ions of the drum; for what is a bell but a metal drum
with one end left open and the drum stick hung inside?

Strange to say, as showing the marvellous potency of primeval
instincts, bells placed in church towers were supposed to
have much of the supernatural power that the savage in his
wilderness ascribed to the drum. We all know something of the
bell legends of the Middle Ages, how the tolling of a bell was
supposed to clear the air of the plague, to calm the storm, and
to shed a blessing on all who heard it. And this superstition
was to a certain extent ratified by the religious ceremonies
attending the casting of church bells and the inscriptions
moulded in them. For instance, the mid-day bell of Strasburg,
taken down during the French Revolution, bore the motto

"I am the voice of life."

Another one in Strasburg:

"I ring out the bad, ring in the good."

Others read

"My voice on high dispels the storm."

"I am called Ave Maria
I drive away storms."

"I who call to thee am the Rose of the World and am called
Ave Maria."

The Egyptian _sistrum_, which in Roman times played an
important role in the worship of Isis, was shaped somewhat
like a tennis racquet, with four wire strings on which rattles
were strung. The sound of it must have been akin to that of our
modern tambourine, and it served much the same purpose as the
primitive drum, namely, to drive away Typhon or Set, the god
of evil. Dead kings were called "Osiris" when placed in their
tombs, and _sistri_ put with them in order to drive away Set.

Beside bells and rattles we must include all instruments of the
tambourine and gong species in the drum category. While there
are many different forms of the same instrument, there are
evidences of their all having at some time served the same
purpose, even down to that strange instrument about which
Du Chaillu tells us in his "Equatorial Africa", a bell of
leopard skin, with a clapper of fur, which was rung by the
wizard doctor when entering a hut where someone was ill or
dying. The leopard skin and fur clapper seem to have been
devised to make no noise, so as not to anger the demon that
was to be cast out. This reminds us strangely of the custom of
ringing a bell as the priest goes to administer the last rites.

It is said that first impressions are the strongest and most
lasting; certain it is that humanity, through all its social and
racial evolutions, has retained r