Liberty Bell

“ With my prejudice it is natural that I should suggest the Liberty Bell as a positive symbol of the thing we fight for. It is possible to draw its form on a wall—not to ward off evil, but to inspire fortitude.
Propaganda must be independent. It is a fighting arm ”

“ The desponding bell-man, electrified into life by the joyful news, seized the iron tongue and hurled it backward and forward with a clang that startled every heart in Philadelphia like a bugle blast.
“Clang! Clang!” the bell of Liberty resounded on, higher and clearer and more joyous, blending in its deep and thrilling vibration, and proclaiming in loud and long accents over all the land the motto that encircled it.
INDEPENDENCE BELL, PHILADELPHIA INSCRIPTION, “PROCLAIM LIBERTY THROUGHOUT THE LAND TO ALL THE INHABITANTS THEREOF.” JULY 4, 1776. ”

“ After Lillie Bell had been duly elected vice-president of the club, and several other club matters had been disposed of, Nathalie proposed, as an inspiration to the girls, that they form a circle in the center of the room, and stand with clasped hands, to show the interdependence of one upon the other. “Then in turn,” she explained, “let each girl tell of some woman, or girl, who, by her bravery in doing what she could for some one else, or for the world, has given of her best to mankind, and shown that she was a true lover of humanity, and a daughter of liberty.” ”

“ At noon, on the Fourth of July, 1826, while the Liberty Bell was again sounding its old message to the people of Philadelphia, the soul of Thomas Jefferson passed on; and a few hours later John Adams entered into rest, with the name of his old friend upon his lips. ”

“ But what a period, and what a country for the development of character! In those peaceful but industrious and frugal days arose that splendid school of writers, poets, essayists, philosophers, publicists and reformers of New England, and the orators, statesmen, and patriots of the young days of the Republic. With such achievements, Mr. Oseba, liberty cannot perish from the earth. The grotesque anomalies in America are incidents of the changing times and will soon disappear. ”

“ Webster as his friend, a housekeeper in Lambeth, said he was ready to bail him. The prosecutor then said, he had also a very serious complaint to make against Mr. Bell, for the article which he published in his last Sunday’s newspaper, respecting Church, and he had one of the papers in his hand. Mr. Bell told the Magistrates that he was ready to meet any complaint of this kind; that he conceived it to be his duty as one of the guardians of public liberty, and public morals, to send forth the statement in question; that he could prove the truth of every thing he had written and published. ”

“ Ardent affection is gained by closing both hands warmly, at half arm’s length, the fingers intermingling, and bringing them to the breast with spirit.... Folding arms, with a drooping of the head, describe contemplation.” I have put it to you and you can judge it.
Let us consider Bell’s marginalia of the plays! Every age has importuned itself with words. Reason was such a word, and fraternity, and liberty. Efficiency, 36maybe, is the latest, though it is sure that when you want anything done properly, you have to fight for it. ”

“ The least that the State can do is to protect people who have something to say that may cause a riot. What will not cause a riot is probably not worth saying. At present, to agitate for an increase of liberty is the best that any ordinary person can do for the advancement of art. ”

“ On motion of Robert Morrissey (whose nephew John, late M. C. from New York, inherits his uncle’s statesmanlike and financial abilities) , a bell to proclaim liberty was purchased for the State-House steeple. They practised economy in those brave days, and bought a cracked one, because they got it at half price. It is still in Independence Hall, a monument of our veracity.
The world knows well what followed, and ’tis well for the world that it does. ”

“ Zelania, my children, is the most unmitigated democracy ever known to the outer world of this planet, yet her people have just gained a glimpse, not a realisation, of human liberty. But the divine flame from the sacred torch is spreading, the public conscience is aroused, the public intellect is alert, and the social train is moving rapidly. ”

