erty to return to
your fishing. That you will succeed in it is the expectation of

Your well-wisher, E. ASHAM.

Chichester's chin dropped a little as he read. For the first time in
his life he looked undecided. Then he folded the note carefully, put it
in the breast pocket of his coat, and turned to his companion.

"You will be going up in to-morrow's boat, I suppose. Shall we go
together?"

"My dear fellow," said Arthur Asham, "really, you know--I should be
delighted. But do you think it would be quite the thing?"

BOOKS THAT I LOVED AS A BOY

"It is one thing," said my Uncle Peter, "to be perfectly honest. But it
is quite another thing to tell the truth."

"Are you honest in that remark," I asked, "or are you merely telling
the truth?"

"Both," he answered, with twinkling eyes, "for that is an abstract
remark, in which species of discourse truth-telling is comparatively
easy. Abstract remarks are a great relief to the lazy honest man. They
spare him the trouble of meticulous investigation of unimportant facts.
But a concrete remark, touching upon a number of small details, is full
of traps for the truth-teller."

"You agree, then," said I, "with what the Psalmist said in his haste:
'All men are liars'?"

"Not in the least," he replied, laying down the volume which he was
apparently reading when he interrupted himself. "I have leisure enough
to perceive at once the falsity of that observation which the honest
Psalmist recorded for our amusement. The real liars, conscious,
malicious, wilful falsifiers, must always be a minority in the world,
because their habits tend to bring them to an early grave or a
reformatory. It is the people who want to tell the truth, and try to,
but do not quite succeed, who are in the majority. Just look at this
virtuous little volume which I was reading when you broke in upon me.
It is called 'Books that Have Influenced Me.' A number of authors,
politicians, preachers, doctors, and rich men profess to give an
account of the youthful reading which has been most powerful in the
development of their manly minds and characters. To judge from what
they have written here you would suppose that these men were as mature
and discriminating at sixteen as they are at sixty. They tell of great
books, serious books, famous books. But they say little or nothing of
the small, amusing books, the books full of fighting and adventure, the
books of good stuff