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<h2> CHAPTER II. The Pool of Tears </h2>
<p>'Curiouser 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 largest 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>I</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.'</p>
<p>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!</p>
<p>ALICE'S RIGHT FOOT, ESQ.<br/>
HEARTHRUG,<br/>
NEAR THE FENDER,<br/>
(WITH ALICE'S LOVE).<br/></p>
<p>Oh dear, what nonsense I'm talking!'</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>'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.</p>
<p>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, 'Oh! 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 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.</p>
<p>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 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 question 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.</p>
<p>'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:—</p>
<p>'How doth the little crocodile<br/>
Improve his shining tail,<br/>
And pour the waters of the Nile<br/>
On every golden scale!<br/>
<br/>
'How cheerfully he seems to grin,<br/>
How neatly spread his claws,<br/>
And welcome little fishes in<br/>
With gently smiling jaws!'<br/></p>
<p>'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
being all alone here!'</p>
<p>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 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.</p>
<p>'That WAS a narrow escape!' said Alice, a good deal frightened 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!'</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>'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.'</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>'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.</p>
<p>'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.'</p>
<p>'Not like cats!' cried the Mouse, in a shrill, passionate voice. 'Would
YOU like cats if you were me?'</p>
<p>'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 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
you'd rather not.'</p>
<p>'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!'</p>
<p>'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
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 making quite
a commotion in the pool as it went.</p>
<p>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.'</p>
<p>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.</p>
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