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"They call us the Heavenly Twins."
"What, signs of the Zodiac?" said the Tenor.
"No; signs of the times," said the Boy.
The time is racked with birth-pangs; every hour
Brings forth some gasping truth, and truth new-born
Looks a misshapen and untimely growth,
The terror of the household and its shame,
A monster coiling in its nurse's lap
That some would strangle, some would starve;
But still it breathes, and passed from hand to hand,
And suckled at a hundred half-clad breasts
Comes slowly to its stature and its form,
Calms the rough ridges of its dragon scales,
Changes to shining locks its snaky hair,
And moves transfigured into Angel guise,
Welcomed by all that cursed its hour of birth,
And folded in the same encircling arms
That cast it like a serpent from their hold!
—Oliver Wendell Holmes.
Mendelssohn's "Elijah."[Illustration: (musical notation); lyrics: He, watch-ing o-ver Is—ra—el,slumbers not, nor sleeps.]
From the high Cathedral tower the solemn assurance floated forth to be awarning, or a promise, according to the mental state of those whose earsit filled; and the mind, familiar with the phrase, continued itinvoluntarily, carrying the running accompaniment, as well as the wordsand the melody, on to the end. After the last reverberation of the laststroke of every hour had died away, and just when expectation had beensucceeded by the sense of silence, they rang it out by day and night—thebells—and the four winds of heaven by day and night spread it abroad overthe great wicked city, and over the fair flat country, by many a tinytownship and peaceful farmstead and scattered hamlet, on, on, it was said,to the sea—to the sea, which was twenty miles away!
But there were many who doubted this; though good men and true, who knewthe music well, declared they had heard it, every note distinct, on summerevenings when they sat alone on the beach and the waves were still; and itsounded then, they said, like the voice of a tenor who sings to himselfsoftly in murmurous monotones. And some thought this must be true, becausethose who said it knew the music well, but others maintained that it couldnot be true just for that very reason; while others again, although theyconfessed that they knew nothing of the distance sound may travel underspecial circumstances, ventured, nevertheless, to assert that the chimethe people heard on those occasions was ringing in their own hearts; and,indeed, it would have been strange if those in whose mother's ears it hadrung before they were born, who knew it for one of their first sensations,and felt it to be, like a blood relation, a part of themselves, thoughhaving a separate existence, had not carried the memory of it with themwherever they went, ready to respond at any moment, like sensitive chordsvibrating to a touch.
But everything in the world that is worth a thought becomes food forcontroversy sooner or later, and the chime was no exception to the rule.Differences of opinion regarding it had always been numerous and extreme,and it was amusing to listen to the wordy warfare which was continuallybeing waged upon the subject.
There were people living immediately