Fifty years ago the child world was made glad by the appearance of Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland . It is a univeral story and so belongs to all time. But those who read the book when it was first published found in it a delight which the child of today misses. Fifty years ago certain poems appeared in every reader and were read over and over again until the child was stupid indeed who did not unconciously learn them by heart.
Today there is a new fashion in literature.
Children are whirled from one supplementary reader to another, conning graceful rhymes and pretty stories all illustrated with artistic pictures, but the old things have passed away. All the poems in Alice in Wonderland are parodies upon these once familiar rhymes. The children of today do not know the verses at all, and as a parody ceases to be a parody without the original poem as a background, the trouble of gathering these originals seems worth while. After Alice had fallen down the rabbit-hole and had passded through her first transformation, when she shut up like a telescope until she was only ten inches high and then grew bigger and bigger until 'her head struck the roof of the hall', she became confused as to her identity. And labours hard to store it well With the sweet food she makes.