were not missed, and I thought how easy it was, but
this beginning proved to be just a stepping-stone to what followed.

I did not smoke the cigars then, but waited until I got home. After
supper I went out and met Mike ----, and gave him one of them, and I
started in to smoke my first cigar. Mike could smoke and not get sick,
but there never was a sicker boy than I was. I thought I was going to
die then and there and I said, "No more cigars for me." I recovered,
however, and as usual forgot my good resolutions. That turned out to be
the beginning of my smoking habit, and I was a good judge of a cigar
when I was but fourteen years of age. I went on stealing them until the
boss tumbled that some one was taking them and locked them up for safe
keeping. I never smoked a cigarette in all my life. I know it takes
away a young fellow's brains and I really class cigarettes next to drink
and would warn boys never to smoke them.

I had been in the office now about three months. At the end of each
month I received a check for $12. It seemed a fortune to me and I hated
to give it in at the house. The third month I received the check as
usual, made out to bearer. Well, I went home and gave the check to
mother, and she said I was a good boy and gave me fifty cents to spend.

I watched my mother and saw her put the check in an unused pitcher in
the closet on the top shelf. It seemed as though some one was beside me
all the time telling me to take it and have a good time. It belonged to
me and no one else had a right to it, Satan seemed to say. And what a
good time I could have with it! They would never suspect me of taking
it, and I could have it cashed and no one would ever know.

So I got up in the middle of the night and started right there and then
to be a burglar. I went on tiptoe as softly as I could, and was right in
the middle of the kitchen floor when I stumbled over a little stool and
it made a noise. It was not much of a noise, but to me it seemed like
the shot out of a cannon. I thought it would wake up the whole house,
but nobody but mother woke, and she said, "Who's there?" I said nothing,
only stood still and waited for her to fall asleep again. As I stood
there a voice--and surely it was the voice of God--seemed to say, "Go
back to bed and leave the check alone. It is not yours: it belongs to
your mother. She is feeding and keeping you, and you are doing wrong." I
think if the Devil had not butted in I would have g