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LEWIS CARROLL

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

      The proper name of Lewis Carroll was Charles Lutwidge
     Dodgson, and he was born at Daresbury, England, on January 27,
     1832.  Educated at Rugby and at Christchurch, Oxford, he
     specialised in mathematical subjects.  Elected a student of his
     college, he became a mathematical lecturer in 1855, continuing
     in that occupation until 1881.  His fame rests on the
     children’s classic, “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,” issued
     in 1865, which has been translated into many languages.  No
     modern fairy-tale has approached it in popularity.  The charms
     of the book are its unstrained humour and its childlike fancy,
     held in check by the discretion of a particularly clear and
     analytical mind.  Though it seems strange that an authority on
     Euclid and logic should have been the inventor of so diverting
     and irresponsible a tale, if we examine his story critically
     we shall see that only a logical mind could have derived so
     much genuine humour from a deliberate attack on reason, in
     which a considerable element of fun arises from efforts to
     reconcile the irreconcilable.  The book has probably been read
     as much by grown-ups as by young people, and no work of humour
     is more heartily to be commended as a banisher of care.  The
     original illustrations by Sir John Tenniel are almost as
     famous as the book itself.

I.—­What Happened 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 conversations?”

So she was considering in her own mind (as well as she could, for the hot day made her feel very sleepy and stupid) whether the pleasure of making a daisy-chain would be worth the trouble of getting up and picking the daisies, when suddenly a White Rabbit with pink eyes ran close by her.

There was nothing so very remarkable in that; nor did Alice think it so very much out of the way to hear the Rabbit say to himself:  “Oh, dear!  Oh, dear!  I shall be too late!” But when the Rabbit actually took a watch out of his waistcoat pocket, and looked at it, and then hurried on, Alice started to her feet, for it flashed across her mind that she had never before seen a rabbit with either a waistcoat pocket or a watch to take out of it, and, burning with curiosity, she ran across the field after him, and was just in time to see him pop down a large rabbit-hole under the hedge.

In another moment down went Alice after him, never once considering how in the world she was to get out again.