Alice in Wonderland.
by J.C. Gorham.
CHAPTER I.
DOWN THE RAB-BIT HOLE.
Al-ice had sat on the bank by her sis-ter till she was tired. Once or twice she had looked at the book her sis-ter held in her hand, but there were no pict-ures in it, "and what is the use of a book," thought Alice, "with-out pict-ures?" She asked her-self as well as she could, for the hot day made her feel quite dull, if it would be worth while to get up and pick some dai-sies to make a chain. Just then a white rab-bit with pink eyes ran close by her.
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That was not such a strange thing, nor did Alice think it so much out of the way to hear the Rab-bit say, "Oh dear! Oh, dear! I shall be late!" But when the Rab-bit took a watch out of its pock-et, and looked at it and then ran on, Al-ice start-ed to her feet, for she knew that was the first time she had seen a Rab-bit with a watch. She jumped up and ran to get a look at it, and was just in time to see it pop down a large rab-bit hole near the hedge.
As fast as she could go, Al-ice went down the hole af-ter it, and did not once stop to think how in the world she was to get out.
The hole went straight on for some way and then turned down with a sharp bend, so sharp that Al-ice had no time to think to stop till she found her-self fall-ing in what seemed a deep well.
She must not have moved fast, or the well must have been quite deep, for it took her a long time to go down, and as she went she had time to look at the strange things she pa.s.sed. First she tried to look down and make out what was there, but it was too dark to see; then she looked at the sides of the well and saw that they were piled with book-shelves; here and there she saw maps hung on pegs. She took down a jar from one of the shelves as she pa.s.sed. On it was the word Jam, but there was no jam in it, so she put it back on one of the shelves as she fell past it.
"Well," thought Al-ice to her-self, "af-ter such a fall as this, I shall not mind a fall down stairs at all. How brave they"ll all think me at home! Why, I wouldn"t say a thing if I fell off the top of the house." (Which I dare say was quite true.) Down, down, down. Would the fall nev-er come to an end? "I should like to know," she said, "how far I have come by this time. Wouldn"t it be strange if I should fall right through the earth and come out where the folks walk with their feet up and their heads down?"
Down, down, down. "Di-nah will miss me to-night," Al-ice went on. (Di-nah was the cat.) "I hope they"ll think to give her her milk at tea-time. Di-nah, my dear! I wish you were down here with me! There are no mice in the air, but you might catch a bat, and that"s much like a mouse, you know. But do cats eat bats?" And here Al-ice must have gone to sleep, for she dreamed that she walked hand in hand with Di-nah, and just as she asked her, "Now, Di-nah, tell me the truth, do you eat bats?" all at once, thump! thump! down she came on a heap of sticks and dry leaves, and the long fall was o-ver.
Al-ice was not a bit hurt, but at once jumped to her feet. She looked up, but all was dark there. At the end of a long hall in front of her the white rab-bit was still in sight. There was no time to be lost, so off Al-ice went like the wind, and was just in time to hear it say, "Oh, my ears, how late it is!" then it was out of sight. She found she was in a long hall with a low roof, from which hung a row of light-ed lamps.
There were doors on all sides, but when Al-ice had been all round and tried each one, she found they were all locked. She walked back and forth and tried to think how she was to get out. At last she came to a stand made all of gla.s.s. On it was a ti-ny key of gold, and Al-ice"s first thought was that this might be a key to one of the doors of the hall, but when she had tried the key in each lock, she found the locks were too large or the key was too small--it did not fit one of them. But when she went round the hall once more she came to a low cur-tain which she had not seen at first, and when she drew this back she found a small door, not much more than a foot high; she tried the key in the lock, and to her great joy it fit-ted!
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Al-ice found that the door led to a hall the size of a rat hole; she knelt down and looked through it in-to a gar-den of gay flow-ers. How she longed to get out of that dark hall and near those bright blooms; but she could not so much as get her head through the door; "and if my head would go through," thought Al-ice, "it would be of no use, for the rest of me would still be too large to go through. Oh, how I wish I could shut up small! I think I could if I knew how to start."
There seemed to be no use to wait by the small door, so she went back to the stand with the hope that she might find a key to one of the large doors, or may-be a book of rules that would teach her to grow small. This time she found a small bot-tle on it ("which I am sure was not here just now," said Al-ice), and tied round the neck of the bot-tle was a tag with the words "Drink me" printed on it.
It was all right to say "Drink me," but Al-ice was too wise to do that in haste: "No, I"ll look first," she said, "and see if it"s marked "poi-son" or not," for she had been taught if you drink much from a bot-tle marked "poi-son," it is sure to make you sick. This had no such mark on it, so she dared to taste it, and as she found it nice (it had, in fact, a taste of pie, ice-cream, roast fowl, and hot toast), she soon drank it off.
