On the lost art of letter writing
Open book
Ap. 19. 1870
My Dear Child,
I took your letter and the book-marker to Mr. Lewis Carroll this morning. He sends you his thanks for the book-marker but he was Very unwilling to take it. "I meant the book for a present," he said: "I don't want anything in exchange!' However I persuaded him to take it at last. When he saw your letter he said you were too old for the book, and that I must have made a mistake about your age, he thought you might be "thirty" not "thirteen." "No child of thirteen ever wrote such a hand as that!" he cried. However I told him you certainly were a child, and that you had been to a very good school at the bottom of the sea.
