glass; there was nothing lying upon it, but a
tiny golden key, and Alice's first idea was that it might belong
to one of the doors of the hall, but alas! either the locks were
too large, or the key too small, but at any rate it would open
none of them. However, on the second time round, she came to a
low curtain, behind which was a door about eighteen inches high:
she tried the little key in the keyhole, and it fitted! Alice
opened the door, and looked down a small passage, not larger than
a rat-hole, 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 through the doorway, "and even if my head
would go through," thought poor Alice, "it would be very little
use without my shoulders. Oh, how I wish I could shut up like a
telescope! I think I could, if I only knew how to begin." For,
you see, so many out-of-the-way things had happened lately, that
Alice began to think very few things indeed were really
impossible.

There was nothing else to do, 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 up people like telescopes: this time there was
a little bottle on it--"which certainly was not there before"
said Alice--and tied round the neck of the bottle was a paper
label with the words DRINK ME beautifully printed on it in large
letters.

It was all very well to say "drink me," "but I'll look first,"
said the wise little Alice, "and see whether the bottle's marked
"poison" or not," for Alice had read several nice little stories
about children that got burnt, and eaten up by wild beasts, and
other unpleasant things, because they would not remember the
simple rules their friends had given them, such as, that, if you
get into the fire, it will burn you, and that, if you cut your
finger very deeply with a knife, it generally bleeds, and she
had never forgotten that, if you drink a bottle marked "poison,"
it is almost certain to disagree with you, sooner or later.

However, this bottle was not marked poison, so Alice tasted it,
and finding it very nice, (it had, in fact, a sort of mixed
flavour of cherry-tart, custard, pine-apple, roast turkey, toffy,
and hot buttered toast,) she very soon finished it off.

* * * * *

"What a curious feeling!" said Alice, "I must be shutting up