rd her tell me to look upon the earth beneath me
and see where I was. First I looked up among the boughs, then
side-ways at my shoulder, then I squinted at the tip of my nose--all
by mistake and innocence--at last I bent my nose in despair and saw my
forepaws standing, and this of course was right. The first thing that
caught my attention, being the first thing I saw distinctly, was a
little blue flower with a bright jewel in the middle, which I
afterwards found was a drop of dew. Sometimes I thought this little
blue darling was so close that it almost touched my eyes and certainly
the color of it was up in my head; sometimes I thought it was deep
down, a long way off. When I bent my face towards it to give it a kiss
it seemed just where it was though I had not done what I had thought
to do.

"The next thing I saw upon the ground was a soft-looking little
creature that crawled along with a round ball upon the middle of its
back, of a beautiful white color, with brown and red curling stripes.
The creature moved very, very slowly, and appeared always to follow
the opinion and advice of two long horns on its head, that went
feeling about on all sides. Presently it slowly approached my right
forepaw and I wondered how I should feel or smell or hear it as it
went over my toes; but the instant one of the horns touched the hair
of my paw, both horns shrunk into nothing and presently came out
again, and the creature slowly moved away in another direction. While
I was wondering at this strange proceeding--for I never thought of
hurting the creature, not knowing how to hurt anything, and what
should have made the horns think otherwise?--while then I was
wondering at this, my attention was suddenly drawn to a tuft of moss
on my right near a hollow tree trunk. Out of this green tuft looked a
pair of very bright round small eyes, which were staring up at me.

"If I had known how to walk I should have stepped back a few steps
when I saw those bright little eyes, but I never ventured to lift a
paw from the earth since my Mother had first set me down, nor did I
know how to do so, or what were the proper thoughts or motions to
begin with. So I stood looking at the eyes and presently I saw that
the head was yellow and that it had a large mouth. 'What you have just
seen,' said my Mother, 'we call a snail; and what you now see is a
frog.' The names however did not help me at all to understand. Why the
first should have turned from my paw