Sleigh bell

“ Fig. 10 shows the ordinary form of gong. Fig. 11, a tea gong; Fig. 12, a cow gong; and Fig. 13, a sleigh bell.
Fig. 10 Fig. 11 Fig. 12 Fig. 13
A coil of steel wire is also used, as in Fig. 14, which on being struck by the hammer gives a pleasant but not loud tone.
Fig. 14 The Buzzer.
The buzzer is the mechanism of a vibrating bell less the hammer and gong. As the armature vibrates it makes a buzzing noise which does not carry as far as the sound from a struck gong. ”

“ On one plantation I found the slaves far more improved, both as regards their temporal comforts, and their religious instruction, than I had expected to see. The number of Negroes on this plantation is, I believe, about two hundred. They live in framed houses, raised above the ground—spacious, and in every way comfortable, and calculated to promote health. The Negroes were uniformly clad in a very decent and comfortable way. There is a chapel on the place where the master meets the adults every night at the ringing of the bell. ”

“ He thought that if it should snow heavily enough he would use the sleigh when he started out in the afternoon. There were several sick children to visit on opposite horizons of his neighborhood. The sound of the bells as he drove in at their front gates might have value: it would not only mean the coming of his sleigh, but it would suggest to them the approach of that mysterious Sleigh of the World which that night they were expecting. Afterwards he was to go to a distant county seat for a consultation. ”

“ The snow continued to fall so heavily, that Uncle Donald decided to remain where we were, or rather to form another camp more under shelter of the trees. To proceed with the horses would have been almost impossible, and he therefore settled to send them back and to prepare the sleighs and snow-shoes for the rest of our journey. A sleigh is simply a thin board, ten feet long and about a foot broad, turned up at one end. The baggage is secured to it by leathern thongs. ”

“ So the Starr children, with Mike, climbed up and sat upon the logs of the first sledge, and the other children waited for the second load to come in sight.
The sleigh-ride over the rough road to the river was great fun, for [131] often the sleigh would bump over a huge snow-covered stump or rock, and make the children roll against each other and cling fast to the chains that bound the logs together. ”

“ The cheerful tinkling music thus occasioned on the Canadian roads is very pleasing. Sleighs vary a good deal in structure and costliness of decoration; and one often meets a rough, cheerful Canadian habitant sitting in his small box of a sledge (painted sometimes red and sometimes green) , lashing away at his shaggy pony in a fruitless attempt to keep up with the large graceful sleigh of a wealthy inhabitant of Montreal, who, wrapped up in furs, drives tandem, with two strong horses, and loudly tinkling bells. ”

“ These beautiful vehicles are mounted on runners, or large skates, and slide very smoothly and easily over the snow, except when the road is bad; and then, owing to the want of springs, sleighs become very rough carriages indeed. They are usually drawn by one horse, the harness and trappings of which are profusely covered with small round bells. These bells are very necessary appendages, as little noise is made by the approach of a sleigh over the soft snow, and they serve to warn travellers in the dark. ”

“ A sleigh ride of several miles, on a moonlight night, through a lovely snow-covered landscape of hill and woods and valley, does not detract from the enjoyment of an informal carpet dance, especially when the vehicle is a big box sleigh, filled with a dozen lively lads and lasses, whose songs and laughter ring out above the jingling bells. ”

“ Young Sally Walsh, brought up under the hardest discipline, in her homespun linen and woollen, and barndoor buxomness, had been considerably dazzled to begin with, by the elegant apparition of Lady Bell, but having been smartly chidden by her mother for her short-sighted worldliness, she fell straightway into the opposite error. ”

“ Then he beats it with a toy whip, which must feel like a fly on its woolly coat, for all the little fat pony does is to kick up its heels and fly along like the wind, missing the other sledges by a hair’s-breadth. It is ghostly to see the way they glide along without a sound, for the sledges wear no bells.
One may drive with perfect safety at a breakneck pace, for they all drive down on one side of the street and up on the other. ”

