“‘Yes, I see! “Isa” begins with “I,” and it seems to me as if she was going to end with “I” this time!’”
The rest of the letter refers to Isa’s visit to America, when she went to play the little Duke of York in “Richard III.”
“Mind you don’t write me from there,” he warns her. “Please, please, no more horrid letters from you! I do hate them so! And as for kissing them when I get them, why, I’d just as soon kiss—kiss—kiss—you, you tiresome thing! So there now!
“Thank you very much for those 2 photographs—I liked them—hum—pretty well. I can’t honestly say I thought them the very best I had ever seen.
“Please give my kindest regards to your mother, and ½ of a kiss to Nellie, and 1⁄200 of a kiss to Emsie, 1⁄2000000 of a kiss to yourself. So with fondest love, I am, my darling,
“Your loving Uncle,
“C. L. Dodgson.”
And at the end of this letter, teeming with fun and laughter, could anything be sweeter than this postscript?
“I’ve thought about that little prayer you asked me to write for Nellie and Emsie. But I would like first to have the words of the one I wrote for you, and the words of what they say now, if they say any. And then I will pray to our Heavenly Father to help me to write a prayer that will be really fit for them to use.”
In letter-writing, and even in his story-telling, Lewis Carroll made frequent use of italics. His own speech was so emphatic that his writing would have looked odd without them, and many of his cleverest bits of nonsense would have been lost but for their aid.
Another time Isa ended a letter to him with “All join me in lufs and kisses.” Now Miss Isa was away on a visit and had no one near to join her in such a message, but that is what she would have put had she been at home, and this is the letter he wrote in reply: