On another occasion, my grandmother took me to Watertown to buy me a suit of clothes. In the store I noticed, while my grandmother was talking with the clerk, a lovely knife in the show-case. I wanted it. All my boyish instincts went out to that knife. I had never had a knife, and was hungry for one. I looked around, with all the inherited cunning of savage and barbarian and predatory ancestors in a thousand forests and for a hundred centuries. No one was observing me. Quietly, stealthily, I went to the case. I lifted the top, took the beautiful knife, and put it in my pocket. It was done. I had the knife, and no one would ever be any wiser. I was safe with my spoil. But again my Methodist-drilled conscience awoke. It made me go back to the show-case and replace the stolen knife. I actually felt better--for a time. Then the appeal of nature came back stronger than before. I longed for the knife. There was no resisting the predatory impulse. Again I stole behind the counter, opened the case, took out the knife, and placed it securely in my pocket. Again it had been done without chance of detection. But again my Methodist-made conscience came to the fore. Again it saved me from being a thief. I went back to the case, and put the knife in its place, but with great reluctance. Still a third time I took the knife from the case and secreted it in my pocket, and again the Methodist conscience proved stronger than human nature, and I restored the treasure to its proper place. I was finally able to leave the store without the knife, and with a clean conscience. These are the only instances when I started to do an evil thing, and in both of them I did not go the full length, but restored the property I coveted. Since that time, and with these exceptions, for the entire period of my life I have never cheated, stolen, or lied. And yet I have been in fifteen jails. For what? When I was clerk in Mr. Holmes's grocery store I was in charge of the money-drawer. I received no salary from Mr. Holmes, but took out the $1 a week that I was allowed, and kept an account of it. I was trusted, and did not betray in the slightest degree this trust and confidence of my employer. Every cent that I took out of, or put into the cash-drawer was entered upon my account-book, and I was ready at any and all times to show exactly how my account stood with the store. CHAPTER VI IN A SHIPPING HOUSE IN BOSTON 1844-1850 The next change in my life, and the real beginning of my career as a business man, was soon to come. I had got as much out of the grocery store as it could give me, and was yearning for a change and a wider field of labor. One day a gentleman drove up to the store in a carriage drawn by an elegant team of horses, and asked if there was a boy there named Train. Mr. Holmes thereupon called to me, and said to the strange gentleman, "This is George Francis Train." He then told me that the stranger was Colonel Enoch Train, and that he wanted to speak to me.