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.