the crackle of a twig, as some tiny animal whisked by. The squirrels were friendly, the hares lifted up their long ears, stared at him and scurried out of sight. Turtles and snails came out of the river to sun themselves on the banks; the air was full of the hum of insects and the chirp of birds.

As he lay under the friendly shelter of some great tree, he thought of this tree as a refuge for the teeming life about it; the beauty of its foliage, its spreading branches, were as nothing to its convenience as a home for the birds and chipmunks and the burrowing things that lived beneath its roots or in the hollows of its trunk.

These creatures became real companions in time. He studied their ways and habits, he looked them up in the Natural History, and noting their peculiarities, tucked them away in that quaint cupboard of his which he called his memory.

How many things were to come out of that cupboard in later days! He himself did not know what was hidden there. It reminded one of a chest which only a special key could open, and he did not even know there was a key, until on a certain “golden afternoon” he found it floating on the surface of the river. He grasped it, thrust it into the rusty lock, and lo!—but dear me, we are going too far ahead, for that is quite another chapter, and we have left Charles Dodgson lying under a tree, watching the lizards and snails and ants at their work or play, weaving his quaint fancies, dreaming perhaps, or chatting with some little sister or other who chanced to be with him. There was always a sister to chat with, which in part accounted for his liking for girls.

So, through a long vista of years, we have the picture of our Boy, between eighteen and nineteen, when he was about to put boyhood by forever and enter the stately ranks of the Oxford undergraduates. As he stands before us now, young, ardent, hopeful, and inexperienced, we can see no glimmer of the fairy wand which turned him into a wizard.

We see only a boy, somewhat old for his years, very manly in his ways, with a well-formed head, on which the clustering dark hair grew thick; a sensitive mouth and deep blue eyes, full of expression. He was clever, imitative, and consequently a good actor in the little plays he wrote and dramatized; he was very shy, but at his best in the home circle. He enjoyed nothing so much as an argument, always holding his ground with great obstinacy; a fine student, frank and affectionate, brimful of wit and humor, fond of reading, with a quiet determination to excel in whatever he undertook. With such weapons he was well equipped to “storm the citadel” at Oxford.

On May 23, 1850, he went up to matriculate—that is, to register his name and go through some examinations and the formality of becoming a student. Christ Church was to be his college, as it had been his father’s before him. Archdeacon Dodgson was much gratified by the many letters he received congratulating him on the fact that he had a son worthy to succeed him, for he was well remembered in the college, where he had left a brilliant record behind him.

It certainly sounds a little queer to have the name of a church attached to one of the colleges of a university, but our colleges in America are comparatively so new that we cannot grasp the vastness and the antiquity of the great English universities. Under the shelter of Oxford, and covering an area of at least five miles, twenty colleges or more were grouped, each one a community in itself, and all under the rule of the Chancellor of Oxford. Christ Church received as students those most interested in the divinity courses, though in other respects the undergraduates could take up whatever studies they pleased, and Charles Dodgson put most of his energy into mathematics and the necessary study of the classics.

Seven months intervened between his matriculation and his real entrance into Oxford; these seven months we have just reviewed, full of study and pleasant family associations, with youthful experiments in literature, full of promise for the future—and something deeper still—which must have touched him just here, “where the brook and river meet.”

Into all our lives at some time or other comes a solemn silence; it may spring from many causes, from a joy which cannot be spoken, or from a sorrow too deep for utterance, but it comes, and we cover it gently and hide it away, as something too sacred for the common light of every day.

This was the silence which came to Lewis Carroll on the threshold of his career; but lusty youth was with him as he stood before the portal of a brilliant future, and there was courage and high hope in his heart as he knocked for entrance.