Chapter II.

The Pool of Tears

‘C uriouser and curiouser!’ cried Alice (she was so much

surprised, that for the moment she quite forgot how
to speak good English); ‘now I’m opening out like the larg-
est telescope that ever was! Good-bye, 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? I’m 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 go! 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 look!

ALICE’S RIGHT FOOT, ESQ.

HEARTHRUG,
NEAR THE FENDER,
(WITH ALICE’S LOVE).

Oh dear, what nonsense I’m talking!’

12 Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

 Just then her head struck against the roof of the hall: in
fact she was now more than nine feet high, and she at once
took up the little golden key and hurried off to the garden
door.
Poor Alice! 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 you!’ 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 dis-
tance, 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, ‘Oh! the Duchess, the Duchess! Oh!
won’t she be savage if I’ve kept her waiting!’ Alice felt so des-
perate that she was ready to ask help of any one; 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 skurried 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 to-day! And

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yesterday things went on just as usual. I wonder if I’ve been
changed in the night? Let me think: was I the same when I
got up this morning? I almost think I can remember feeling
a little different. But if I’m not the same, the next ques-
tion is, Who in the world am I? Ah, that’s the great puzzle!’
And she began thinking over all the children she knew that
were of the same age as herself, to see if she could have been
changed for any of them.
‘I’m sure I’m not Ada,’ she said, ‘for her hair goes in such
long 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 little! Besides, she’s she, and I’m I,
and—oh dear, how puzzling 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 thirteen, and four times seven is—oh
dear! I shall never get to twenty at that rate! However, the
Multiplication Table doesn’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 Mabel! 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 pour the waters of the Nile
On every golden scale!

14 Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

 ‘How cheerfully he seems to grin,
How neatly spread his claws,
And welcome little fishes in
With gently smiling jaws!’

‘I’m 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 oh!
ever so many lessons to learn! No, I’ve made up my mind
about it; if I’m Mabel, I’ll stay down here! It’ll be no use
their putting their heads down and saying ‘Come up again,
dear!’ 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 be-
ing all alone here!’
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 lit-
tle 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 herself 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 avoid shrinking
away altogether.

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 ‘That was a narrow escape!’ said Alice, a good deal fright-
ened at the sudden change, but very glad to find herself still
in existence; ‘and now for the garden!’ and she ran with all
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. (Al-
ice 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 hippopota-
mus, but then she remembered how small she was now, and

16 Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

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 be-
fore, 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 hap-
pened.) 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

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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 one for catching mice—oh, I beg your
pardon!’ cried Alice again, for this time the Mouse was bris-
tling all over, and she felt certain it must be really offended.
‘We won’t talk about her any more if you’d 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 you! 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 its dinner, and all
sorts of things—I can’t remember half of them—and it be-
longs 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 making 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

18 Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

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 his-
tory, 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 were 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.

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