The Heavenly Twins | Page 5

said at last.
"Ah niver 'eerd tell on 'im," the collier answered slowly.
"Hast 'niver 'eerd tell on Christ?" the old man asked in measured
machine-like tones. "I thowt ivery one know'd on 'im. Why, what
religion are you?"
"Well, me feyther's a Liberal--leastways 'im as brought me up," was the
passionless rejoinder, slowly spoken; "but ah doan't know no one o' the
name o' Christ, an', what's more, ah's sure 'e doan't work down our
way,"-- with which he sauntered forward with his hands in his trowser
pockets, and sat in the bow; and the old man steered on as before.
How like a mind is to a river! both may be pure and transparent and
lovable, and strong to support and admirable; each may mirror the
beauties of earth and sky, and still have a wonderful beauty of its own
to delight us; both are always moving onward, bound irresistibly to be
absorbed in a great ocean mystery, to be swept away irreclaimably,
without hope of return, but leaving memories of themselves in good or
evil wrought by them; and both are pure at the outset, but can be
contaminated, when they in turn contaminate; and, being perverted in
their use, become accursed, and curse again with all the more effect
because the province of each was to bless.
The collier lad in the bow of the barge felt something of the fascination
of the river that day. He saw it sparkle in the sunshine, he heard it

ripple along its banks, he felt the slow and dreamy motion of the boat it
bore; and his mind was filled with unaccustomed thought, and a strange
yearning which he did not understand. There was something singularly
attractive about the lad, although his clothes were tattered, his golden
hair and delicate skin were begrimed, his great bright eyes had no
intelligent expression in them, and there was that discontented
undisciplined look about his mouth which is common to uneducated
men. He had no human knowledge, but he had capacity, and he had
music, the divine gift, in his soul, and the voice of an angel to utter it.
What passed through his dim consciousness in the interval which
followed his last remark, no one will ever know; but the chime had
once more sounded; and, suddenly, as he sat there, he took up the strain,
and sang it--and the labourers in the fields, and the loiterers by the river,
and the ladies in their gardens, even the very cattle in the meadows,
looked up and listened, wondering, while he varied the simple melody,
as singers can, finding new meaning in the message, and filling the
summer silence with perfect raptures of ecstatic sound.
It was a voice to gladden the hearts of men, and one who heard it knew
this, and followed the barge, and took the lad and had him taught, so
that in after days the world was ready to fall at his feet and worship the
gift.
And so time passed. Change followed change, but the chime was
immutable. And always, whatever came, it rang out calmly over the
beautiful old city of Morningquest, and entered into it, and was part of
the life of it, mixing itself impartially with the good and evil; with all
the sin and suffering, the pitiful pettiness, the indifference, the cruelty,
and every form of misery-begetting vice, as much as with the purity
above reproach, the charity, the self-sacrifice, the unswerving truth, the
patient endurance, and courage not to be daunted, which are in every
city--mixing itself with these as the light and air of heaven do, and with
effects doubtless as unexpected and as fine; and ready also to be a help
to the helpless, a guide to the rash and straying, a comfort to the
comfortless, a reproach to the reckless, and a warning to the wicked.
Perhaps an ambitious stranger, passing through the city, would hear the

chime, and pause to listen, and in the pause a flash of recollection
would show him the weary way he had gone, the disappointments
which were the inevitable accompaniments of even his most brilliant
successes in the years of toil that had been his since he made the world
his idol and swerved from the Higher Life; and then he would ask
himself the good of it all, and finding that there was no good, he would
go his way, cherishing the new impression, and asking of all things,
"Is it too late now?"
And perhaps at the same moment a lady rolling past in her carriage
would say, "How sweet!" or the beauty of the bells might win some
other thoughtless tribute from her, if she heard the chime at all; but
probably she never heard it, because the accustomed tones were