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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75219 ***
+
+
+
+
+
+  Transcriber’s Note
+  Italic text displayed as: _italic_
+
+
+
+
+  COPYRIGHT, 1924, BY AGNES REPPLIER
+
+  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
+
+  The Riverside Press
+  CAMBRIDGE · MASSACHUSETTS
+  PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.
+
+
+
+
+  THE PROMISE OF THE BELL
+  Christmas in Philadelphia
+
+  By
+
+  Agnes Repplier
+
+  With Illustrations by
+
+  John Wolcott Adams
+
+  [Illustration: Bell]
+
+  BOSTON AND NEW YORK
+  HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
+  The Riverside Press Cambridge
+  1924
+
+[Illustration:
+
+  JWA
+
+THE OLD TOWER OF INDEPENDENCE HALL WHERE RANG THE LIBERTY BELL]
+
+
+
+
+THE
+
+PROMISE OF THE BELL
+
+Christmas in Philadelphia
+
+
+When from the wooden steeple of the Philadelphia State House (the
+Nation’s birthplace, and the most sacred spot on American soil) the
+Liberty Bell rang out its message of freedom “throughout the land,” it
+did more than proclaim the Declaration of Independence, and it did more
+than summon the colonists to defend that independence with their lives.
+It promised them in a beautiful and borrowed phrase the reward of their
+valour. It affirmed their inalienable right to “life, liberty, and the
+pursuit of happiness”; thus linking with bare existence two things
+which give it worth, thus striving to ennoble and embellish the length
+of years which lie between man’s cradle and his grave.
+
+Never was phrase more profoundly English or more profoundly Greek in
+its rational conception of values. It means a vast deal more than the
+privilege of casting a ballot, which privilege has been always praised
+and glorified beyond its deserts. “The liberty to discover and pursue
+a natural happiness,” says Santayana, “the liberty to grow wise, and
+live in friendship with the gods and with one another, was the liberty
+vindicated by the martyrdom of Thermopylæ, and by the victory of
+Salamis.” It is also the liberty which England has always prized and
+cherished, and which has promoted the thoroughly English qualities of
+“solidity and sense, independence of judgment, and idiosyncrasy of
+temperament.” To the colonists it opened a fair vista, a widening of
+their somewhat restricted horizon, a very definite and shining goal,
+well worth their resolute endeavour.
+
+When on the 23d of October, 1781, three hours before sunrise, a
+watchman called through the quiet streets of Philadelphia, “Past three
+o’clock, and Lord Cornwallis is taken,” the city awoke to a refreshing
+sense of safety and exhilaration. The war was not over; but victory was
+assured, and, with it, life and liberty. There remained the pursuit
+of happiness, and it was undertaken in good faith, and without undue
+delay. A sober and sedate community, kept in order by Quaker dominance,
+Philadelphians had always shown a singular capacity for enjoying
+themselves when they had the chance. They had danced twelve hours at
+the Mischianza,—a notable achievement. They had promoted horse-racing,
+condoned bull-baiting, and had been “decently drunk” from time to time
+at punch parties on the river. Now, deeming pleasure to be one approach
+to happiness, they opened the old Southwark theatre, which had led a
+life of sore vicissitudes, rechristened it cautiously the Academy of
+Polite Science, and gave a performance of Beaumarchais’s “Eugénie,” in
+honour of Washington, who graced the occasion with his presence. He
+was escorted to his box by attendants bearing wax candles in silver
+candlesticks, a deferential courtesy which made him distinctly and
+desirably visible to the audience in the dimly lit theatre.
+
+[Illustration: Soldier]
+
+Nothing in the way of entertainment came amiss to people whose hearts
+were at ease, and who were unspoiled by wealth or poverty. They went to
+Washington’s rigidly formal receptions. They danced as gaily, if not as
+long, at the Assembly balls, and at the less august tradesmen’s balls,
+as they had danced at the Mischianza and at the Fête du Dauphin. They
+dined well with such hosts as Robert Morris and William Bingham. They
+opened hospitable doors to strangers, who sometimes thought them dull;
+“the men grave, the women serious,” wrote Brissot de Warville in 1788.
+They feasted on Christmas Day, and they built bonfires on the Fourth of
+July. They rode to hounds. They began the long career of parades and
+processions which have always been dear to the city’s heart, and which
+the famous New Year Mummers have by now carried to the wonder point of
+gaiety, brilliancy, and burlesque.
+
+Eating and drinking were the fundamentals of enjoyment in the Quaker
+town, as they have been in all cities and in all ages of the world. But
+it was eating and drinking relished “as the sane and exhilarating basis
+of everything else”; and its most precious asset was companionship.
+When the Chevalier de Luzerne drank twelve cups of tea during the
+course of a winter afternoon call upon Mrs. Robert Morris, it was not
+because he doted on the beverage. No Frenchman has ever shared Dr.
