data3.txt

Down, down, down. There was nothing else to do, so Alice
soon began talking again. 'Dinah'll miss me very much
to-night, I should think!' (Dinah was the cat.) 'I hope
they'll remember her saucer of milk at tea-time. Dinah my
dear! I wish you were down here with me! There are no mice
in the air, I'm afraid, but you might catch a bat, and
that's very like a mouse, you know. But do cats eat bats, I
wonder?' And here Alice began to get rather sleepy, and went
on saying to herself, in a dreamy sort of way, 'Do cats eat
bats? Do cats eat bats?' and sometimes, 'Do bats eat cats?'
for, you see, as she couldn't answer either question, it
didn't much matter which way she put it. She felt that she
was dozing off, and had just begun to dream that she was
walking hand in hand with Dinah, and saying to her very
earnestly, 'Now, Dinah, tell me the truth: did you ever eat
a bat?' when suddenly, thump! thump! down she came upon a
heap of sticks and dry leaves, and the fall was over.

Alice was not a bit hurt, and she jumped up on to her feet
in a moment: she looked up, but it was all dark overhead;
before her was another 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 know 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 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.