ificance" (_Academy,_ January 29, 1898), quoted the
inscription which Mr. Dodgson had written in a vellum-bound,
presentation-copy of the book. It is so characteristic that I take the
liberty of reproducing it here:--

Presented to Henry Holiday, most patient of artists, by
Charles L. Dodgson, most exacting, but not most ungrateful
of authors, March 29, 1876.

A little girl, to whom Mr. Dodgson had given a copy of the "Snark,"
managed to get the whole poem off by heart, and insisted on reciting,
it from beginning to end during a long carriage-drive. Her friends,
who, from the nature of the case, were unable to escape, no doubt
wished that she, too, was a Boojum.

During the year, the first public dramatic representation of "Alice in
Wonderland" was given at the Polytechnic, the entertainment taking the
form of a series of _tableaux_, interspersed with appropriate
readings and songs. Mr. Dodgson exercised a rigid censorship over all
the extraneous matter introduced into the performance, and put his
veto upon a verse in one of the songs, in which the drowning of
kittens was treated from the humorous point of view, lest the children
in the audience might learn to think lightly of death in the case of
the lower animals.

[Illustration: Lewis Carroll. _From a photograph_.]

* * * * *

CHAPTER V

(1877-1883)

Dramatic tastes--Miss Ellen Terry--"Natural Science at
Oxford"--Mr. Dodgson as an artist--Miss E. G. Thomson--The
drawing of children--A curious dream--"The Deserted
Parks"--"Syzygies"--Circus children--Row-loving
undergraduates--A letter to _The Observer_--Resignation
of the Lectureship--He is elected Curator of the Common
Room--Dream-music.

Mr. Dodgson's love of the drama was not, as I have shown, a taste
which he acquired in later years. From early college days he never
missed anything which he considered worth seeing at the London
theatres. I believe he used to reproach himself--unfairly, I
think--with spending too much time on such recreations. For a man who
worked so hard and so incessantly as he did; for a man to whom
vacations meant rather a variation of mental employment than absolute
rest of mind, the drama afforded just the sort of relief that was
wanted. His vivid imagination, the very earnestness and intensity of
his character enabled him to throw himself utterly into the spirit of
what he saw upon the stage, and to