"I am writing this to wish you many and many a happy return of your birthday to-morrow. I will drink your health, if only I can remember, and if you don't mind - but perhaps you object? You see, if I were to sit by you at breakfast, and to drink your tea, you wouldn't like that, would you? You would say "Boo! hoo! Here's Mr. Dodgson's drunk all my tea, and I haven't got any left!" So I am very much afraid, next time Sybil looks for you, she'll find you sitting by the sad sea-wave, and crying "Boo! hoo! Here's Mr. Dodgson has drunk my health, and I haven't got any left!" And how it will puzzle Dr. Maund, when he is sent for to see you! "My dear Madam, I'm very sorry to say your little girl has got no health at all! I never saw such a thing in my life!" "Oh, I can easily explain it!" your mother will say. "You see she would go and make friends with a strange gentleman, and yesterday he drank her health!" "Well, Mrs. Chataway," he will say, "the only way to cure her is to wait till his next birthday, and then for her to drink his health."And then we shall have changed healths. I wonder how you'll like mine! Oh, Gertrude, I wish you wouldn't talk such nonsense!"
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Letter to Gertrude Chataway (13 Oct 1875), p.381
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Letters_of_Lewis_Carroll
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Letters of Lewis Carroll
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (27 January 1832 – 14 January 1898) was a British author, mathematician, Anglican clergyman, logician, and amateur photographer, more famous under the pen name Lewis Carroll. He wrote many thousands of letters during his lifetime.
89 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Letters of Lewis Carroll →
Related Quotes
"He thought you might be "thirty" not "thirteen." "No child of thirteen ever wrote such a hand as that" he cried. Howe…"
"The great question is, do you generally think right or wrong? I should say (judging by the experience of many years) …"
"The greatest blow that has ever fallen on my life was the death, nearly thirty years ago, of my own dear father; so, …"
"That text is consecrated for me by the memory of one of the greatest sorrows I have known — the death of my dear fath…"
"My dear Ada, - (Isn't that your short name? "Adelaide" is all very well, but you see when one's dreadfully busy one h…"
"This really will not do, you know, sending one more kiss every time by post: the parcel gets so heavy it is quite exp…"
"Most things, you know, ought to be studied: even a trunk is studded with nails."
"How far is it from Winckfield to Rotherwick? Now do not deceive me, you wretched child! If it is more than a hundred …"
"I have been awfully busy, and I've had to write heaps of letters - wheelbarrows full, almost. And it tires me so that…"
""Why can't you make up your mind?" that's a riddle I've just invented. "Because you haven't got one to make up" - tha…"