recollections of childhood, all I knew of fairyland, clustered around
the old Abbey and its curfew bell, which tolled at eight o'clock every
evening and was the signal for me to run to bed before it stopped. I
have referred to that bell in my "American Four-in-Hand in
Britain"[10] when passing the Abbey and I may as well quote from it
now:

[Footnote 10: _An American Four-in-Hand in Britain_. New York, 1886.]

As we drove down the Pends I was standing on the front seat
of the coach with Provost Walls, when I heard the first toll
of the Abbey bell, tolled in honor of my mother and myself.
My knees sank from under me, the tears came rushing before I
knew it, and I turned round to tell the Provost that I must
give in. For a moment I felt as if I were about to faint.
Fortunately I saw that there was no crowd before us for a
little distance. I had time to regain control, and biting my
lips till they actually bled, I murmured to myself, "No
matter, keep cool, you must go on"; but never can there come
to my ears on earth, nor enter so deep into my soul, a sound
that shall haunt and subdue me with its sweet, gracious,
melting power as that did.

By that curfew bell I had been laid in my little couch to
sleep the sleep of childish innocence. Father and mother,
sometimes the one, sometimes the other, had told me as they
bent lovingly over me night after night, what that bell said
as it tolled. Many good words has that bell spoken to me
through their translations. No wrong thing did I do through
the day which that voice from all I knew of heaven and the
great Father there did not tell me kindly about ere I sank
to sleep, speaking the words so plainly that I knew that the
power that moved it had seen all and was not angry, never
angry, never, but so very, _very_ sorry. Nor is that bell
dumb to me to-day when I hear its voice. It still has its
message, and now it sounded to welcome back the exiled
mother and son under its precious care again.

The world has not within its power to devise, much less to
bestow upon us, such reward as that which the Abbey bell
gave when it tolled in our honor. But my brother Tom should
have been there also; this was the thought that came. He,
too, was beginning to know the wonders of that bell ere we
were away to the newer land.