Chapter
1: Down the Rabbit-Hole
lice is sitting with her sister on
the riverbank and is very bored. Suddenly she sees a White Rabbit running by
her. It is wearing a waistcoat and takes a watch out of it, while muttering to
himself ‘Oh dear! Oh dear! I shall be late!'. Alice gets very curious and
follows him down his rabbit-hole.
The rabbit-hole suddenly goes
straight down and Alice falls into it. She falls very slowly and while she is
talking to herself she falls asleep. Suddenly she lands on a heap of sticks and
dry leaves and the fall is over. She sees the White Rabbit running in front of
her through a long passage and she continues to follow him.
When she turns the corner the Rabbit
is gone and Alice finds herself in a long, low hall, with doors all round it.
She tries them, but they are all locked. Then she comes upon a little
three-legged table on which a little golden key lies. The key fits in a little
door behind a curtain and when she opens it she sees that it leads into a small
passage. At the end of the passage Alice sees a beautiful garden. She really
wants to get into the garden, but she is too big to fit through the door.
When she goes back to the table she
finds a little bottle on it with the words ‘Drink me’ printed on the label.
Alice drinks from it and starts shrinking until she is only ten inches high.
She now has the right size to enter the door, but she finds that the door is
still locked and that she has left the little golden key on the table, which is
now too high to reach.
