On February 5th the Professor appears to have conceded a point, for Mr. Dodgson writes:  “Heard from Cook Wilson, who has long declined to read a paper which I sent January 12th, and which seems to me to prove the fallacy of a view of his about Hypotheticals.  He now offers to read it, if I will study a proof he sent, that another problem of mine had contradictory data.  I have accepted his offer, and studied and answered his paper.  So I now look forward hopefully to the result of his reading mine.”

The hopes which he entertained were doomed to be disappointed; the controversy bore no fruits save a few pamphlets and an enormous amount of correspondence, and finally the two antagonists had to agree to differ.

As a rule Mr. Dodgson was a stern opponent of music-halls and music-hall singers; but he made one or two exceptions with regard to the latter.  For Chevalier he had nothing but praise; he heard him at one of his recitals, for he never in his life entered a “Variety Theatre.”  I give the passage from his Diary:—­

Went to hear Mr. Albert Chevalier’s Recital.  I only knew of him as being now recognised as facile princeps among music-hall singers, and did not remember that I had seen him twice or oftener on the stage—­first as “Mr. Hobbs” in “Little Lord Fauntleroy,” and afterwards as a “horsy” young man in a matinee in which Violet Vanbrugh appeared.  He was decidedly good as an actor; but as a comic singer (with considerable powers of pathos as well) he is quite first-rate.  His chief merit seems to be the earnestness with which he throws himself into the work.  The songs (mostly his own writing) were quite inoffensive, and very funny.  I am very glad to be able to think that his influence on public taste is towards refinement and purity.  I liked best “The Future Mrs.  ’Awkins,” with its taking tune, and “My Old Dutch,” which revealed powers that, I should think, would come out grandly in Robsonian parts, such as “The Porter’s Knot.”  “The Little Nipper” was also well worth hearing.

Mr. Dodgson’s views on Sunday Observance were old-fashioned, but he lived up to them, and did not try to force them upon people with whose actions he had no concern.  They were purely matters of “private opinion” with him.  On October 2nd he wrote to Miss E.G.  Thomson, who was illustrating his “Three Sunsets":—­

Would you kindly do no sketches, or photos, for me, on a Sunday?  It is, in my view (of course I don’t condemn any one who differs from me) inconsistent with keeping the day holy.  I do not hold it to be the Jewish “Sabbath,” but I do hold it to be “the Lord’s Day,” and so to be made very distinct from the other days.

In December, the Logical controversy being over for a time, Mr. Dodgson invented a new problem to puzzle his mathematical friends with, which was called “The Monkey and Weight Problem.”  A rope is supposed to be hung over a wheel fixed to the roof of a building; at one end of the rope a weight is fixed, which exactly counterbalances a monkey which is hanging on to the other end.  Suppose that the monkey begins to climb the rope, what will be the result?  The following extract from the Diary illustrates the several possible answers which may be given:—­