“ The sport went on and time flew by. Grown more and more daring, the strong heels of the boys urged on the descending sled till it moved at the pace of a swift locomotive. Suddenly there came a clumsy old-fashioned sleigh along the shore road, which crossed the slide at a right angle. Frans braked with heel and staff, and the other boys in vain did their best to help him. The sled struck the sleigh, and was emptied in a moment. The boys who were unencumbered fell here and there in the soft snow or on the road. Nono held desperately fast to his precious bundle, but could not save little Decima. ”

“ The situation, as we smoked and talked, became a more matter-of-fact one, and when Ryckman carried a lamp to the rear end of the wide reception hall and pointed out the bell which was given to ringing without earthly reason or cause, I could even view that bell with half-amused disdain.
It was an old-fashioned and very ordinary-looking bell, swinging on the end of a curling steel band wire. When once set in motion, because of this wire, it would naturally oscillate for some length of time. ”

“ One is glad enough, then, to remain at home by the warm stove; or if one goes out, one must be well wrapped up in furs and cloaks.
The little boys slide and skate on the frozen river; the poorer folks go about in sledges, and the rich in splendid sleighs, with white fur robes and capering horses, which have little bells tied to their manes and tails. [11]
Just such a sleigh as this stood, one bright moonlight night, before the door of the Burgomaster Von Geirstein, in the good town of Leipsic. ”

“ Although I do not recollect where the hand bells are used in town, yet I have more than once lately heard it mentioned in Fenchurch-street and its neighbourhood, that the ringers were in the practice of amusing themselves with hand bells at a public-house where they assembled for the purpose of practising; and it is more than probable, that some of your readers in that neighbourhood can furnish you with further particulars.
In most of the towns in the west of England, they have a custom of ringing one of the church bells (generally the treble bell) in the morning and evenings. ”

“ To the end of my life I shall remember the weeping women, and the haggard-eyed men in that little town, and the two sharp strokes of the tocsin, sounding like the knell of hope.
Nothing can carry a more poignant message than a bell. In my time at Harrow, should a member of the school actually die at Harrow during the term, the school bell was tolled at minute intervals, from 10 to 10.30 p.m., with the great bass bell of the parish church answering it, also at minute intervals. ”

“ Sliding still lower on a slanting beam, he could look obliquely upward into the bell's interior, and see the clapper, a mass weighing eight hundredweight, and so long, that quite down at the bell's rim were two hollows where it had constantly struck. It, too, had been blasted; but the bell-rope hung intact from a short beam at right angles to the swing beam; and, having found this much, he searched where he had left the bottom of his tin can, and clambered back with it into the upper regions. ”

“ Vehicles of every description, from the most elegant appointed sleigh down to the rough box sled, are seen upon the road, and the jingle of bells is everywhere heard, as the sledges follow, pass and repass one another on the snowy track. Ladies closely wrapped in furs and veils, and their cavaliers in fur caps with flaps brought closely around ears and chin, alike bid defiance to the temperature, which is not infrequently in the neighborhood of zero; and the blood seems to course more quickly for the keenness of the atmosphere. ”

“ The sleigh proceeded across the Cambridge bridge and then through East Cambridge and so to Cambridge, [pg 12] stopping now on one side of a street to discharge passengers at a small house, and now on the other side at a big house, and so on, and the fine snow kept sifting down and Morse, perched high up in front, was growing more and more ghostly, when out from the sleigh rose the voice of James Russell Lowell, intoning a fragment from Horace, adapted so as to embrace the charioteer of the sleigh ”

“ The general diffusion of clocks and watches has rendered bells less necessary for marking the events of daily life; and most of these old customs have either disappeared or are fast disappearing. At Strassburg a large bell of eight tons weight, known as the “Holy Ghost Bell,” is only rung when two fires are seen in the town at once ”

