SUNDAY BELLS

By GERTRUDE HENDERSON

At different times Miss Henderson has lived in Indiana, California and New York. During the World War she gave active patriotic service. She contributes to various publications.

The bells of Sunday have given subjects to many poets and to many essayists. Their sound is full of suggestions of peace, calm and the solemnity of worship.

The writer of the following essay expresses, as she says, the emotions of many people. It is that seizing upon what is, at the same time, intensely personal and yet universal that gives the essay its power.

Although the essay is written in a gossipy style it has a quiet spirit entirely in harmony with its subject.

Are all of us potentially devotees, I wonder. When the bells ring and I look up to the aspiring steeples against the sky in the middle of a Sunday morning, or when I hear them sounding upon the quiet of the Sunday evening dusk or sending their clear-toned invitation out through the secular bustle of the mid-week streets and in at doors and windows, summoning, summoning, there is that in me that hears them and starts up and would obey. It must be something my grandmothers left there—my long line of untraceable grandmothers back, back through the hundreds of years. I wonder if in all the other people of this questioning generation whose thoughts have separated them from the firm, sustaining certainties of the past the same ghostly allegiance rises, the same vague emotions stir and quiver at the evoking of the Sunday bells. I should think it altogether likely, for I have never found that in anything very real in me I am at all different from everybody else I meet.

The Sunday bells! I sit in the morning quiet and I hear them ringing near. They are not so golden-voiced, those first bells, as if they had been more lately made; but I think it may be they go the deeper into my feelings for that. Some people pass, leisurely at first, starting early and strolling at ease through the peaceful Sunday morning on the way to church, talking together as they go: ladies, middle-aged and elderly, the black-dressed Sunday ladies whose serene wontedness suggests that they have passed this very way to that very goal one morning in seven since their lives began; a father with his boy and girl; three frolicsome youngsters together in their Sunday clothes loitering through the sunny square with many divagations, and chattering happily as they go,—I am not so sure their blithe steps will end at the church door,—but yet they may; a young girl, fluttering pink ruffles and hurrying. I think she is going to sing in the choir and must be there early. She has the manner of one who fears she is already the least moment late for flawless earliness. Other young girls with their young men are walking consciously together in tempered Sunday sweethearting. And so on and on till the bell has rung a last summons, and the music has risen, and given way to silence, and the last belated comers have hurried by, looking at accusing watches, and gone within, to lose their consciousness of guilt in that cool interior whose concern is with eternity, not time. Along all the other streets of the diverse town I fancy them streaming, gathering in at the various doors on one business bent, obeying one impulse in their many ways, one common, deep-planted instinct that not one of them can philosophize back to its ultimate, sure source, though it masters them all—the source that is deeper than lifelong habit or childhood teaching or the tradition of the race; the source out of which all these came in their dim beginnings.

SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS

How does the writer show that her subject has universal appeal?

Why does she describe people on their way to church?

What types of people does she mention?

How does the writer give the essay a quiet spirit?

Point out examples of repetition.

What is the effect of the last sentence?

SUBJECTS FOR WRITTEN IMITATION

1. Organ Music 11. Church Interiors

2. The Violin 12. Store Windows

3. An Orchestra 13. Sympathy with Sorrow

4. A Brass Band 14. Weddings

5. Patriotic Songs 15. Receptions

6. Singing in Chorus 16. The Dance

7. A Procession 17. Evening

8. Going to Church 18. A Stormy Night

9. Marching 19. Solitude

10. Team Work 20. Whistling

DIRECTIONS FOR WRITING

Show that your subject is one that appeals to almost every person, and that it appeals to you in particular. Show the connection between your subject and various types of people. Give your essay a serious note, especially at the close.