and perhaps after all it might tell her something worth hearing. For
some minutes it puffed away without speaking; but at last it unfolded
its arms, took the hookah out of its mouth again, and said, "So you
think you're changed, do you?"
"I'm afraid I am, Sir," said Alice. "I can't remember things as I
used--and I don't keep the same size for ten minutes together!"
"Can't remember _what_ things?" said the Caterpillar.
"Well, I've tried to say, '_How doth the little busy bee_,' but it all
came different!" Alice replied in a very melancholy voice.
"Repeat, '_You are old, Father William_,'" said the Caterpillar.
Alice folded her hands, and began:
"You are old, Father William," the young man said,
"And your hair has become very white;
And yet you incessantly stand on your head--
Do you think, at your age, it is right?"
"In my youth," Father William replied to his son,
"I feared it might injure the brain;
But, now that I'm perfectly sure I have none,
Why, I do it again and again."
"You are old," said the youth, "as I mentioned before,
And have grown most uncommonly fat;
Yet you turned a back-somersault in at the door--
Pray, what is the reason of that?"
"In my youth," said the sage, as he shook his gray locks,
"I kept all my limbs very supple
By the use of this ointment--one shilling the box--
Allow me to sell you a couple?"
"You are old," said the youth, "and your jaws are too weak
For anything tougher than suet;
Yet you finished the goose, with the bones and the beak--
Pray, how did you manage to do it?"
"In my youth," said his father, "I took to the law,
And argued each case with my wife;
And the muscular strength which it gave to my jaw
Has lasted the rest of my life."
"You are old," said the youth, "one would hardly suppose
That your eye was as steady as ever;
Yet you balanced an eel on the end of your nose--
What made you so awfully clever?"
"I have answered three questions, and that is enough,"
Said his father. "Don't give yourself airs!
Do you think I can listen all day to such stuff?
Be off, or I'll kick you down-stairs!"
"That is not said right," said the Caterpillar.
"Not _quite_ right, I'm afraid," said Alice, timidly: "some of the
words have got altered."
"It is wrong from beginning to end," said the Caterpillar, decidedly;
and there was silence for some minutes.
The Caterpillar was the first to speak.
"What size do you want to be?" it asked.
"Oh, I'm not particular as to size," Alice hastily replied; "only one
doesn't like changing so often, you know."
"I _don't_ know," said the Caterpillar.
Alice said nothing: she had never been so much contradicted in all her
life before, and she felt that she was losing her temper.
"Are you content now?" said the Caterpillar.
"Well, I should like to be a _little_ larger, Sir, if you wouldn't
mind," said Alice: "three inches is such a wretched height to be."
"It is a very good height indeed!" said the Caterpillar angrily,
rearing itself upright as it spoke (it was exactly three inches high).
"But I'm not used to it!" pleaded poor Alice in a piteous tone. And
she thought to herself, "I wish the creature wouldn't be so easily
offended!"
"You'll get used to it in time," said the Caterpillar; and it put the
hookah into its mouth, and began smoking again.
This time Alice waited patiently until it chose to speak again. In a
minute or two the Caterpillar took the hookah out of its mouth, and
yawned once or twice, and shook itself. Then it got down off the
mushroom, and crawled away into the grass, merely remarking, as it
went, "One side will make you grow taller, and the other side will
make you grow shorter."
"One side of _what_? The other side of _what_?" thought Alice to
herself.
"Of the mushroom," said the Caterpillar, just as if she had asked it
aloud; and in another moment it was out of sight.
Alice remained looking thoughtfully at the mushroom for a minute,
trying to make out which were the two sides of it;--and, as it was
perfectly round, she found this a very difficult question. However,
at last she stretched her arms round it as far as they would go, and
broke off a bit of the edge with each hand.
"And now which is which?" she said to herself, and nibbled a little of
the right-hand bit to try the effect.
The next moment she felt a violent blow underneath her chin: it had
struck her foot!
She was a good deal frightened by this very sudden change, but she
felt that there was no time to be lost, as she was shrinking rapidly:
so she set to work at once to eat some of the other bit. Her chin was
pressed so closely against her foot, that there was hardly room to
open her mouth; but she did it at last, and managed to swallow a
morsel of the left-hand bit.
* * * * *
"Come, my head's free at last!" said Alice in a tone of delight, which
changed into alarm in another moment, when she found that her
shoulders were nowhere to be found: all she could see, when she looked
down, was an immense length of neck, which seemed to rise like a stalk
out a sea of green leaves that lay far below her.
