 | The snow-image |  |
A BELL'S BIOGRAPHY.
Hearken to our neighbor with the iron tongue!
While I sit musing over my sheet of foolscap, he
emphatically tells the hour, in tones loud enough for all
the town to hear, though doubtless intended only as a
gentle hint to myself, that I may begin his biography
before the evening shall be further wasted. Unquestionably,
a personage in such an elevated position, and
making so great a noise in the world, has a fair claim
to the services of a biographer. He is the representative
and most illustrious member of that innumerable
class, whose characteristic feature is the tongue, and
whose sole business, to clamor for the public good. If
any of his noisy brethren, in our tongue-governed
democracy, be envious of the superiority which I have
assigned him, they have my free consent to hang themselves
as high as he. And, for his history, let not the
reader apprehend an empty repetition of ding-dong-bell.
He has been the passive hero of wonderful vicissitudes,
with which I have chanced to become acquainted, possibly
from his own mouth; while the careless multitude
supposed him to be talking merely of the time of day,
or calling them to dinner or to church, or bidding drowsy
people go bedward, or the dead to their graves. Many
a revolution has it been his fate to go through, and invariably
have told me his reminiscences, this at least is true, that
the more I study his deep-toned language, the more
sense, and sentiment, and soul, do I discover in it.
This bell — for we may as well drop our quaint personification
— is of antique French manufacture, and the
symbol of the cross betokens that it was meant to be
suspended in the belfry of a Romish place of worship.
The old people hereabout have a tradition, that a considerable
part of the metal was supplied by a brass
cannon, captured in one of the victories of Louis the
Fourteenth over the Spaniards, and that a Bourbon
princess threw her golden crucifix into the molten mass.
It is said, likewise, that a bishop baptized and blessed
the bell, and prayed that a heavenly influence might
mingle with its tones. When all due ceremonies had
been performed, the Grand Monarque bestowed the gift
— than which none could resound his beneficence more
loudly — on the Jesuits, who were then converting the
American Indians to the spiritual dominion of the Pope.
So the bell, — our self-same bell, whose familiar voice
we may hear at all hours, in the streets, — this very bell
sent forth its first-born accents from the tower of a log-built
chapel, westward of Lake Champlain, and near the
mighty stream of the Saint Lawrence. It was called
Our Lady's Chapel of the Forest. The peal went forth
as if to redeem and consecrate the heathen wilderness.
The wolf growled at the sound, as he prowled stealthily
through the underbrush; the grim bear turned his
back, and stalked sullenly away; the startled doe leaped
up, and led her fawn into a deeper solitude. The
red men wondered what awful voice was speaking amid
reverentially its summons, the dark-robed fathers
blessed them, as they drew near the cross-crowned
chapel. In a little time, there was a crucifix on every
dusky bosom. The Indians knelt beneath the lowly
roof, worshipping in the same forms that were observed
under the vast dome of Saint Peter's, when the Pope
performed high mass in the presence of kneeling princes.
All the religious festivals, that awoke the chiming bells
of lofty cathedrals, called forth a peal from Our Lady's
Chapel of the Forest. Loudly rang the bell of the
wilderness while the streets of Paris echoed with
rejoicings for the birth-day of the Bourbon, or whenever
France had triumphed on some European battle-field.
And the solemn woods were suddened with a melancholy
knell, as often as the thick-strewn leaves were swept
away from the virgin soil, for the burial of an Indian
chief.
Meantime, the bells of a hostile people and a hostile
faith were ringing on Sabbaths and lecture-days, at
Boston and other Puritan towns. Their echoes died
away hundreds of miles south-eastward of Our Lady's
Chapel. But scouts had threaded the pathless desert
that lay between, and, from behind the huge tree-trunks,
perceived the Indians assembling at the summons of the
bell. Some bore flaxen-haired scalps at their girdles, as
if to lay those bloody trophies on Our Lady's altar. It
was reported, and believed, all through New England,
that the Pope of Rome, and the King of France, had
established this little chapel in the forest, for the purpose
of stirring up the red men to a crusade against the
English settlers. The latter took energetic measures to
especial fast of the Romish church, while the bell tolled
dismally, and the priests were chanting a doleful stave,
a band of New England rangers rushed from the surrounding
woods. Fierce shouts, and the report of
musketry, pealed suddenly within the chapel. The
ministering priests threw themselves before the altar, and
were slain even on its steps. If, as antique traditions
tell us, no grass will grow where the blood of martyrs
has been shed, there should be a barren spot, to this very
day, on the site of that desecrated altar.
