A VILLAGE church was presented with a chime of bells, which were rung for the first time on a bright spring morning. The country-people were delighted with the unusual sounds, but there was one class of hearers displeased. These were the birds. Heretofore they had made all the music for the fields and hills, and the sound of the bells seemed to them an invasion of their rights. They met together in an evergreen hedge to talk over the matter.

Said the robin:

“My notes can no longer be heard.”

The bluebird said:

“I might as well have no voice at all.”

The wrens and swallows whose nests were in the church-tower declared they were driven out of house and home. The meeting appointed the oriole and the dove to wait on the pastor and lay their grievance before him.

The next morning, as the good man was at work in his garden, the two appeared in a pear tree near by.

“Good-morning, sir,” said the oriole.

“Good-morning, my feathered friend,” replied the pastor. “When did you arrive from the South?”

“Only a few days ago, but it was to find a sad change here.”

“Pray, what may it be? Not gunners already, nor boys after your nests?”

“Not these, but the bells in your church-tower.”

“Why, do not they please you?”

“No, indeed! and all the birds have sent us to protest against them. We and our forefathers have enlivened these hills with our songs time out of mind, and we believe the air, for music, belongs to us still. And we have come to give you your choice: Take down the bells, or we will be still and never sing for you again.”

The pastor was dumb with astonishment as the birds flew away. He held the hoe in his hand full five minutes without moving, deep in thought concerning the strange interview. But of course submission to so unreasonable a demand was not to be thought of, and the next Sunday morning the bells again sent forth their glad peal. The ringers were in earnest, and their chimes floated far over hill and vale. But for the rest of the sacred day, and[461]
[462] for full twenty-four hours afterward, not a bird uttered a note. They could be seen flitting through the bushes and the trees, but all was perfectly still.

“How I miss their sweet voices!” said the pastor to his wife. “Though the leaves are unfolding and the rosebuds are swelling, without the birds’ voices it does not seem like spring.”

“Never fear,” replied his wife; “it will all come right again.”

Now, the birds, in resolving not to sing, had forgotten that, besides disobliging the people, they might inconvenience themselves. The spring was the season for their songs, and they soon found this out. After being silent for two whole days, the robin said:

“I really cannot keep still any longer. I will fly down to the other end of the woods, beyond the creek, where nobody can hear me, and sing a little song to myself.”

But great was his surprise, on reaching the woods, to hear the oriole, who had come there for the same purpose a little while before him. And presently the cuckoo, and a number of other birds, joined them at the place.

“What does this mean?” they said, looking round at each other.

“It is not hard to guess,” said the wren. “I don’t doubt we have all gone through the same experience. To confess the truth, I believe we are spiting ourselves more than anybody else.”

“Well, now,” said the owl, who spent his days asleep in that dark woods, but had been waked up by the voices, “let us reconsider our vote. Long ago, in the days of our fathers, these hills remained the same from age to age; but now the world has changed, and we must put up with it. The bells are not so bad as they might be, after all. They don’t ring all the time, and though they are not as musical as your songs, or as my hoot, yet they are not altogether without harmony. I move it be left to each bird to do as he chooses.”

The vote was taken and carried, and the birds flew off merrily; but the owl went to sleep again.

The next morning, as the pastor and his wife were in their garden tending their flower-beds, and both longing for the songs of the birds, suddenly the voice of the oriole was heard in the pear tree. He was leaping from branch to branch, singing as if to make up for lost time and as though he could not utter the notes fast enough.

“Here I am!” he said to the pastor. “We have thought the matter over and concluded to let the bells ring.”

The pastor looked up delighted, and his wife shared his joy.

“Did I not tell you,” she cried, “that it would all come right? For when no harm is intended and both sides mean to be fair, though they may sometimes get crooked, they are pretty sure to come straight again.”