The Old Church Bell Page #2

								

military school, neither was he provided with clothes or food. But
he had his number, and his own peg; for everything here was ordered
like clockwork, which we all know is of the greatest utility--people
get on so much better together when their position and duties are
understood. It is by pressure that a jewel is stamped. The pressure of
regularity and discipline here stamped the jewel, which in the
future the world so well knew.

In the chief town of the province a great festival was being
celebrated. The light streamed forth from thousands of lamps, and
the rockets shot upwards towards the sky, filling the air with showers
of colored fiery sparks. A record of this bright display will live
in the memory of man, for through it the pupil in the military
school was in tears and sorrow. He had dared to attempt to reach
foreign territories unnoticed, and must therefore give up
fatherland, mother, his dearest friends, all, or sink down into the
stream of common life. The old church bell had still some comfort;
it stood in the shelter of the church wall in Marbach, once so
elevated, now quite forgotten. The wind roared around it, and could
have readily related the story of its origin and of its sweet
chimes, and the wind could also tell of him to whom he had brought
fresh air when, in the woods of a neighboring country, he had sunk
down exhausted with fatigue, with no other worldly possessions than
hope for the future, and a written leaf from "Fiesco." The wind
could have told that his only protector was an artist, who, by reading
each leaf to him, made it plain; and that they amused themselves by
playing at nine-pins together. The wind could also describe the pale
fugitive, who, for weeks and months, lay in a wretched little
road-side inn, where the landlord got drunk and raved, and where the
merry-makers had it all their own way. And he, the pale fugitive, sang
of the ideal.

For many heavy days and dark nights the heart must suffer to
enable it to endure trial and temptation; yet, amidst it all, would
the minstrel sing. Dark days and cold nights also passed over the
old bell, and it noticed them not; but the bell in the man's heart
felt it to be a gloomy time. What would become of this young man,
and what would become of the old bell?

The old bell was, after a time, carried away to a greater distance
than any one, even the warder in the bell tower, ever imagined; and
the bell in the breast of the young man was heard in countries where
his feet had never wandered. The tones went forth over the wide
ocean to every part of the round world.

We will now follow the career of the old bell. It was, as we
have said, carried far away from Marbach and sold as old copper;
then sent to Bavaria to be melted down in a furnace. And then what
happened?

In the royal city of Bavaria, many years after the bell had been
removed from the tower and melted down, some metal was required for
a monument in honor of one of the most celebrated characters which a
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