To this date I cannot actually describe the sensations that shot through me. I wanted to turn to my mother and place my arm about her and tell her that under no circumstances would I ever do such. But I could see by the hard light in her eyes that neither she nor anyone else would believe me. I was a pretty proud youngster; I would much rather have stolen from my boss man than to have stolen biscuits out of the kitchen safe. Never would I have ripped the screen on the safe. I told them over and over again that I did not do it and I spoke bitterly and in a highly emotional manner. I was not only trying to defend myself against the charge of stealing, but also against their basic conception of me that would allow them to accuse me. When a man is accused, he is already condemned in the minds of the people who launch the accusation, all the fine and fancy Bill of Rights to the contrary. It is a psychological law. No man will accuse another, rightly or wrongly, unless he has already cast that man beyond the pale of the just and honest and decent. While they were accusing me, I did not know that all of the children had already been thoroughly questioned and by a process of elimination, it was decided that I had stolen the biscuits. They imputed to me a hungry viciousness; they had decided that I was so contemptuous of them that I did not bother to open the cabinet and take the biscuits, but that I ripped the screen from the cabinet and took the biscuits.

I suppose that for the period of a month, arguments, bitter and violent, raged in the household because of those stolen biscuits. I don’t know to this day who stole those biscuits. I would like to know. The only real thing I regret about the entire matter of the biscuits now is that I wished that I had stolen them. I remember as I walked about the household I could read the accusation in their eyes: You stole the biscuits. And the only defense I could put up was one that rendered me almost incoherent. I was not trying to defend myself so much against the charge of stealing biscuits, but against being pushed out from that warm circle of trust that exists in all families if they are families at all. As I look back upon it now, my whole conduct, my reaction to their accusations, must have convinced them that I was guilty.