Page:Complete Works of Lewis Carroll.djvu/159

 had on the same terms as the ordinary shiUing picture- books — although I feel sure that it is, in every quality (ex- cept the text itself, in which I am not qualified to pro- nounce), greatly superior to them. Four shillings was a perfectly reasonable price to charge, considering the very heavy initial outlay I had incurred: still, as the Public have practically said "We will not give more than a shill- ing for a picture-book, however artistically got-up," I am content to reckon my outlay on the book as so much dead loss, and, rather than let the little ones, for whom it was written, go without it, I am selling it at a price which is, to me, much the same thing as giving it away. Christmas, 1896