Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

								

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 larger, I can reach the key; and if it
makes me grow smaller, I can creep under the door; so either way I’ll
get into the garden, and I don’t care which happens!”
She ate a little bit, and said anxiously to herself, “Which way? Which