Down the Rabbit-Hole

Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and of having nothing to do: once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it, «and what is the use of a book,» thought Alice «without pictures or conversation?».

whether the pleasure Trade-offs, whose general study is called Economics. To illustrate: Everyone wants to be millionaire when asked, but if you have to pay, the question is: “How Much?”.
White Rabbit There's a 1960's song by Grace Slick called White Rabbit, based on Wonderland themes. See White Rabbit. See also Wikipedia White Rabbit.



a white rabbit checking his pocket watch



MARMALADE Sweet fruit preserve made of fruits, water, sugar; jelly. Marmalade


«Well!» thought Alice to herself, «after such a fall as this, I shall think nothing of tumbling down stairs! How brave they'll all think me at home! Why, I wouldn't say anything about it, even if I fell off the top of the house!» (Which was very likely true.)

miles down Earth has a radius of 6373 km. See Earth.
Latitude Equater is latitude 0°. North pole is 90°, South pole is -90°. Latitude. Longitude measures east and west, with a line passing somewhere in London, England, defined as 0°.

Down, down, down. Would the fall never come to an end! «I wonder how many miles I've fallen by this time?» she said aloud. «I must be getting somewhere near the centre of the earth. Let me see: that would be four thousand miles down, I think — » (for, you see, Alice had learnt several things of this sort in her lessons in the schoolroom, and though this was not a VERY good opportunity for showing off her knowledge, as there was no one to listen to her, still it was good practice to say it over) « — yes, that's about the right distance — but then I wonder what Latitude or Longitude I've got to?» (Alice had no idea what Latitude was, or Longitude either, but thought they were nice grand words to say.)

Antipathies Contrariety or opposition in feeling; opposite sympathy. The right word here should be antipodal. The antipode of London would be Lat -51°, Lon 180°, somewhere in the sea SE of New Zealand. Google Map
curtsey curtsey

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.



fifteen inches 38.1 cm.


Alice finding tiny door behind curtain

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 though 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.

Alice taking “Drink Me” bottle

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.

«What a curious feeling!» said Alice; «I must be shutting up like a telescope.»

ten inches 25.4 cm.
going out altogether Will a continuously decreasing object ever become non-existant? This question is mathematically studied in calculus. It depends on the rate of decreasing. In brief, if the rate of decrement is dereasing itself, then the object might not become non-existant, even if the object is decreasing forever. See Limit (mathematics)

And so it was indeed: she was now only ten inches high, and her face brightened up at the thought that she was now the right size for going through the little door into that lovely garden. First, however, she waited for a few minutes to see if she was going to shrink any further: she felt a little nervous about this; «for it might end, you know,» said Alice to herself, «in my going out altogether, like a candle. I wonder what I should be like then?» And she tried to fancy what the flame of a candle is like after the candle is blown out, for she could not remember ever having seen such a thing.


«Come, there's no use in crying like that!» said Alice to herself, rather sharply; «I advise you to leave off this minute!» She generally gave herself very good advice, (though she very seldom followed it), and sometimes she scolded herself so severely as to bring tears into her eyes; and once she remembered trying to box her own ears for having cheated herself in a game of croquet she was playing against herself, for this curious child was very fond of pretending to be two people. «But it's no use now,» thought poor Alice, «to pretend to be two people! Why, there's hardly enough of me left to make ONE respectable person!»

Soon her eye fell on a little glass box that was lying under the table: she opened it, and found in it a very small cake, on which the words «EAT ME» were beautifully marked in currants. «Well, I'll eat it,» said Alice, «and if it makes me grow larger, I can reach the key; and if it makes me grow smaller, I can creep under the door; so either way I'll get into the garden, and I don't care which happens!»

She ate a little bit, and said anxiously to herself, «Which way? Which way?», holding her hand on the top of her head to feel which way it was growing, and she was quite surprised to find that she remained the same size: to be sure, this generally happens when one eats cake, but Alice had got so much into the way of expecting nothing but out-of-the-way things to happen, that it seemed quite dull and stupid for life to go on in the common way.


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