Deception was common practice in the country store business. Barnum wrote that often he cut open bundles of rags brought to the store by country women to exchange for goods, and found that what were ostensibly good linen and cotton rags contained in their midst extra weight in the shape of stone, gravel or ashes; and farmers regularly brought their loads of oats, corn, and rye into town short of their stated weights. Many years later Barnum told a story in his book, _The Humbugs of the World_, that he would agree characterizes the atmosphere in which he found himself as a boy: “There is a much older and better-known story about a grocer who was a deacon, and who was heard to call downstairs before breakfast to his clerk: “‘John, have you watered the rum?’ ‘Yes, sir.’ ‘And sanded the sugar?’ ‘Yes, sir.’ ‘And dusted the pepper?’ ‘Yes, sir.’ ‘And chicoried the coffee?’ ‘Yes, sir.’ ‘Then come up to prayers.’” The boy was brought up to attend church regularly. Barnum’s grandfather was a Universalist, and that was the religion which he strenuously defended during his maturity and unto his death, but apparently he also came under the stern influence of strict Methodism. Of his early religious experiences Barnum told a reporter for the _New York Sun_ when he was seventy-three years old: “I was brought up in the fear of hell, and when I went to Methodist prayer meetings, at the age of thirteen or fourteen, I used to go home and pray and cry and beg God to take me out of existence if He would only save me; but I didn’t see much chance for me in the way they put it.” There was only one meeting house in Bethel, where all attended, and no differences of sects seemed to disrupt the harmony of religion, but seemingly this did not detract from the severity with which worship was indulged. Doubtless it was partly as a reaction from the fiery hell of those early Methodist influences that Barnum as soon as he was able to choose for himself turned to Universalism, by which salvation is guaranteed more or less to all those who seek for it, without regard to their previous condition of sinful servitude. The meeting house at Bethel, without steeple or bell, was also without heat in winter, for one of the brethren said when a stove was suggested by an irreverent reformer, “A pretty pass, indeed, when professing Christians need a fire to warm their zeal.” The women were allowed to bring to church tin boxes with live coals, as foot-stoves, but the men were expected to endure with hardihood the cold Connecticut winter draughts during the long sermons, which usually lasted one hour and a half, and sometimes continued for two hours.