Where deed and daring fail, But joy forevermore Shall tremble and prevail Against the narrow door, Where sorrow knocks too late, And grief is overdue, Beyond the granite gate There will be thoughts of you. From 'Behind the Arras': copyrighted 1895, by Lamson, Wolffe and Company A SEA CHILD The lover of child Marjory Had one white hour of life brim full; Now the old nurse, the rocking sea, Hath him to lull. The daughter of child Marjory Hath in her veins, to beat and run, The glad indomitable sea, The strong white sun. Copyrighted by Bliss Carman. LEWIS CARROLL (CHARLES LUTWIDGE DODGSON) (1832-) That the author of the best nonsense-writing in the language should be a professional mathematician and logician, is not a paradox but a sequence. A gymnast cannot divert us by pretending to lose his balance unless perfectly able to keep his balance. Actors who counterfeit insanity must be acutely sane. Only a competent classical scholar can write good macaronics; only a good poet can write clever doggerel. The only ones who can use slang effectively are those who do not need to use it at all. Nor is the tone and temper of mind evinced by these dry and severe studies out of keeping with the airiest play of fancy or the maddest fun. The one is indeed a frequent relief from the other, and no intellectual bent is related in the least to any special temperament. Extravagant drollery can be mated to an aptitude for geometry or a passion for analysis as well as to a love of pictures or of horses. But the parentage of 'Alice in Wonderland' and its fellows is closer to their creator's intellectual being even than this. A very slight glance at their matter and mechanism shows that they are the work of one trained to use words with the finest precision, to teach others to use them so, to criticize keenly any inconsistency or slovenliness in their use, and to mock mercilessly any vagueness or incoherence in thought or diction. The fantastic framework and inconsequent scenes of these wonder-stories mask from the popular view the qualities which give them their superlative rank and enduring charm. The mere machinery, ingenious and amusing as it is, would not entertain beyond a single reading; it can be and has often been imitated, along with the incarnated nursery rhymes and old saws. Yet these grotesque chimeras, under Lewis Carroll's touch, are as living to us as any characters in Dickens or the 'Ingoldsby Legends,' and even more so to the elders than the children. Who does not know and delight in the King and Queen and Knave of Hearts, the elegant White Rabbit and the conceited and monosyllabic Caterpillar, the Cheshire Cat and the Mock-Turtle, the March Hare and the Hatter and the Dormouse; or the chess White King and the Queens and the White Knight, the Walrus and the Carpenter, of Looking-Glass Land?