Years afterward, when I was lecturing, my cousin, George Pickering Bemis, ex-Mayor of Omaha, and my aunt Abbie and my cousin Abbie attended the one I delivered in Omaha, and all of them felt a little hurt by my allusions to the old Methodists, and to my grandmother and her father. Bemis wrote to me that they were horrified. But they forgot that what I said of the Methodists and of my ancestors was in their praise. I was not ridiculing them, but extolling them. I told of these incidents of my childhood, because I was speaking of my childhood, and these were facts. One of the strictest commandments of old Methodism was to tell the truth. They were not satisfied with the mild negative of the Sinaitic commandment, "Thou shalt not lie." They added a positive decree, "Thou shalt speak the truth." That was all I was doing. I was telling the truth about my childhood and boyhood. I have never spoken anything but the truth in all my life. This, too, I owe to the early training in Methodist virtues and precepts, and to the example and counsel of my dear old grandmother.
I could not join the Bible class, at the urgent request of the grocer, Mr. Holmes, because I could not see the necessity of God, and no one could ever explain to me the reason why there should be, or is, a God. I could never recognize the necessity. Morality and ethics I could see the necessity of, and the high and authoritative reason for; but religion never appealed to my intelligence or to my emotions. The story of the Prodigal Son only taught me that to be a Christian one must do something to be forgiven for, to repent of; and I could not see the strength of such an argument. The plain and sound "ethics" of Methodism, outside of "faith" and "belief," always seemed to me to be higher and better than this.
I feel that in an autobiography I should say this much about my moral creed and principles. Later in life the Bible got me into much trouble, involved me in persecutions, and finally landed me in jail—all of which I shall refer to in due season.
Children are born savages and cheats. It is only training that makes true and honest men and women of them. When a child of five and six, I slept with my aunt Alice, the one who was afterward lost on the Lexington. One night I saw a fourpence in her pocket-book. When I saw that she was asleep, I got up quietly, went to her pocket-book where it lay on the table and took the fourpence out of it. But I could not retain it. It seared into my conscience. Before she woke up, I went as quietly back to the purse and placed the fourpence exactly where I had found it. My Methodist training saved me.
On another occasion, my grandmother took me to Watertown to buy me a suit of clothes. In the store I noticed, while my grandmother was talking with the clerk, a lovely knife in the show-case. I wanted it. All my boyish instincts went out to that knife. I had never had a knife, and was hungry for one. I looked around, with all the inherited cunning of savage and barbarian and predatory ancestors in a thousand forests and for a hundred centuries. No one was observing me. Quietly, stealthily, I went to the case. I lifted the top, took the beautiful knife, and put it in my pocket. It was done. I had the knife, and no one would ever be any wiser. I was safe with my spoil. But again my Methodist-drilled conscience awoke. It made me go back to the show-case and replace the stolen knife. I actually felt better—for a time.
Then the appeal of nature came back stronger than before. I longed for the knife. There was no resisting the predatory impulse. Again I stole behind the counter, opened the case, took out the knife, and placed it securely in my pocket. Again it had been done without chance of detection. But again my Methodist-made conscience came to the fore. Again it saved me from being a thief. I went back to the case, and put the knife in its place, but with great reluctance. Still a third time I took the knife from the case and secreted it in my pocket, and again the Methodist conscience proved stronger than human nature, and I restored the treasure to its proper place. I was finally able to leave the store without the knife, and with a clean conscience.
These are the only instances when I started to do an evil thing, and in both of them I did not go the full length, but restored the property I coveted. Since that time, and with these exceptions, for the entire period of my life I have never cheated, stolen, or lied. And yet I have been in fifteen jails. For what?
When I was clerk in Mr. Holmes's grocery store I was in charge of the money-drawer. I received no salary from Mr. Holmes, but took out the $1 a week that I was allowed, and kept an account of it. I was trusted, and did not betray in the slightest degree this trust and confidence of my employer. Every cent that I took out of, or put into the cash-drawer was entered upon my account-book, and I was ready at any and all times to show exactly how my account stood with the store.