+Johnson’s passion for tea. It was for love of the warm brightly lit
+rooms (warm rooms were no everyday indulgence in the era of open fires
+and Franklin stoves), and for love of his agreeable hostess, and of the
+animated and purposeful conversation. When John Adams “drank Madeira
+at a great rate” at the house of Chief Justice Chew, “and found no
+inconvenience in it,” it was not because he was a tippler; but because
+the generous wine quieted his anxious thoughts, and stimulated him to
+match mind with mind in the sympathetic society of his friends.
+
+Indeed, the drinking of Madeira was in the nature of a ceremonial rite.
+Even in the days of Penn no serious business was enacted, no compact
+sealed, no social gathering complete without this glass of wine.
+It signified good-fellowship and good-will; and when Penn returned
+to England for the last time, he left his little store of wine in
+the cellar of the Letitia House “for the use and entertainment of
+strangers,” which was a gracious thing to do.
+
+According to Dr. Weir Mitchell, Philadelphia was famous for its
+Madeira, which, being a temperamental wine, throve best in that serene
+atmosphere, and in the careful hands of Philadelphians. It was kept by
+preference in demijohns, and lived in moderate darkness under the roof,
+where it “accumulated virtues like a hermit.” For seventy years—the
+allotted years of man—it could be trusted to acquire merit. After that
+period, it began—like man—to deteriorate. When its owner was compelled
+by circumstance to house it in the cellar, it was suffered to rest and
+revive for a day or two in a warm room on its way to the dining-table;
+and the bottles were carried with infinite tenderness lest the wine be
+bruised in the transit. A crust of bread was placed by every glass to
+“clean the palate” before drinking. Elizabeth Robins Pennell tells us
+that, in her grandfather’s old-fashioned household, Madeira was the
+wine of ceremony, dedicated to the rites of hospitality, sacred to the
+stranger, to whom it was offered like the bread and salt of the Arab,
+and with whom it established (if the stranger knew anything about wine)
+a bond of sympathy and understanding.
+
+When in the winter of 1799 the directors of the Mutual or “Green Tree”
+Assurance Company were holding their annual dinner, word was brought
+them of Washington’s death. They charged their glasses, rose to their
+feet, and gravely drank to his memory. In the century and a quarter
+which have intervened since then, the rite has been yearly repeated.
+Even to-day, though the toast may no longer be drunk, the diners rise,
+the words are spoken, and the dead leader is honoured by the living.
+
+[Illustration: People eating at a table]
+
+How cordial, how dignified, how intelligent was this hospitality
+practised by men who were pursuing happiness along tranquil and
+rational lines! How immaculately free from the grossness of Georgian
+drunkenness, and from the grossness of Victorian gluttony! It is true
+that boned turkey and terrapin were making their way to tables where
+wild ducks and venison had always been plentiful, and where dairy
+products, made perfect by practice, were admittedly the finest in the
+land. But it was companionship and conversation, “the liberty to grow
+wise and live in friendship with one another,” which citizens prized,
+and which strangers recognized and remembered. Philadelphia, said the
+poet Moore, was the only American city in which he felt tempted to
+linger. It was the silver talk, alternating with golden silence, which
+made the nights speed by when friend met friend, and the wreckage of
+years was forgotten.
+
+    “_And the men that were boys when I was a boy
+     Shall sit and drink with me._”
+
+The Wistar parties were born naturally into a world where social
+intercourse was pleasant and esteemed. First a few friends dropped
+casually in upon Dr. Caspar Wistar, and sat by his fire on winter
+nights. Then he asked a few more. By 1811 the custom was an established
+one, and every Saturday night Dr. Wistar entertained his guests,
+among them any foreigners of distinction who chanced to be visiting
+Philadelphia. His house at Fourth and Prune Streets was spacious; the
+supper he provided was simple and sufficient. In 1818 he died, and
+his friends wisely resolved to perpetuate his name by perpetuating
+his hospitality. A hundred years is a respectable age for any social
+observance to reach in the United States; but Philadelphians reckon
+such things by centuries. Their tenacity in clinging to old customs,
+and maintaining them unchanged, is a valiant and poignant protest
+against the ills done to their town by modernity.
+
+For more than any other American city, Philadelphia has suffered the
+loss of her comeliness, a comeliness that was very dear to those
+who first heard the promise of the Bell. “After our cares for the
+necessities of life are over,” said the wise Franklin, “we shall
+come to think of its embellishments.” In the pursuit of a rational
+happiness, Philadelphians devoted time, thought, and money to the
+embellishment of their daily lives. They had an unerring taste in
+architecture and decoration. Their portraits were painted by good
+artists, Peale and Stuart and Sully. Trim gardens lent brilliancy of
+colour to their handsome, sober homes. They made of “Faire Mount” hill
+a thing of beauty, a little spot of classic grace and charm, which
+artists loved, and politicians ruthlessly destroyed—perhaps because
+it was the only thing in the nature of an eminence to break the level
+surface on which Penn laid out his checkerboard town.
