But I don’t know why I never heard any one say that but myself.  I always recognized it.  But even those nearest and dearest to me couldn’t seem to see it.  My mother, especially, seemed to think there was something wrong with that estimate.  And she never got over that prejudice.

Now, when my mother got to be eighty-five years old her memory failed her.  She forgot little threads that hold life’s patches of meaning together.  She was living out West then, and I went on to visit her.

I hadn’t seen my mother in a year or so.  And when I got there she knew my face; knew I was married; knew I had a family, and that I was living with them.  But she couldn’t, for the life of her, tell my name or who I was.  So I told her I was her boy.

“But you don’t live with me,” she said.

“No,” said I, “I’m living in Rochester.”

“What are you doing there?”

“Going to school.”

“Large school?”

“Very large.”

“All boys?”

“All boys.”

“And how do you stand?” said my mother.

“I’m the best boy in that school,” I answered.

“Well,” said my mother, with a return of her old fire, “I’d like to know what the other boys are like.”

Now, one point in this story is the fact that my mother’s mind went back to my school days, and remembered my little youthful self-prejudice when she’d forgotten everything else about me.

The other point is the moral.  There’s one there that you will find if you search for it.

Now, here’s something else I remember.  It’s about the first time I ever stole a watermelon.  “Stole” is a strong word.  Stole?  Stole?  No, I don’t mean that.  It was the first time I ever withdrew a watermelon.  It was the first time I ever extracted a watermelon.  That is exactly the word I want—­“extracted.”  It is definite.  It is precise.  It perfectly conveys my idea.  Its use in dentistry connotes the delicate shade of meaning I am looking for.  You know we never extract our own teeth.

And it was not my watermelon that I extracted.  I extracted that watermelon from a farmer’s wagon while he was inside negotiating with an other customer.  I carried that watermelon to one of the secluded recesses of the lumber-yard, and there I broke it open.

It was a green watermelon.

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.