CURIOUSER and curiouser,” cried Alice (she was so
much surprised that for the moment she quite for-
got how to speak good English); “now I’m opening out
like the largest telescope that ever was! Good-by, feet”
(for when she looked down at her feet, they seemed to be
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? Im sure I shan’t be able! I
shall be a great deal too far off to trouble 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 gol Let me see: I’ll give them a
new pair of boots every Christmas.”
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 lookl
Alice’s Right Foot, Esq.
Hearthrug, near the Fender,
(with Alice’s love.)
“Oh dear, what nonsense I’m talking.”
10 ALICE IN WONDERLAND
Just at this moment her head struck against the roof of
the hall; in fact she was now rather more than nine feet
high, and she at once took up the little golden key and
hurried off to the garden door.
Poor Alicel It was as much as she could do, lying down
on one side, to look through into the garden with one eye:
but to get through was more hopeless than ever: she sat
down and began to cry again.
“You ought to be ashamed of yourself,” said Alice, “a
great girl like you” (she might well say this), “to go on
crying in this way! Stop this moment, I tell youl” But
she went on all the same, shedding gallons of tears, until
there was a large pool all round her, about four inches
deep and reaching half down the hall.
After a time she heard a little pattering of feet in the
distance, and she hastily dried her eyes to see what was
coming. It was the White Rabbit returning, splendidly
dressed, with a pair of white kid gloves in one hand and a
large fan in the other: he came trotting along in a great
hurry, muttering to himself as he came, “Ohl! the Duchess,
the Duchess! Oh! won’t she be savage if I’ve kept her
waiting?” Alice felt so desperate that she was ready to
ask help of anyone: so, when the Rabbit came near her,
she began, in a low, timid voice, “If you please, sir~” The
Rabbit started violently, dropped the white kid gloves and
the fan, and scurried away into the darkness as hard as he
could go.
Alice took up the fan and gloves, and, as the hall was
very hot, she kept fanning herself all the time she went on
talking. “Dear, dear! How queer everything is todayl
And yesterday things went on just as usual. I wonder if
[HE POOL OF TEARS ll
sts ? SSS ameene
‘ve been changed in the night? Let me think: was I the
ame when I got up this morning? I almost think I can
emember feeling a little different. But if I’m not the
ame, the next question is, who in the world am IP Ah
hat’s the great puzzle!” And she began thinking over all
he children she knew, that were the same age as her-
elf, to see if she could have been changed for any of them.
12 ALICE IN WONDERLAND
“I’m sure I’m not Ada,” she said, “for her hair goes in
such Jong ringlets, and mine doesn’t go in ringlets at all;
and I’m sure I can’t be Mabel, for I know all sorts of things,
and she, oh! she knows such a very littlel Besides, she’s
she, and I’m I, and—oh dear, how puzzling it all is! Tl
try if I know all the things I used to know. Let me see:
four times five is twelve, and four times six is thirteen, and
four times seven is—oh dear! I shall never get to twenty at
that ratel However the multiplication table don’t signify:
let’s try geography. London is the capital of Paris, and
Paris is the capital of Rome, and Rome—no, that’s all
wrong, I’m certain! I must have been changed for Mabell
I’ll try and say ‘How doth the little—’” and she crossed her
hands on her lap, as if she were saying lessons, and began
to repeat it, but her voice sounded hoarse and strange, and
the words did not come the same as they used to do:
“How doth the little crocodile
Improve his shining tail,
And pours the waters of the Nile
On every golden scalel
How cheerfully he seems to grin,
How neatly spreads his claws,
And welcomes little fishes in
With gently smiling jaws!”
“Tm sure those are not the right words,” said poor Alice,
and her eyes filled with tears again as she went on, “I must
be Mabel after all, and I shall have to go and live in that
poky little house, and have next to no toys to play with,
and ohl ever so many lessons to learn! No I’ve made up
my mind about it; if ‘m Mabel, I’ll stay down here! It’ll
THE POOL OF TEARS 13
be no use their putting their heads down and saying,
‘Come up again, dearl’ I shall only look up and say, ‘Who
am I, then? Tell me that first, and then, if I like being that
person, I’ll come up; if not, I’ll stay down here till I’m
somebody else’—but, oh dear!” cried Alice with a sudden
burst of tears, “I do wish they would put their heads
down! I am so very tired of being all alone herel”
As she said this, she looked down at her hands, and was
surprised to see that she had put on one of the Rabbit’s
little white kid gloves while she was talking. “How can I
have done that?” she thought. “I must be growing small
again.” She got up and went to the table to measure her-
self by it, and found that, as nearly as she could guess, she
was now about two feet high, and was going on shrinking
rapidly; she soon found out that the cause of this was the
fan she was holding, and she dropped it hastily, just in
time to save herself from shrinking away altogether.
