The Bossier banner. [volume] (Bellevue, Bossier Parish, La.) 1859-1952, 1876-03-14

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marry none of his characters without a
great deal of ringing. Mark how he in
sists on the bells beingexcellent company.
Mr.. Pickwicks excited reveries on the
night of the discovery of the famous
Bill-Stumpian sculpture are dissipated
by the church bell sounding solemnity
on his ear; but when the bell ceased, the
silence was insupportable- fell almost
as if he had lost companion" "They
were company to Toby Week: many
kind things they said to him." To the
best of my belief, he has only made fun
of the moral effect of bells and their as
sociations once, viz, in Nicholas Nick
lebys explanation of the part to be per-
formed in a new play by Mr.. Lenville,
the heavy tragedian OF Crummie's COM
pany: But just as you are raising the
pistol to your head, bell strikes ten;
you pause, you reccollect to have heard
bell strike ten in your infancy; the
pistol falls from your hand, you are over
come, burst into tears, and become vir-
tuous character ever afterward."
In his travels abroad he still displays
his bell worship. At Marseilles he no
tices the Jail bell and the bells on the
draught horses; at Venice, tie softened
ringing Of the church bells !" at Genoa,
" the long strings Of patient mules that
go jingling their little bells through the
narrow Streets" "the gay vetturino
jingling through every village" the
fiesta days, "when the bells of churches
ring necessarily, not in peals, but in q
horrible, irregular, jerking dingle, dingle,
dingle. with sudden stop at every fif-
teenth dingle or SO, which is madden
ing" Rome seems to him "a vast will
derness of tinkling bells. from the bell
that announces the elevation of the Host
in St. Peters, and the bell that gives the
signal on Easter Monday for the simulta-
neous illumiaation of the great cathe-
dral, to the bell which puts the carnival
out like BREATH" At Florence he re-
marks the bell of the beautiful Campo
nile, "that summons the Compagnia
della Misericordia to their charitable
labors;" and as he returns homeward he
hears the bells of Calais, and describes
the night steamer which restores him to
his native land as a "screech, bell; and
two red eyes," Arriving in London, iKe
Arthur Clennam Tin Little Dorrit),
maddening church bells of all degrees
of dissonance, sharp and fat, cracked and
and clear, fast and slow, made the brick
and mortar hideous. In every thorough
fare, up almost every alley and down
almost every turning, some doleful bell
was throbbing, jerking, tolling, as if the
plague was in the city and the dead carts
were going round. Mr.. Arthur Clennam
sat in the window of the coffee-house on
Ludgate Hill, counting one Of the neigh
boring bells, making sentences and bur-
dens of songs out of it. in spite of HIM
self, and wondering how many sick people
it might be the death of in the course of
the year. As the hour. approached, its
changes of measure made it more and
more exasperating. At the quarter, it
went off into a condition Of deadly lively
Importantly, urging the populace in a
voluble manner to sCome to church,
come to church At the ten minutes it
became aware" (like the disappointed
bel" tolled by the sexton in Dombey
and SOM that the congregation would
be scanty, and slowly hammered out, in
low spirits, They won't come, they won't
come, they won't GOMEZ At the five