"What _can_ all that green stuff be?" said Alice. "And where _have_ my
shoulders got to? And oh, my poor hands, how is it I can't see you?"
She was moving them about, as she spoke, but no result seemed to
follow, except a little shaking among the distant green leaves.
As there seemed to be no chance of getting her hands up to her head,
she tried to get her head down to _them_, and was delighted to
find that her neck would bend about easily in any direction, like a
serpent. She had just succeeded in curving it down into a graceful
zigzag, and was going to dive in among the leaves, which she found to
be nothing but the tops of the trees under which she had been
wandering, when a sharp hiss made her draw back in a hurry: a large
pigeon had flown into her face, and was beating her violently with its
wings.
"Serpent!" screamed the Pigeon.
"I'm _not_ a serpent!" said Alice indignantly. "Let me alone!"
"Serpent, I say again!" repeated the Pigeon, but in a more subdued
tone, and added, with a kind of sob, "I've tried every way, but
nothing seems to suit them!"
"I haven't the least idea what you're talking about," said Alice.
"I've tried the roots of trees, and I've tried banks, and I've tried
hedges," the Pigeon went on, without attending to her; "but those
serpents! There's no pleasing them!"
Alice was more and more puzzled, but she thought there was no use in
saying anything more till the Pigeon had finished.
"As if it wasn't trouble enough hatching the eggs," said the Pigeon;
"but I must be on the lookout for serpents, night and day! Why, I
haven't had a wink of sleep these three weeks!"
"I'm very sorry you've been annoyed," said Alice, who was beginning to
see its meaning.
"And just as I'd taken the highest tree in the wood," continued the
Pigeon, raising its voice to a shriek, "and just as I was thinking I
should be free of them at last, they must needs come wriggling down
from the sky! Ugh, Serpent!"
"But I'm _not_ a serpent, I tell you!" said Alice, "I'm a--I'm a--"
"Well! _What_ are you?" said the Pigeon. "I can see you're trying to
invent something!"
"I--I'm a little girl," said Alice, rather doubtfully, as she
remembered the number of changes she had gone through that day.
"A likely story indeed!" said the Pigeon, in a tone of the deepest
contempt. "I've seen a good many little girls in my time, but never
_one_ with such a neck as that! No, no! You're a serpent; and there's
no use denying it. I suppose you'll be telling me next that you never
tasted an egg!"
"I _have_ tasted eggs, certainly," said Alice, who was a very truthful
child; "but little girls eat eggs quite as much as serpents do, you
know."
"I don't believe it," said the Pigeon; "but if they do, why, then
they're a kind of serpent: that's all I can say."
This was such a new idea to Alice that she was quite silent for a
minute or two, which gave the Pigeon the opportunity of adding,
"You're looking for eggs, I know _that_ well enough; and what does it
matter to me whether you're a little girl or a serpent?"
"It matters a good deal to _me_," said Alice, hastily; "but I'm not
looking for eggs, as it happens; and, if I was, I shouldn't want
_yours_: I don't like them raw."
"Well, be off, then!" said the Pigeon in a sulky tone, as it settled
down again into its nest. Alice crouched down among the trees as well
as she could, for her neck kept getting entangled among the branches,
and every now and then she had to stop and untwist it. After a while
she remembered that she still held the pieces of mushroom in her
hands, and she set to work very carefully, nibbling first at one and
then at the other, and growing sometimes taller, and sometimes
shorter, until she had succeeded in bringing herself down to her usual
height.
It was so long since she had been anything near the right size that it
felt quite strange at first; but she got used to it in a few minutes,
and began talking to herself, as usual, "Come, there's half my plan
done now! How puzzling all these changes are! I'm never sure what I'm
going to be, from one minute to another! However, I've got back to my
right size: the next thing is, to get into that beautiful garden--how
_is_ that to be done, I wonder?" As she said this, she came suddenly
upon an open place, with a little house in it about four feet high.
"Whoever lives there," thought Alice, "it'll never do to come upon
them _this_ size: why, I should frighten them out of their wits!" So
she began nibbling at the right-hand bit again, and did not venture to
go near the house till she had brought herself down to nine inches
high.
