French
governess in whom he was interested, I should be sure to
admire the care with which he would give me _her name in
full_--(in extra-legible writing if it were an unusual
name)--as well as her address. Some of my friends are not
men of business.

So many such requests were addressed to him that at one time he had a
circular letter printed, with a list of people requiring various
appointments or assistants, which he sent round to his friends.

In one respect Lewis Carroll resembled the stoic philosophers, for no
outward circumstance could upset the tranquillity of his mind. He
lived, in fact, the life which Marcus Aurelius commends so highly, the
life of calm contentment, based on the assurance that so long as we
are faithful to ourselves, no seeming evils can really harm us. But in
him there was one exception to this rule. During an argument he was
often excited. The war of words, the keen and subtle conflict between
trained minds--in this his soul took delight, in this he sought and
found the joy of battle and of victory. Yet he would not allow his
serenity to be ruffled by any foe whom he considered unworthy of his
steel; he refused to argue with people whom he knew to be hopelessly
illogical--definitely refused, though with such tact that no wound was
given, even to the most sensitive.

He was modest in the true sense of the term, neither overestimating
nor underrating his own mental powers, and preferring to follow his
own course without regarding outside criticism. "I never read anything
about myself or my books," he writes in a letter to a friend; and the
reason he used to give was that if the critics praised him he might
become conceited, while, if they found fault, he would only feel hurt
and angry. On October 25, 1888, he wrote in his Diary: "I see there is
a leader in to-day's _Standard_ on myself as a writer; but I do
not mean to read it. It is not healthy reading, I think."

He hated publicity, and tried to avoid it in every way. "Do not tell
any one, if you see me in the theatre," he wrote once to Miss Marion
Terry. On another occasion, when he was dining out at Oxford, and some
one, who did not know that it was a forbidden subject, turned the
conversation on "Alice in Wonderland," he rose suddenly and fled from
the house. I could multiply instances of this sort, but it would be
unjust to his memory to insist upon the morbid way in which he
regarded personal popularity. As com