Alices Adventures Under Ground | Page 2

or Latitude-line
shall I be in?" (Alice had no idea what Longitude was, or Latitude
either, but she thought they were nice grand words to say.)
Presently she began again: "I wonder if I shall fall right through the
earth! How funny it'll be to come out among the people that walk with
their heads downwards! But I shall 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 curtsey as she spoke (fancy curtseying as
you're falling through the air! do you think you could manage it?) "and
what an ignorant little girl she'll think me for asking! No, it'll never do
to ask: perhaps I shall see it written up somewhere."
Down, down, down: there was nothing else to do, so Alice soon began
talking again. "Dinah will miss me very much tonight, I should think!"
(Dinah was the cat.) "I hope they'll remember her saucer of milk at
tea-time! Oh, dear Dinah, I wish I had you here! There are no mice in
the air, I'm afraid, but you might catch a bat, and that's very like a
mouse, you know, my dear. But do cats eat bats, I wonder?" And here
Alice began to get rather sleepy, and kept on saying to herself, in a
dreamy sort of way "do cats eat bats? do cats eat bats?" and sometimes,
"do bats eat cats?" for, as she couldn't answer either question, it didn't
much matter which way she put it. She felt that she was dozing off, and

had just begun to dream that she was walking hand in hand with Dinah,
and was saying to her very earnestly, "Now, Dinah, my dear, tell me
the truth. Did you ever eat a bat?" when suddenly, bump! bump! down
she came upon a heap of sticks and shavings, and the fall was over.
Alice was not a bit hurt, and jumped on to her feet directly: she looked
up, but it was all dark overhead; before her was another long passage,
and the white rabbit was still in sight, hurrying down it. There was not
a moment to be lost: away went Alice like the wind, and just heard it
say, as it turned a corner, "my ears and whiskers, how late it's getting!"
She turned the corner after it, and instantly found herself in a long, low
hall, lit up by a row of lamps which hung from the roof.
[Illustration]
There were doors all round the hall, but they were all locked, and when
Alice had been all round it, and tried them all, she walked sadly down
the middle, wondering how she was ever to get out again: suddenly she
came upon a little three-legged table, all made of solid glass; there was
nothing lying upon it, but a tiny golden key, and Alice's first idea was
that it might belong to one of the doors of the hall, but alas! either the
locks were too large, or the key too small, but at any rate it would open
none of them. However, on the second time round, she came to a low
curtain, behind which was a door about eighteen inches high: she tried
the little key in the keyhole, and it fitted! Alice opened the door, and
looked down a small passage, not larger than a rat-hole, into the
loveliest garden you ever saw. How she longed to get out of that dark
hall, and wander about among those beds of bright flowers and those
cool fountains, but she could not even get her head through the
doorway, "and even if my head would go through," thought poor Alice,
"it would be very little use without my shoulders. Oh, how I wish I
could shut up like a telescope! I think I could, if I only knew how to
begin." For, you see, so many out-of-the-way things had happened
lately, that Alice began to think very few things indeed were really
impossible.
There was nothing else to do, so she went back to the table, half hoping
she might find another key on it, or at any rate a book of rules for

shutting up people like telescopes: this time there was a little bottle on
it--"which certainly was not there before" said Alice--and tied round
the neck of the bottle was a paper label with the words DRINK ME
beautifully printed on it in large letters.
It was all very well to say "drink me," "but I'll look first," said the wise
little Alice, "and see whether the bottle's marked "poison" or not," for
Alice had read several nice little stories about children that got burnt,
and eaten up by wild beasts, and other unpleasant things, because they
would not