V
THE CRACKED BELL
There was no doubt whatever of its melancholy condition. Cracked it was, and cracked it had been for the last two years. Just how the crack came there, nobody knew. It was, indeed, a tiny flaw, long ago covered by green rust, and apparently as harmless as the veriest thread or a wisp of straw, lodging for a moment on the old bell’s brazen sides. But when the clapper began to swing, and gave one timid touch to the smooth inner surface of its small cell, the flaw made itself known, and as the strokes grew louder and angrier, the dissonance so clattered and battered against the ears of the parish, that after two years’ patient endurance of this infliction (which they considered a direct discipline, to humble their pride over a new coat of white paint on the little church), one small, black-bonneted sister rose in prayer-meeting and begged that the bell be left quiet, or at least muffled for one day, as it disturbed her daughter, whom all the village knew to be suffering from nervous prostration.
Emboldened by this declaration of war, a deacon declared that it was an insult to religion and its Founder, to ring such a bell. It was the laughing-stock of the village, he added, and its flat discords were but a signal for derision on the part of every scoffer and backslider in the parish.
Other evidence of convincing character was given by various members of the congregation; the bell was tried, convicted and sentenced; and more than one face showed its relief as good old Dr. Manson, the pastor, instructed the sexton publicly to omit the customary call to services on the following Sabbath.
“I hope,” he further said, looking around gravely on his people, “that you will all make more than usual effort to be in your pews promptly at half-past ten.”