C.L. Dodgson.

The entry in the Diary for April 11th (Sunday) is interesting:--

Went my eighteen-mile round by Besilsleigh. From my rooms
back to them again, took me five hours and twenty-seven
minutes. Had "high tea" at twenty minutes past seven. This
entails only leaving a plate of cold meat, and gives much
less trouble than hot dinner at six.

Dinner at six has been my rule since January 31st, when it
began--I then abandoned the seven o'clock Sunday dinner, of
which I entirely disapprove. It has prevented, for two
terms, the College Servants' Service.

On May 12th he wrote:--

As the Prince of Wales comes this afternoon to open the Town
Hall, I went round to the Deanery to invite them to come
through my rooms upon the roof, to see the procession
arrive.... A party of about twenty were on my roof in the
afternoon, including Mrs. Moberly, Mrs. Driver, and Mrs.
Baynes, and most, if not all, of the children in Christ
Church. Dinner in Hall at eight. The Dean had the Prince on
his right, and Lord Salisbury on his left. My place was almost
_vis-a-vis_ with the Prince. He and the Dean were the
only speakers. We did not get out of Hall till nearly ten.

In June he bought a "Whiteley Exerciser," and fixed it up in his
rooms. One would have thought that he would have found his long walks
sufficient exercise (an eighteen-mile round was, as we have seen, no
unusual thing for him to undertake), but apparently it was not so. He
was so pleased with the "Exerciser," that he bought several more of
them, and made presents of them to his friends.

As an instance of his broad-mindedness, the following extract from his
Diary for June 20th is interesting. It must be premised that E--was a
young friend of his who had recently become a member of the Roman
Catholic Church, and that their place of worship in Oxford is
dedicated to S. Aloysius.

I went with E-- to S. Aloysius. There was much beauty in the
service, part of which consisted in a procession, with
banner, all round the church, carrying the Host, preceded by
a number of girls in white, with veils (who had all had
their first communion that morning), strewing flowers. Many
of them were quite little things of about seven. The sermon
(by Father Richardson) was good and interesting, and in a
very loyal tone about the Queen.

A letter he wrote some years before