I would like to quote further from her letters, as embodying a suggestion that may perhaps thus come to the notice of some one able and willing to carry it out.

`I want you to send me one of your Easter Greetings for a very dear child who is dying at our Home. She is just fading away, and `Alice' had brightened some of the weary hours in her illness, and I know that letter would be such a delight to her--especially if you would put `Minnie' at the top, and she could know you had sent it for her. She knows you, and would so value it. . . . She suffers so much that I long for what I know would so please her.'

. . . `Thank you very much for sending me the letter, and for writing Minnie's name. . . . I am quite sure that all these children will say a loving prayer for the "Alice-man" on Easter Day: and I am sure the letter will help the little ones to the real Easter joy. How I do wish that you, who have won the hearts and confidence of so many children, would do for them what is so very near my heart, and yet what no one will do, viz. write a book for children about GOD and themselves, which is not goody, and which begins at the right end, about religion, to make them see what it really is. I get quite miserable very often over the children I come across: hardly any of them have an idea of really knowing that GOD loves them, or of loving and confiding in Him. They will love and trust me, and be sure that I want them to be happy, and will not let them suffer more than is necessary: but as for going to Him in the same way, they would never think of it. They are dreadfully afraid of Him, if they think of Him at all, which they generally only do when they have been naughty, and they look on all connected with Him as very grave and dull: and, when they are full of fun and thoroughly happy, I am sure they unconsciously hope He is not looking. I am sure I don't wonder they think of Him in this way, for people never talk of Him in connection with what makes their little lives the brightest. If they are naughty, people put on solemn faces, and say He is very angry or shocked, or something which frightens them: and, for the rest, He is talked about only in a way that makes them think of church and having to be quiet. As for being taught that all Joy and all Gladness and Brightness is his Joy--that He is wearying for them to be happy, and is not hard and stern, but always doing things to make their days brighter, and caring for them so tenderly, and wanting them to run to Him with all their little joys and sorrows, they are not taught that. I do so long to make them trust Him as they trust us, to feel that He will `take their part' as they do with us in their little woes, and to go to Him in their plays and enjoyments and not only when they say their prayers. I was quite grateful to one little dot, a short time ago, who said to his mother `when I am in bed, I put out my hand to see if I can feel JESUS and my angel. I thought perhaps in the dark they'd touch me, but they never have yet.' I do so want them to want to go to Him, and to feel how, if He is there, it must be happy.'

Let me add--for I feel I have drifted into far too serious a vein for a preface to a fairy-tale--the deliciously naive remark of a very dear child-friend, whom I asked, after an acquaintance of two or three days, if she had read `Alice' and the `Looking-Glass'. `Oh yes,' she replied readily, `I've read both of them! And I think' (this more slowly and thoughtfully) `I think "Through the Looking-Glass" is more stupid than "Alice's Adventures". Don't you think so?' But this was a question I felt it would be hardly discreet for me to enter upon.

LEWIS CARROLL December, 1886

Dear Child,

Please to fancy, if you can, that you are reading a real letter, from a real friend whom you have seen, and whose voice you can seem to yourself to hear wishing you, as I do now with all my heart, a happy Easter.

Do you know that delicious dreamy feeling when one first wakes on a summer morning, with the twitter of birds in the air, and the fresh breeze coming in at the open window--when, lying lazily with eyes half shut, one sees as in a dream green boughs waving, or waters rippling in a golden light? It is a pleasure