“Most certainly; and I’ll tell you what will happen if you don’t. You will go on writing till the last moment, and just in the middle of the last sentence you will become aware that ‘time’s up!’ Then comes the hurried wind-up—the wildly scrawled signature—the hastily fastened envelope which comes open in the post—the address—a mere hieroglyphic—the horrible discovery that you’ve forgotten to replenish your stamp-case—the frantic appeal to everyone in the house to lend you a stamp—the headlong rush to the Post Office, arriving hot and gasping, just after the box has been closed—and finally, a week afterwards, the return of the letter from the dead letter office, marked, ‘address illegible.’”
“Write legibly.
“The average temper of the human race would be perceptibly sweetened if everybody obeyed this rule. A great deal of bad writing in the world comes simply from writing too quickly. Of course you reply, ‘I do it to save time.’ A very good object no doubt; but what right have you to do it at your friend’s expense? Isn’t his time as valuable as yours? Years ago I used to receive letters from a friend—and very interesting letters too—written in one of the most atrocious hands ever invented. It generally took me about a week to read one of his letters! I used to carry it about in my pocket and take it out at leisure times to puzzle over the riddles which composed it—holding it in different positions, till at last the meaning of some hopeless scrawl would flash upon me, when I at once wrote down the English under it; and when several had thus been guessed, the context would help me with the others till at last the whole series of hieroglyphics was deciphered. If all one’s friends wrote like that, life would be entirely spent in reading their letters!”
“My Ninth Rule.—When you get to the end of a note-sheet, and find you have more to say, take another piece of paper—a whole sheet or a scrap, as the case may demand, but whatever you do, don’t cross! Remember the old proverb ‘Cross-writing makes cross-reading.’ ‘The old proverb?’ you say inquiringly. ‘How old?’ Why, not so very ancient, I must confess. In fact—I’m afraid I invented it while writing this paragraph. Still, you know ‘old’ is a comparative term; I think you would be quite justified in addressing a chicken just out of the shell as ‘Old Boy!’ when compared with another chicken that was only half out!”
“Don’t try to have the last word,” he tells us—and again, “Don’t fill more than a page and a half with apologies for not having written sooner.”
“On how to end a letter,” he advises the writer to “refer to your correspondent’s last letter, and make your winding up at least as friendly as his; in fact, even if a shade more friendly, it will do no harm.”
“When you take your letters to the post, carry them in your hand. If you put them in your pocket, you will take a long country walk (I speak from experience), passing the post office twice, going and returning, and when you get home you will find them still in your pocket.”
Letter-writing was as much a part of Lewis Carroll as games, and puzzles, and problems, and mathematics, and nonsense, and little girls. Indeed, as we view him through the stretch of years, we find him so many-sided that he himself would have done well to draw a new geometrical figure to represent a nature so full of strange angles and surprising shapes. If one is fond of looking into a kaleidoscope, and watching the ever-changing facets and colors and designs, one would be pretty apt to understand the constant shifting of that active mind, always on the alert for new ideas, but steady and fixed in many good old ones, which had become firm habits.
He was fond of giving his child-friends “nuts to crack,” and nothing pleased him more than to be the center of some group of little girls, firing his conundrums and puzzles into their minds, and watching the bright young faces catching the glow of his thoughts. He knew just how far to go, and when to turn some dawning idea into quaint nonsense, so that the young mind could grasp and hold it. Dear maker of nonsense, dear teacher and friend, dear lover of children, can they ever forget you!