“Is there any boy left in Boston to whose ears the Christ Church chimes sound as they did to mine? Some travelled persons in Litchfield had informed me that the churches in Boston were so thick that the bells on Sunday morning would almost play a tune. The first Sunday morning after the family took possession of the house in Sheafe Street, being in the back-yard, I heard in a wondrous manner the tune of ‘Greenville,’ played on bells! The whole air was full of ‘Greenville.’ “I was fully persuaded that this was the thing predicted, and that this tune simply fell into place among the vast number of bell-strokes. Too young to analyze or reason upon the matter, I listened with a pleasure and amazement which I fear nothing will ever give me again till I hear the bells ring out wondrous things in the New Jerusalem. Blessed city! in which dwelt so divine a spirit of harmony that some airy hand governed the widely scattered belfries, and taught the notes which each bell carelessly struck to come together in time and tune, and march through the air in harmony. And when, after a few minutes, the tune changed and ‘St. Martyn’s’ came sadly and slowly through the air, I could contain myself no longer, but rushed, red and eager, to bring out ‘Charles,’ the inseparable companion of all my marvels, who opened his great eyes with a look of amazement as utter and implicit as if he had been a young devotee witnessing his first miracle. I expounded to him the cause, taking for text the reports which had been made to me while yet in the country. Alas for marvels! The cook, overhearing, laughed us out of countenance, and explained that it was a chime of bells, and also what a chime was. Of course we were wiser and less happy. But never, in forty years, has that _chime_ of bells sounded in my ears without bringing back, for a second, the first electric shock of wonder and pleasure. “Next to Boston bells were Boston ships. Here first we beheld a ship! We shall never again see anything that will so profoundly affect our imagination. We stood and gazed upon the ship, and smelt the sea-air, and looked far out along the water to the horizon, and all that we had ever read of buccaneers, of naval battles, of fleets of merchantmen, of explorations into strange seas, among rare and curious things, rose up in a cloud of mixed and changing fancies, until we scarcely knew whether we were in the body or out. How many hours have we asked and wanted no better joy than to sit at the end of the wharf, or on the deck of some newly-come ship, and rock and ride on the stream of our own unconscious imagination! We went to school in Boston Harbor.