.

And in those moments of depression of which he had his full share,
when old age seemed to mock him with all its futility and feebleness,
it was the thought that the children still loved him which nerved him
again to continue his life-work, which renewed his youth, so that to
his friends he never seemed an old man. Even the hand of death itself
only made his face look more boyish--the word is not too strong. "How
wonderfully young your brother looks!" were the first words the doctor
said, as he returned from the room where Lewis Carroll's body lay, to
speak to the mourners below. And so he loved children because their
friendship was the true source of his perennial youth and unflagging
vigour. This idea is expressed in the following poem--an acrostic,
which he wrote for a friend some twenty years ago:--

Around my lonely hearth, to-night,
Ghostlike the shadows wander:
Now here, now there, a childish sprite,
Earthborn and yet as angel bright,
Seems near me as I ponder.

Gaily she shouts: the laughing air
Echoes her note of gladness--
Or bends herself with earnest care
Round fairy-fortress to prepare
Grim battlement or turret-stair--
In childhood's merry madness!

New raptures still hath youth in store:
Age may but fondly cherish
Half-faded memories of yore--
Up, craven heart! repine no more!
Love stretches hands from shore to shore:
Love is, and shall not perish!

His first child-friend, so far as I know, was Miss Alice Liddell, the
little companion whose innocent talk was one of the chief pleasures of
his early life at Oxford, and to whom he told the tale that was to
make him famous. In December, 1885, Miss M.E. Manners presented him
with a little volume, of which she was the authoress, "Aunt Agatha Ann
and Other Verses," and which contained a poem (which I quoted in
Chapter VI.), about "Alice." Writing to acknowledge this gift, Lewis
Carroll said:--

Permit me to offer you my sincere thanks for the very sweet
verses you have written about my dream-child (named after a
real Alice, but none the less a dream-child) and her
Wonderland. That children love the book is a very precious
thought to me, and, next to their love, I value the sympathy
of those who come with a child's heart to what I have tried
to write about a child's thoughts.