The Bells Of Wallingford

NOTHING was permitted to disturb the serenity of our Sabbath day except for the clanging of the church bell high up in the belfry synchronizing with vigorous pulls by Captain Johnson on a dangling rope. Just who Captain Johnson was, who his progenitors were, or how he happened to be called Captain, I do not know. All that I can with assurance state is that whenever the Congregational church bell rang on Sunday morning, the Captain could always be seen in the vestry pulling a rope which writhed and twisted into serpentine folds and coils and at times almost disappeared through a small hole in the ceiling. The Captain never let it get entirely away although it was sometimes difficult to determine whether Captain Johnson was pulling the rope or the rope was pulling Captain Johnson. In any event, he always made a gallant fight every Sunday morning in the vestry. Just as all seemed lost, he would make a mighty tug on the all but disappearing rope and back it would come again. The Captain’s singlehanded encounters with his writhing rope were as thrilling as the legendary maneuvers of the Laocoon Group with their writhing serpents. In fact to little boys they were one of the compensations for going to church.

There is nothing more likely to cause a church bell to crack up than getting mixed in its theology but the theology of our bell was sound; that is to say, it was a Congregational bell. Its resonant voice rang out twice every Sunday morning. There was the early bell and the late bell. The early bell summoned all persons within the sound of its voice to abandon worldly pursuits and cajoled to church forthwith. It was evangelistic in its fervor; it pleaded deprecated, warned and cajoled. It worked itself into a fury of passionate and wild crescendo. It turned somersaults, cartwheels and handsprings. At times in mad caprice, it threatened to hurl itself from the belfry. It was difficult to associate staid and sober Captain Johnson with such a delirious and unaccountable bell. It must be remembered, however, that Captain Johnson had never been marked for his piety; he never went to Friday evening prayer meetings nor did he partake of the bread and wine on communion Sundays.

The late bell was tolled in well timed strokes; it indulged in no such exuberance of spirit as did the early bell; it was reproachful and condemnatory, far more in keeping with the character of Captain Johnson as we knew him in every day life. Each stroke was a solemn proclamation of what might be expected by folks who failed to repent of their sins and come to church.

In the belfry of another church barely two squares distant, at precisely the same minute, another bell began to cavort and go through convulsions of its own, all to the same intent and purpose. In fact, it aped and mimicked the Congregational bell but it was not nearly so sound in its theological conceptions. It lived in the belfry of the Baptist Church. It must have had a Captain Johnson or his equivalent of its own though who he was I never knew. I suspected that it might be Seward Ainsworth who was organist, choir leader, soloist, Sabbath School superintendent, Justice of the Peace and sundry other things.

One of the most irrational assumptions of the Baptist bell was that salvation depended upon complete submersion and that meant a breath taking sousing of the penitents by the minister in the frigid waters of Otter Creek. Church members and other spectators could sit on the opposite bank and witness the ceremony if they chose to do so and little boys, of course, always chose. It was a thrilling sight to see red bearded and upright Reverend Henry Archibald, stiff and solemn, lead shivering sinners out over slippery stones to where the waters ran swift and deep, plunge them beneath the surface, then lead them, coughing and choking, to shore, “washed,” as the Psalmist expressed it, “whiter than snow.”

All of these proceedings were, supposedly, in keeping with the doctrines of the Baptist bell; at least it can be said that the Baptist bell never kicked up any fuss on such occasions but remained serenely silent throughout it all. In other words it held its tongue and thereby set an example for humans to follow in cases of doctrinal differences of opinion. Whether the Baptist bell held its tongue in its cheek or elsewhere is not known, but in any event its tongue did not wag and that was a blessing. New Englanders know what a mischief-maker a wagging tongue can be.

The wise old Congregational bell knew that there was a screw loose in the Baptist bell’s thinking and therefore all the more loudly proclaimed the virtue of sprinkling as a means of accomplishing the mutual purpose. The debate waxed furious and even became acrimonious at times. Ejaculations, epithets, accusations, innuendos, iterations and re-iterations were bandied back and forth. It was a conglomeration of the doctrines of Calvin, Knox and Wesley with a somber Johnathan Edwards undertone.

