The Heavenly Twins

The Heavenly Twins, by Madame
Sarah Grand

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Title: The Heavenly Twins
Author: Madame Sarah Grand
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THE HEAVENLY TWINS
BY MADAME SARAH GRAND AUTHOR OF "IDEALA," ETC.
ETC.
"They call us the Heavenly Twins." "What, signs of the Zodiac?" said
the Tenor. "No; signs of the times," said the Boy.
The time is racked with birth-pangs; every hour Brings forth some
gasping truth, and truth new-born Looks a misshapen and untimely
growth, The terror of the household and its shame, A monster coiling in
its nurse's lap That some would strangle, some would starve; But still it
breathes, and passed from hand to hand, And suckled at a hundred
half-clad breasts Comes slowly to its stature and its form, Calms the
rough ridges of its dragon scales, Changes to shining locks its snaky
hair, And moves transfigured into Angel guise, Welcomed by all that
cursed its hour of birth, And folded in the same encircling arms That
cast it like a serpent from their hold!
--Oliver Wendell Holmes.

PROEM.
Mendelssohn's "Elijah." [Illustration: (musical notation); lyrics: He,
watch-ing o-ver Is--ra--el, slumbers not, nor sleeps.]
From the high Cathedral tower the solemn assurance floated forth to be
a warning, or a promise, according to the mental state of those whose
ears it filled; and the mind, familiar with the phrase, continued it
involuntarily, carrying the running accompaniment, as well as the
words and the melody, on to the end. After the last reverberation of the
last stroke of every hour had died away, and just when expectation had
been succeeded by the sense of silence, they rang it out by day and
night--the bells--and the four winds of heaven by day and night spread
it abroad over the great wicked city, and over the fair flat country, by
many a tiny township and peaceful farmstead and scattered hamlet, on,
on, it was said, to the sea--to the sea, which was twenty miles away!
But there were many who doubted this; though good men and true, who
knew the music well, declared they had heard it, every note distinct, on
summer evenings when they sat alone on the beach and the waves were
still; and it sounded then, they said, like the voice of a tenor who sings
to himself softly in murmurous monotones. And some thought this
must be true, because those who said it knew the music well, but others
maintained that it could not be true just for that very reason; while
others again, although they confessed that they knew nothing of the
distance sound may travel under special circumstances, ventured,
nevertheless, to assert that the chime the people heard on those
occasions was ringing in their own hearts; and, indeed, it would have
been strange if those in whose mother's ears it had rung before they
were born, who knew it for one of their first sensations, and felt it to be,
like a blood relation, a part of themselves, though having a separate
existence, had not carried the memory of it with them wherever they
went, ready to respond at any moment, like sensitive chords vibrating
to a touch.
But everything in the world that is worth a thought becomes food for
controversy sooner or later, and the chime was no exception to the rule.
Differences of opinion regarding it had always been numerous and

extreme, and it was amusing to listen to the wordy warfare which was
continually being waged upon the subject.
There were people living immediately beneath it who wished it far
enough, they said, but they used to boast about it