said, “and see if it’s marked ‘poison‘ or not”; because they had read several nice little stories about children who had been burned and eaten by wild beasts and other nasty things, all because they didn’t remember the simple rules their friends had taught them: like, that a red-hot poker will burn you if you hold it too much time; and that if you cut your finger very deeply with a knife, it usually bleeds; and he had never forgotten that if you drink too much from a bottle marked “poison”, it is almost certain that sooner or later he will disagree with you.
however, this bottle wasn’t marked “poison”, so alice ventured out to try it and found it very nice (it had, in fact, a sort of mixed pie flavor). cherry). custard, pineapple, roast turkey, caramel, and hot buttered toast), he finished it very soon.
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“what a funny feeling!” Alice said; “I must be closing like a telescope.”
And so it was indeed: he was only ten inches tall now, and his face lit up at the thought that he was now just the right size to walk through the small gate into that beautiful garden. her first, however, she waited a few minutes to see if she was going to shrink any further: she felt a little nervous about this; “Well, it could end, you know,” she told herself Alicia, “when I go out completely, like a candle. I wonder how it should be then. and she tried to imagine what a candle flame looks like after blowing it out, because she couldn’t remember ever seeing such a thing.
after a while, seeing that nothing else happened, he decided to go out to the garden immediately; but woe to poor Alice! when he got to the door, he realized that he had forgotten the little gold key, and when he went back to the table to get it, he realized that he could not reach it: he could see it clearly through the glass, and he tried his best to find it. climb up one of the table legs, but it was too slippery; and when she got tired of trying, the poor thing sat down and cried.
“come on, there’s no use crying like that!” Alice said to herself, rather sharply; “I advise you to leave it at this time!” she generally gave herself very good advice (although she very rarely followed it), and sometimes she scolded herself so severely that her eyes welled with tears; and she once remembered trying to slap herself for cheating herself in a game of croquet she was playing against herself, for this curious little girl was very fond of pretending to be two people. “But it’s no use now,” thought poor Alice, “pretending to be two people! why, there’s barely enough of me left to make a respectable person!
soon his gaze fell on a glass box that was under the table: he opened it and found in it a very small cake, on which the words “eat me” were beautifully marked with currants. “Well, I’ll eat it,” said Alicia, “and if it makes me grow, I can reach the key; and if it makes me smaller, I can slip under the door; so I’ll get into the garden anyway, and I don’t care what happens!”
she ate a little and anxiously said to herself, “where to? which way?”, holding her hand to the top of her head to feel which way it grew, and was rather surprised to find that it was still the same size: no doubt this usually happens when you eat cake, but alice he had gotten so used to expecting nothing but out of the ordinary things to happen that it seemed rather boring and stupid for life to go on as normal.
so he got to work and pretty soon the cake was done.
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