While the blood was still plashing from step to step,
the leader of the rangers seized a torch, and applied it to
the drapery of the shrine. The flame and smoke arose,
as from a burnt-sacrifice, at once illuminating and
obscuring the whole interior of the chapel, — now hiding
the dead priests in a sable shroud, now revealing them
and their slayers in one terrific glare. Some already
wished that the altar-smoke could cover the deed from
the sight of Heaven. But one of the rangers — a man
of sanctified aspect, though his hands were bloody —
approached the captain.
“Sir,” said he, “our village meeting-house lacks a
bell, and hitherto we have been fain to summon the good
people to worship by beat of drum. Give me, I pray
you, the bell of this popish chapel, for the sake of the
godly Mr. Rogers, who doubtless hath remembered us in
the prayers of the congregation, ever since we began our
march. Who can tell what share of this night's good
success we owe to that holy man's wrestling with the
Lord?”
“Nay, then,” answered the captain, “if good Mr.
should share the spoil. Take the bell and welcome,
Deacon Lawson, if you will be at the trouble of carrying
it home. Hitherto it hath spoken nothing but papistry,
and that too in the French or Indian gibberish; but I
warrant me, if Mr. Rogers consecrate it anew, it will
talk like a good English and Protestant bell.”
So Deacon Lawson and half a score of his townsmen
took down the bell, suspended it on a pole, and bore it
away on their sturdy shoulders, meaning to carry it to
the shore of Lake Champlain, and thence homeward by
water. Far through the woods gleamed the flames of
Our Lady's Chapel, flinging fantastic shadows from the
clustered foliage, and glancing on brooks that had never
caught the sunlight. As the rangers traversed the midnight
forest, staggering under their heavy burden, the
tongue of the bell gave many a tremendous stroke, —
clang, clang, clang! — a most doleful sound, as if it were
tolling for the slaughter of the priests and the ruin of
the chapel. Little dreamed Deacon Lawson and his
townsmen that it was their own funeral knell. A war-party
of Indians had heard the report of musketry, and
seen the blaze of the chapel, and now were on the track
of the rangers, summoned to vengeance by the bell's
dismal murmurs. In the midst of a deep swamp, they
made a sudden onset on the retreating foe. Good Deacon
Lawson battled stoutly, but had his skull cloven by
a tomahawk, and sank into the depths of the morass,
with the ponderous bell above him. And, for many a
year thereafter, our hero's voice was heard no more on
earth, neither at the hour of worship, nor at festivals
nor funerals.
And is he still buried in that unknown grave?
Scarcely so, dear reader. Hark! How plainly we hear
him at this moment, the spokesman of Time, proclaiming
that it is nine o'clock at night! We may therefore
safely conclude that some happy chance has restored
him to upper air.
But there lay the bell, for many silent years; and the
wonder is, that he did not lie silent there a century, or
perhaps a dozen centuries, till the world should have forgotten
not only his voice, but the voices of the whole
brotherhood of bells. How would the first accent of his
iron tongue have startled his resurrectionists! But he
was not fated to be a subject of discussion among the
antiquaries of far posterity. Near the close of the Old
French War, a party of New England axe-men, who
preceded the march of Colonel Bradstreet toward Lake
Ontario, were building a bridge of logs through a swamp.
Plunging down a stake, one of these pioneers felt it
graze against some hard, smooth substance. He called
his comrades, and, by their united efforts, the top of the
bell was raised to the surface, a rope made fast to it, and
thence passed over the horizontal limb of a tree. Heaveoh!
up they hoisted their prize, dripping with moisture,
and festooned with verdant water-moss. As the base of
the bell emerged from the swamp, the pioneers perceived
that a skeleton was clinging with its bony fingers to the
clapper, but immediately relaxing its nerveless grasp,
sank back into the stagnant water. The bell then gave
forth a sullen clang. No wonder that he was in haste
to speak, after holding his tongue for such a length of
time! The pioneers shoved the bell to and fro, thus
ringing a loud and heavy peal, which echoed widely
Bradstreet, and his three thousand men. The soldiers
paused on their march; a feeling of religion, mingled
with home-tenderness, overpowered their rude hearts;
each seemed to hear the clangor of the old church-bell,
which had been familiar to him from infancy, and had
tolled at the funerals of all his forefathers. By what
magic had that holy sound strayed over the wide-murmuring
ocean, and become audible amid the clash of
arms, the loud crashing of the artillery over the rough
wilderness-path, and the melancholy roar of the wind
among the boughs?
