Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll Read Free Book Online

the Caterpillar decidedly, and there was silence for some minutes.
    The Caterpillar was the first to speak.
    â€˜What size do you want to be?’ it asked.
    â€˜Oh, I’m not particular as to size,’ Alice hastily replied; ‘only one doesn’t like changing so often, you know.’
    â€˜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.
    â€˜Are you content now?’ said the Caterpillar.
    â€˜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.’
    â€˜It is a very good height indeed!’ said the Caterpillar angrily, rearing itself upright as it spoke (it was exactly three inches high).
    â€˜But I’m not used to it!’ pleaded poor Alice in a piteous tone. And she thought to herself, ‘I wish the creatures wouldn’t be so easily offended!’
    â€˜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.’
    â€˜One side of what? The other side of what? ’ thought Alice to herself.
    â€˜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 armsround it as far as they would go, and broke off a bit of the edge with each hand.
    â€˜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.
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    â€˜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.
    â€˜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 shespoke, 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