I don't know whether Goethe was as honest a man as
Wordsworth and Stevenson, but I reckon he told about as much of the
truth. Autobiography is usually a man's view of what his biography
ought to be."

"This is rather a disquieting thought, my Uncle Peter," said I, "for it
seems to leave us all adrift on a sea of illusions."

"Not if you look at it in the right way," he answered, placidly. "We
can always get at a few more facts than the man himself gives us, from
letters and from the dispassionate recollections of his friends.
Besides, a man's view of what his life ought to have been is almost as
interesting, and quite as instructive, as a mere chronicle of what it
actually was. The truth is, there are two kinds of truth: one kind
is----"

Crash! went the fire-irons, tumbling in brazen confusion on the
red-brick hearth. When my Uncle Peter has mounted his favourite
metaphysical theory, I know that nothing can make him dismount but
physical violence. I apologized for the poker and the shovel and the
tongs (practising a Stevensonian omission in regard to my own share in
the catastrophe), arranged the offending members in their proper
station on the left of the fire-place, and took the bellows to
encourage the dull fire into a more concrete flame.

"I know enough about the different kinds of truth," said I, working
away at the bellows. "Haven't I just been reading Professor Jacobus on
'Varieties of Religious Experience'? What I want now is something
concrete; and I wish you would try to give it to me, whatever perils it
may involve. Tell me something about the books that you loved as a boy.
Never mind your veracity, Uncle Peter, just be honest, that will be
enough."

"My veracity!" he grunted, "Humph! Impudent academic mocker, university
life has destroyed your last rag of reverence. You have become a mere
pivot for turning another fellow's remarks against himself. However, if
you will just allow me to talk, and promise to let those fire-irons
alone, I will tell you about some of the literary loves of my boyhood."

"I promise not to stir hand or tongue or foot," said I, "unless I see
you sliding towards a metaphysical precipice."

"Very well," said my Uncle Peter, "I will do my best to give you the
facts. And the first is this: there never was a day in my boyhood when
I would not rather go a-fishing than read the best book in the world.
If the choice had been given me, I never would have hesitated between
climbing