There was a Catholic church in Wallingford but having no bell of its own, it could not take part in the argument; the best that the Catholic church could do under the circumstances was to lay low and grind its teeth, if it had any. What it would have said had it not been speechless is open to conjecture. it is however fair to assume that it would never have yielded its air rights to its clamorous neighbors.

Whatever else may have been claimed for the Wallingford church bells, and there was much in their favor, it can hardly be contended that they exercised a unifying influence in the community. It might have been better if they had gotten together and talked things over instead of getting so excited. Possibly they might have compromised, each admitting, for the time being, that there were three available and well blazed trails to the Kingdom.

However the church bells were not always contentious. On sad occasions when villagers had passed to the mystic beyond, no jargon of argumentative bells announced the fact. Each bell did so in its own distinctive and obstinate way. The consensus was that whether the passing neighbor had been in life theologically right or theologically wrong, sound or unsound, in death his remains were entitled to quiet and peaceful interment and it was then too late to do anything about the matter anyway. So it was left to the church bells to herald the passing of their respective members; the other bell remaining in reverential silence. On such occasions one stroke was tolled for each year of the life of the deceased. At the first solemn stroke villagers threw down their work whatever it happened to be. Housewives, doing their washing, withdrew their hands from foaming suds, gave them a hasty wipe on towel or apron, and, with bated breath, ejaculated, “Some one’s dead!” Then began the count, one, two, three, and as the approximate age of every villager was known, it was not difficult for the church bell to convey its message. As the count of the strokes continued, one heard such remarks as, “Thank God, it isn’t Millie!” I can see grandmother in memory as she stood one day on our back porch counting the lugubrious strokes—”eighty eight, eighty nine, ninety!” then turning to grand father and saying, “It’s Mr. Lovett, Pa; he has gone to his eternal rest; well, he lived a long and good life; been ailing for a long time; he’s deserving of a rest.” No theological distinctions marked the resting places in the cemetery, Congregational family lots and Baptist family lots were interspersed among each other.

Being more or less mixed in my theological conceptions, I used at times on Sunday evenings, while sitting on the threshold of the kitchen door, eating my usual Sunday evening repast of bread and milk, hold clandestine trysts with the notoriously unsound Baptist bell. It was within range of my vision and we became quite friendly. As the Baptist bell went through its contortions in supreme effort to bring the hard shell Baptists out to Sunday evening meeting, the swallows, who didn’t believe in such demonstrations, flew madly about until quiet was restored and they could return to their homes in the belfry.

There were other bells; in fact, Wallingford was a village of bells, the tintinnabulations of which were heard far and wide. There was the shop bell and the school bell. In winter after a carpet of snowy white had spread itself over hills, roads and roof tops, there were tinkling sleigh bells without number.

None of these last named bells were sectarian in character, nor were they in any sense of the word devisive. The shop bell summoned the workers of the village to come from their various homes to the shop, there to earn their daily bread midst the din of heavy trip hammers and clanging steel. The workers included Irish, French-Canadians and Americans. None was very rich; none destitute.

The school bell summoned all the young folks; Sons and daughters of Congregationalists, Catholics and Baptists. In the public school they were all served alike under the benign influence of teachers consecrated to their tasks. They were as one family the members of which were worthy of the friendship and esteem one of the other.

The bells of Wallingford threw aside all differences on occasions when homes, stores or shops got on fire during the night. There being no linguistic difficulties, they all set up the same cry, “Wake up! There is a fire; bring along your water pails,” and again, on the night preceding the Fourth of July, either of the two church bells which happened not to be guarded by a vigilant sexton, was likely to break the silence of the night with an infernal din which was not so much a celebration of the Declaration of Independence as it was an announcement of the fact that mischievous boys had eluded the watchfulness of parents and were for the time being in possession of the town.

It was even rumored at times that the grave and solemn sextons of the churches were not always particularly averse to such out breaks of lawlessness but rather contrived to egg them on. How ever in one instance it is reported that the boys climbed into the belfry, attached a stout piece of string to the clapper of the bell and threw the other end of the string into the shrubbery, thus making it possible to ring the bell from the outside. On that occasion, the sexton, thinking to make a capture of the offenders, climbed stealthily up into the belfry but watchful boys followed, locked the door of the stairway, leaving the sleuth to enjoy the jubilant music of the bells during the remainder of the night.

