He was a simple-natured scientist, and treated Bell with the utmost kindness.
At this point, and before Bell had begun to experiment with his telegraph, the scene of the story shifts from Canada to Massachusetts.
"That surely cannot be the bell," said one of the children, lying down and listening.
The long stems twined round the gable, on which there hung a small bell.
Bellringer of Notre-Dame at the age of fourteen, a new infirmity had come to complete his misfortunes: the bells had broken the drums of his ears; he had become deaf.
What he loved above all else in the maternal edifice, that which aroused his soul, and made it open its poor wings, which it kept so miserably folded in its cavern, that which sometimes rendered him even happy, was the bells. He loved them, fondled them, talked to them, understood them.
And now, in joyless age, she felt that some withered partner should request her hand, and all unite, in a dance of death, to the music of the funeral bell.
The corpse stood motionless, but addressed the widow in accents that seemed to melt into the clang of the bell, which fell heavily on the air while he spoke.
A schooner's
bell struck up alongside, and a voice hailed through the fog: "O Disko!
Then the Prince took out his little
bell and rang it three times.
'Never done us foul, and false, and wicked wrong, in words?' pursued the Goblin of the
Bell.
He advertised that he would "open his performance in the after cabin at 'two
bells' (nine P.M.) and show the passengers where they shall eventually arrive"--which was all very well, but by a funny accident the first picture that flamed out upon the canvas was a view of Greenwood Cemetery!