`` I am very sure , '' writes a lady-visitor at a Home for Sick Children , `` that there will be many loving earnest prayers for you on Easter morning from the children . '' I would like to quote further from her letters , as embodying a suggestion that may perhaps thus come to the notice of some one able and willing to carry it out . '' I want you to send me one of your Easter Greetings for a very dear child who is dying at our Home . She is just fading away , and ` Alice ' has brightened some of the weary hours in her illness , and I know that letter would be such a delight to her -- especially if you would put ` Minnie ' at the top , and she could know you had sent it for her . She knows you , and would so value it ... She suffers so much that I long for what I know would so please her . '' ... `` Thank you very much for sending me the letter , and for writing Minnie 's name ... I am quite sure that all these children will say a loving prayer for the ` Alice-man ' on Easter Day : and I am sure the letter will help the little ones to the real Easter joy . How I do wish that you , who have won the hearts and confidence of so many children , would do for them what is so very near my heart , and yet what no one will do , viz . write a book for children about GOD and themselves , which is not goody , and which begins at the right end , about religion , to make them see what it really is . I get quite miserable very often over the children I come across : hardly any of them have an idea of really knowing that GOD loves them , or of loving and confiding in Him . They will love and trust me , and be sure that I want them to be happy , and will not let them suffer more than is necessary : but as for going to Him in the same way , they would never think of it . They are dreadfully afraid of Him , if they think of Him at all , which they generally only do when they have been naughty , and they look on all connected with Him as very grave and dull : and , when they are full of fun and thoroughly happy , I am sure they unconsciously hope He is not looking . I am sure I do n't wonder they think of Him in this way , for people never talk of Him in connection with what makes their little lives the brightest . If they are naughty , people put on solemn faces , and say He is very angry or shocked , or something which frightens them : and , for the rest , He is talked about only in a way that makes them think of church and having to be quiet . As for being taught that all Joy and all Gladness and Brightness is His Joy -- that He is wearying for them to be happy , and is not hard and stern , but always doing things to make their days brighter , and caring for them so tenderly , and wanting them to run to Him with all their little joys and sorrows , they are not taught that . I do so long to make them trust Him as they trust us , to feel that He will ` take their part ' as they do with us in their little woes , and to go to Him in their plays and enjoyments and not only when they say their prayers . I was quite grateful to one little dot , a short time ago , who said to his mother ` when I am in bed , I put out my hand to see if I can feel JESUS and my angel . I thought perhaps in the dark they 'd touch me , but they never have yet . ' I do so want them to want to go to Him , and to feel how , if He is there , it must be happy . '' Let me add -- for I feel I have drifted into far too serious a vein for a preface to a fairy-tale -- the deliciously naïve remark of a very dear child-friend , whom I asked , after an acquaintance of two or three days , if she had read ` Alice ' and the ` Looking-Glass . ' `` Oh yes , '' she replied readily , `` I 've read both of them !
And I think '' -LRB- this more slowly and thoughtfully -RRB- `` I think ` Through the Looking-Glass ' is more stupid than ` XXXXX 's Adventures . '
Alice Brightness Joy Looking-Glass Minnie days enjoyments hours right woes