EARLY NEW ENGLAND METHODISM
Before I get away from my boyhood days, I want to say something about
the manner of my rearing in the bosom of old New England Methodism. I
was reared in the strictest ways of morality, in accordance with the old
system. Grandmother told me that I must not swear, must not drink
intoxicating liquors, must not lie, must not use tobacco in any form. It
seemed to me she was stretching out the moral law a little, and that
there were fifteen, instead of ten, commandments, in the religious
scheme of Methodism. And each commandment was held up to me as an
unfailing precept that would make a man of me. I used to say to myself
that I would be fifteen times a man, as I intended to keep them all.
But while this training was proceeding, and I was being warned against
drinking and using tobacco, there were some strange inconsistencies
going on side by side with the precepts. My old grandmother smoked what
was known as "nigger-head" tobacco, in a little clay pipe. The pipes
cost about a cent apiece. I used to cut up this tobacco for her. But as
she smoked, she lost no opportunity of impressing upon me the
dreadfulness of the tobacco habit.
I made bold one day to ask her why it was that she smoked, and yet told
me not to smoke. She touched herself in the right side, and said, "The
doctor tells me to smoke for some trouble here." But she was a very
lovely old lady, and I would never write or speak a word that could harm
the dear memory of the mother of my mother.
At this time, also, her father was living. I remember the old gentleman
now, in his red cap, then a wonder to me, but which afterward became
very familiar in Constantinople and the East as the Turkish fez. He was
very aged, being then well along in the eighties. Every night I used to
go up to his room and make him a toddy. He always wanted me to mix this
drink for him, as I had learned to make it exactly to his taste. He had
the rare consistency never to say anything to me about the immorality of
drinking, nor did I ever speak to him about the matter. But one day I
asked my grandmother about this "toddy." She touched her left side, and
said, "It is for something here."
I could not understand it, but here were mysterious "somethings" in my
grandmother's right side, and in her father's left side, that nullified
the Methodist religious system and set at naught the additional
commandments, "Thou shalt not drink," and "Thou shalt not smoke."
But the scheme of morality proved a good thing for me, and served to
guide me aright in all my wanderings about the world and up and down in
it. I think it very good testimony to the soundness and virtue of my
moral training that I have wandered around the world four times, have
lived in every manner known to man, have been thrown with the most
dissolute and the most reckless of mankind, and have passed through
almost every vicissitude of fortune, and have never tasted a drop of
intoxicating liquor, and have never smoked. I have kept all of the
commandments--those of Sinai and those of the Methodists.
In my period of wealth and prosperity, I have entertained thousands of
men, have seen thousands drinking and drunken at my table--and under it;
but I never touched a drop of my own wine or of the wine of others. I
have paid a great deal of money for the purchase of all sorts of
tobacco, and for all sorts of pipes--narghiles, hookas, chibouks--as
presents for others; but never touched tobacco myself in any way. I have
been in every rat-hole of the world--but I never touched the rats. It is
for these reasons that I am seventy-three years young, and am hale and
strong to-day, and living my life over again like a youth once more.
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.