I offered to give any in my classes lessons in "how to tell a story"
with ease, brevity, and point, promising to give an anecdote of my own
suggested by theirs every time. This pleased them, and we had a jolly
time. The first girl who tried to tell a story said:
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.
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