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Alice's
Adventures in Wonderland
Kapitel 2:
The pool of tears, Lewis Carroll, Seite 2 ( von 3 )
Besides, she's
she, and I'm I,
and - oh dear, how puzzling it all is! I'll try if I know all the things I used
to know. Let me see: four times five is twelve, and four times six is thirteen,
and four times seven is - oh dear! I shall never get to twenty at that rate!
However, the Multiplication Table doesn't signify: let's try Geography. London
is the capital of Paris, and Paris is the capital of Rome, and Rome - no,
that's all
wrong, I'm ceratin! I must have been changed for Mabel! I'll try and say
'How doth the
little-'" and she crossed her hands on her lap as if she were saying
lessons, and began to repeat it, but her voice sounded hoarse and strange, and
the words did not come the same as they used to do: -
"How doth the
little crocodile
Improve his shining tail,
And pour the waters of the Nile
On every golden scale!
"How cheerfully he seems to grin,
How neatly spreads his claws,
And welcomes little fishes in
With gently smiling jaws!"
"I'm sure those are not the right words," said poor Alice, and her
eyes filled with tears again as she went on, "I must be Mabel after all,
and I shall have to go and live in that poky little house, and have next to no
toys to play with, and oh! ever so many lessons to learn! No, I've made up my
mind about it; if I'm Mabel, I'll stay down here! It'll be no use their putting
their heads down and saying 'Come up again, dear!' I shall only look up and say
'Who am I then? Tell me that first, and then, if I like being that person, I'll
come up: if not, I'll stay down here till I'm somebody else' - but, oh
dear!" cried Alice, with a sudden burst of tears, "I do wish they
would put their
heads down! I am so very tired of being
all alone here!"
As she said this she looked down at her hands, and was surprised to see that
she had put on one of the Rabbit's little white kid gloves while she was
talking. "How can I have done
that?" she thought. "I must be growing small again." She got up
and went to the table to measure herself by it, and found that, as nearly as
she could guess, she was now about two feet high, and was going on shrinking
rapidly: she soon found out that the cause of this was the fan she was holding,
and she dropped it hastily, just in time to save herself from shrinking away
altogether.
"That was a
narrow escape!" said Alice, a good deal frightened at the sudden change,
but very glad to find herself still in existence; "and now for the
garden!" and she ran with all speed back to the little door: but, alas!
the little door was shut again, and the little golden key was lying on the
glass table as before, "and things are worse then ever," thought the
poor child, "for I never was so small as this before, never! And I declare
it's too bad, that it is!"
As she said these words her foot slipped, and in another moment, splash! she
was up to her chin in salt water. Her first idea was that she had somehow
fallen into the sea, "and in that case I can go back by railway," she
said to herself. (Alice had been to the seaside once in her life, and had come
to the general conclusion, that wherever you go to on the English coast you
find a number of bathing machines in the sea, some children digging in the sand
with wooden spades, then a row of lodging houses, and behind them a railway
station.) However, she soon made out that she was in the pool of tears which
she had wept when she was nine feet high.
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