The creator of Alice has really done nothing but permit his absorbing
worship of many demure little maids to focus and concentrate itself
into an almost incredible transformation of what was the intrinsic
nature of the writer into what was the intrinsic nature of the
"written-about."
The author of this book has indeed, so to speak, eluded the
limitations of his own skin, and by the magic of his love for little
girls has passed--carrying his grown-up cleverness with him--actually
into the little girl's inmost consciousness. The book might be quite
as witty as it is and quite as amusing but it would not carry for us
that peculiar "perfume in the mention," that provocative enchantment,
if it were not much more--Oh, so much more--than merely amusing. The
thousand and one reactions, impressions, intimations, of a little
girl's consciousness, are reproduced here with a faithfulness that is
absolutely startling. What really makes the transformation complete is
the absence in "Alice" of that half-comic sententious priggishness
which, as soon as we have ceased to be children, we find so curiously
irritating in Kingsley's "Water Babies.
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