he last word!
Never mind how telling a rejoinder you leave unuttered:
never mind your friend's supposing that you are silent from
lack of anything to say: let the thing drop, as soon as it
is possible without discourtesy: remember "Speech is
silvern, but silence is golden"! (N.B. If you are a
gentleman, and your friend a lady, this Rule is superfluous:
_you won't get the last word!_)

Remember the old proverb, "Cross-writing makes
cross-reading." "The _old_ proverb?" you say
inquiringly. "_How_ old?" Well, not so _very_
ancient, I must confess. In fact, I invented it while
writing this paragraph. Still, you know, "old" is a
_comparative_ term. I think you would be _quite_
justified in addressing a chicken, just out of the shell, as
"old boy!" _when compared_ with another chicken that
was only half-out!

The pamphlet ends with an explanation of Lewis Carroll's method of
using a correspondence-book, illustrated by a few imaginary pages from
such a compilation, which are very humorous.

[Illustration: _Facsimile of programme of "Alice in
Wonderland_."]

At the end of the year the "Alice" operetta was again produced at the
Globe Theatre, with Miss Isa Bowman as the heroine. "Isa makes a
delightful Alice," Mr. Dodgson writes, "and Emsie [a younger sister]
is wonderfully good as Dormouse and as Second Ghost [of an oyster!],
when she sings a verse, and dances the Sailor's Hornpipe."

[Illustration: "The Mad Tea-Party." _From a photograph by
Elliott & Fry_.]

The first of an incomplete series, "Curiosa Mathematica," was
published for Mr. Dodgson by Messrs. Macmillan during the year. It was
entitled "A New Theory of Parallels," and any one taking it up for the
first time might be tempted to ask, Is the author serious, or is he
simply giving us some _jeu d'esprit?_ A closer inspection,
however, soon settles the question, and the reader, if mathematics be
his hobby, is carried irresistibly along till he reaches the last
page.

The object which Mr. Dodgson set himself to accomplish was to prove
Euclid I. 32 without assuming the celebrated 12th Axiom, a feat which
calls up visions of the "Circle-Squarers."

The work is divided into two parts: Book I. contains certain
Propositions which require no disputable Axiom for their proof, and
when once the few Definitions of "amount," &c., have become familiar
it is easy reading. In Book II. the author introduces a