Dear Maggie,—­I found that the friend, that the little girl asked me to write to, lived at Ripon, and not at Land’s End—­a nice sort of place to invite to!  It looked rather suspicious to me—­and soon after, by dint of incessant inquiries, I found out that she was called Maggie, and lived in a Crescent!  Of course I declared, “After that” (the language I used doesn’t matter), “I will not address her, that’s flat!  So do not expect me to flatter.”

Well, I hope you will soon see your beloved Pa come back—­for consider, should you be quite content with only Jack?  Just suppose they made a blunder! (Such things happen now and then.) Really, now, I shouldn’t wonder if your “John” came home again, and your father stayed at school!  A most awkward thing, no doubt.  How would you receive him?  You’ll say, perhaps, “you’d turn him out.”  That would answer well, so far as concerns the boy, you know—­but consider your Papa, learning lessons in a row of great inky schoolboys!  This (though unlikely) might occur:  “Haly” would be grieved to miss him (don’t mention it to her).

No carte has yet been done of me, that does real justice to my smile; and so I hardly like, you see, to send you one.  However, I’ll consider if I will or not—­meanwhile, I send a little thing to give you an idea of what I look like when I’m lecturing.  The merest sketch, you will allow—­yet still I think there’s something grand in the expression of the brow and in the action of the hand.

Have you read my fairy tale in Aunt Judy’s Magazine? If you have you will not fail to discover what I mean when I say “Bruno yesterday came to remind me that he was my god-son!”—­on the ground that I “gave him a name”!

    Your affectionate friend,

    C.L.  Dodgson.

P.S.—­I would send, if I were not too shy, the same message to “Haly” that she (though I do not deserve it, not I!) has sent through her sister to me.  My best love to yourself—­to your Mother my kindest regards—­to your small, fat, impertinent, ignorant brother my hatred.  I think that is all.

[Illustration:  What I look like when I’m Lecturing. From a drawing, by Lewis Carroll.]

My dear Maggie,—­I am a very bad correspondent, I fear, but I hope you won’t leave off writing to me on that account.  I got the little book safe, and will do my best about putting my name in, if I can only manage to remember what day my birthday is—­but one forgets these things so easily.

Somebody told me (a little bird, I suppose) that you had been having better photographs done of yourselves.  If so, I hope you will let me buy copies.  Fanny will pay you for them.  But, oh Maggie, how can you ask for a better one of me than the one I sent!  It is one of the best ever done!  Such grace, such dignity,