Alices Adventures in Wonderland | Page 5

found that it led into a small passage, not much larger than a
rat-hole: she knelt down and looked along the passage 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 though the
doorway; `and even if my head would go through,' thought poor Alice, `it would be of
very little use without my shoulders. Oh, how I wish I could shut up like a telescope! I
think I could, if I only know how to begin.' For, you see, so many out-of-the-way things
had happened lately, that Alice had begun to think that very few things indeed were really
impossible.
There seemed to be no use in waiting by the little door, 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 people
up like telescopes: this time she found a little bottle on it, (`which certainly was not here
before,' said Alice,) and 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 the wise little Alice was not going to do THAT
in a hurry. `No, I'll look first,' she said, `and see whether it's marked "poison" or not'; for
she had read several nice little histories about children who had got burnt, and eaten up
by wild beasts and other unpleasant things, all because they WOULD not remember the
simple rules their friends had taught them: such as, that a red-hot poker will burn you if
you hold it too long; and that if you cut your finger VERY deeply with a knife, it usually
bleeds; and she had never forgotten that, if you drink much from a bottle marked `poison,'
it is almost certain to disagree with you, sooner or later.
However, this bottle was NOT marked `poison,' so Alice ventured to taste it, and finding
it very nice, (it had, in fact, a sort of mixed flavour of cherry-tart, custard, pine-apple,
roast turkey, toffee, and hot buttered toast,) she very soon finished it off.

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`What a curious feeling!' said Alice; `I must be shutting up like a telescope.'
And so it was indeed: she was now only ten inches high, and her face brightened up at the
thought 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 if 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. I wonder what I should be like then?'
And she tried to fancy what the flame of a candle is like after the candle is blown out, for
she could not remember ever having seen such a thing.
After a while, finding that nothing more happened, 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 it, she found she could not
possibly reach it: she could see it quite plainly 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.
`Come, there's no use in crying like that!' said Alice to herself, rather sharply; `I advise
you to leave off this minute!' She generally gave herself very good advice, (though she
very seldom followed it), and sometimes she scolded herself so severely as to bring tears
into her eyes; and once she remembered trying to box her own ears for having cheated
herself in a game of croquet she was playing against 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 eye fell on a little glass box that was lying under the table: she opened it, and
found in it a very small cake, on which the words `EAT ME' were beautifully marked in
currants. `Well, I'll eat it,' said Alice, `and if it makes me grow