PIG AND PEPPER
By Lewis Carroll
For a minute or two she stood looking at the house, and wondering what
to do next, when suddenly a footman in livery came running out of the
wood--(she considered him to be a footman because he was in livery:
otherwise, judging by his face only, she would have called him a
fish)--and rapped loudly at the door with his knuckles. It was opened
by another footman in livery, with a round face, and large eyes like a
frog; and both footmen, Alice noticed, had powdered hair that curled
all over their heads. She felt very curious to know what it was all
about, and crept a little way out of the wood to listen.
The Fish-Footman began by producing from under his arm a great letter,
nearly as large as himself, and this he handed over to the other,
saying, in a solemn tone, "For the Duchess. An invitation from the
Queen to play croquet." The Frog-Footman repeated, in the same solemn
tone, only changing the order of the words a little, "From the Queen.
An invitation for the Duchess to play croquet."
Then they both bowed low, and their curls got entangled together.
Alice laughed so much at this, that she had to run back into the wood
for fear of their hearing her; and, when she next peeped out, the
Fish-Footman was gone, and the other was sitting on the ground near
the door, staring stupidly up into the sky.
Alice went timidly up to the door, and knocked.
"There's no sort of use in knocking," said the Footman, "and that for
two reasons. First, because I'm on the same side of the door as you
are: secondly, because they're making such a noise inside, no one
could possibly hear you." And certainly there _was_ a most
extraordinary noise going on within--a constant howling and sneezing,
and every now and then a great crash, as if a dish or kettle had been
broken to pieces.
"Please, then," said Alice, "how am I to get in?"
"There might be some sense in your knocking," the Footman went on,
without attending to her, "if we had the door between us. For
instance, if you were _inside_, you might knock, and I could let you
out, you know." He was looking up into the sky all the time he was
speaking, and this Alice thought decidedly uncivil. "But perhaps he
can't help it," she said to herself; "his eyes are so _very_ nearly at
the top of his head. But at any rate he might answer questions--How am
I to get in?" she repeated, aloud.
"I shall sit here," the Footman remarked, "till to-morrow--"
At this moment the door of the house opened, and a large plate came
skimming out, straight at the Footman's head: it just grazed his nose,
and broke to pieces against one of the trees behind him.
"--or next day, maybe," the Footman continued in the same tone,
exactly as if nothing had happened.
"How am I to get in?" asked Alice again, in a louder tone.
"_Are_ you to get in at all?" said the Footman. "That's the first
question, you know."
It was, no doubt: only Alice did not like to be told so. "It's really
dreadful," she muttered to herself, "the way all the creatures argue.
It's enough to drive one crazy!"
The Footman seemed to think this a good opportunity for repeating his
remark, with variations. "I shall sit here," he said, "on and off, for
days and days."
"But what am _I_ to do?" said Alice.
"Anything you like," said the Footman, and began whistling.
"Oh, there's no use in talking to him," said Alice desperately: "he's
perfectly idiotic!" And she opened the door and went in.
The door led right into a large kitchen, which was full of smoke from
one end to the other; the Duchess was sitting on a three-legged stool
in the middle, nursing a baby: the cook was leaning over the fire,
stirring a large caldron which seemed to be full of soup.
"There's certainly too much pepper in that soup!" Alice said to
herself, as well as she could for sneezing.
There was certainly too much of it in the _air_. Even the Duchess
sneezed occasionally; and as for the baby, it was sneezing and howling
alternately without a moment's pause. The only two creatures in the
kitchen, that did _not_ sneeze, were the cook, and a large cat, which
was lying on the hearth and grinning from ear to ear.
"Please would you tell me," said Alice, a little timidly, for she was
not quite sure whether it was good manners for her to speak first,
"why your cat grins like that?"
"It's a Cheshire-Cat," said the Duchess, "and that's why. Pig!"
She said the last word with such sudden violence that Alice quite
jumped; but she saw in another moment that it was addressed to the
baby, and not to her, so she took courage, and went on again:
"I didn't know that Cheshire-Cats always grinned; in fact, I didn't
know that cats _would_ grin."
"They all can," said the Duchess; "and most of 'em do."
"I don't know of any that do," Alice said, very politely, feeling
quite pleased to have got into a conversation.
"You don't know much," said the Duchess; "and that's a fact."
Alice did not at all like the tone of this remark, and thought it
would be as well to introduce some other subject of conversation.
