Page:Collingwood - Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll.djvu/55

 the daily life would have been comparative trifles to bear."

The picture on page 32 was, I believe, drawn by Charles while he was at Rugby in illustration of a letter received from one of his sisters. Halnaby, as I have said before, was an outlying district of Croft parish.

During his holidays he used to amuse himself by editing local magazines. Indeed, they might be called very local magazines, as their circulation was confined to the inmates of Croft Rectory. The first of these, Useful and Instructive Poetry, was written about 1845. It came to an untimely end after a six months' run, and was followed at varying intervals by several other periodicals, equally short-lived.

In 1849 or 1850, The Rectory Umbrella began to appear. As the editor was by this time seventeen or eighteen years old, it was naturally of a more ambitious character than any of its precursors. It contained a serial story of the most thrilling interest, entitled, "The Walking-Stick of Destiny," some meritorious poetry, a few humorous essays, and several caricatures of pictures in the Vernon Gallery. Three reproductions of these pictures follow, with extracts from the Umbrella descriptive of them.