the sun at noon
I soon found that the sight of me , or any one else , walking upside down -- to him -- was very painful ; only in the case of Alice did other considerations remove the unpleasantness . Little by little the accumulation of experience brought to my mind the full and vivid horror of what the poor lad had suffered and was suffering . Why , when he had looked out of that window into the sky , he was looking _ down _ into a bottomless abyss , from which he was sustained only by the frail plaster and planking under his feet ! The whole earth , with its trees and buildings , was suspended over his head , seemingly about to fall at any moment with him into the depths ; the sun at noon glared _ upward _ from the depths of an inferno , lighting from _ below _ the somber earth suspended overhead ! Thus the warm comfort of the sun , which has cheered the heart of man from time immemorial , now took on an unearthly , unnatural semblance . I learned that he could never quite shake off the feeling that the houses were anchored into the earth , suspended only by the embedment of their foundations in the soil ; that trees were suspended from their roots , which groaned with the strain ; that soil was held to the bedrock only by its cohesion . He even dreaded lest , during storms , the grip of the muddy soil be loosened , and the fields fall into the blue !