ROMANCE OF A BELL

Manawatu Times, Volume LIV, Issue 7018, 18 September 1929, Page 15

ROMANCE OF A BELL

PACKAGE IN A CELLAR Bells have always boen endowed with the spirit of romance. There are legends of Japanese bells which would not ring when they were stolen from one temple and hung in another, an-1 of other bells which rang out unpleasant truths concerning their makers. But the latest story which is related in a London newspaper is stated to be a true one. In the course of the Great War a Canadian soldier spent his leave with a certain Londoner, and once he brought a big package from Belgium, asking his host to store it for him. After the war the Canadian said he did not yet know where he should settle down, and as he did not wapt to drag puch a huge package about he asked his London friend to let it remain in his cellar until he had a permanent address. Fpr 12 years the package lay forgotten in the cellar. The Canadian had sent no address." Then the Londoner ■wanted to move, and he remembered the package which containcu a church fcell, Evidently it was a particularly large souvenir of the devastated erea. , , Instead of selling at the Londoner pmde inquiries in the part of Belgium Where he knew the Canadian’s unit had fought, and to his delight succeeded in discovering tho church from which the bell had been taken. bell recently left London for the neighbourhood of Ypres. It will

bo about the oldest bell in the district, for the Germans took the bells and other metal to be melted down for ammunition, and this one had a lucky eseape. The villagers will rejoice to hear its voice again, and their descendants will tell of its adventures for generations. What a queer souvenir for a soldior to take back to Canada! But the sou. verfir hunter collects strange things. The story is told of a musician, who perserves a single sheet of a sonata all smothered in mud. He has told why. “I found it lying on tho floor of a house where all the windows had been smashed—the soldier said—and Gorman soldiers had torn out the flve middle keys of what had once been a line piano. They were fond of doing that to pianos. Yet I suppose they were decent people at home, War makes us into fools and brutes. I keep this bit of music to remind me,”