urite author as almost a personal friend, I felt less
restraint than one usually feels in writing to a stranger, though I
carefully concealed my knowledge of his identity, as he had not chosen
to reveal it.

This was the beginning of a frequent and delightful correspondence, and,
as I confessed to a great love for fairy lore of every description, he
asked me if I would accept a child's fairytale book he had written,
called "Alice in Wonderland." I replied that I knew it nearly all off by
heart, but that I should greatly prize a copy given to me by himself. By
return came "Alice," and "Through the Looking-glass," bound most
luxuriously in white calf and gold. And this is the grateful and kindly
note that came with them: "I am now sending you 'Alice,' and the
'Looking-glass' as well. There is an incompleteness about giving only
one, and besides, the one you bought was probably in red, and would not
match these. If you are at all in doubt as to what to do with the (now)
superfluous copy, let me suggest your giving it to some poor sick child.
I have been distributing copies to all the hospitals and convalescent
homes I can hear of, where there are sick children capable of reading
them, and though, of course, one takes some pleasure in the popularity
of the books elsewhere, it is not nearly so pleasant a thought to me as
that they may be a comfort and relief to children in hours of pain and
weariness. Still, no recipient _can_ be more appropriate than one who
seems to have been in fairyland herself, and to have seen, like the
'weary mariners' of old--

"Between the green brink and the running foam
White limbs unrobed to a crystal air,
Sweet faces, rounded arms, and bosoms prest
To little harps of gold."

"Do you ever come to London?" he asked in another letter; "if so, will
you allow me to call upon you?"

Early in the summer I came up to study, and I sent him word that I was
in town. One night, coming into my room after a long day spent at the
British Museum, in the half-light I saw a card lying on the table: "Rev.
C.L. Dodgson." Bitter, indeed, was my disappointment at having missed
him, but, just as I was laying it sadly down, I spied a small T.O. in
the corner. On the back I read that he couldn't get up to my rooms early
or late enough to find me, so would I arrange to meet him at some museum
or gallery the day but one following? I fixed the South Kensington
Museum, by the "Schliemann" collection, at twelve