w that I know full well I have none,
Why, I do it a-gain and a-gain.'

"'You are old,' said the youth, 'shall I tell you once more?
And are now quite as large as a tun;
Yet you turned a back som-er-set in at the door--
Pray, tell me now, how was that done?'

[Illustration]

"'In my youth,' said the sage, as he shook his gray locks.
I kept all my limbs ver-y sup-ple
By the use of this oint-ment--one shil-ling the box--
Al-low me to sell you a coup-le.'

"'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 sp