I can bring a moral to bear here which shows the difference between theoretical morals and practical morals.  Theoretical morals are the sort you get on your mother’s knee, in good books, and from the pulpit.  You gather them in your head, and not in your heart; they are theory without practice.  Without the assistance of practice to perfect them, it is difficult to teach a child to “be honest, don’t steal.”

I will teach you how it should be done, lead you into temptation, teach you how to steal, so that you may recognize when you have stolen and feel the proper pangs.  It is no good going round and bragging you have never taken the chair.

As by the fires of experience, so by commission of crime, you learn real morals.  Commit all the crimes, familiarize yourself with all sins, take them in rotation (there are only two or three thousand of them), stick to it, commit two or three every day, and by-and-by you will be proof against them.  When you are through you will be proof against all sins and morally perfect.  You will be vaccinated against every possible commission of them.  This is the only way.

I will read you a written statement upon the subject that I wrote three years ago to read to the Sabbath-schools. [Here the lecturer turned his pockets out, but without success.] No!  I have left it at home.  Still, it was a mere statement of fact, illustrating the value of practical morals produced by the commission of crime.

It was in my boyhood just a statement of fact, reading is only more formal, merely facts, merely pathetic facts, which I can state so as to be understood.  It relates to the first time I ever stole a watermelon; that is, I think it was the first time; anyway, it was right along there somewhere.

I stole it out of a farmer’s wagon while he was waiting on another customer.  “Stole” is a harsh term.  I withdrew—­I retired that watermelon.  I carried it to a secluded corner of a lumber-yard.  I broke it open.  It was green—­the greenest watermelon raised in the valley that year.

The minute I saw it was green I was sorry, and began to reflect —­reflection is the beginning of reform.  If you don’t reflect when you commit a crime then that crime is of no use; it might just as well have been committed by some one else:  You must reflect or the value is lost; you are not vaccinated against committing it again.

I began to reflect.  I said to myself:  “What ought a boy to do who has stolen a green watermelon?  What would George Washington do, the father of his country, the only American who could not tell a lie?  What would he do?  There is only one right, high, noble thing for any boy to do who has stolen a watermelon of that class he must make restitution; he must restore that stolen property to its rightful owner.”  I said I would do it when I made that good resolution.  I felt it to be a noble, uplifting obligation.  I rose up spiritually stronger and refreshed.  I carried that watermelon back—­what was left of it—­and restored it to the farmer, and made him give me a ripe one in its place.