"'You are old,' said the youth, and your jaws are too weak For an-y thing tough-er than su-et; Yet you ate up the goose, with the bones and the beak: Pray, how did you man-age to do it?' [Illustration] "'In my youth,' said his fath-er, 'I took to the law And ar-gued each case with my wife; And the ver-y great strength, which it gave to my jaw, Has last-ed the rest of my life.' "'You are old,' said the youth; 'one would hard-ly sup-pose That your eye was as stead-y as ev-er; Yet you bal-ance an eel on the end of your nose-- What makes you al-ways so clev-er?' [Illustration] "'I have re-plied to three ques-tions, and that is e-nough,' Said the fath-er; 'don't give your-self airs! Do you think I can lis-ten all day to such stuff? Be off, or I'll kick you down-stairs!'" "That is not said right," said the Cat-er-pil-lar. "Not quite right, I fear," said Al-ice, "some of the words are changed." "It is wrong from first to last," said the Cat-er-pil-lar; then did not speak for some time. At last it said, "What size do you want to be?" "Oh, I don't care so much as to size, but one does'nt like to change so much, you know." "I don't know," it said. Al-ice was too much vexed to speak, for she had nev-er, in all her life, been talked to in that rude way. "Do you like your size now?" asked the Cat-er-pil-lar. "Well, I'm not quite so large as I would like to be," said Al-ice; "three inch-es is such a wretch-ed height to be." "It is a good height, in-deed!" said the Cat-er-pil-lar, and reared it-self up straight as it spoke. (It was just three inch-es high.) "But I'm not used to it!" plead-ed poor Al-ice. And she thought, "I wish the things wouldn't be so ea-sy to get mad!" "You'll get used to it in time," the Cat-er-pil-lar said, and put the pipe to its mouth, and Al-ice wait-ed till it should choose to speak. At last it took the pipe from its mouth, yawned once or twice, then got down from its perch and crawled off in the grass. As it went it said, "One side will make you tall, and one side will make you small. "One side of what?" thought Al-ice to her-self. "Of the mush-room," said the Cat-er-pil-lar, just as if it had heard her speak; soon it was out of sight. Al-ice stood and looked at the mush-room a long time and tried to make out which were the two sides of it; as it was round she found this a hard thing to do. 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 her-self, and ate a small piece of the right-hand bit, to try what it would do. The next mo-ment she felt her chin strike her foot with a hard blow. She was in a sore fright at this quick change, but she felt that there was no time to be lost as she was shrink-ing so fast; so she set to work at once to eat some from the left hand bit. * * * * *