tell lies? If my friends love me, it is because I try to tell the truth. I never heard but two voices in my life that frightened me by their sweetness. . . . They made me feel as if there might be constituted a creature with such a chord in her voice to some string in another's soul, that, if she but spoke, we would leave all and follow her, though it were into the jaws of Erebus. 4. Our only chance to keep our wits is, that there are so few natural chords between others' voices and this string in our souls, and that those which at first may have jarred a little, by-and-by come into harmony with it. But I tell you this is no fiction. You may call the story of Ulysses and the Sirens a fable, but what will you say to Mario and the poor lady who followed him? 5. Whose were those two voices that bewitched me so? They both belonged to German women. One was a chambermaid, not otherwise fascinating. The key of my room at a certain great hotel was missing, and this Teutonic maiden was summoned to give information respecting it. The simple soul was evidently not long from her mother-land, and spoke with sweet uncertainty of dialect. 6. But to hear her wonder and lament and suggest, with soft, liquid inflexions, and low, sad murmurs, in tones as full of serious tenderness for the fate of the lost key as if it had been a child that had strayed from its mother, was so winning, that, had her features and figure been as delicious as her accents, if she had looked like the marble Clytie, for in stance, why, all I can say is . . . I was only going to say that I should have drowned myself. For Lake Erie was close by, and it is so much better to accept asphyxia, which takes only three minutes by the watch, than a mésalliance, that lasts fifty years to begin with, and then passes along down the line of descent (breaking out in all manner of boorish manifestations of feature and manner, which, if men were only as short-lived as horses, could be readily traced back through the square-roots and the cube-roots of the family stem on which you have hung the armorial bearings of the De Champignons or the De la Morues, until one came to beings that ate with knives and said "Haow?"), that no person of right feeling could have hesitated for a single moment. 7. The second of the ravishing voices I have heard was, as I have said, that of another German woman.—I suppose I shall ruin myself by saying that such a voice could not have come from any Americanized human being. . . . It had so much woman in it,-muliebrity, as well as femineity;-no self-assertion, such as free suffrage introduces into every word and movement; large, vigorous nature, running back to those huge-limbed Germans of Tacitus, but subdued by the reverential training and tuned by the kindly culture of fifty generations. Sharp business habits, a lean soil, independence, enterprise, and east winds, are not the best things for the larynx. 8. Still you hear noble voices among us,-I have known families famous for them,-but ask the first person you meet a question, and ten to one there is a hard, sharp, metallic, matter-of-business clink in the accents of the answer, that produces the effect of one of those bells which small tradespeople connect with their shop-doors, and which spring upon your ear with such vivacity, as you enter, that your first impulse is to retire at once from the precincts. 9. —————Ah, but I must not forget that dear little child I saw and heard in a French hospital. Between two and three years old. Fell out of a chair and snapped both thigh-bones. Lying in bed, patient, gentle. Rough students round her, sme in white aprons, looking fearfully business-like; but the child placid, perfectly still. I spoke to her, and the blessed little creature answered me in a voice of such heavenly sweetness, with that reedy thrill in it which you have heard in the thrush's even-song, that I hear it at this mo ment, while I am writing, so many, many years afterwards.— "C'est tout comme un serin," said the French student at my side. 10. These are the voices which struck the key-note of my conceptions as to what the sounds we are to hear in heaven will be, if we shall enter through one of the twelve gates of pearl. There must be other things besides aërolites that wonder from their own spheres to ours; and when we speak of celestial sweetness or beauty, we may be nearer the literal truth than we dream. 11. If mankind generally are the shipwrecked survivors of some pre-Adamitic cataclysm, set adrift in these little open boats of humanity to make one more trial to reach the shore, -as some grave theologians have maintained,-if, in plain English, men are the ghosts of dead devils who have "died into life" (to borrow an expression from Keats), and walk the earth in a suit of living rags which lasts three or fourscore summers,-why, there must have been a few good spirits sent to keep them company, and these sweet voices I speak of must belong to them. HOLMES. 42. THE BELL OF LIBERTY. [This is an admirable description of the first peal that announced the declaration of the United Colonies to be free and independent of all British control.] THE HE representatives of the people assembled in solemn conclave, and long and anxiously surveyed the perilous. ground on which they were treading. To recede was now impossible; to go on seemed fraught with terrible consequences. The result of the long and fearful conflict that must follow was more than doubtful. For twenty days Congress was tossed on a sea of perplexity. 2. At length, Richard Henry Lee, shaking off the fetters that galled his noble spirit, arose on the 7th of June, and in a Just like a canary-bird. clear, deliberate tone, every accent of which rang to the farthest extremity of the silent hall, proposed the following resolution : 'Resolved, That these United Colonies are, and ought to be, free and independent States, and all political connection between us and the States of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved." 3. John Adams, in whose soul glowed the burning future, seconded the resolution in a speech so full of impassioned fervor, thrilling eloquence, and prophetic power, that Congress was carried away before it, as by a resistless wave. The die was cast, and every man was now compelled to meet the dreadful issue. The resolution was finally deferred till the 1st of July, to allow a committee, appointed for that purpose, to draft a Declaration of Independence. 4. When the day arrived, the Declaration was taken up, and debated article by article. The discussion continued for three days, and was characterized by great excitement. At length, the various sections having been gone through with, the next day, July 4th, was appointed for final action. It was soon known throughout the city; and in the morning, before Congress assembled, the streets were filled with excited men, some gathered in groups, engaged in eager discussion, and others moving towards the State House. 5. All business was forgotten in the momentous crisis which the country had now reached. No sooner had the members taken their seats than the multitude gathered in a dense mass around the entrance. The bell-man mounted to the belfry, to be ready to proclaim the joyful tidings of freedom as soon as the final vote had passed. A bright-eyed boy was stationed below to give the signal. 6. Around the bell, brought from England, had been cast more than twenty years before the prophetic motto: "PROCLAIM LIBERTY THROughout all tHE LAND UNTO ALL THE Although its loud clang had often sounded over the city, the proclamation engraved on its iron lip had never yet been spoken aloud. It was expected that the final vote would be taken without delay, but hour after hour wore on, and no report came from that mysterious hall where the fate of a contiuent was in suspense. 7. The multitude grew impatient; the old man leaned over the railing, straining his eyes downward, till his heart misgave him, and hope yielded to fear. But at length, at about two o'clock, the door of the hall opened, and a voice exclaimed, "It has passed." The word leaped like lightning from lip to lip, followed by huzzas that shook the building. The boy-sentinel turned to the belfry, clapped his hands, and shouted, "Ring ring!" 8. The desponding bell-man, electrified into life by the joyful news, seized the iron tongue, and hauled it backward and forward with a clang that startled every heart in Philadelphia like a bugle-blast. "Clang! clang !" the Bell of Liberty resounded on, higher, and clearer, and more joyous, blending in its deep and thrilling vibrations, and proclaiming in loud and long accents over all the land the motto that encircled it. 9. Glad messengers caught the tidings as they floated out on the air, and sped off in every direction to bear them onward. When they reached New York, the bells rang out the glorious news, and the excited multitude, surging hither and thither, at length gathered around the Bowling Green, and seizing the leaden statue of George III., which stood there, tore it into fragments. These were afterwards run into bullets, and hurled against his majesty's troops. 10. When the Declaration arrived in Boston, the people gathered to old Faneuil Hall to hear it read; and as the last sentence fell from the lips of the reader, a loud shout went up, and soon from every fortified height and every battery the thunder of cannon re-echoed the joy. HEADLEY. |