+
+To the casual visitor of to-day, Philadelphia seems an ugly and shabby
+city, set in the fields of Paradise. Surroundings of exceptional
+loveliness have lured the town-dweller from his narrow streets, from
+soot and grime and perpetual racket, to pursue happiness in the clean
+and composed life of the country. And as more and more citizens seek
+every year this method of escape, the abandoned city grows more and
+more downcast and forlorn. It is to be forever regretted that its
+oldest streets, lined with houses of unsurpassable dignity, should have
+degenerated into filthy slums, where an alien population violates every
+tradition of reticence and propriety. Christ Church, Gloria Dei, and
+Saint Peter’s still stand inviolate, keeping their dirty neighbours
+at arm’s length with green churchyards and cherished slips of lawn.
+Indeed, churchyards, which were once in disfavour, have come to be
+highly commended. They interpose their undesecrated neatness between
+many an ancient place of worship and its elbowing associates.
+
+To the visitor who is not casual, to a few careful observers like
+Mrs. Pennell and Christopher Morley, and to those Philadelphians who
+love her pavements better than turf, and her brick walls better than
+trees, Penn’s city has a charm which enterprise and immigrant are
+equally powerless to destroy. It is a beauty faded with years, and
+dimmed by neglect, and it lies hidden away in quiet nooks and corners;
+but none the less is it apparent to the eye of the artist and the
+antiquarian. The Bell, the joyous, old Liberty Bell, is, indeed, housed
+with appropriate splendour. It has been carried over the country in
+a series of triumphant processions, and many thousands of Americans
+have greeted it with reverence. But the deepening fissure in its side
+now calls imperatively for rest; and Independence Hall—a remarkably
+agreeable example of colonial architecture—is the Mecca of patriotic
+pilgrims. All the year round they come to look upon the room where the
+Declaration of Independence was signed, and upon the Bell which rang
+its message to the land.
+
+[Illustration: Fancy old-fashioned party]
+
+To-day that message rings the knell of the past, and the deathless
+promise of the future:
+
+    “_Tho’ much is taken, much abides._”
+
+Life, though it is beset by greater perils; liberty, though it is
+restricted by an excess of legislation; and the pursuit of happiness,
+though it is turned into new, and possibly nobler, channels. The old
+society “in which men looked up without envy or malice, and even found
+life richer from the thought that there were degrees of excellency and
+honour,” has been replaced by a society in which perpetual change has
+bred dissatisfaction and insecurity. But more clearly than before the
+note of a real Democracy, of a sense of comradeship, of a natural,
+cheerful, irresponsible interest in one another, has been struck
+in what was once the City of Brotherly Love. It gives to Christmas
+something which earlier Christmases never knew; a coming-together of
+people whose lives are, by force of circumstance, apart, a closing-in
+of circles which are commonly and necessarily remote.
+
+For a week before the feast, the great pioneer department store of
+America sets aside a half-hour in the morning and a half-hour at
+dusk for community singing of Christmas hymns and carols. The rush
+of business is suspended, the giant organ peals forth the familiar
+strains, and men, women, and children, crowded into every inch of
+available space, sing with all their might, “God Rest Ye Merry,
+Gentlemen,” “Come, All Ye Faithful,” and “While Shepherds Watch’d Their
+Flocks by Night.” Nobody claims the sounds they make are beautiful; but
+nobody denies they are inspiriting.
+
+    “_If unmelodious was the song,
+     It was a hearty note, and strong._”
+
+People who surge around counters to do their Christmas shopping are
+indifferent, not to say inimical, to one another; but people who stand
+shoulder to shoulder singing the same words are impelled by the force
+of crowd psychology to good feeling and mutual understanding.
+
+Charity is an old, old virtue, and Christmas has always been its
+sacred season; but it is not charity which now makes the householder
+put Christmas candles in his windows, to give the passer-by a sense
+of recognition and intimacy. It is not charity which rears the great
+municipal Christmas Tree for all the town to see, or provides the great
+municipal concert on Christmas Eve for all the town to hear—and join in
+if it pleases. It is not charity which lights the “Community Christmas
+Trees” on country roads, and leaves them shining softly in the darkness
+as a reminder of good-will. It is not charity which sends little groups
+of men and women, accompanied by a sober deaconess to sing carols in
+the few quiet streets which Philadelphia has preserved unspoiled. These
+singers ask for no recompense. They are forging a link in the bond
+of healthy human emotions. They are adding their share to the little
+intimacies of the world.
+
+“Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” “Inalienable rights” the
+Signers termed them, which yet have never been without assailants. What
+strange vicissitudes the Bell has witnessed, and what strange meanings
+have been read into its message! But its promise still holds good. If
+we never grow wise as the Greeks grew wise, if we never lay hold of
+the “natural happiness” which is the birthright of Englishmen, we may
+yet surpass Greece and England in the grace of friendship. It will
+be something different from friendship with our friends; it will be
+friendship with our neighbours. It will be—I hope—disunited from duty,
+and composed of simple, durable materials,—tolerance, good-nature, and
+a sweet reasonableness of approach. It will read a generous meaning
+into qualities which are common to all of us, displeasing to most of
+us, and intelligible only to the wide-eyed few who interpret the heart
+of humanity.
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75219 ***