Alices Adventures Under Ground | Page 3

remember the simple rules their friends had given them, such
as, that, if you get into the fire, it will burn you, and that, if you cut
your finger very deeply with a knife, it generally bleeds, and she had
never forgotten that, if you drink a bottle marked "poison," it is almost
certain to disagree with you, sooner or later.
However, this bottle was not marked poison, so Alice tasted it, and
finding it very nice, (it had, in fact, a sort of mixed flavour of
cherry-tart, custard, pine-apple, roast turkey, toffy, and hot buttered
toast,) she very soon finished it off.
* * * * *
"What a curious feeling!" said Alice, "I must be shutting up like a
telescope."
It was so indeed: she was now only ten inches high, and her face
brightened up as it occurred to her that she was now the right size for
going through the little door into that lovely garden. First, however, she
waited for a few minutes to see whether she was going to shrink any
further: she felt a little nervous about this, "for it might end, you
know," said Alice to herself, "in my going out altogether, like a candle,
and what should I be like then, I wonder?" and she tried to fancy what
the flame of a candle is like after the candle is blown out, for she could
not remember having ever seen one. However, nothing more happened
so she decided on going into the garden at once, but, alas for poor Alice!
when she got to the door, she found she had forgotten the little golden
key, and when she went back to the table for the key, she found she
could not possibly reach it: she could see it plainly enough through the

glass, and she tried her best to climb up one of the legs of the table, but
it was too slippery, and when she had tired herself out with trying, the
poor little thing sat down and cried.
[Illustration]
"Come! there's no use in crying!" said Alice to herself rather sharply, "I
advise you to leave off this minute!" (she generally gave herself very
good advice, and sometimes scolded herself so severely as to bring
tears into her eyes, and once she remembered boxing her own ears for
having been unkind to herself in a game of croquet she was playing
with herself, for this curious child was very fond of pretending to be
two people,) "but it's no use now," thought poor Alice, "to pretend to be
two people! Why, there's hardly enough of me left to make one
respectable person!"
Soon her eyes fell on a little ebony box lying under the table: she
opened it, and found in it a very small cake, on which was lying a card
with the words EAT ME beautifully printed on it in large letters. "I'll
eat," said Alice, "and if it makes me larger, I can reach the key, and if it
makes me smaller, I can creep under the door, so either way I'll get into
the garden, and I don't care which happens!"
She ate a little bit, and said anxiously to herself "which way? which
way?" and laid her hand on the top of her head to feel which way it was
growing, and was quite surprised to find that she remained the same
size: to be sure this is what generally happens when one eats cake, but
Alice had got into the way of expecting nothing but out-of-the way
things to happen, and it seemed quite dull and stupid for things to go on
in the common way.
So she set to work, and very soon finished off the cake.
* * * * *
"Curiouser and curiouser!" cried Alice, (she was so surprised that she
quite forgot how to speak good English,) "now I'm opening out like the
largest telescope that ever was! Goodbye, feet!" (for when she looked

down at her feet, they seemed almost out of sight, they were getting so
far off,) "oh, my poor little feet, I wonder who will put on your shoes
and stockings for you now, dears? I'm sure I can't! I shall be a great
deal too far off to bother myself about you: you must manage the best
way you can--but I must be kind to them," thought Alice, "or perhaps
they won't walk the way I want to go! Let me see: I'll give them a new
pair of boots every Christmas."
[Illustration]
And she went on planning to herself how she would manage it "they
must go by the carrier," she thought, "and how funny it'll seem, sending
presents to one's own feet! And how odd the directions will look!
ALICE'S RIGHT FOOT, ESQ. THE