Page:Collingwood - Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll.djvu/389

Rh His first child-friend, so far as I know, was Miss Alice Liddell, the little companion whose innocent talk was one of the chief pleasures of his early life at Oxford, and to whom he told the tale that was to make him famous. In December, 1885, Miss M. E. Manners presented him with a little volume, of which she was the authoress, "Aunt Agatha Ann and Other Verses," and which contained a poem (which I quoted in Chapter VI.), about "Alice." Writing to acknowledge this gift, Lewis Carroll said:—

It is interesting to note how in "Sylvie and Bruno" his idea of the thoughts of a child has become deeper and more spiritual. Yet in the earlier tale, told "all in a golden afternoon," to the plash of oars and the swish of a boat through