“ There is not a true American in the world who would not stand up as a man or a woman and go into his presence without fear. Are we afraid of our Senators, our chief rulers? No. But we are afraid of our servants, of our street-car conductors. We are afraid of sleeping-car porters, and the drivers of huge trucks. We are afraid they will drive over us in the streets, and if we dare to assert our rights and hold them in check we are afraid of what they will say to us, in the name of liberty, and of the way they will look at us, in the name of liberty. ”

“ Britain has given Oliffa its industrial and commercial methods, the tone of its present civilisation, and she is rapidly giving to the whole race her erstwhile scorned language, and in this there seems a magic spell that infects all who imbibe its spirit with a burning desire for liberty. ”

“ Because the Athenians really believed this, because they saw dimly that good states of mind, not wealth nor comfort nor power nor prestige—which are but means—but states of mind, which alone are good in themselves, are the proper end of existence, they refused to sacrifice individual liberty to any god of efficiency. It was to the mind of the individual they looked for absolute good: the state was but a means. Therefore at Athens, after twenty years of stultifying war, the right of the individual to free expression and self-development was scrupulously respected. ”

“ In America nobody obeys anybody. We make our laws, and then most industriously set about studying out a plan by which we may evade them. America is suffering, as all republics must of necessity suffer, from liberty in the hands of the multitude. The multitude are ignorant, and liberty in the hands of the ignorant is always license. ”

“ While there is a vast difference in the degree of oppression in Continental Europe, between class assumption, military despotism, official insolence, and creed interference, save for those for whom custom would render hell salubrious, there is no room for a liberty-loving man—especially is it no place for a people with the lofty aspirations of the Shadowas. ”

“ It is to me a strange thing that since the beginning of the war Utopia-building has gone on more merrily than ever. Almost every one has a scheme for social reconstruction; and of these schemes, though most are of that familiar kind which discovers in compulsory strike-arbitration the true and only panacea, some are in themselves attractive enough, being more or less intelligent attempts to combine Socialist economics with the maximum of personal liberty. ”

“ Everybody wanted to be free, but the feeling was so unanimous that there was abundance of officers but no privates, so it took many centuries of disputes, and quarrels, and conflicts, and wars, before they had accumulated sufficient ‘grey matter’ to comprehend the fact that civilised government is a compromise; that where any can be oppressed, none can be secure; and that liberty, which must halt at the gate of the other fellow’s paddock, is the inalienable right of man. ”

“ A shout as of waters, a long-uttered cry!
How it leaps, how it leaps from the earth to the sky!
From the sky to the earth, from the earth to the sea,
Hear the chorus re-echoed, "The people are free!" ”

“ Must thrill in the night to its deep, solemn roll;
For it speaks in its belfry when kissed by the blast,
Like a broad blessing breathed from the lips of the Past.
Long years will roll o'er it, and yet every chime
Must unceasingly tell of an era sublime,
And more splendid, more dear than the rest of all Time. ”

“ Within twelve hours the rough men walking about the house at their pleasure, in muddy shoes, with hats on their heads, and smelling of beer and gin, stripped from St. Bevis’s, as bailiffs had done more than once already, every article that would lift. They even put profane hands on some of Lady Bell’s fragile performances of fan-handles and card-boxes. ”

“ One need not condemn that man alone—there were hundreds and thousands of men like him, desperately jaded, mind and body, with the springs of life poisoned early, who might have been capable of higher and better things.
The couple were swift to recognise Lady Bell’s position, as she recognised theirs, and to show her what had become the courtesy of foes. It touched her all the more when she recalled it, after she had happened to see from her window Mr. Trevor’s encounter with Mr. Sundon in the market-place. ”

“ Bell, by dint of staring hard at a model of H.M.S. Temeraire weathering a gale on a furious sea of blue linen, came to the decision chat there were no means known to civilisation by which he could compel the proprietress of the Climax Tea-Rooms to recognise his rights. He pitied himself sincerely, and, indeed, that seemed the only action that he could take without incurring some risk. She was, he knew, an obstinate young woman. ”

