us reason
is that you will be able, from sympathy, to put my delay in the most
favorable light--to make him see that, as hasty puddings are not the
best of puddings so hasty judgments are not the best of judgments, and
that he ought to be content to wait even another seven years for his
picture, and to sit 'like patience on a monument, smiling at grief.'
This quotation, by the way, is altogether a misprint. Let me explain it
to you. The passage originally stood, '_They_ sit like patients on the
Monument, smiling at Greenwich.' In the next edition 'Greenwich' was
printed short, 'Green'h,' and so got gradually altered into 'grief.' The
allusion of course is to the celebrated Dr. Jenner, who used to send all
his patients to sit on the top of the Monument (near London Bridge) to
inhale fresh air, promising them that, when they were well enough, they
should go to 'Greenwich Fair.' So of course they always looked out
towards Greenwich, and sat smiling to think of the treat in store for
them. A play was written on the subject of their inhaling the fresh air,
and was for some time attributed to him (Shakespeare), but it is
certainly not in his style. It was called 'The Wandering Air,' and was
lately revived at the Queen's Theater. The custom of sitting on the
Monument was given up when Dr. Jenner went mad, and insisted on it that
the air was worse up there and that the _lower_ you went the _more airy_
it became. Hence he always called those little yards, below the
pavement, outside the kitchen windows, '_the kitchen airier_,' a name
that is still in use.

"All this information you are most welcome to use, the next time you are
in want of something to talk about. You may say you learned it from 'a
distinguished etymologist,' which is perfectly true, since any one who
knows me by sight can easily distinguish me from all other etymologists.

"What parts are you and Polly now playing?

"Believe me to be (conventionally)

"Yours affectionately,

"L. DODGSON."

No two men could be more unlike than Mr. Dodgson and Mr. J.M. Barrie,
yet there are more points of resemblance than "because there's a 'b' in
both!"

If "Alice in Wonderland" is the children's classic of the library, and
one perhaps even more loved by the grown up children than by the others,
"Peter Pan" is the children's stage classic, and here again elderly
children are the most devoted admirers. I am a very old child, nearly
old enough to be a "beautiful great-gran