Quaker of a nearby town who said, “If a hen wants to crow, thee’d better let her crow.”
To return to his stories: there was the legend of David. When the lion attacked his sheep he ran so fast to their rescue that his little coat-tails stuck out straight behind him; when the lion opened his mouth to roar David reached down his throat and caught him by the roots of his tongue and held him, while, with his free hand he pulled his jackknife out of his trousers pocket, opened it with his teeth, and promptly killed the beast. Then he sat down upon a great white stone and played on his jews-harp and sang, “Twinkle, twinkle, little star.”
I once gave this form of the story in a Sunday School class as an object lesson in earnestness in the pursuit of duty, and when my teacher kindly asked me where it was to be found, assured her that it must be in one of the intervening Bible chapters that had been skipped in our course. Imagine my chagrin as I vainly sought the text. I must have been fourteen years old at the time.
Grandfather not only told us stories, but he opened Sunday to me for secular reading. On my eighth birthday he had given me a copy of Grimm’s Fairy Tales, and I was revelling in them when a Sunday came, and, as we were settling ourselves on a blanket out on the grass under the big eucalyptus tree for an afternoon with books, mother questioned the wisdom of my reading such a book on that day. She said we would let grandfather decide. I see him yet, looking over the tops of his spectacles at the eager little girl