To hungry boys, the most welcome of all was the dinner bell which, in the strong hands of mother or the hired girl, announced the fact that savory and satisfying food had been placed piping hot on the dining room table and was ready for business. Where is there a well organized and healthy boy who will fail to throw down bat or ball or even abandon his intended slide to second or third base when he hears the sweet voice of his own dinner bell?

There was no need of announcement of what the feast was to be; it announced itself the moment the kitchen door was thrown open. It couldn’t have been more intelligible if the corned beef, salt pork, cabbage, turnips, beets and onions had thrust their heads up out of the boiling pot and yelled in chorus, “New England boiled dinner for you, my boy. Pull up your chair and prepare to get busy. Don’t mind about washing your face; you washed your face yesterday. What matter if you do track the kitchen and dining- room floors a bit, it’s good, clean mud and what’s a mop for any how? Throw your hat at the nail on the wood-shed door and we will do what we can to please you.”

Even if the steamed cornmeal pudding had thrust its head from beneath its own popping cover and yelled, “Don’t forget me, my boy, I am coming along later,” it would have added nothing to the convincing appeal of olfactory nerve aroused by the gods of hunger. If one wants to catch a bird, put salt on its tail; if one wants to catch a boy, tickle his olfactory nerve.

There were also bells perched on the tops of locomotives; they gave warning to village folks gathered at the station for the purpose of boarding cars or seeing friends off on journeys to Rutland, nine long miles distant. One shudders to think how many fathers, mothers, sisters and brothers would have been run down by the cruel, ruthless iron wheels had it not been for the warning voice of the locomotive bell rung so lustily by the fireman sitting opposite his majesty, the locomotive engineer, who in regal pomp bore the responsibility for the preservation of the lives of scores of passengers living along the line. The throne of the Caesars could not have compared in august splendor with the cab of the locomotive familiarly known as “Green Mountain Boy.” His majesty the loco motive engineer bore his honors without undue pride considering his exalted position. He sometimes even deigned to look down and wink at adoring little boys, who had resolved to rise some day to the same exalted heights and inspire little boys of coming generations.

In the summertime, cowbells on the necks of leaders served to keep the herds together in mountain pasturelands, and sometimes even the tinkle of sheep bells was heard.

The most joyous of all bells in Wallingford were without doubt the sleigh bells. How they rang out! especially after the first snow fall in late autumn. Downy flakes falling silently in the night had carpeted the earth in pure white. What happy surprise to youngsters, who, jumping from warm featherbeds, tumbled into their clothes and glanced out of the windows on sights unknown. No farmer or villager who had a horse was too poor to own sleigh bells. Their joyous clamor announced that the time for winter sports had come. There would be sleigh rides without number and coasting on the hills.

There would be snow men to be fashioned with pipes in their mouths. There would be snow houses to be lived in and snow forts to be assaulted with flying missiles made of snow. There would be moon light sleigh rides and a world of romance for giggling boys and girls, snuggled beneath buffalo robes in clean crisp yellow straw spread thick on the bottoms of sleds drawn by high stepping greys, blacks or bays, with their belts of jingling bells. Even the horses seemed to sense the spirit of it and to welcome the transformation from dull brown to crystal white.

Yes, the jolliest of all bells were the dancing, rollicking sleigh bells of winter. Would once again I might experience the ecstatic joys of boyhood as they sprang up in my heart on the mornings of late autumn after the first fall of snow.

Hear the sledges with the bells, Silver bells!

What a world of merriment their melody foretells!

How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle

In the icy air of night!

While the stars that over sprinkle all the Heavens

seem to twinkle with a crystaline delight;

Keeping time, time, time in a sort of Runic rhyme,

To the tintinabulation that so musically wells

From the bells, bells, bells, bells

Bells, bells, bells

From the jingling and the tinkling of the

Bells, bells, bells.

 Edgar Allen Poe