Page:Collingwood - Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll.djvu/350

 In writing his books he never attempted to win popularity by acceding to the prejudices and frailties of the age — his one object was to make his books useful and helpful and ennobling. Like the great Master, in whose steps he so earnestly strove to follow, he "went about doing good." And one is glad to think that even his memory is being made to serve the same purpose. The "Alice " cots are a worthy sequel to his generous life.

Even Mr. Dodgson, with all his boasted health, was not absolutely proof against disease, for on February 12, 1895, he writes:—

Tenth day of a rather bad attack of influenza of the ague type. Last night the fever rose to a great height, partly caused by a succession of five visitors. One, however, was of my own seeking — Dean Paget, to whom I was thankful to be able to tell all I have had in my mind for a year or more, as to our Chapel services not being as helpful as they could be made. The chief fault is extreme rapidity. I long ago gave up the attempt to say the Confession at that pace; and now I say it, and the Lord's Prayer, close together, and never hear a word of the Absolution. Also many of the Lessons are quite unedifying.

On July nth he wrote to my brother on the subject of a paper about Eternal Punishment, which was to form the first of a series of essays on Religious Difficulties:—