The New Englanders hid their prize in a shadowy
nook, betwixt a large gray stone and the earthy roots of
an overthrown tree; and when the campaign was ended,
they conveyed our friend to Boston, and put him up at
auction on the side-walk of King-street. He was suspended,
for the nonce, by a block and tackle, and being
swung backward and forward, gave such loud and clear
testimony to his own merits, that the auctioneer had no
need to say a word. The highest bidder was a rich old
representative from our town, who piously bestowed the
bell on the meeting-house where he had been a worshipper
for half a century. The good man had his reward.
By a strange coincidence, the very first duty of the sexton,
after the bell had been hoisted into the belfry, was
to toll the funeral knell of the donor. Soon, however,
those doleful echoes were drowned by a triumphant peal
for the surrender of Quebec.
Ever since that period, our hero has occupied the
same elevated station, and has put in his word on all
matters of public importance, civil, military, or religious.
the street beneath, he uttered a peal which many deemed
ominous and fearful, rather than triumphant. But he
has told the same story these sixty years, and none mistake
his meaning now. When Washington, in the
fulness of his glory, rode through our flower-strewn
streets, this was the tongue that bade the Father of his
Country welcome! Again the same voice was heard,
when La Fayette came to gather in his half-century's
harvest of gratitude. Meantime, vast changes have been
going on below. His voice, which once floated over a
little provincial seaport, is now reverberated between
brick edifices, and strikes the ear amid the buzz and
tumult of a city. On the Sabbaths of olden time, the
summons of the bell was obeyed by a picturesque and
varied throng; stately gentlemen in purple velvet coats,
embroidered waistcoats, white wigs and gold-laced hats,
stepping with grave courtesy beside ladies in flowered
satin gowns, and hoop-petticoats of majestic circumference;
while behind followed a liveried slave or bondsman,
bearing the psalm-book, and a stove for his mistress'
feet. The commonalty, clad in homely garb, gave precedence
to their betters at the door of the meeting-house,
as if admitting that there were distinctions between
them, even in the sight of God. Yet, as their coffins
were borne one after another through the street, the bell
has tolled a requiem for all alike. What mattered it,
whether or no there were a silver scutcheon on the
coffin-lid? “Open thy bosom, Mother Earth!” Thus
spake the bell. “Another of thy children is coming to
his long rest. Take him to thy bosom, and let him
slumber in peace.” Thus spake the bell, and Mother
the present generation be ushered to the embraces of
their mother; and Mother Earth will still receive her
children. Is not thy tongue a-weary, mournful talker
of two centuries? O, funeral bell! wilt thou never be
shattered with thine own melancholy strokes? Yea,
and a trumpet-call shall arouse the sleepers, whom thy
heavy clang could awake no more!
Again — again, thy voice, reminding me that I am
wasting the “midnight oil.” In my lonely fantasy, I
can scarce believe that other mortals have caught the
sound, or that it vibrates elsewhere than in my secret
soul. But to many hast thou spoken. Anxious men
have heard thee on their sleepless pillows, and bethought
themselves anew of to-morrow's care. In a brief interval
of wakefulness, the sons of toil have heard thee, and
say, “Is so much of our quiet slumber spent? — is the
morning so near at hand?” Crime has heard thee, and
mutters, “Now is the very hour!” Despair answers
thee, “Thus much of this weary life is gone!” The
young mother, on her bed of pain and ecstasy, has
counted thy echoing strokes, and dates from them her
first-born's share of life and immortality. The bridegroom
and the bride have listened, and feel that their
night of rapture flits like a dream away. Thine accents
have fallen faintly on the ear of the dying man, and
warned him that, ere thou speakest again, his spirit shall
have passed whither no voice of time can ever reach.
Alas for the departing traveller, if thy voice — the voice
of fleeting time — have taught him no lessons for Eternity!
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