Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

								

long passage, and the White Rabbit was still in sight, hurrying down
it. There was not a moment to be lost: away went Alice like the wind,
and was just in time to hear it say, as it turned a corner, “Oh my ears
and whiskers, how late it’s getting!” She was close behind it when she
turned the corner, but the Rabbit was no longer to be seen: she found
herself in a long, low hall, which was lit up by a row of lamps hanging
from the roof.
There were doors all round the hall, but they were all locked; and when
Alice had been all the way down one side and up the other, trying every
door, she walked sadly down the middle, wondering how she was ever to
get out again.
Suddenly she came upon a little three-legged table, all made of solid
glass; there was nothing on it except a tiny golden key, and Alice’s
first thought was that it might belong to one of the doors of the hall;
but, alas! either the locks were too large, or the key was too small,
but at any rate it would not open any of them. However, on the second
time round, she came upon a low curtain she had not noticed before, and
behind it was a little door about fifteen inches high: she tried the
little golden key in the lock, and to her great delight it fitted!
Alice opened the door and 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
through 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
knew 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