e Snark."

The success of "Alice in Wonderland" tempted Mr. Dodgson to make
another essay in the same field of literature. His idea had not yet
been plagiarised, as it was afterwards, though the book had of course
been parodied, a notable instance being "Alice in Blunderland," which
appeared in _Punch_. It was very different when he came to write
"Sylvie and Bruno"; the countless imitations of the two "Alice" books
which had been foisted upon the public forced him to strike out in a
new line. Long before the publication of his second tale, people had
heard that Lewis Carroll was writing again, and the editor of a
well-known magazine had offered him two guineas a page, which was a
high rate of pay in those days, for the story, if he would allow it to
appear in serial form.

The central idea was, as every one knows, the adventures of a little
girl who had somehow or other got through a looking-glass. The first
difficulty, however, was to get her through, and this question
exercised his ingenuity for some time, before it was satisfactorily
solved. The next thing was to secure Tenniel's services again. At
first it seemed that he was to be disappointed in this matter; Tenniel
was so fully occupied with other work that there seemed little hope of
his being able to undertake any more. He then applied to Sir Noel
Paton, with whose fairy-pictures he had fallen in love; but the artist
was ill, and wrote in reply, "Tenniel is _the_ man." In the end
Tenniel consented to undertake the work, and once more author and
artist settled down to work together. Mr. Dodgson was no easy man to
work with; no detail was too small for his exact criticism. "Don't
give Alice so much crinoline," he would write, or "The White Knight
must not have whiskers; he must not be made to look old"--such were
the directions he was constantly giving.

On June 21st Archdeacon Dodgson died, after an illness of only a few
days' duration. Lewis Carroll was not summoned until too late, for the
illness took a sudden turn for the worse, and he was unable to reach
his father's bedside before the end had come. This was a terrible
shock to him; his father had been his ideal of what a Christian
gentleman should be, and it seemed to him at first as if a cloud had
settled on his life which could never be dispelled. Two letters of
his, both of them written long after the sad event, give one some idea
of the grief which his father's death, and all that it entailed,
caus