“ The sense of freedom and of a new life sent a certain glow and throb of elasticity through her veins.
Lady Bell trudged on alongside the ragged hedges, and keeping by the posts which marked the king’s highway, in the broken, deeply-rutted road. She ceased to see any trace of the election, beyond a spurring messenger now and again. The few travellers were of an honest though homely description. The electioneering had done good for the moment, scoured the neighbouring country, and collected the stoutest beggars, the most rampageous tramps, into their dens in Peasmarsh. ”

“ ROYALTY AGAIN. Arrived at the next market town to Peasmarsh, Lady Bell’s driver took her into the lamp-lit inn-yard; and when she pressed a recompense upon him, looked doubtfully at it, and then, as if he would do more to deserve it, hailed a sleepy chambermaid.
“Here, Dolly, here be a poor madam who has missed the coach, or summat, and I ha’ given her a lift. She be skeared and knocked up. Do you put her up at a reasonable charge, and see her on her way in the morning.” ”

“ Bevis’s; Mrs. Die had long retired from her world. The appeal to the quarter sessions remained for months the solitary episode which broke the dreary monotony of Lady Bell’s life.
But the oppression of dulness grew lightened by custom and in time, though not from Lady Bell’s acquiring rapidly country tastes, not even after sloppy mid-winter had given place to the rosy-tipped buds of spring.
Nature, though for the most part accessible to all, requires an introduction to her court, and a suit paid to her after the fashion of sovereigns, before she will bestow her rewards. ”

“ If Lady Bell had only known in her youthful inexperience, there was something irresistibly piquant and provocative in her pouts and flouts, her sulks and déshabillés, to most men who had her in their power. The mere circumstance that her resistance, sincere to anguish as it was, in its openness, was weak as her age, would have been enough to all, save a generous man, in the conduct of such an attack, while to a man like Squire Trevor, any opposition, however feeble, served but as tinder to flame. ”

“ She would wonder if Squire Trevor had discovered her escape, and whether all Peasmarsh were up after her. She would ask herself what she should do next—what would become of her after she reached London.
But absorbing as such considerations must have been to an older, more experienced woman, Lady Bell continually broke them off to be amused and interested like a child in the novelty of her present position, above all, to be fascinated with the lady who was more grandly beautiful than Mrs. Sundon. ”

“ Lady Bell would have been not merely affronted, but mortally offended, by the freedom of the last words, had they not been spoken abstractedly, like the words of a man accustomed to lead an autocratic, solitary life, and to speak to himself for lack of a qualified audience. ”

“ At last a stout, red-cheeked country girl, in the extremity of rusticity to the town-bred eyes of Lady Bell, accustomed to a trim waiting-woman, instead of to a girl in a jacket, woollen apron, heavy frilled cap, and clamping clogs, stood arrested in the stranger’s way. ”

“ While Miss Kingscote and Master Charles accorded their ready consent to the connection, it would be difficult to tell its preciousness to Lady Bell. It was like sunshine irradiating a dull landscape, like water springing up in a desert, like the restoration of an alien to forfeited privileges, never before held so dear.
The atmosphere of high-bred and refined society was regained. A sense of reliance in the presence of a powerful friend was experienced. The delightful tie of sisterhood, to which Lady Bell had not been born, was acquired. ”

“ Sundon,” Lady Bell hurried to deliver her warning, “and to impress upon him to be mindful, and not venture about the town alone, as you have chid me for doing. Believe me, madam, there is greater risk for a gentleman who has many enemies in the place than for a foolish creature—not an angel—with regard to whom you have spoken truly when you called her unfriended.” ”

“ Grounding the canoe on the beach near where it had been launched, he made directly for the door of Bell's house and bolted inside. Reappearing almost immediately, he came on along the beach at a more deliberate gait.
At Jackson's he told them that Bell had jumped at the chance of taking the Cora to Townsville.... Said it might be the means of getting his master's certificate back in case he pulled it off all right. But he—"Slant"—couldn't allow a white man to tackle a job like that alone. He had only landed to pick up his kit and a few things Bell wanted. ”