The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman

Fifty thousand pannier loads of devils -- (not of the Archbishop of Benevento's, -- I mean of Rabelais's devils) with their tails chopped off by their rumps, could not have made so diabolical a scream of it, as I did -- when the accident befell me: it summoned up my mother instantly into the nursery, -- so that Susannah had but just time to make her escape down the back stairs, as my mother came up the fore.

Now, though I was old enough to have told the story myself, -- and young enough, I hope, to have done it without malignity; yet Susannah, in passing by the kitchen, for fear of accidents, had left it in shorthand with the cook -- the cook had told it with a commentary to Jonathan, and Jonathan to Obadiah; so that by the time my father had rung the bell half a dozen times, to know what was the matter above, -- was Obadiah enabled to give him a particular account of it, just as it had happened.