what Latitude was, or Longitude either, but thought they were nice grand words

to say.)


Presently she began again. “I wonder if I shall fall right through

the earth! How funny it’ll seem to come out among the people that walk

with their heads downward! The Antipathies, I think—” (she was

rather glad there was no one listening, this time, as it didn’t

sound at all the right word) “—but I shall have to ask them what

the name of the country is, you know. Please, Ma’am, is this New Zealand

or Australia?” (and she tried to curtsey as she spoke—fancy

curtseying as you’re falling through the air! Do you think you

could manage it?) “And what an ignorant little girl she’ll think me

for asking! No, it’ll never do to ask: perhaps I shall see it written up

somewhere.”


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,