the people heard on those occasions was ringing in their own hearts; and,
indeed, it would have been strange if those in whose mother's ears it had
rung before they were born, who knew it for one of their first sensations,
and felt it to be, like a blood relation, a part of themselves, though
having a separate existence, had not carried the memory of it with them
wherever they went, ready to respond at any moment, like sensitive chords
vibrating to a touch.

But everything in the world that is worth a thought becomes food for
controversy sooner or later, and the chime was no exception to the rule.
Differences of opinion regarding it had always been numerous and extreme,
and it was amusing to listen to the wordy warfare which was continually
being waged upon the subject.

There were people living immediately beneath it who wished it far enough,
they said, but they used to boast about it nevertheless when they went to
other places--just as they did about their troublesome children, whom they
declared, in like manner, that they expected to be the death of them when
they and their worrying ways were within range of criticism. It was a
flagrant instance of the narrowness of small humanity which judges people
and things, not on their own merits, but with regard to their effect upon
itself; a circumstance being praised to-day because importance is to be
derived from _its_ importance, and blamed to-morrow because a bilious
attack makes thought on any subject irritating.

Other people liked the idea of the chime, but were not content with its
arrangement; if it had been set in another way, you know, it would have be
so different, they asserted, with as much emphasis as if there were wisdom
in the words. And some said it would have been more effective if it had
not rung so regularly, and some maintained that it owed its power to that