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...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 through 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 knew 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
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 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
stories 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 flavor
of cherry-tart, custard, pine-apple, roast turkey, toffy, and hot buttered
toast), she very soon finished it off.