"If you were very anxious to get him to come to your house on any particular day, the only chance was _not_ to _invite_ him, but only to inform him that you would be at home. Otherwise he would say, 'As you have _invited_ me I cannot come, for I have made a rule to decline all _invitations_; but I will come the next day.' In former years he would sometimes consent to go to a 'party' if he was quite sure he was not to be 'shown off' or introduced to any one as the author of 'Alice.' I must again quote from a note of his in answer to an invitation to tea: 'What an awful proposition! To drink tea from four to six would tax the constitution even of a hardened tea drinker! For me, who hardly ever touch it, it would probably be fatal.'" All through the University, except in an extremely limited circle, Lewis Carroll was regarded as a person who lived very much by himself. "When," Mr. Girdlestone said to me, "I went to see him on quite a slight acquaintance, I confess it was with some slight feeling of trepidation. However I had to on some business, and accordingly I knocked at his door about 8.30 one winter's evening, and was invited to come in. "He was sitting working at a writing-table, and all round him were piles of MSS. arranged with mathematical neatness, and many of them tied up with tape. The lamp threw his face into sharp relief as he greeted me. My business was soon over, and I was about to go away, when he asked me if I would have a glass of wine and sit with him for a little. "The night outside was very cold, and the fire was bright and inviting, and I sat down. He began to talk to me of ordinary subjects, of the things a man might do at Oxford, of the place itself, and the affection in which he held it. He talked quietly, and in a rather tired voice. During our conversation my eye fell upon a photograph of a little girl--evidently from the freshness of its appearance but newly taken--which was resting upon the ledge of a reading-stand at my elbow. It was the picture of a tiny child, very pretty, and I picked it up to look at it. "'That is the baby of a girl friend of mine,' he said, and then, with an absolute change of voice, 'there is something very strange about very young children, something I cannot understand.' I asked him in what way, and he explained at some length. He was far less at his ease than when talking trivialities, and he occasionally stammered and sometimes hesitated for a word. I cannot remember all he said, but some of his remarks still remain with me. He said that in the company of very little children his brain enjoyed a rest which was startlingly recuperative. If he had been working too hard or had tired his brain in any way, to play with children was like an actual material tonic to his whole system. I understood him to say that the effect was almost physical!