same regularity which suggested something permanent in this weary world of
change. Among the minor details of the discussion there was one point in
particular which exercised the more active minds, but did not seem likely
ever to be settled. It was as to whether the expression given to the
announcement by the bells did not vary at different hours of the day and
night, or at different seasons of the year at all events; and opinion
differed as widely upon this point as we are told they did on one occasion
in some other place with regard to the question whether a fish weighed
heavier when it was dead than when it was alive--a question that would
certainly never have been settled either, had it not happened, after a
long time and much discussion, that someone accidentally weighed a fish,
when it was found there was no difference. The question of expression,
however, could not be decided in that way, expression being imponderable;
and it was pretty generally acknowledged that the truth could not be
ascertained and must therefore remain a matter of opinion. But that did
not stop the talk. Once, indeed, someone declared positively that the
state of a man's feelings at the moment would influence his perceptions,
and make the chimes sound glad when he was glad, and mournful when he was
melancholy; but nobody liked the solution.

Let them wrangle as they might, however, the citizens were proud of their
chime, and for a really good reason. It meant something! It was not a mere
jingle of bells, as most chimes are, but a phrase with a distinct idea in
it which they understood as we understand a foreign language when we can
read it without translating it. It might have puzzled them to put the
phrase into other words, but they had it off pat enough as it stood, and
they held it sacred, which is why they quarrelled about it, it being usual
for men to quarrel about what they hold sacred, as if the thing could only
be maintained by hot insistence--the things they hold sacred, that
is--although they cannot be sure of them, like the forms of a religion