endurance, and courage not to be daunted, which are in every city--mixing
itself with these as the light and air of heaven do, and with effects
doubtless as unexpected and as fine; and ready also to be a help to the
helpless, a guide to the rash and straying, a comfort to the comfortless,
a reproach to the reckless, and a warning to the wicked. Perhaps an
ambitious stranger, passing through the city, would hear the chime, and
pause to listen, and in the pause a flash of recollection would show him
the weary way he had gone, the disappointments which were the inevitable
accompaniments of even his most brilliant successes in the years of toil
that had been his since he made the world his idol and swerved from the
Higher Life; and then he would ask himself the good of it all, and finding
that there was no good, he would go his way, cherishing the new
impression, and asking of all things,

"Is it too late now?"

And perhaps at the same moment a lady rolling past in her carriage would
say, "How sweet!" or the beauty of the bells might win some other
thoughtless tribute from her, if she heard the chime at all; but probably
she never heard it, because the accustomed tones were as familiar as the
striking of the hour--the striking of an hour that bore no special
significance for her, and therefore set no chord vibrating in her soul.
The thoughts of her mind deafened her heart to it as completely as the
thunder of a waggon had at the same time deafened the waggoner's ears
while the bells uttered their message above him. And so it was with the
doctor, overworked and anxious, hurrying on his rounds; the grasping
lawyer, absorbed in calculation, and all the other money-grubbers; the
indolent woman, the pleasure-seeker, and the hard-pressed toiler for daily
bread: if they heard they heeded not because their hour had not yet come.
At least this is what some thought, who believed that for every one a