"How far is it from Winckfield to Rotherwick? Now do not deceive me, you wretched child! If it is more than a hundred miles, I can't come to see you, and there is no use to talk about it. If it is less, the next question is, How much less? These are serious questions, and you must be as serious as a judge in answering them. There mustn't be a smile in your pen, or a wink in your ink (perhaps you'll say, "There can't be a wink in ink: but there may be ink in a wink" - but this is trifling; you mustn't make jokes like that when I tell you to be serious) while you write to Guildford and answer these two questions. You might as well tell me at the same time whether you are still living at Rotherwick - and whether you are at home - and whether you get my letter - and whether you're still a child, or a grown-up person--and whether you're going to the seaside next summer - and anything else (except the alphabet and the multiplication table) that you happen to know."
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Letter to Gertrude Chataway (13 Apr 1878), pp.384-5
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Letters_of_Lewis_Carroll
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Letters of Lewis Carroll
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (27 January 1832 – 14 January 1898) was a British author, mathematician, Anglican clergyman, logician, and amateur photographer, more famous under the pen name Lewis Carroll. He wrote many thousands of letters during his lifetime.
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