“‘Very well, now, have you kissed her since?’
“‘Well—I—ahem! ahem! ahem! (excuse me, Uncle, I’ve got a bad cough). I—think—that—I—that is, you, know, I——’
“‘Yes, I see! “Isa” begins with “I,” and it seems to me as if she was going to end with “I,” this time!’
“Anyhow, my not writing hasn’t been because I was ill, but because I was a horrid lazy old thing, who kept putting it off from day to day, till at last I said to myself, ‘WHO ROAR! There’s no time to write now, because they sail on the 1st of April.’[1] In fact, I shouldn’t have been a bit surprised if this letter had been from Fulham, instead of Louisville. Well, I suppose you will be there by about the middle of May. But mind you don’t write to me from there! 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 a kiss to Emsie, and 1⁄2,000,000 a kiss to yourself. So, with fondest love, I am, my darling, your loving Uncle,
“C. L. Dodgson.”
And now, in the postscript, comes one of the rare instances in which Lewis Carroll showed his deep religious feeling. It runs—
“P.S.—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 now say, 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.”