[THE NEW WONDERLAND]
You have probably, like Betty, the little girl in this story, read "Alice in Wonderland". If you haven't, you will find out, before you have read very far on this page, when Alice lived. Glance at the first part of the story and see.
Alice, in the book that Betty had been reading, had wonderful adventures in a strange country, where rabbits and caterpillars talked, and where certain kinds of cake made you grow taller or shorter, and where people put pepper in tea. Anybody would think a country like that was a Wonderland; but you will see that Alice found our everyday, twentieth-century world is a Wonderland, too. See if you can tell why she thought so.
Betty laid down her book with a sigh. It had been a lovely book, and she was sorry it was finished. "Such a humdrum old world!" she said discontentedly. "I wish I had a chance to go to Wonderland, like Alice."
"Why," said a voice from the doorway, "isn't this Wonderland, then?"
Betty looked up, startled. She saw a little girl of about her own age, with long, light, straight hair hanging to her waist, with wide, wondering blue eyes, and dressed in the simplest, most old-fashioned of little white frocks.
"Who are you?" inquired Betty.
"Why, don't you know me? I'm Alice," said the quaint little girl.
"How did you get here? I thought you lived a long time ago, in 1850 or so."
"Oh, yes, I did begin to live then; but you see I've been traveling in Wonderland so long that I've never had time to grow up."
"Aren't you sorry to have come back to real life, and begin to do lessons, and mind what the older people say, and all?"