“ Half an hour later, Charlie McPhee set out in a red pung, behind a sorrel mare, for Jim Bell’s place a few miles below the village. Mr. Bell was the nearest constable. Half an hour after that again, two sleds set out for the Dangler settlement on Goose Creek. Each sled was drawn by a pair of horses, and crowded with men armed with many kinds and patterns of explosive weapons in their pockets and their hands. Snow was falling thick and soft and steady. ”

“ One day Jotham was making a sled for Elsie. It was June, and people do not usually wish to slide on the daisies and clover; but Jotham liked to get things finished early. I suppose he knew, too, that when Elsie’s sled was done he would have to make one a-piece for Lill, for Dora, for Boy Blue, and for little Tot; so, perhaps, he thought from June to December was not too long time for so much work.
The sled was ready to be painted; and blue paint, in a nice little bucket, with a small brush in it, was waiting for the sled. Boy Blue stood by helping. ”

“ AN OLD FRIEND. The white hoar frost which had given a fairy-like beauty to the old orchard trees of Nutfield had long melted away, and was replaced by the first powdering and fluttering of green on the grey gnarled boughs.
The birds which Lady Bell had fed no longer came hopping to door and windowsill, but, independent of her bounty, and forgetful of past favours, broke off the acquaintance, and gave themselves up to satisfactory poking for worms in the soft earth, to energetic pecking at the first midges and green flies, and to the absorbing delights of pairing. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Never at Nivelle.... The belfry is being destroyed.... The sweetest carillon in France—the oldest, the most beautiful.... Fifty-six bells, Djack—a wondrous wilderness of bells rising above where one stands in the belfry, tier on tier, tier on tier, until one's gaze is lost amid the heavenly company aloft.... Oh, Djack! And the great bell, Clovis! ”

“ Bell coolly declined to do anything of the kind. He surveyed the two graceful banks of flowers there, the carefully trained creepers trailing so naturally and yet so artistically from the roof to the ground, and the sight pleased him.
"My dear chap," he said, "I am not going to sit here and allow you to destroy the work of so many hours. There is not the slightest reason to disturb anything. Unless I am greatly mistaken, Van Sneck will lay his had upon the ring for us without so much as the sacrifice of a blossom." ”

“ He grumbled resentfully before he looked round. “What the plague do you mean by bringing any one here at this hour, Sneyd?”
“It is your niece, Lady Bell Etheredge, squire. I thought you would like to see her at once, as Mrs. Die is not to be disturbed after supper,” answered the squire’s butler, as if he were delivering a carefully considered speech.
The squire with a little “humph!” possibly meant to be inaudible, got up and turned round. “My dear niece, I beg to welcome you to St. Bevis’s,” he said, in a voice cultivated and agreeable in spite of its slight hoarseness. ”

“ Presbyterianism has naturally had a great influence on the bells in Scotland. Mr Eeles, who is an authority on the subject, tells us that the passing bell is no longer rung, nor is there any ringing at burials beyond tolling the bell for a few minutes as the procession approaches the churchyard. In some parishes even this is said to be fast dying out. In the Burgh Records of Dundee “it is statute that an ony person cause the gret bells to be rung for either saul, mass or dirige, he sall pay forty pence to the Kirk werk.” ”

“ The clock-bell, in particular, now drew attention. Under a patient chisel, the latent beauty of its enrichments, before obscured by the cloudings incident to casting, that beauty in its shyest grace, was now revealed. Round and round the bell, twelve figures of gay girls, garlanded, hand-in-hand, danced in a choral ring—the embodied hours.
"Bannadonna," said the chief, "this bell excels all else. No added touch could here improve. Hark!" hearing a sound, "was that the wind?"
"The wind, Excellenza," was the light response. "But the figures, they are not yet without their faults. ”

“ Sneyd, the butler, in his unencouraged essays at conversation the night before, had made Lady Bell acquainted with the habits of the family. The squire was never down in the morning till it was late, when he was at home, and that was but seldom, as he attended all the races. Lady Bell need not fear to stumble on her uncle, and be frozen to stone by his distant greeting. ”