The writer of the Introduction to a book, who is not himself the author of the book, enjoys one singular privilege—he can discuss its merits with a freedom that very few authors would venture to use: since, however sweet the “blowing one’s own trumpet” may sound to the enraptured trumpeter, it is apt to pall on other ears. Let me, then, avail myself of this privilege by saying that I believe Mrs. Egerton Allen has a very special talent for writing books for very young children. Her dialogues have all the vividness of a photograph; and I feel sure that all real children—children who have not been spoiled by too much notice, and thus taught to give themselves the airs of little men and women—will like to read the story of tiny “Joey,” and will enjoy the clever and sympathetic sketches with which Mrs. Shute has adorned it. It is, I think, a real loss to the thousands of child-readers, for whom so many charming books have been written, that Mrs. Allen’s first litde book—“Little Humphrey’s Adventure”—has been allowed by the Publishers, who hold the copyright of it, to go out of print. It is a thorough child’s book, and I trust the S.P.C.K. may ere long see their way to issuing another edition of it.
But the writer of this Introduction is not alone in his good fortune: the reader of this little book has also a singular privilege at his command, in connection with the cover, which was designed for it by Miss E. Gertrude Thomson. Holding the book at the middle point of each side, and turn it about till the light (which should come from behind him) causes what look like little hills on the red cover to glitter, he can then fidget it about—he will soon catch the knack—till the gold ornamentation seems to lift itself a good half-inch off the cover; and he can easily persuade his eye, if not his intellect, to believe that, in turning the book about, he is causing the gold to cover now one part of the red and now another. It is a really curious optical illusion.
Let me seize this opportunity of saying one earnest word to the mothers into 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 her 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 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 thinks, when I grows up, I’ll never go to church no more. I thinks 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. Christmas, 1897