"You needn't have waited five years to find that out," he said, with a good-natured grin. "I could have told you the day the book was published--I bought one of the first copies." "Still," he continued, "I don't see why a book should be out-of-date in five years. That is if it deals with the truth. Truth is eternal." "What is truth?" I asked wearily. "We all thought we knew the truth about gravitation. Then Einstein came along with his relativity theory, and told us we were wrong." "Did he?" inquired Macdonald, with a faint smile. "I am quoting from the newspapers," I added hastily. "I haven't the remotest idea what relativity means. Perhaps it's Epstein I mean--no, he's a sculptor." "You're hedging!" said Macdonald. "Can you blame me?" I asked. "You're trying to get me to say what truth is. I am not a professor of philosophy, I'm a dominie. All I can say is that the _Log_ was the truth . . . for me . . . five years ago; but it isn't the truth for me now." "Then, what exactly is your honest opinion of the _Log_ as a work on education?" "As a work on education," I said deliberately, "the _Log_ isn't worth a damn." "Not a bad criticism, either," said Macdonald dryly. "I say that," I continued, "because when I wrote it I knew nothing about the most important factor in education--the psychology of children." "But," said Mrs. Macdonald in surprise--hitherto she had been an interested listener--"I thought that the bits about the bairns were the best part of the book." "Possibly," I answered, "but I was looking at children from a grown-up point of view. I thought of them as they affected me, instead of as they affected themselves. I'll give you an instance. I think I said something about wanting to chuck woodwork and cookery out of the school curriculum. I was wrong, hopelessly wrong." "I'm glad to hear you admit it," said Macdonald. "I have always thought that every boy ought to be taught to mend a hen-house and every girl to cook a dinner." "Then I was right after all," I said quickly. Macdonald stared at me, whilst his wife looked up interrogatively from her embroidery. "If your aim is to make boys joiners and girls cooks," I explained, "then I still hold that cookery and woodwork ought to be chucked out of the schools." "But, man, what are schools for?" I saw a combative light in Macdonald's eye. "Creation, self-expression . . . . the only thing that matters in education. I don't care what a child is doing in the way of creation, whether he is making tables, or porridge, or sketches, or--or--" "Snowballs!" prompted Macdonald. "Or snowballs," I said. "There is more true education in making a snowball than in listening to an hour's lecture on grammar." Mrs. Macdonald dropped her embroidery into her lap, with a little gasp at the heresy of my remark. "You're talking pure balderdash!" said Macdonald, leaning forward to knock the ashes from his pipe on the bars of the grate.