Page:Collingwood - Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll.djvu/289



N old bachelor is generally very precise and exact in his habits. He has no one but himself to look after, nothing to distract his attention from his own affairs; and Mr. Dodgson was the most precise and exact of old bachelors. He made a précis of every letter he wrote or received from the 1st of January, 1861, to the 8th of the same month, 1898. These precis were all numbered and entered in reference-books, and by an ingenious system of cross-numbering he was able to trace