Page:Complete Works of Lewis Carroll.djvu/1306

1286 But the writer of this Introduction is not alone in his good fortune: the reader of this little book has also a singular privilege at his command, in connection with the cover, which was designed for it by Miss E. Gertrude Thomson. Holding the book at the middle point of each side, and turn it about till the light (which should come from behind him) causes what look like little hills on the red cover to glitter, he can then fidget it about—he will soon catch the knack—till the gold ornamentation seems to lift itself a good half-inch off the cover; and he can easily persuade his eye, if not his intellect, to believe that, in turning the book about, he is causing the gold to cover now one part of the red and now another. It is a really curious optical illusion.

Let me seize this opportunity of saying one earnest word to the mothers into whose hands this little book may chance to come, who are in the habit of taking their children to church with them. However well and reverently those dear little ones have been taught to behave, there is no doubt that so long a period of enforced quietude is a severe tax on their patience. The hymns, perhaps, tax it least: and what a pathetic beauty there is in the sweet fresh voices of the children, and how earnestly they sing! I took a little girl of six to church with me one day: they had told me she could hardly read at all—but she made me find all her places for her! And afterwards I said to her elder sister, "What made you say Barbara couldn't read? Why, I heard her joining in, all through the hymn!" And the little sister gravely replied, "She knows the tunes, but not the words." Well, to return to my subject—children in church. The lessons and the prayers, are not wholly beyond them: often they can catch little bits that come within the range of their small minds. But the sermons! It goes to one's heart to see, as I so