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chapter 1: down the rabbit holechapter 2: the pool of tearschapter 3: a caucus race and a long historychapter 4: the rabbit sends a small billchapter 5: advice from a caterpillarchapter 6: pig and pepperchapter 7: a madman tea partychapter 8: the queen’s croquet lawnchapter 9: the story of the mock turtlechapter 10: the lobster gangchapter 11: who stole the tarts?chapter 12: alice’s evidence
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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 at 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 so 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 past her.
there was nothing so remarkable about it; Alice also didn’t think it was that strange to hear the rabbit say to himself, ‘my gosh! oh dear! I’ll be late!’ it all seemed natural enough); but when the rabbit actually took a watch out of his vest pocket, looked at it, and then ran on, Alice jumped to her feet, because it crossed her mind that she had never seen a rabbit in a vest before : pocket, or a watch to take out of it, and burning with curiosity, she ran across the field after him, fortunately arriving just in time to see him fall down a large burrow under the hedge.
At another point, Alicia fell behind him, never once considering how the hell she was going to get out again.
The rabbit hole went straight on like a tunnel somehow, and then it 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.
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Either the well was too deep, or she fell too slowly, because she had plenty 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 it 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 his great disappointment it was empty: he didn’t like to drop the jar for fear of killing someone, so he managed to put it in one of the cupboards as he passed by.
“good!” Alice 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! well, 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. the fall would never come to an end! ‘I wonder how many miles I’ve fallen by now,’ she said out loud. I must be getting somewhere near the center of the earth. let me see: that would be four thousand miles deep, i think…’ (because, you see, alice had learned several such things in her classroom lessons, and while this wasn’t a very good opportunity to brag her knowledge, since there was no one to hear her, it was still good practice to say it again) ‘—yes, that’s the right distance—but then I wonder what latitude or longitude do I have to go to?’ (Alice had no idea what latitude was, and neither did longitude, but I thought those were great words to say.)
See Also: Sherry Harris – Book Series In Order
then she started again. I wonder if I’ll fall straight through the earth! what fun it will seem to go out among people who walk with their heads down! dislikes, I think…’ (she was glad no one was listening to her this time, since it didn’t sound like the right word at all)’… but I’ll 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 bow as she spoke. imagine bowing while falling through the air! do you think you could do it?) ‘and what an ignorant little girl, she’ll think of me for asking! no, it will never be good to ask: maybe she will see it written somewhere.”
down, down, down. there was nothing else to do, so alice soon started talking again. Dinah will miss me a lot tonight, I think! (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 do cats eat bats, I wonder?’
and here alice started to get quite sleepy, and kept saying to herself, in a dreamy way, ‘do cats eat bats? Do cats eat bats?’ And sometimes ‘do bats eat cats?’ because, you see, since she couldn’t answer either question, it didn’t much matter how she phrased it. she felt that she was falling asleep, and she had just started to dream that she was walking hand in hand with dinah, and she was telling her very seriously, ‘now, dinah, tell me the truth: did you ever eat a bat?’ suddenly, bang! beat! her down she met a lot of dry branches and leaves, and the fall was over.
Alice wasn’t the least bit hurt, 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 lose: alice went like the wind, and he was just in time to hear her say, turning a corner, ‘oh my ears and whiskers, how late it is getting!’ she was very close behind she. her when she turned the corner, but the rabbit was no longer in sight: she found herself in a long, low corridor, which was lit by a row of lamps hanging from the ceiling.
there were doors around the room, but they were all locked; And when Alice had gone all the way this way and that, trying all the doors, he sadly walked down the middle, wondering how he was ever going to get out again.
suddenly he found a small table with three legs, 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 to find that 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 you have ever seen. how he wanted to get out of that dark room 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, ‘it would be of little use without my shoulders. Oh how I wish I could shut up like a telescope! I think I could, if only I knew how to start.’ Because, you see, there had been so many out of the ordinary things happening 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 once 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 it in a hurry. ‘no, I’ll look first,’ she said, ‘and see if it’s marked ‘poison’ or not’; because he 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 too deeply with a knife, it usually bleeds; And she had never forgotten that if you drink too much from a bottle marked “poison,” it’s almost certain that sooner or later she won’t agree with you.
See Also: Autism Books for Children on the Spectrum – Autism Parenting Magazine
however, this bottle wasn’t marked ‘poison’, so alice ventured out to try it and found it very nice (it had, in fact, sort of a mixed flavor of cherry pie, custard, pineapple, turkey roast, toffee, and hot buttered toast), it was soon over.
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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 fit through the little door 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 Alicia to herself, “when I go out completely, like a candle.” I wonder what it should be like then?’ and she tried to imagine what a candle flame looks like after the candle goes out, because she didn’t remember seeing anything like that.
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 found that he had forgotten the little gold key, and when he went back to the table to look for it, he found that he couldn’t reach it: he could see it clearly through the glass, and he tried his best to climb up one of the legs from the table, 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 tears came to her eyes; 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 now it’s no use,’ thought poor alice, ‘pretending to be two people! why, there is hardly enough of me left to make a respectable person! ‘
Soon his gaze fell on a small 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’m going to get in the garden anyway, and I don’t care what happens!”
she ate a little and said to herself anxiously, ‘where to? which way?’, holding his hand to the top of his head to feel which way it grew, and was very surprised to find that it was still the same size: no doubt this usually happens when one eats cake, but alice he had gotten so into the way of expecting nothing but out of the ordinary things to happen, that it seemed pretty boring and stupid for life to go on in the ordinary way.
so he got to work, and pretty soon the cake was done.