Chapter V.

Advice from a Caterpillar

T he 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 conversa-
tion. 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?’

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 ‘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 some-
thing 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 hoo-
kah 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

38 Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

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 Caterpil-
lar.
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?’

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 ‘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;

40 Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

‘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 contra-
dicted 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 an-
grily, rearing itself upright as it spoke (it was exactly three
inches high).
‘But I’m not used to it!’ pleaded poor Alice in a pite-
ous 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

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it; and as it was perfectly round, she found this a very diffi-
cult 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 nib-
bled 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 de-
light, 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

42 Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

was delighted to find that her neck would bend about eas-
ily 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 pi-
geon 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 fin-
ished.
‘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,’ con-
tinued the Pigeon, raising its voice to a shriek, ‘and just as

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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 ser-
pents 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 op-
portunity 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

44 Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

the trees as well as she could, for her neck kept getting en-
tangled 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 sud-
denly 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.

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