The name of the story, as most of you know, is _Alice in Wonderland_. All over the English-speaking world, children, and older people as well, seem to know Alice. When you hear someone talking about the Mad Hatter at the tea party, or a blue caterpillar smoking a hookah, or the Duchess losing her temper, or the cat vanishing but the smile remaining, and you ask what it means, you will be told, if you have not guessed already, that all these odd phrases belong to _Alice in Wonderland_. Alice followed the White Rabbit down the hole, falling down a very long way without hurting {98} herself a bit. Then she found herself in a hall where there was a three-legged table with a tiny gold key on it, and she discovered a little door that she opened with the tiny gold key, but she was too big to go through the door, although she could see that it led into the loveliest garden. Then, as you may remember, she found a bottle with "Drink me" printed on it, and when she saw that it was not marked poison, she tasted it, and since it had a very good taste, she drank it all, and after that she was only ten inches high. Then she had forgotten the key, and now she was too small to reach to the top of the table, but under the table she saw a glass box and in the box a cake with "Eat me" marked on it beautifully in currants. And so, finally, with the help of the cake, and then with the help of a fan, of which you must read for yourselves, Alice found her way into the garden; and after that she had the most curious adventures. Perhaps no one can explain the exact reason why we enjoy _Alice in Wonderland_ so much. The story is so precisely what we should like it to be, that we take it as it is, and hurry on through its pages in a sort of breathless happiness, wanting to know only what comes next. There is nothing puzzling or difficult in the story, no hidden meanings, nothing to make one sad or discontented, only laughter and curious, amusing incidents. It is a perfect story about the strange adventures of a little girl, and most people find delight in it. There is a sequel to the story of Alice, called _Through the Looking-Glass_. {99} Lewis Carroll is the name you will find printed on the title pages of these stories, but this is a pen name. The author's real name was Dodgson. He did not like people to know that he wrote children's books. Lewis Carroll seems to have been a quiet, shy man, a mathematician who wrote difficult books for students, but he was wonderfully fond of children and understood how to write stories that they would like.