Every evening after sunset, when the most wonderful soft light is in the sky and it is very still everywhere, the old bell in the steeple chimes out over the village and the fields around. No one quite knows what the evening bell sings, but the tone is so beautiful that everyone stands still and listens.

Ever since the oldest grandfather can remember, the dear bell has sung at evening and everyone has listened, and listened, for the message.

A great many people said there was really no message at all, and one very learned man wrote a whole book to show that the song of the evening bell was nothing but the clanging of brass and iron; and almost everyone who read it believed it. But there were many who were not wise enough to read, so they listened to the sweet tone just as lovingly as they had listened when they were little children.

Sometimes when the sweet song pealed out, the old shoemaker would forget and leave his thread half drawn, and while he listened a wonderful smiling light shone in his face. But whenever the little grandson asked him what the bell said to him, the old man only shook his head and pulled the stitch through and sewed on and on, until there was not any more light; and for this reason the little boy began to think that the bell was singing something about work. He thought of it very often when he sat on his grandfather's step listening to the song and watching the people. Sometimes those who had read the learned book spoke together and laughed quite loudly, to show that they were not paying any attention to the bell; and there were others who seemed not to hear it at all. But there were some who listened just as the old grandfather had listened, and many who stopped and bowed their heads and stood quite still for a long, long while. But the strangest was, that no one ever could tell the other what the bell had sung to him. It was really a very deep mystery.

Now there was a painter who had such loving eyes that even when he looked on homely, lowly things, he saw wonder that no one else could see. He loved all the sweet mysteries that are in the world, and he loved the bell's song; he wondered about it just as the little boy had done.

One evening, I think, he went alone beyond the village and through the wide brown fields; he saw the light in the sky, and the birds going home, and the steeple far off. It was all very still and wonderful, and as he looked away on every side, thinking many holy thoughts, he saw a man and a woman working together in the dim light. They were digging potatoes; there was a wheelbarrow beside them, and a basket. Sometimes they moved about slowly, or stooped with their hands in the brown earth. And while they worked, the sound of the evening bell came faintly to them. When they heard it they rose up. The mother folded her hands on her breast and said the words of a prayer, and thought of her little ones. The father just held his hat in his hand and looked down at their work. And the painter forgot all the wonder of the sky and the wide field as he looked at them, for there was a deeper mystery. And it was plain to him.

But the man and the woman stood there listening; they did not know that the bell was singing to them of their very own work, of every loving service and lowly task of the day.

The bell sang on and on, and the peace of the song seemed to fill the whole day.Contents

Come, let us with the children live.

—Friedrich Froebel