old church bell which had been the first to sound and
chime for him, that he would be the first to sing the beautiful song
of "The Bell." The boy grew apace, and the world advanced with him.

While he was yet a child, his parents removed from Marbach, and
went to reside in another town; but their dearest friends remained
behind at Marbach, and therefore sometimes the mother and her son
would start on a fine day to pay a visit to the little town. The boy
was at this time about six years old, and already knew a great many
stories out of the Bible, and several religious psalms. While seated
in the evening on his little cane-chair, he had often heard his father
read from Gellert's fables, and sometimes from Klopstock's grand poem,
"The Messiah." He and his sister, two years older than himself, had
often wept scalding tears over the story of Him who suffered death
on the cross for us all.

On his first visit to Marbach, the town appeared to have changed
but very little, and it was not far enough away to be forgotten. The
house, with its pointed gable, narrow windows, overhanging walls and
stories, projecting one beyond another, looked just the same as in
former times. But in the churchyard there were several new graves; and
there also, in the grass, close by the wall, stood the old church
bell! It had been taken down from its high position, in consequence of
a crack in the metal which prevented it from ever chiming again, and a
new bell now occupied its place. The mother and son were walking in
the churchyard when they discovered the old bell, and they stood still
to look at it. Then the mother reminded her little boy of what a
useful bell this had been for many hundred years. It had chimed for
weddings and for christenings; it had tolled for funerals, and to give
the alarm in case of fire. With every event in the life of man the
bell had made its voice heard. His mother also told him how the
chiming of that old bell had once filled her heart with joy and
confidence, and that in the midst of the sweet tones her child had
been given to her. And the boy gazed on the large, old bell with the
deepest interest. He bowed his head over it and kissed it, old, thrown
away, and cracked as it was, and standing there amidst the grass and
nettles. The boy never forgot what his mother told him, and the
tones of the old bell reverberated in his heart till he reached
manhood. In such sweet remembrance was the old bell cherished by the
bo