It was the Caterpillar who asked her to recite “You are old, Father William,” and Alice began in this fashion:
“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 gray 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.”
“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 downstairs!”
Now Alice knew well enough that she had given an awful twist to a pretty and old-fashioned piece of poetry, but for the life of her the old words refused to come. It seemed that with her power to grow large or small on short notice, her memory performed queer antics; she was never sure of it for two minutes together.
One odd thing about her change of size was that she never grew up or dwindled away unless she ate something or drank something. Now every little girl has had similar experience when it came to eating and drinking. “Eat so and so,” says a “grown-up,” “and you will be tall and strong,” and “if you don’t eat this thing or that, you will be little all your life,” so Alice was only going through the same trials in Wonderland.
Her meeting with the Duchess and the peppery Cook, and the screaming Baby, and the grinning Cheshire Cat, occupied some thrilling moments. She found the Duchess conversational but cross, and the Cook sprinkling pepper lavishly into the soup she was stirring, and out of it for the matter of that, so that everybody was sneezing. The Cat was the sole exception; it sat on the hearth and grinned from ear to ear. Alice opened the conversation by asking the Duchess, who was holding the Baby and jumping it up and down so roughly that it howled dismally, why the Cat grinned in that absurd way.
“‘It’s a Cheshire Cat,’ said the Duchess, and that’s why. ‘Pig!’ She said the last word with such sudden violence that Alice quite jumped; but she saw in another moment that it was addressed to the Baby and not to her, so she took courage and went on again:
“‘I didn’t know that Cheshire Cats always grinned—in fact I didn’t know that Cats could grin.’
“‘They all can,’ said the Duchess, ‘and most of ’em do.’
“‘I don’t know of any that do,’ said Alice, very politely, feeling quite pleased to have got into a conversation.
“‘You don’t know much,’ said the Duchess; ‘and that’s a fact.’