Lewis Carroll in Wonderland and at Home

e brothers and sisters who wanted the latest news from "the front," meaning Rugby of course, and Charles found many funny things to tell of the

ing with excitement as in fancy they pictured the scene at "Big-side" during some great football scrimmage, for Charles's descripti

of home manufacture, chiefly, indeed, of his own composition, or drawn from local items of interest to the young people of Croft Rectory. While he was still at

r geniuses who influenced his later years, Carlyle, Browning and others, but the first three caught his boyish fancy and were his guides during those early days of editorship. Punch, the great English magazine of wit and humor, attracted him immensely, an

r beyond the rectory grounds. He evidently took his title out of the umbrella-stand in the rectory hall, the same stand doubtless which furnished him with "The Walking Stick of Destiny," a story of the lurid, exciting sort, which made his readers' hair rise. The magazine also contained a series of ske

medicine, and this picture represents housekeeping on a homeopathic plan; a family of six bony specimens are eating infinitesimal grains of

tale of his brothers' adventures with an obdurate donkey. It is the second of the series called "Lays of Sorrow," in imitation of

stirred by the martial note in it. No wonder boys like Charles Dodgson loved Macaulay, and it is pretty safe to say that he must have had it by heart, to have treated it

he was working hard for his examinations. The desire of the eldest son to follow in his father's footsteps was strengthened by his own natural inclination, for into the boy nature crept a rare golden streak of piety. The reverence for holy things was a b

nd the more serious Oxford ones, something happened-we know not what-which cast a shadow on our Boy's life. He was young enough to live it down, yet old enough to feel keenly whatever sorrow crossed his path, and as he never married, we naturally suspect that some unhappy love affair, or death perhaps, had cut him off from all the joys so

urse, there were some younger brothers of his own to be considered, but he had such a generous provision of sisters that he didn't mind, and then, besides, one's own people are different somehow; we know well enough we wouldn't change our brothers and sisters for the finest little paragons that walk. So with Lewis Carroll; he strongly objected to everybody else's

mportant. English as a "course" was not thought of as it is to-day; the classics

hetic figure of lonely little David, irresistibly appealing to the young fellow who hated oppression and injustice of any kind, and was always on the side of the weak. While the dainty picture of Little Em'ly might have been

we well know, after the writing of "Nicholas Nickleby," government authorities began to look into the condition of the "cheap schools" and to remedy some of the evils. Even the more expensive schools, where the tired little brains were crammed to the brim until the springs were worn out and the minds were gone, were exposed by the great novelist when he wrote "Dombey and

fall of the Stuarts to the reign of Victoria, appealed strongly to the patriotism of the English boy, and the fact that Mac

their lives and kept them from becoming crusty old bachelors. It is very probable, indeed, that the younger man modeled his life somewhat along the lines of the older, whom he greatly admired. Both were parts of g

on of many a quaint phrase and poetic turn of thought which came from the pen of Lewis Carroll. For Tennyson became to him a thing of flesh and blood, a friend, and many a pleasant hour was spent in the poet's home in later years, when the fam

er, in the seclusion of Croft Rectory, during that

ciety, his own family seemed to be sufficient. If he had any boy friends, there are no records of their intercourse; indeed, the only friend mentioned is T. Vere Bayne, who in childish days was his playfellow and who later bec

r the crackle of a twig, as some tiny animal whisked by. The squirrels were friendly, the hares lifted up their long ears, stared at him and scurried

fe about it; the beauty of its foliage, its spreading branches, were as nothing to its convenience as a home fo

its, he looked them up in the Natural History, and noting their peculiarities

n" he found it floating on the surface of the river. He grasped it, thrust it into the rusty lock, and lo!-but dear me, we are going too far ahead, for that is quite another chapter, and we have left Charles Dodgson lying under a tree, watching the liza

t to put boyhood by forever and enter the stately ranks of the Oxford undergraduates. As he stands before us now,

tive, and consequently a good actor in the little plays he wrote and dramatized; he was very shy, but at his best in the home circle. He enjoyed nothing so much as an argument, always holding his ground with great obstin

t Church was to be his college, as it had been his father's before him. Archdeacon Dodgson was much gratified by the many letters he received congratula

niversities. Under the shelter of Oxford, and covering an area of at least five miles, twenty colleges or more were grouped, each one a community in itself, and all under the rule of the Chancellor of Oxford. Christ Church received as stude

t reviewed, full of study and pleasant family associations, with youthful experiments in literature, full of promis

, from a joy which cannot be spoken, or from a sorrow too deep for utterance, but it comes, and

; but lusty youth was with him as he stood before the portal of a brilliant fut