My father was somewhat poor.  He had no salary for preaching, except for a few months, perhaps not five hundred dollars for forty years of pulpit labor.  He maintained his family chiefly from a small farm, and, there being several children, we were deprived of many little things that wealthier parents are accustomed to furnish for theirs.  We had few presents, and those chiefly of necessary articles,—­school-books, or something of the kind; while toys, playthings, and instruments of amusement, we were left to go without, or take up with such rude and simple ones as we could manufacture for ourselves.

I wanted a small box very much.  A handsome little trunk, such as most of my young readers probably have, was too much to hope for, and a plain wooden box, even, I had no means to purchase.

I went without for a long time, and at last determined that I would try to make one.  But the materials,—­where was I to obtain them?  True, my father had pieces of thin boards that would answer, but there were nails, and hinges, and a lock wanting.  Where were these to come from?

After trying a variety of methods, I invented a plan for fastening it without a lock, and leather made a very good substitute for hinges, as it was to be out of sight.  Still, I wanted nails.  There were some old ones about the house, but they were crooked, and broken, and rusty.  These would not answer if anything better could be obtained.

My uncle, who at this time lived but a short distance from us, was engaged in building, and I watched the barrel of bright new nails his workmen were using, with a longing eye.  O, how I coveted them!

The temptation was too great.  I sought the opportunity while the hands were at dinner, and, after cautiously looking about to see that no one was near to observe me, with trembling hands seized upon them, and stole enough to make my box.  O! how my heart beat as I hurried away across the fields home.  I almost expected to see some one start up from every stump and bush on the way, to accuse me of the theft.  I hardly dared to look behind me.  It seemed as though my old uncle, with frowning brow, was at my very heels.  And then, too, the workmen;—­were they not suspicious from my hanging about them, and had not some of them watched me?  So horrid images began to dance about my brain.  Dim visions of court-rooms, and lawyers, and judges, and prisons, and sorrowing parents, and frightened brothers and sisters, rose in awful terror before me.  I began to grow dizzy and faint.  I had laid up, for a long time, all the pennies I could obtain, which, at that time, amounted to the vast sum of twenty cents, contained in an old-fashioned pistareen; and the hope sprung up in my heart, that, possibly, by paying this to the officers, they would not carry me to jail.

Thought was busy in laying plans for escape, and I reached home in the greatest excitement imaginable.

Well, the deed was now done, and I could not undo it.  I was really a thief; and now, as I had got the nails, I thought I might as well use them.  I was too anxious about the crime, however, to do this at once.  So I hid them away for a week or more, before I ventured to make my box.