Charles Synyard (@CharlesSynyard)

“In the narrow streets of the big town, toward evening when the sun was setting and the clouds shone like gold on the chimney tops, people would hear a strange sound like that of a church bell. But they heard it only for a few moments before it was lost in the rumble of city carriages and the voices of the multitudes, for such noises are very distracting.” “The Bell” has to be one of my favorite Hans Christian Andersen stories, just reached in my Complete Fairy Tales volume. Allegorical. Many hear the bell, but how many will seek it to its source? ”Now, on a certain Confirmation Day, the minister had preached a very beautiful and moving sermon; the children who were confirmed were deeply touched by it. It was a tremendously important day in their lives, for on this day they were leaving childhood behind and becoming grown-up persons. Their infant souls would take wing into the bodies of adults. It was a glorious, sunny day, and after the confirmation the children walked together out of the town, and from the depths of the woods the strange tolling of the bell came with a mysterious clear sweetness. “At once all the children decided to go into the woods and find the bell…” Full story: https://andersen.sdu.dk/vaerk/hersholt/TheBell_e.html A child’s-scale adventure? A quest of a single day’s length. Illustration of the king’s son by Maxwell Armfield, from Faery Tales from Hans Christian Andersen, J. M. Dent & Co., London, 1910. #HansChristianAndersen #TheBell #MaxwellArmfield #illustration #art #kindredspirits #quest #nature #spirituality #allegory #fairytales