modern Christianity.  When detected, it may seriously injure many believers, and fill them with miserable doubts.  So my advice to you, as a young theological student, is “Sift your reasons well, and, before you offer them to others, make sure that they prove your conclusions.”

I hope you won’t give this letter of mine (which it has cost me some time and thought to write) just a single reading and then burn it; but that you will lay it aside.  Perhaps, even years hence, it may be of some use to you to read it again.

    Believe me always

    Your affectionate Uncle,

    C. L. Dodgson.

* * * * *

CHAPTER VIII

(1892-1896)

Mr. Dodgson resigns the Curatorship—­Bazaars—­He lectures to children—­A mechanical “Humpty Dumpty”—­A logical controversy—­Albert Chevalier—­“Sylvie and Bruno Concluded”—­“Pillow Problems”—­Mr. Dodgson’s generosity—­College services—­Religious difficulties—­A village sermon—­Plans for the future—­Reverence—­“Symbolic Logic.”

At Christ Church, as at other Colleges, the Common Room is an important feature.  Open from eight in the morning until ten at night, it takes the place of a club, where the “dons” may see the newspapers, talk, write letters, or enjoy a cup of tea.  After dinner, members of High Table, with their guests if any are present, usually adjourn to the Common Room for wine and dessert, while there is a smoking-room hard by for those who do not despise the harmless but unnecessary weed, and below are cellars, with a goodly store of choice old wines.

The Curator’s duties were therefore sufficiently onerous.  They were doubly so in Mr. Dodgson’s case, for his love of minute accuracy greatly increased the amount of work he had to do.  It was his office to select and purchase wines, to keep accounts, to adjust selling price to cost price, to see that the two Common Room servants performed their duties, and generally to look after the comfort and convenience of the members.

“Having heard,” he wrote near the end of the year 1892, “that Strong was willing to be elected (as Curator), and Common Room willing to elect him, I most gladly resigned.  The sense of relief at being free from the burdensome office, which has cost me a large amount of time and trouble, is very delightful.  I was made Curator, December 8, 1882, so that I have held the office more than nine years.”

The literary results of his Curatorship were three very interesting little pamphlets, “Twelve Months in a Curatorship, by One who has tried it”; “Three years in a Curatorship, by One whom it has tried”; and “Curiosissima Curatoria, by ‘Rude Donatus,’” all printed for private circulation, and couched in the same serio-comic vein.  As a logician he naturally liked to see his thoughts in print, for, just as the mathematical mind craves for a black-board and a piece of chalk, so the logical mind must have its paper and printing-press wherewith to set forth its deductions effectively.