A delightful book! In a very few pages, two of Lewis Carroll's short works (c. 1884) are contained in this volume: excerpts from Eight or Nine Wise Words about Letter-Writing, and the text of Feeding the Mind.

Carroll composed, and had professionally printed, a witty, yet practical and instructive, 40-page "guidelines" for written correspondence, which he sent to his acquaintances, along with it a small case for keeping stamps. The instructions concerned beginning, writing and ending a letter, and were as much about the principles of communications as anything else. For example, regarding disagreeable times, he says,

If, in picking a quarrel, each party declined to go more than three-eighths of the way, and if in making friends, each was ready to go five-eighths,> of the way -- why, there would be more reconciliations than quarrels!

In Feeding the Mind Carroll starts by saying, "What care we take about feeding the lucky body! Which of us does as much for his mind?" He incorporates the kind of absurdity and humor in this work that one finds in Alice in Wonderland. He corresponds methods for addressing the condition of the body to addressing the condition of the mind. For example, he draws on the pattern of a visit to a doctor for the body to a visit with a doctor for the mind:

'Why, what have you been doing with this mind lately? How have you fed it? It looks pale and the pulse is very slow.'

'Well, doctor it has not had much regular food lately. I gave it a lot of sugar-plums yesterday.'

'Sugar-plums! What kind?'

'Well, they were a parcel of conundrums, sir.'

'Ah, I thought so. Now just mind this: if you go on playing tricks like that, you'll spoil all its teeth, and get laid up with mental indigestion. You must have nothing but the plainest reading for the next few days. Take care now! No novels on any account!'

Following is his advice on reading for the health of the mind:

1. The proper kind of food. (types of books, novels, essays, et al.)
2. The proper amount (he speculates whether or not there could be a FAT MIND).
3. Caution about combining too many kinds at once.
4. Proper Intervals of reading. (the body may require hours for rest, the mind, minutes)
5. Thinking over what one reads. (the equivalent of mastication of food)
6. Test the healthiness of the mental appetite of a person.

He ends this piece with the thought that it is "one's duty no less than one's interest" to read appropriately.

For avid readers, this little work is merely an enjoyable reminder about reading habits. I recommend this for lighting one's mood and mental processes. ( )