“That was a narrow escapel” said Alice, a good deal
frightened at the sudden change, but very glad to find her-
self still in existence; “and now for the garden,” and she
ran with all her speed back to the little door; but alas! the
little door was shut again, and the little golden key was
lying on the glass table as before, “and things are worse
than ever,” thought the poor child, “for I never was so
small as this before, never! And I declare it’s too bad, that
it is!”
As she said these words her foot slipped, and in another
moment, splash! she was up to her chin in salt water. Her
first idea was that she had somehow fallen into the sea,
“and in that case I can go back by railway,” she said to
herself, (Alice had been at the seaside once in her life,
14 ALICE IN WONDERLAND
and had come to the general conclusion, that wherever you
go to on the English coast you find a number of bathing
machines in the sea, some children digging in the sand
with wooden spades, then a row of lodging houses, and
behind them a railway station.) However, she soon made
out that she was in the pool of tears which she had wept
when she was nine feet high.
“I wish I hadn’t cried so much!” said Alice as she swam
about, trying to find her way out. “I shall be punished for
it now, I suppose, by being drowned in my own tears.
That will be a queer thing, to be sure! However, every-
thing is queer today.”
Just then she heard something splashing about in the
pool a little way off, and she swam nearer to make out
what it was; at first she thought it must be a walrus or hip-
popotamus, but then she remembered how small she was
now, and she soon made out that it was only a mouse, that
had slipped in like herself.
THE POOL OF TEARS 15
“Would it be of any use, now,” thought Alice, “to speak
to this mouse? Everything is so out-of-the-way down
here, that I should think very likely it can talk; at any rate
there’s no harm in trying.” So she began; “O Mouse, do
you know the way out of this pool? I am very tired of
swimming about here, O Mouse!” (Alice thought this
must be the right way of speaking to a mouse; she had
never done such a thing before, but she remembered hav-
ing seen in her brother’s Latin grammar, “A mouse—of a
mouse—to a mouse—a mouse—O mouse!”) The Mouse
looked at her rather inquisitively, and seemed to her to
wink with one of its little eyes, but it said nothing.
“Perhaps it doesn’t understand English,” thought Alice;
“I daresay it’s a French Mouse, come over with William
the Conqueror.” (For, with all her knowledge of history,
Alice had no very clear notion how long ago anything had
happened.) So she began again: Ou est ma chatteP”
16 ALICE IN WONDERLAND
which was the first sentence in her French lesson-book.
The Mouse gave a sudden leap out of the water, and
seemed to quiver all over with fright. “Oh I beg your
pardon!” cried Alice hastily, afraid that she had hurt the
poor animal’s feelings. “I quite forgot you didn’t like
cats.”
“Not like cats!” cried the Mouse in a shrill passionate
voice. “Would you like cats if you were me?”
“Well, perhaps not,” said Alice in a soothing tone: “don’t
be angry about it. And yet I wish I could show you our
cat Dinah: I think you’d take a fancy to cats if you could
only see her. She is such a dear quiet thing,” Alice went
on, half to herself, as she swam lazily about in the pool,
“and she sits purring so nicely by the fire licking her paws
and washing her face—and she is such a nice soft thing to
nurse—and she’s a capital one for catching mice—oh, I beg
your pardon!” cried Alice again, for this time the Mouse
was bristling all over, and she felt certain it must be really
offended. “We won’t talk about her any more if youd
rather not.”
“We; indeed!” cried the Mouse, who was trembling
down to the end of his tail. “As if I would talk on such a
subject! Our family always hated cats: nasty, low, vulgar
things! Don’t let me hear the name again!”
“I won’t indeed!” said Alice in a great hurry to change
the subject of conversation. “Are you—are you fond—of
—of dogs?” The Mouse did not answer, so Alice went on
eagerly: “There is such a nice little dog near our house I
should like to show youl A little bright-eyed terrier, you
know, with oh! such long curly brown hair! And it’ll fetch
things when you throw them, and it’ll sit up and beg for
THE POOL OF TEARS 17
its dinner, and all sorts of things—I can’t remember half of
them—and it belongs to a farmer, you know, and he says
it’s so useful it’s worth a hundred pounds! He says it kills
all the rats and—oh dear!” cried Alice in a sorrowful tone.
“I’m afraid I’ve offended it again!” For the Mouse was
swimming away from her as hard as it could go, and mak-
ing quite a commotion in the pool as it went.
So she called softly after it: “Mouse dear! Do come
back again, and we won’t talk about cats or dogs either, if
you don’t like them!” When the Mouse heard this, it
turned round and swam slowly back to her: its face was
quite pale (with passion, Alice thought), and it said in a
low, trembling voice, “Let us get to the shore, and then I’ll
tell you my history, and you’ll understand why it is I hate
cats and dogs.”
it was high time to go, for the pool was getting quite
crowded with the birds and animals that had fallen into it:
there was a Duck and a Dodo, a Lory and an Eaglet, and
several other curious creatures. Alice led the way, and
the whole party swam to the shore.