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NOTE
The history of this little sparkle from the pen of Lewis Carroll may soon be told. It was in October of the year 1884 that he came on a visit to a certain vicarage in Derbyshire, where he had promised, on the score of friendship, to do what was for him a most unusual favour—to give a lecture before a public audience.
The writer well remembers his nervous, highly-strung manner as he stood before the little room full of simple people, few of whom had any idea of the world-wide reputation of that shy, slight figure before them.
When the lecture was over, he handed the manuscript to me, saying: ‘Do what you like with it.’
The one for whose sake he did this kindness was not long after called
‘Into the Silent Land.’
So the beautifully-written MS., in his customary violet ink, has been treasured for more than twenty years, only now and then being read over at Christmastime to a friend or two by the study fire, always to meet with the same welcome and glad acknowledgment that here was a genuine, though little flame that could not have belonged to any other source but that which all the world knew in Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass.