Soon after my return from St. Louis, I received a call from Packer Institute in Brooklyn, to teach English Literature, which was most agreeable. But when I arrived, the principal, Mr. Crittenden, told me that the woman who had done that work had decided to remain. I was asked by Mr. Crittenden, "Can you read?" "Yes, I think so." "Then come with me." He touched a bell and then escorted me to the large chapel capable of holding nearly twelve hundred, where I found the entire faculty assembled to listen to my efforts. I was requested to stand up in the pulpit and read from a large Bible the fourteenth chapter of John, and the twenty-third psalm. That was easy enough. Next request, "Please recite something comic." I gave them "Comic Miseries." "Now try a little pathos." I recited Alice Cary's "The Volunteer," which was one of my favourite poems. Then I heard a professor say to Mr. Crittenden, "She recites with great taste and expression; what a pity she has that lisp!" And hitherto I had been blissfully unaware of such a failing. One other selection in every-day prose, and I was let off. The faculty were now exchanging their opinions and soon dispersed without one word to me. I said to Mr. Crittenden, as I came down the pulpit stairs, "I do not want to take the place." But he insisted that they all wanted me to come and begin work at once. I had large classes, number of pupils eight hundred and fifty. It was a great opportunity to help young girls to read in such a way that it would be a pleasure to their home friends, or to recite in company, as was common then, naturally and without gestures. I took one more class of little girls who had received no training before in that direction. They were easy to inspire, were wholly free from self-consciousness, and their parents were so much pleased that we gave an exhibition of what they could do in reading and recitation in combination with their gymnastics. The chapel was crowded to the doors. A plump little German girl was the star of the evening. She stood perfectly serene, her chubby arms stuck out stiffly from her sides, and in a loud, clear voice she recited this nonsense:
If the butterfly courted the bee,
And the owl the porcupine;
If churches were built on the sea,
And three times one were nine;
If the pony rode his master,
And the buttercups ate the cows;
And the cat had the dire disaster
To be worried, sir, by a mouse;
And mamma, sir, sold her baby,
To a gypsy for half a crown,
And a gentleman were a lady,
This world would be upside down.
But, if any or all these wonders
Should ever come about,
I should not think them blunders,
For I should be inside out.
An encore was insisted on.
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.
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.