“I dare say you are right,” said he, after a little pause. “But like many other people, poet Cowper did not think of the church bells except in regard to their secondary function of summoning people to the sacred precincts. He probably never knew that the original use of the bells was to scare away the Evil One. It was only when they found out that he had never any temptation to enter a church, that the authorities turned their devil-scaring bells to the summoning of the worshippers, and they have kept up the foolish practice ever since.” “Why foolish?” asked Dorothy quite affably. “You don't consider it foolish to ring a bell to go to dinner, and why should you think it so in the matter of going to church?” “My dear creature, you don't keep ringing your dinner bell for half an hour, with an extra five minutes for the cook.” “No,” said she quickly. “And why not? Because people don't need any urging to come to dinner, but they require a good deal to go to church, and then they don't go.” “There's something in that,” said he. “Anyhow they've been ringing those summoning bells so long that I'm sure they will go on with them until all the churches are turned into school-houses.” “And then there will be a passing-bell rung for the passing of the churches themselves--I suppose the origin of the passing-bell was the necessity to scare away the devil at the supreme moment,” remarked Heywood. “Undoubtedly it was,” said Friswell. “The practice exists among many of those races that are still savage enough to believe in the devil--a good handmade tom-tom does the business quite effectually, I've heard.” “Do you know, my dear Friswell, I think that when you sit down with us in our Garden of Peace, the conversation usually takes the form of the dialogue in _Magnall's Questions_ or the _Child's Guide_ or _Joyce's Science_. You are so full of promiscuous information which you cannot hide?” He roared in laughter, and we all joined in. “You have just said what my wife says to me daily,” said he. “I'll try to repress myself in future.” “Don't try to do anything of the sort,” cried Dorothy. “You never cease to be interesting, no matter how erudite you are.” “What I can't understand is, how he has escaped assassination all these years,” remarked Heywood. “I think the time is coming when whoso slayeth Friswell will think that he doeth God's service. Just think all of you of the mental state of the man who fails to see that, however heathenish may be the practice of church-bell-ringing, the fact that it has brought into existence some of the most beautiful buildings in the world makes the world its debtor for evermore!”