I don’t know how; never attempted any such thing, but what I am
going to tell is true and funny.

My grandfather is very deaf.  You may have seen him sitting on a pulpit stair at Mr. Beecher’s church, holding to his ear what looks like a skillet.  Last spring we went to the country, house-hunting, leaving grandfather to guard our home.  He was waked, in the middle of the night as he supposed, by a noise, and started out to find where it came from.  It continued; so he courageously went downstairs and cautiously opened the kitchen door.  He reached out his skillet-trumpet before him through the partly opened door and the milkman poured in a quart of milk.

This story, I am told, is an ancient chestnut.  But I used to see the deaf grandfather with his uplifted skillet on the steps of Beecher’s pulpit, and the young lady gave it as a real happening in her own home.  Did anyone hear of it before 1868 when she gave it to our anecdote class?  I believe this was the foundation or starter for similar skillet-trumpet stories.

The girl was applauded, and deserved it.  Then they asked me for a milk story.  I told them of a milkman who, in answer to a young mother’s complaint that the milk he brought for her baby was sour, replied:  “Well, is there anything outside the sourness that doesn’t suit you?” And Thoreau remarked that “circumstantial evidence is sometimes conclusive, as when a trout is found in the morning milk.”

This class was considered so practical and valuable that I was offered pay for it, but it was a relief, after exhausting work.

We had many visitors interested in the work of the various classes.  One day Beecher strolled into the chapel and wished to hear some of the girls read.  All were ready.  One took the morning paper; another recited a poem; one read a selection from her scrapbook.  Beecher afterward inquired:  “Whom have you got to teach elocution now?  You used to have a few prize pumpkins on show, but now every girl is doing good original work.”  Mr. Crittenden warned me at the outset, “Keep an eye out or they’ll run over you.”  But I never had anything but kindness from my pupils.  I realized that cheerful, courteous requests were wiser than commands, and sincere friendship more winning than “Teachery” primness.  I knew of an unpopular instructor who, being annoyed by his pupils throwing a few peanuts at his desk, said, “Young men, if you throw another peanut, I shall leave the room.”  A shower of peanuts followed.

So, when I went to my largest class in the big chapel, and saw one of my most interesting girls sitting on that immense Bible on the pulpit looking at me in merry defiance, and kicking her heels against the woodwork below, I did not appear to see her, and began the exercises, hoping fervently that one of the detectives who were always on watch might providentially appear.  Before long I saw one come to the door, look in with an amazed expression, only to bring two of the faculty to release the young lady from her uneasy pre-eminence.