Let me seize this opportunity of saying one earnest word to the mothers in 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 the 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 often do, little darlings of five or six years old, forced to sit still through a weary half-hour, with nothing to do, and not one word of the sermon that they can understand.  Most heartily can I sympathise with the little charity-girl who is said to have written to some friend, “I think, when I grows up, I’ll never go to church no more.  I think I’se getting sermons enough to last me all my life!” But need it be so?  Would it be so very irreverent to let your child have a story-book to read during the sermon, to while away that tedious half-hour, and to make church-going a bright and happy memory, instead of rousing the thought, “I’ll never go to church no more”?  I think not.  For my part, I should love to see the experiment tried.  I am quite sure it would be a success.  My advice would be to keep some books for that special purpose.  I would call such books “Sunday-treats”—­and your little boy or girl would soon learn to look forward with eager hope to that half-hour, once so tedious.  If I were the preacher, dealing with some subject too hard for the little ones, I should love to see them all enjoying their picture-books.  And if this little book should ever come to be used as a “Sunday-treat” for some sweet baby reader, I don’t think it could serve a better purpose.

    Lewis Carroll.

Miss M.E.  Manners was another writer for children whose books pleased him.  She gives an amusing account of two visits which he paid to her house in 1889:—­

    An Unexpected Guest.

    “Mr. Dobson wants to see you, miss.”

    I was in the kitchen looking after the dinner, and did not
    feel that I particularly wished to see anybody.

    “He wants a vote, or he is an agent for a special kind of
    tea,” thought I.  “I don’t know him; ask him to send a
    message.”