Chapter: "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-by, feet! Oh,
my poor little feet, I wonder who will put on your shoes and stockings
for you now, dears? I shall be a great deal too far off to trouble
myself about you."

Just at this moment her head struck against the roof of the hall; in
fact, she was now rather 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.

She went on shedding gallons of tears, until there was a large pool all
'round her and reaching half down the hall.

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, "Oh! the Duchess, the Duchess! Oh!
_won't_ she be savage if I've kept her waiting!"

When the Rabbit came near her, Alice 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.

[Illustration]

Alice took up the fan and gloves and 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. _Was_ I the same when I got
up this morning? But if I'm not the same, the next question is, 'Who in
the world am I?' Ah, _that's_ the great puzzle!"

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 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
save herself from shrinking away altogether.

"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. "Things are worse than ever,"
thought the poor child, "for I never was so small as this before,
never!"

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. However, she soon made out that she
was in the pool of tears which she had wept when she was nine feet high.

[Illustration]

Just then she heard something splashing about in the pool a little way
off, and she swam nearer to see what it was: 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!" 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 dare say it's
a French mouse, come over with William the Conqueror." 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 see her. She is such a dear,
quiet thing." 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."

"We, indeed!" cried the Mouse, who was trembling down to the end of its
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!"

[Illustration: Alice at the Mad Tea Party.]

"I won't indeed!" said Alice, in a great hurry to change the subject of
conversation. "Are you--are you fond--of--of dogs? There is such a nice
little dog near our house, I should like to show you! 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 'round and swam slowly back to her; its face
was quite pale, 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."

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.

 As Alice expected, at the beginning of this chapter the cake indeed does make her grow quite tall. As she is growing to adult proportions Alice begins to worry about her feet, her tiny feet, as though they were children. In this way Alice's manner of speaking becomes more adult and motherly. She decides that, in order to win favor from her now distant and small feat she shall send them Christmas presents. But while this opening paragraph begins as a very adult kind of worry it degenerates into childish hyperbole. "Oh dear, what nonsense I am talking!" Alice scolds herself, reasserting her balance between the extremes of childhood and adulthood. Then Alice grows to be too big for the house and, like a child, she cries in frustration. But the adult voice in Alice's head interjects, scolding her for crying when she is such a big girl. Her tears continue to fall, however, and she fills the house with a pool of tears. At this point the White Rabbit reappears and Alice calls out to him for help, but he is too frightened by her size and he scurries away. '"Who in the world am I?" Ah, that's the great puzzle,' she says to her self after he is gone. . At this point Alice decides to investigate who she is, and if she is the same person that she thought she was yesterday. First she tries to catalogue all of the things she used to know to see if she still knows them. She goes from multiplication tables, to geography and then to little rhyming lessons, effectively moving backward through her schooling to the earliest things she was taught. In all cases she fails to remember. After this Alice notices that she is shrinking again, and she shrinks back to normal size. Then she shrinks down to a size smaller than she was before, less than ten inches. She finds herself afloat in her own pool of tears and she also finds that she is sharing this pool with a mouse. She asks the mouse how she might get out of the pool. The mouse does not answer. Finally, however, Alice engages the mouse in conversation about cats. The conversation consists primarily of Alice offending the mouse by speaking well of cats . Then Alice tries to engage the mouse on the subject of dogs until she mentions a dog that was a good ratkiller, which enrages the mouse again. Finally, exasperated, the mouse announces that he will tell Alice the story of why he hates both cats and dogs and leads her ashore. Alice and the mouse are followed ashore by a Dodo, a Duck, a Lory and an Eaglet who all fell into the pool while Alice and the mouse were talking. In this chapter Carroll introduces the beginning of his argument for adulthood. The first chapter laid out the books basic question, which was: should Alice choose to remain a disordered child so that she can enjoy the laziness of a garden in summer with no worries and no responsibilities? Or, should she impose order on her life and grow up? Her conversation with the mouse is the first of many conversations she will have in this book. While the conversations will be about many things what is really going on in the conversations is the problems of politeness and civility. This will be the core of Carroll's argument that Alice SHOULD grow up and impose order on her life. If she learns to be civil and polite, for example, then she can successfully ask for help without offending anyone. This is the important first step towards growing up: learning how to be polite and how to communicate.

