At the end of 1874 Mr. Dodgson was again at Hatfield, where he told the children the story of Prince Uggug, which was afterwards made a part of “Sylvie and Bruno,” though at that time it seems to have been a separate tale.  But “Sylvie and Bruno,” in this respect entirely unlike “Alice in Wonderland,” was the result of notes taken during many years; for while he was thinking out the book he never neglected any amusing scraps of childish conversation or funny anecdotes about children which came to his notice.  It is this fact which gives such verisimilitude to the prattle of Bruno; childish talk is a thing which a grown-up person cannot possibly invent.  He can only listen to the actual things the children say, and then combine what he has heard into a connected narrative.

During 1875 Mr. Dodgson wrote an article on “Some Popular Fallacies about Vivisection,” which was refused by the Pall Mall Gazette, the editor saying that he had never heard of most of them; on which Mr. Dodgson plaintively notes in his Diary that seven out of the thirteen fallacies dealt with in his essay had appeared in the columns of the Pall Mall Gazette.  Ultimately it was accepted by the editor of The Fortnightly Review.  Mr. Dodgson had a peculiar horror of vivisection.  I was once walking in Oxford with him when a certain well-known professor passed us.  “I am afraid that man vivisects,” he said, in his gravest tone.  Every year he used to get a friend to recommend him a list of suitable charities to which he should subscribe.  Once the name of some Lost Dogs’ Home appeared in this list.  Before Mr. Dodgson sent his guinea he wrote to the secretary to ask whether the manager of the Home was in the habit of sending dogs that had to be killed to physiological laboratories for vivisection.  The answer was in the negative, so the institution got the cheque.  He did not, however, advocate the total abolition of vivisection—­what reasonable man could?—­but he would have liked to see it much more carefully restricted by law.  An earlier letter of his to the Pall Mall Gazette on the same subject is sufficiently characteristic to deserve a place here.  Be it noted that he signed it “Lewis Carroll,” in order that whatever influence or power his writings had gained him might tell in the controversy.

    VIVISECTION AS A SIGN OF THE TIMES.

    To the Editor of the “Pall Mall Gazette."

Sir,—­The letter which appeared in last week’s Spectator, and which must have saddened the heart of every one who read it, seems to suggest a question which has not yet been asked or answered with sufficient clearness, and that is, How far may vivisection be regarded as a sign of the times, and a fair specimen of that higher civilisation which a purely secular State education is to give us?  In that much-vaunted panacea for all human ills we are promised not only increase of knowledge, but also a higher