He was glad to hear you had got the book safe, but his eyes filled with tears as he said, “I sent her my love, but she never—­” he couldn’t say any more, his mouth was so full of bones (he was just finishing a roast goose).

Another letter to Miss Paine is very characteristic of his quaint humour:—­

    Christ Church, Oxford, March 8, 1880.

My dear Ada,—­(Isn’t that your short name?  “Adelaide” is all very well, but you see when one’s dreadfully busy one hasn’t time to write such long words—­particularly when it takes one half an hour to remember how to spell it—­and even then one has to go and get a dictionary to see if one has spelt it right, and of course the dictionary is in another room, at the top of a high bookcase—­where it has been for months and months, and has got all covered with dust—­so one has to get a duster first of all, and nearly choke oneself in dusting it—­and when one has made out at last which is dictionary and which is dust, even then there’s the job of remembering which end of the alphabet “A” comes—­for one feels pretty certain it isn’t in the middle—­then one has to go and wash one’s hands before turning over the leaves—­for they’ve got so thick with dust one hardly knows them by sight—­and, as likely as not, the soap is lost, and the jug is empty, and there’s no towel, and one has to spend hours and hours in finding things—­and perhaps after all one has to go off to the shop to buy a new cake of soap—­so, with all this bother, I hope you won’t mind my writing it short and saying, “My dear Ada").  You said in your last letter you would like a likeness of me:  so here it is, and I hope you will like it—­I won’t forget to call the next time but one I’m in Wallington.

    Your very affectionate friend,

    Lewis Carroll.

It was quite against Mr. Dodgson’s usual rule to give away photographs of himself; he hated publicity, and the above letter was accompanied by another to Mrs. Paine, which ran as follows:—­

I am very unwilling, usually, to give my photograph, for I don’t want people, who have heard of Lewis Carroll, to be able to recognise him in the street—­but I can’t refuse Ada.  Will you kindly take care, if any of your ordinary acquaintances (I don’t speak of intimate friends) see it, that they are not told anything about the name of “Lewis Carroll”?

He even objected to having his books discussed in his presence; thus he writes to a friend:—­