While she was trying to fix on one, the cook took the caldron of soup
off the fire, and at once set to work throwing everything within her
reach at the Duchess and the baby--the fire-irons came first; then
followed a shower of saucepans, plates, and dishes. The Duchess took
no notice of them even when they hit her; and the baby was howling so
much already, that it was quite impossible to say whether the blows
hurt it or not.
"Oh, _please_ mind what you're doing!" cried Alice, jumping up and
down in an agony of terror. "Oh, there goes his _precious_ nose!" as
an unusually large saucepan flew close by it, and very nearly carried
it off.
"If everybody minded their own business," the Duchess said, in a
hoarse growl, "the world would go around a deal faster than it does."
"Which would _not_ be an advantage," said Alice, who felt very glad to
get an opportunity of showing off a little of her knowledge. "Just
think what work it would make with the day and night! You see the
earth takes twenty-four hours to turn round on its axis--"
"Talking of axes," said the Duchess, "chop off her head!"
Alice glanced rather anxiously at the cook, to see if she meant to
take the hint; but the cook was busily stirring the soup, and seemed
not to be listening, so she went on again: "Twenty-four hours, I
_think_; or is it twelve? I--"
"Oh, don't bother _me_!" said the Duchess. "I never could abide
figures!" And with that she began nursing her child again, singing a
sort of lullaby to it as she did so, and giving it a violent shake at
the end of every line:--
"Speak roughly to your little boy,
And beat him when he sneezes:
He only does it to annoy,
Because he knows it teases."
CHORUS
(in which the cook and the baby joined):
"Wow! wow! wow!"
While the Duchess sang the second verse of the song, she kept tossing
the baby violently up and down, and the poor little thing howled so,
that Alice could hardly hear the words:
"I speak severely to my boy,
I beat him when he sneezes;
For he can thoroughly enjoy
The pepper when he pleases!"
CHORUS
"Wow! wow! wow!"
"Here! You may nurse it a bit, if you like!" the Duchess said to
Alice, flinging the baby at her as she spoke. "I must go and get ready
to play croquet with the Queen," and she hurried out of the room. The
cook threw a frying-pan after her as she went, but it just missed her.
Alice caught the baby with some difficulty, as it was a queer-shaped
little creature, and held out its arms and legs in all directions,
"just like a star fish," thought Alice. The poor little thing was
snorting like a steam-engine when she caught it, and kept doubling
itself up and straightening itself out again, so that altogether, for
the first minute or two, it was as much as she could do to hold it.
As soon as she had made out the proper way of nursing it (which was to
twist it up into a sort of knot, and then keep tight hold of its right
ear and left foot, so as to prevent its undoing itself), she carried
it out into the open air. "If I don't take this child away with me,"
thought Alice, "they're sure to kill it in a day or two. Wouldn't it
be murder to leave it behind?" She said the last words out loud, and
the little thing grunted in reply (it had left off sneezing by this
time). "Don't grunt," said Alice; "that's not at all a proper way of
expressing yourself."
The baby grunted again, and Alice looked very anxiously into its face
to see what was the matter with it. There could be no doubt that it
had a _very_ turn-up nose, much more like a snout than a real nose:
also its eyes were getting extremely small for I a baby: altogether
Alice did not like the look of the thing at all. "But perhaps it was
only sobbing," she thought, and looked into its eyes again, to see if
there were any tears.
No, there were no tears. "If you're going to turn into a pig, my dear"
said Alice, seriously, "I'll have nothing more to do with you. Mind
now!" The poor little thing sobbed again (or grunted, it was
impossible to say which), and they went on for some while in silence.
Alice was just beginning to think to herself, "Now, what am I to do
with this creature, when I get it home?" when it grunted again, so
violently, that she looked down into its face in some alarm. This time
there could be _no_ mistake about it: it was neither more nor less
than a pig, and she felt that it would be quite absurd for her to
carry it any further.
So she set the little creature down, and felt quite relieved to see it
trot away quietly into the wood. "If it had grown up," she said to
herself, "it would have made a dreadfully ugly child: but it makes
rather a handsome pig, I think." And she began thinking over other
children she knew, who might do very well as pigs, and was just saying
to herself, "if one only knew the right way to change them--" when she
was a little startled by seeing the Cheshire-Cat sitting on a bough of
a tree a few yards off.
The Cat only grinned when it saw Alice. It looked good-natured, she
thought: still it had _very_ long claws and a great many teeth, so she
felt that it ought to be treated with respect.
"Cheshire-Puss," she began, rather timidly, as she did not at all know
whether it would like the name: however, it only grinned a little
wider. "Come, it's pleased so far," thought Alice, and she went on:
"Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?"