"How strange I feel," said Al-ice. "I am sure I am not so large as I was!"
And so it was; she was now not quite a foot high, and her face light-ed up at the thought that she was now the right size to go through the small door and get out to that love-ly gar-den.
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Poor Al-ice! When she reached the door she found that she had left the key on the stand, and when she went back for it, she found she could by no means reach it. She could see it through the gla.s.s, and she tried her best to climb one of the legs of the stand, but it was too sleek, and when she was quite tired out, she sat down and cried.
"Come, there"s no use to cry like that!" Al-ice said to her-self as stern as she could speak. "I tell you to leave off at once!"
Soon her eyes fell on a small gla.s.s box that lay on the floor. She looked in it and found a tiny cake on which were the words "Eat me," marked in grapes. "Well, I"ll eat it," said Al-ice, "and if it makes me grow tall, I can reach the key, and if it makes me shrink up, I can creep un-der the door; so I"ll get out some way."
So she set to work and soon ate all the cake.
CHAPTER II.
THE POOL OF TEARS.
"How strange! Oh my!" said Al-ice, "how tall I am, and all at once, too! Good-by, feet." (For when she looked down at her feet they seemed so far off, she thought they would soon be out of sight.) "Oh, my poor feet, who will put on your shoes for you now, dears? I"m sure I shan"t do it. I shall be a great deal too far off to take care of you; you must get on the best way you can; but I must be kind to them," thought Al-ice, "or they won"t walk the way I want to go! Let me see: I"ll give them a pair of new shoes each, Christ-mas."
She stopped to think how she would send them. "They must go by the mail," she thought; "and how fun-ny it"ll seem to send shoes to one"s own feet. How odd the ad-dress will look!
AL-ICE"S RIGHT FOOT, ESQ., Hearth-rug, Near the Fire. (With Al-ice"s love.) [Ill.u.s.tration]
Oh dear, there"s no sense in all that."
Just then her head struck the roof of the hall; in fact she was now more than nine feet high, and she at once took up the small key and went back to the door.
Poor Al-ice! It was as much as she could do, when she lay down on one side, to look through to the gar-den with one eye: but to get through was not to be hoped for, so she sat down and had a good cry.
"Shame on you," said Al-ice, "a great big girl like you" (she might well say this) "to cry in this way! Stop at once, I tell you!" But she went on all the same, and shed tears till there was a large pool all round her, and which reached half way down the hall.
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At last she heard the sound of feet not far off, then she dried her eyes in great haste to see who it was. It was the White Rab-bit that had come back, dressed in fine clothes, with a pair of white kid gloves in one hand, and a large fan in the oth-er. He trot-ted on in great haste, and talked to him-self as he came, "Oh! the Duch-ess, the Duch-ess! Oh! won"t she be in a fine rage if I"ve made her wait?"
Al-ice felt so bad and so in need of help from some one, that when the Rab-bit came near, she said in a low tim-id voice, "If you please, sir--" The Rab-bit started as if shot, dropped the white kid gloves and the fan and ran off in-to the dark as fast as his two hind feet could take him.
Al-ice took up the fan and gloves and as the hall was quite hot, she fanned her-self all the time she went on talk-ing. "Dear, dear! How queer all things are to-day! Could I have been changed in the night? Let me think: was I the same when I got up to-day? Seems to me I didn"t feel quite the same. But if I"m not the same, then who in the world am I?" Then she thought of all the girls she knew that were of her age, to see if she could have been changed for one of them.
"I"m sure I"m not A-da," she said, "for her hair is in such long curls and mine doesn"t curl at all; and I"m sure I can"t be Ma-bel, for I know all sorts of things, and she, oh! she knows such a lit-tle! Then, she"s she, and I"m I, and--oh dear, how strange it all is! I"ll try if I know all the things I used to know. Let me see: four times five is twelve, and four times six is thir-teen, and four times sev-en is--oh dear! that is not right. I must have been changed for Ma-bel! I"ll try if I know "How doth the lit-tle--"" and she placed her hands on her lap, as if she were at school and tried to say it, but her voice was hoa.r.s.e and strange and the words did not come the same as they used to do.
"I"m sure those are not the right words," said poor Al-ice, and her eyes filled with tears as she went on, "I must be Ma-bel af-ter all, and I shall have to go and live in that po-ky house and have next to no toys to play with, and oh! such hard things to learn. No, I"ve made up my mind; if I"m Ma-bel, I"ll stay down here! It"ll be no use for them to put their heads down and say, "Come up, dear!" I shall look up and say, "Who am I, then? Tell me that first, and then if I like it, I"ll come up; if not, I"ll stay down here till I"m some one else"--but, oh dear," cried Al-ice with a fresh burst of tears, "I do wish they would put their heads down! I am so tired of this place!"
