Alice's Adventures in Wonderland: HTML Edition

								

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 to the seaside once in her life, 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, everything is
queer to-day.'
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 hippopotamus, 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.
'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 having
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 chatte?' 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 such a capital