"Please, mother," pleaded the child, "if you forgive me this time I shall always be good because I want to, both for your sake and because I wish to be good. I am very much ashamed of myself." [Illustration: ELEANOR HOWARD.] Polly threw her arms around the good mother and hugged her. From that hour, they became friends. And sitting down on the grass the good woman explained the working of the tower. "That spire," she said, "reaches to heaven and has millions and millions of disks on its sides. These instruments are the sound-receivers of the whole world. Every sound is magnified and made sweeter by the condensers. Every prayer, every song, and every musical note is caught here and made clearer and stronger. Every good deed done is praised and every kind word reechoed." "Did you say," inquired the girl, "that every angry word or wicked prayer is retold on these bells? That would be terrible!" Polly was thinking of her own naughty thoughts. "Yes, my dear," answered the woman, "everything is heard here. But the strange thing about the bells is that a wicked thing is a thousand times reduced. These disks repeat everything good that is said and throw it back to the poor old world to brighten the speaker and the world itself. Good thoughts, too, are reflected and sent to earth again to gladden human beings. Wicked things are detected and examined, but only good things are sent to earth again." Then the woman led the children a short distance from the tower and asked them to listen. "Oh! Oh!" screamed Polly, "I heard a bad word." "Yes," explained the woman, "you heard that word before it reached the bells; but if you were to listen, it would be so changed that you would not recognize it. But let us go and see other things about the great steeple." She led them to the base of the building and showed them a queer-looking register that worked like a modern adding machine. A ribbon continually ran out of one end and was rolled on a big spool. "This," explained the guide, "records every deed done by everybody in the world. It is connected with the disks and never gets out of tune." They examined the machine, and saw millions and millions of spools slowly rolling as the minutes passed. There was a spool for each individual that ever lived on earth. At every one's death his spool was laid away in the great tower above. "Isn't it wonderful?" exclaimed Polly. "I should like to see my spool, dear mother." The woman took the girl to the back of the machine and showed her her own life-spool. The ribbon was very small, but the guide detached it and gave it to the child to read. As she unwound it, she read: "I wish that God would punish all the wicked people I know!" Polly dropped the spool and hid her face: these were her own words.