Quote from "The Old Church Bell" (1861)
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Dark days and cold nights passed over the old bell, and it did not feel them; but the bell within the human breast is sensitive to these miseries. What happened to the young man? What happened to the old bell? Well, the bell went far away, farther than its sound could ever be heard even from its high tower; the young man – ah, yes, the bell within his breast sounded farther into distant lands than ever his foot would ever tread or his eyes ever see; it sounded and resounded across the ocean and around the earth.
But first you must hear about the church bell. It was taken away from Marbach and sold for old copper, and now it was to go into a smelting furnace in Bavaria. How did it come there, and when? Well, this the bell itself may tell you, if it can – it's of no great importance; but it is certain that it came to the capital of Bavaria. Many years had passed since it fell from the tower; and now it was to be melted down, to become part of the casting of a great monument, a statue in honor of one of the German people's great men. Now listen to how it all came about. Strange and beautiful things do happen in this world!
Up in Denmark, on one of the green islands where the beech tree grows and there are many ancient viking graves, there once lived a very poor little boy who wore wooden shoes and used to carry the meals, wrapped up in an old piece of cloth, to his father who worked on the wharves, carving figureheads for ships. This poor child had become his country's pride; he carved out of marble such wonderful things that they amazed the whole world, and to him the noble task was given to shape from clay a majestic and beautiful figure that would be cast in bronze, a statue of him whose name his father wrote in the Bible, Johann Christoph Friedrich.
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Keywords: Father, child, son, boy, travel, journey, fame, art
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