Roundabout Papers - Penn State University

Roundabout PapersThe tune has been haunting me ever since, as tuneswill. You dress, eat, drink, walk and talk to yourself totheir tune: their inaudible jingle accompanies you allday: you read the sentences of the paper to their rhythm.I tried uncouthly to imitate the tune to the ladies ofthe family at breakfast, and they say it is “the shadowdance of Dinorah.” It may be so. I dimly remember thatmy body was once present during the performance ofthat opera, whilst my eyes were closed, and my intellectualfaculties dormant at the back of the box; howbeit,I have learned that shadow dance from hearing itpealing up ever so high in the air, at night, morn, noon.How pleasant to lie awake and listen to the cheerypeal! whilst the old city is asleep at midnight, or wakingup rosy at sunrise, or basking in noon, or swept bythe scudding rain which drives in gusts over the broadplaces, and the great shining river; or sparkling in snowwhich dresses up a hundred thousand masts, peaks, andtowers; or wrapped round with thunder-cloud canopies,before, which the white gables shine whiter; day andnight the kind little carillon plays its fantastic melodiesoverhead. The bells go on ringing. Quot vivos vocant,mortuos plangunt, fulgara frangunt; so on to the pastand future tenses, and for how many nights, days, andyears! Whilst the French were pitching their fulgara intoChasse’s citadel, the bells went on ringing quite cheerfully.Whilst the scaffolds were up and guarded by Alva’ssoldiery, and regiments of penitents, blue, black, andgray, poured out of churches and convents, droning theirdirges, and marching to the place of the Hotel de Ville,where heretics and rebels were to meet their doom, thebells up yonder were chanting at their appointed halfhoursand quarters, and rang the mauvais quart d’heurefor many a poor soul. This bell can see as far away asthe towers and dykes of Rotterdam. That one can call agreeting to St. Ursula’s at Brussels, and toss a recognitionto that one at the town-hall of Oudenarde, andremember how after a great struggle there a hundredand fifty years ago the whole plain was covered withthe flying French cavalry—Burgundy, and Bern, and theChevalier of St. George flying like the rest. “What isyour clamor about Oudenarde?” says another bell (Bob174