The Dallas daily herald. [volume] (Dallas, Tex.) 1873-1887, 1886-10-13
THE CHESTNUT BELL.
A Boston Writer who Thinks II "
Time TO Call II In.

1t is q pity, says The Boston Globe,
that when Edgar Allan Poe wrote his
poem on THE Bells he could not
have had prophetic eye to this tintin-
nabulating nuisance of the period. II
he had we should possible have had a
stanza something like this:
Hear the noisy chestnut bells
Nickel bells
What world of merry chat their idiocy dspels !
At the table, on the street,
Whcre'er we chance to meet,
How they I'LL our souls with terror
With their beating,
Lest we fall into the error
OF repeating,
And one and all keep mum,
Sadly dumb,
For fear that some cheap "bum"
VIII ring us down.
II is, indeed, high time that the
chestnut bell should be itself "rung
in" At present it is the blight of con-
versa.ion, the destroyer of good CON-
partnership, n first-class social nuisance.
What excuse is there for it, anyway?
Solomon found out that there was no
new thing under the sun, and until
now mankind have been wisely content
to see and hear and enjoy good thing
more than once. Take away from the
world all its old music, paintings, art
works, and literature, and the logic of
the chestnut bell would, we suppose.
be satisfied. But what an empty world
it would be to be surep From our era
dies to our graves our path of life is
made pleasant for us by chestnuts.
The lullabies which soothed the infants
of ten centuries ago are still being sung
to the babies of to-day. The songs of
our great grandfathers are among the
sweetest we know. The best laws we
have, and all the means of justice af-
forded by our courts, come down TO us
with notifications from the early ages
of civilization. Trial by jury is a thou
sand wears old, and habeas corpus,
which means personal liberty, has been
a chestnut for over two centuries. All
the classics, ancient and modern, from
Virgil to Goethe inclusive. are chest
nuts. The best plays and operas are
equally fit subjects for the ''ringing-in"
imbecility of the hour. Shakespeare
and Sheridan, Beethoven and Bellini
are alike under the ban of the new bell
And the authors of whom we have been
in the habit of saying that they wrote
for no one age but for all time-Scott,
Rabelais, Dickens, Hugo, and the rest
must all be consigned to the limbo of
forgotten greatness, if the chestnut
theory is to stand.
The whole idea is absurd and in its
current application is an offensive fad.
A group of half dozen gentlemen
are enjoying themselves at the dinner
table or in the club parlor One Of
them begins good story by way of
illustrating point in the conversation.
Four out of five of the listeners have
most likely not heard it. bnt the fifth
has. Forthwith he must strike his
chestnut gong. and the pleasant rela-
ton which would have amused all the
others, is cut short. This sort of thing
is insuflerable. The man who thus
lays in wait to interrupt 1.-THE feast of
reason and the flow of SOUL is reduc-
ing rudeness TO fine art and is the
champion boor of the day. When 1t is
employed to shut off a story that smells
of the gutter or suggests the hog-pen
we may welcome and applaud the
chestnut bells. They can not ring too
often on whatever is gross and grovel-
ing. But beyond that they perform no
useful service, and their effect is to
check. the easy, natural current of ia
mliar talk. 1t may be confidentially
asserted that it is in the interests of
sociability, and of all that tends to
make life cheerful and worth living.
that old stories, old jokes old WITH
cisms, and old bits of humor should be
often repeated. to the end that they
may not be lost to coming generations.
A vast amount OF the very best wit and
humor IN the world is outside of writ
ten books, passing on from mouth TO
mouth. told by fathers to. sons and
carried by travellers from one country
to another. The bell-fiend of the per-
iod. il he had his way, would soon cali
m all this fractional currency of con-
versation. and mankind would lose ir-
reparably by the operation.