As she said this she looked down at her hands and saw that she had put on one of the Rab-bit"s white kid gloves while she was talk-ing. "How can I have done that?" she thought. "I must have grown small once more." She got up and went to the gla.s.s stand to test her height by that, and found that as well as she could guess she was now not more than two feet high, and still shrink-ing quite fast. She soon found out that the cause of this, was the fan she held and she dropped it at once, or she might have shrunk to the size of a gnat.
Al-ice was, at first, in a sad fright at the quick change, but glad that it was no worse. "Now for the gar-den," and she ran with all her speed back to the small door; but, oh dear! the door was shut, and the key lay on the gla.s.s stand, "and things are worse than ev-er," thought the poor child, "for I nev-er was so small as this, nev-er! It"s too bad, that it is!"
As she said these words her foot slipped, and splash! she was up to her chin in salt wa-ter. At first she thought she must be in the sea, but she soon made out that she was in the pool of tears which she had wept when she was nine feet high.
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"I wish I hadn"t cried so much!" said Al-ice as she swam round and tried to find her way out. "I shall now be drowned in my own tears. That will be a queer thing, to be sure! But all things are queer to-day."
Just then she heard a splash in the pool a lit-tle way off, and she swam near to make out what it was; at first she thought it must be a whale, but when she thought how small she was now, she soon made out that it was a mouse that had slipped in the pond.
"Would it be of an-y use now to speak to this mouse? All things are so out-of-way down here, I should think may-be it can talk, at least there"s no harm to try." So she said: "O Mouse, do you know the way out of this pool? I have swum here till I"m quite tired, O Mouse!" The Mouse looked at her and seemed to her to wink with one of its small eyes, but it did not speak.
"It may be a French Mouse," thought Al-ice, so she said: "Ou est ma chatte?" (Where is my cat?) which was all the French she could think of just then. The Mouse gave a quick leap out of the wa-ter, and seemed in a great fright, "Oh, I beg your par-don," cried Al-ice. "I quite for-got you didn"t like cats."
"Not like cats!" cried the Mouse in a shrill, harsh voice. "Would you like cats if you were me?"
"Well, I guess not," said Al-ice, "but please don"t get mad. And yet I wish I could show you our cat, Di-nah. I"m sure you"d like cats if you could see her. She is such a dear thing," Al-ice went on half to her-self as she swam round in the pool, "and she sits and purrs by the fire and licks her paws and wash-es her face--and she is such a nice soft thing to nurse--and she"s a fine one to catch mice--Oh, dear!" cried Al-ice, for this time the Mouse was in a great fright and each hair stood on end. "We won"t talk of her if you don"t like it."
"We talk!" cried the Mouse, who shook down to the end of his tail. "As if I would talk of such low, mean things as cats! All rats hate them. Don"t let me hear the name a-gain!"
"I won"t," said Al-ice, in great haste to change the theme. "Are you fond--of--of dogs?" The mouse did not speak, so Al-ice went on: "There is such a nice dog near our house, I should like to show you! A ti-ny bright-eyed dog, you know, with oh! such long cur-ly brown hair! And it"ll fetch things when you throw them, and it"ll sit up and beg for its meat and do all sorts of things--I can"t tell you half of them. And it kills all the rats, and m--oh dear!" cried Al-ice in a sad tone, "I"ve made it mad a-gain!" For the Mouse swam off from her as fast as it could go, and made quite a stir in the pool as it went.
So she called it in a soft, kind voice, "Mouse dear! Do come back and we won"t talk of cats or dogs if you don"t like them!" When the Mouse heard this it turned round and swam back to her; its face was quite pale (with rage, Al-ice thought), and it said in a low, weak voice, "Let us get to the sh.o.r.e, and then I"ll tell you why it is I hate cats and dogs."
It was high time to go, for the pool was by this time quite crowded with the birds and beasts that had slipped in-to it. Al-ice led the way and they all swam to the sh.o.r.e.
CHAPTER III.
A RACE.
They were a queer look-ing crowd as they stood or sat on the bank--the wings and tails of the birds drooped to the earth; the fur of the beasts clung close to them, and all were as wet and cross as could be.
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The first thought, of course, was how to get dry. They had a long talk a-bout this, and Al-ice joined with, them as if she had known them all her life. But it was hard to tell what was best.
"What I want to say," at last spoke up the Do-do, "is that the best thing to get us dry would be a race."
