A New England Girlhood, Outlined from Memory (Beverly, MA)

My brother's vigilant care of his two youngest sisters was once the occasion to them of a serious fright. My grandfather--the sexton--sometimes trusted him to toll the bell for a funeral. In those days the bell was tolled for everybody who died. John was social, and did not like to go up into the belfry and stay an hour or so alone, and as my grandfather positively forbade him to take any other boy up there, he one day got permission for us two little girls to go with him, for company. We had to climb up a great many stairs, and the last flight was inclosed by a rough door with a lock inside, which he was charged to fasten, so that no mischievous boys should follow. It was strange to be standing up there in the air, gazing over the balcony-railing down into the street, where the men and women looked so small, and across to the water and the ships in the east, and the clouds and hills in the west! But when he struck the tongue against the great bell, close to our ears, it was more than we were prepared for. The little sister, scarcely three years old, screamed and shrieked,-- "I shall be stunned-ded! I shall be stunned-ded!" I do not know where she had picked up that final syllable, but it made her terror much more emphatic. Still the great waves of solemn sound went eddying on, over the hills and over the sea, and we had to hear it all, though we stopped our ears with our fingers. It was an immense relief to us when the last stroke of the passing-bell was struck, and John said we could go down.