Steeple-Ball Ascension.--The Toy-Press.
How, on this sixteenth of May, the old steeple-ball was twisted off
from the Hukelum steeple, and a new one put on in its stead, will I now
describe to my best ability; but in that simple historical style of the
Ancients, which, for great events, is perhaps the most suitable.
At a very early hour, a coach arrived, containing Messrs. Court-Guilder
Zeddel and Locksmith Waechser, and the new Peter's-cupola of the
steeple. Towards eight o'clock the community, consisting of subscribers
to the Globe, was visibly collecting. A little later came the Lord
Dragoon Rittmeister von Aufhammer, as Patron of the church and steeple,
attended by Mr. Church-Inspector Streichert. Hereupon my Reverend
Cousin Fixlein and I repaired, with the other persons whom I have
already named, into the Church, and there celebrated, before
innumerable hearers, a week-day prayer-service. Directly afterwards,
my Reverend Friend made his appearance above in the pulpit, and
endeavored to deliver a speech which might correspond to the solemn
transaction;--and immediately thereafter, he read aloud the names of
the patrons and charitable souls, by whose donations the Ball had been
put together; and showed to the congregation the leaden box in which
they were specially recorded; observing that the book from which he had
recited them was to be reposited in the Parish Register-office. Next he
held it necessary to thank them and God, that he, above his deserts,
had been chosen as the instrument and undertaker of such a work. The
whole he concluded with a short prayer for Mr. Stechmann the Slater
(who was already hanging on the outside on the steeple, and loosening
the old shaft); and entreated that he might not break his neck, or any
of his members. A short hymn was then sung, which the most of those
assembled without the church-doors sang along with us, looking up at
the same time to the steeple.
All of us now proceeded out likewise; and the discarded ball, as it
were the amputated cock's-comb of the church, was lowered down and
untied. Church-Inspector Streichert drew a leaden case from the
crumbling ball, which my Reverend Friend put into his pocket, purposing
to read it at his convenience; I, however, said to some peasants: "See,
thus will your names also be preserved in the new Ball, and when, after
long years, it shall be taken down, the box lies within it, and the
then parson becomes acquainted with you all."--And now was the new
steeple-globe, with the leaden cup in which lay the names of the
by-standers, at length full-laden, so to speak, and saturated, and
fixed to the pulley-rope;--and so did this the whilom cupping-glass of
the community ascend aloft....
By Heaven! the unadorned style is here a thing beyond my power: for
when the Ball moved, swung, mounted, there rose a drumming in the
centre of the steeple; and the Schoolmaster, who, till now, had looked
down through a sounding-hole directed towards the congregation, now
stepped out with a trumpet at a side sounding-hole, which the mounting
Ball was not to cross.--But when the whole Church rung and pealed, the
nearer the capital approached its crown,--and when the Slater clutched
it and turned it round, and happily incorporated the spike of it, and
delivered down, between Heaven and Earth, and leaning on the Ball, a
Topstone-speech to this and all of us,--and when my gossip's eyes, in
his rapture at being Parson on this great day, were running over, and
the tears trickling down his priestly garment;--I believe I was the
only man--as his mother was the only woman--whose souls a common grief
laid hold of to press them even to bleeding; for I and the mother had
yesternight, as I shall tell more largely afterwards, discovered in the
little chest of the drowned boy, from a memorial in his father's hand,
that, on the day after the morrow, on Cantata-Sunday and his baptismal
Sunday, he would be--two-and-thirty-years of age. "Oh!" thought I,
while I looked at the blue heaven, the green graves, the glittering
ball, the weeping priest, "so, at all times, stands poor man with
bandaged eyes before thy sharp sword, incomprehensible Destiny! And
when thou drawest it and brandishest it aloft, he listens with pleasure
to the whizzing of the stroke before it falls!"--
Last night I was aware of it; but to the reader, whom I was preparing
for it afar off, I would tell nothing of the mournful news, that, in
the press of the dead brother, I had found an old Bible which the boys
had used at school, with a white blank leaf in it, on which the father
had written down the dates of his children's birth. And even this it
was that raised in thee, thou poor mother, the shade of sorrow which of
late we have been attributing to smaller causes; and thy heart was
still standing amid the rain, which seemed to us already past over and
changed into a rainbow!--Out of love to him, she had yearly told one
falsehood, and concealed his age. By extreme good luck, he had not been
present when the press was opened. I still purpose, after this fatal
Sunday, to surprise him with the party-colored relics of his childhood,
and so of these old Christmas-presents to make him new ones. In the
mean while, if I and his mother can but follow him incessantly,
like fishhook-floats, and foot clogs, through to-morrow and next
day, that no murderous accident lift aside the curtain from his
birth-certificate,--all may yet be well. For now, in truth, to his
eyes, this birthday, in the metamorphotic mirror of his superstitious
imagination, and behind the magnifying magic vapor of his present joys,
would burn forth like a red death-warrant.... But besides all this, the
leaf of the Bible is now sitting higher than any of us, namely, in the
new steeple-ball, into which I this morning prudently introduced it.
Properly speaking, there is indeed no danger.