"What kind of race?" asked Al-ice, not that she much want-ed to know, but the Do-do had paused as if it thought that some one ought to speak, and no one else would say a word. "Why," said the Do-do, "the best way to make it plain is to do it." (And as you might like to try the thing some cold day, I"ll tell you how the Do-do did it.) First it marked out a race-course in a sort of ring (it didn"t care much for the shape), and then all the crowd were placed on the course, here and there. There was no "One, two, three, and here we go," but they ran when they liked and left off when they liked, so that no one could tell when the race was ended. When they had been running half an hour or so and were all quite dry, the Do-do called out, "The race is o-ver!" and they all crow-ded round it and and asked, "But who has won?"
This the Do-do could not, at first, tell, but sat for a long time with one claw pressed to its head while the rest wait-ed, but did not speak. At last the Do-do said, "All have won and each must have a prize."
"But who is to give them?" all asked at once.
"Why, she of course," said the Do-do, as it point-ed to Al-ice with one long claw; and the whole par-ty at once crowd-ed round her as they called out, "A prize, a prize!"
Al-ice did not know what to do, but she pulled from her pock-et a box of lit-tle cakes (by a strange, good luck they did not get wet while she was in the pool) and hand-ed them round as priz-es. There was one a-piece all round.
"But she must have a prize, you know," said the Mouse.
"Of course," the Do-do said. "What else have you got?" he went on as he turned to Al-ice.
"A thim-ble," said Al-ice looking quite sad.
"Hand it here," said the Do-do.
Then they all crowd-ed round her once more, while the Do-do hand-ed the thim-ble back to Al-ice and said, "We beg that you accept this fine thim-ble;" and when it had made this short speech they all cheered.
Al-ice thought the whole thing quite fool-ish, but they all looked so grave that she did not dare to laugh, and as she could not think what to say she bowed and took the thim-ble, while she looked as staid as she could.
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The next thing was to eat the cakes: this caused some noise, as the large birds said they could not taste theirs, and the small ones choked and had to be pat-ted on the back. It was o-ver at last and they sat down in a ring and begged the Mouse to tell them a tale.
"You said you would tell us why you hate cats and dogs," said Al-ice.
"Mine is a long and a sad tale," said the Mouse, as it turned to Al-ice with a sigh.
"It is a long tail, I"m sure," said Al-ice, look-ing down at the Mouse"s tail; "but why do you call it sad?"
"I shall not tell you," said the Mouse, as it got up and walked off.
"Please come back and tell us your tale," called Al-ice; and all joined in, "Yes, please do!" but the Mouse shook its head and walked on and was soon out of sight.
"I wish I had our Di-nah here, I know I do!" said Al-ice. "She"d soon fetch it back."
"And who is Di-nah, if I may dare to ask such a thing?" said one of the birds.
Al-ice was glad to talk of her pet. "Di-nah"s our cat; and she"s such a fine one to catch mice, you can"t think. And oh, I wish you could see her chase a bird! Why she"ll eat a bird as soon as look at it!"
This speech caused a great stir in the par-ty. Some of the birds rushed off at once; one old jay wrapped it-self up with care and said, "I must get home; the night air doesn"t suit my throat!" and a wren called out to her brood, "come, my dears! It"s high time you were all in bed."
Soon they all moved off and Al-ice was left a-lone.
"I wish I hadn"t told them of Di-nah," she said to her-self. "No one seems to like her down here, and I"m sure she"s the best cat in the world! Oh, my dear Di-nah! Shall I ev-er see you an-y more?" And here poor Al-ice burst in-to tears, for she felt ver-y sad and lone-ly. In a short time she heard the pat-ter of feet, and she looked up with the hope that the Mouse had changed its mind and come back to tell his "long and sad tale."
CHAPTER IV.
THE RAB-BIT SENDS IN A BILL.
It was the White Rab-bit who trot-ted back a-gain. It looked from side to side as it went as if it had lost some-thing; and Al-ice heard it say to it-self, "The Duch-ess! The Duch-ess! Oh, my dear paws! She"ll get my head cut off as sure as rats are rats! Where can I have lost them!" Al-ice guessed at once that he was in search of the fan and the pair of white kid gloves, and like the good girl that she was, she set out to hunt for them, but they were not to be found. All things seemed to have changed since her swim in the pool; the great hall with the gla.s.s stand and the lit-tle door--all were gone. Soon the Rab-bit saw Al-ice and called out to her, "Why, Ann, what are you out here for? Run home at once, and fetch me a pair of gloves and a fan! Quick, now!" And Al-ice was in such a fright that she ran off and did not wait to tell it who she was.
"He took me for his house-maid," she said to her-self as she ran. "What will he think when he finds out who I am! But I must take him his fan and gloves--that is if I can find them."