"That depends a good deal on where you want to get to," said the Cat.
"I don't much care where--," said Alice.
"Then it doesn't matter which way you go," said the Cat.
"--so long as I get _somewhere_," Alice added as an explanation.
"Oh, you're sure to do that," said the Cat, "if you only walk long
enough."
Alice felt that this could not be denied, so she tried another
question. "What sort of people live about here?"
"In _that_ direction," the Cat said, waving its right paw round,
"lives a Hatter: and in _that_ direction," waving the other paw,
"lives a March Hare. Visit either you like: they're both mad."
"But I don't want to go among mad people," Alice remarked.
"Oh, you can't help that," said the Cat: "we're all mad here. I'm mad.
You're mad."
"How do you know I'm mad?" said Alice.
"You must be," said the Cat, "or you wouldn't have come here."
Alice didn't think that proved it at all: however, she went on: "And
how do you know that you're mad?"
"To begin with," said the Cat, "a dog's not mad. You grant that?"
"I suppose so," said Alice.
"Well, then," the Cat went on, "you see a dog growls when it's angry,
and wags its tail when it's pleased. Now _I_ growl when I'm pleased,
and wag my tail when I'm angry. Therefore I'm mad."
"_I_ call it purring, not growling," said Alice.
"Call it what you like," said the Cat. "Do you play croquet with the
Queen to-day?"
"I should like it very much," said Alice, "but I haven't been invited
yet."
"You'll see me there," said the Cat, and vanished.
Alice was not much surprised at this, she was getting so well used to
queer things happening. While she was still looking at the place where
it had been, it suddenly appeared again.
"By the by, what became of the baby?" said the Cat. "I'd nearly
forgotten to ask."
"It turned into a pig," Alice answered very quietly, just is if the
Cat had come back in a natural way.
"I thought it would," said the Cat, and vanished again.
Alice waited a little, half expecting to see it again, but it did not
appear, and after a minute or two she walked on in the direction in
which the March Hare was said to live. "I've seen hatters before," she
said to herself: "the March Hare will be much the most interesting,
and perhaps, as this is May, it won't be raving mad--at least not so
mad as it was in March." As she said this, she looked up, and there
was the Cat again sitting on a branch of a tree.
"Did you say 'pig,' or 'fig'?" said the Cat.
"I said 'pig'," replied Alice; "and I wish you wouldn't keep appearing
and vanishing so suddenly: you make one quite giddy!"
"All right," said the Cat; and this time it vanished quite slowly,
beginning with the end of the tail, and ending with the grin, which
remained some time after the rest of it had gone.
"Well! I've often seen a cat without a grin," thought Alice; "but a
grin without a cat! It's the most curious thing I ever saw in all my
life!"
She had not gone much further before she came in sight of the house of
the March Hare: she thought it must be the right house, because the
chimneys were shaped like ears and the roof was thatched with fur. It
was so large a house, that she did not like to go nearer till she had
nibbled some more of the left-hand bit of mushroom, and raised herself
to about two feet high: even then she walked up toward it rather
timidly, saying to herself, "Suppose it should be raving mad after
all! I almost wish I'd gone to see the Hatter instead!"
A MAD TEA-PARTY
By Lewis Carroll
There was a table set out under a tree in front of the house, and the
March Hare and the Hatter were having tea at it: a Dormouse was
sitting between them, fast asleep, and the other two were using it as
a cushion, resting their elbows on it, and talking over its head.
"Very uncomfortable for the Dormouse," thought Alice; "only as it's
asleep, I suppose it doesn't mind."
The table was a large one, but the three were all crowded together at
one corner of it. "No room! No room!" they cried out when they saw
Alice coming.
"There's _plenty_ of room!" said Alice indignantly, and she sat down
in a large arm-chair at one end of the table.
"Have some wine," the March Hare said in an encouraging tone.
Alice looked all round the table, but there was nothing on it but tea.
"I don't see any wine," she remarked.
"There isn't any," said the March Hare.
"Then it wasn't very civil of you to offer it," said Alice, angrily.
"It wasn't very civil of you to sit down without being invited," said
the March Hare.
"I didn't know it was _your_ table," said Alice: "it's laid for a
great many more than three."
"Your hair wants cutting," said the Hatter. He had been looking at
Alice for some time with great curiosity, and this was his first
speech.