Chapter: The Caterpillar and Alice looked at each other for some time in silence:
at last the Caterpillar took the hookah out of its mouth, and addressed
her in a languid, sleepy voice.

'Who are YOU?' said the Caterpillar.

This was not an encouraging opening for a conversation. Alice replied,
rather shyly, 'I--I hardly know, sir, just at present--at least I know
who I WAS when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been
changed several times since then.'

'What do you mean by that?' said the Caterpillar sternly. 'Explain
yourself!'

'I can't explain MYSELF, I'm afraid, sir' said Alice, 'because I'm not
myself, you see.'

'I don't see,' said the Caterpillar.

'I'm afraid I can't put it more clearly,' Alice replied very politely,
'for I can't understand it myself to begin with; and being so many
different sizes in a day is very confusing.'

'It isn't,' said the Caterpillar.

'Well, perhaps you haven't found it so yet,' said Alice; 'but when you
have to turn into a chrysalis--you will some day, you know--and then
after that into a butterfly, I should think you'll feel it a little
queer, won't you?'

'Not a bit,' said the Caterpillar.

'Well, perhaps your feelings may be different,' said Alice; 'all I know
is, it would feel very queer to ME.'

'You!' said the Caterpillar contemptuously. 'Who are YOU?'

Which brought them back again to the beginning of the conversation.
Alice felt a little irritated at the Caterpillar's making such VERY
short remarks, and she drew herself up and said, very gravely, 'I think,
you ought to tell me who YOU are, first.'

'Why?' said the Caterpillar.

Here was another puzzling question; and as Alice could not think of any
good reason, and as the Caterpillar seemed to be in a VERY unpleasant
state of mind, she turned away.

'Come back!' the Caterpillar called after her. 'I've something important
to say!'

This sounded promising, certainly: Alice turned and came back again.

'Keep your temper,' said the Caterpillar.

'Is that all?' said Alice, swallowing down her anger as well as she
could.

'No,' said the Caterpillar.

Alice thought she might as well wait, as she had nothing else to do, 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 grey 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 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 of herself, 'I wish the creatures 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 in 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
lefthand 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 of 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, and 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 look-out 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
righthand bit again, and did not venture to go near the house till she
had brought herself down to nine inches high.

 Alice comes across a Caterpillar that is resting on top of a giant mushroom and smoking a hookah pipe. The two stare at each other in silence for a while before the Caterpillar asks Alice, "Who are you?" Alice has trouble explaining who she is to the antagonistic and contemptuous Caterpillar. Dejected, she turns to leave, but the Caterpillar calls her back to recite a poem. The Caterpillar duly notes that she recites the poem incorrectly and goes on to ask what size she would like to be. Alice states that being three inches tall is a wretched height, which insults the three-inch-tall Caterpillar. The Caterpillar crawls away in a huff, but not before telling Alice that eating one side of the mushroom will make her grow larger and eating the other side will make her grow smaller. Alice tastes the right-hand portion of the mushroom and shrinks. She next tries part of the left-hand portion of the mushroom, and her neck grows so long that her head is above the treetops. Realizing she cannot get the other part of mushroom to her mouth, she attempts to reorient herself when a Pigeon attacks her. The Pigeon has mistaken Alice for a serpent who wants to eat its eggs. Alice assures the Pigeon that she is not a serpent, and the Pigeon skulks back to its nest, leaving Alice to nibble at the two pieces of the mushroom until she returns to her original height. Back at her proper size, Alice wanders around the forest looking for the garden when she encounters a four-foot-tall house. She decides to visit the house and eats the portion of the mushroom to reduce her size to nine inches tall.

