Well, do you know when I saw that I began to feel sorry—sorry—sorry. It seemed to me that I had done wrong. I reflected deeply. I reflected that I was young—I think I was just eleven. But I knew that though immature I did not lack moral advancement. I knew what a boy ought to do who had extracted a watermelon—like that.
I considered George Washington, and what action he would have taken under similar circumstances. Then I knew there was just one thing to make me feel right inside, and that was—Restitution.
So I said to myself: “I will do that. I will take that green watermelon back where I got it from.” And the minute I had said it I felt that great moral uplift that comes to you when you’ve made a noble resolution.
So I gathered up the biggest fragments, and I carried them back to the farmer’s wagon, and I restored the watermelon—what was left of it. And I made him give me a good one in place of it, too.
And I told him he ought to be ashamed of himself going around working off his worthless, old, green watermelons on trusting purchasers who had to rely on him. How could they tell from the outside whether the melons were good or not? That was his business. And if he didn’t reform, I told him I’d see that he didn’t get any more of my trade—nor anybody else’s I knew, if I could help it.
You know that man was as contrite as a revivalist’s last convert. He said he was all broken up to think I’d gotten a green watermelon. He promised that he would never carry another green watermelon if he starved for it. And he drove off—a better man.
Now, do you see what I did for that man? He was on a downward path, and I rescued him. But all I got out of it was a watermelon.
Yet I’d rather have that memory—just that memory of the good I did for that depraved farmer—than all the material gain you can think of. Look at the lesson he got! I never got anything like that from it. But I ought to be satisfied: I was only eleven years old, but I secured everlasting benefit to other people.
The moral in this is perfectly clear, and I think there’s one in the next memory I’m going to tell you about.
To go back to my childhood, there’s another little incident that comes to me from which you can draw even another moral. It’s about one of the times I went fishing. You see, in our house there was a sort of family prejudice against going fishing if you hadn’t permission. But it would frequently be bad judgment to ask. So I went fishing secretly, as it were—way up the Mississippi. It was an exquisitely happy trip, I recall, with a very pleasant sensation.