100个儿童英语小故事: An Old Church Bell 古教堂的钟（在线收听）

049 An Old Church Bell

There once was a small town in Germany where acacia flowers were in full bloom, and apple and pear trees bore fruit in autumn. This town was beautiful but poor.

On one day of late autumn, when the grape vine leaves were dried with a red color, it rained heavily, and there was a cold strong wind. It was not good news for the poor people in this town. As it got dark outside, the small old houses got darker.

There was one small and shabby house with a very small window. The people in that house were very poor, but they were good and honest. When a solemn church bell tolled piously and peacefully, a boy came into the world.

His mother was very happy, because the church bell seemed to deliver her happy news to the whole town.

The boy grew up well, and his family moved to another town. On the day that the boy turned six, he visited his hometown with his mother. The town was still poor though.

There were new graves in the churchyard, and the old bell was laying on a lawn next some walls. That was the bell from the church bell tower. A new bell was hanging in the tower.

The mother told her son that the old bell tolled for people of the town when they had baptism ceremonies, weddings and funerals, and it was always on people's minds whenever they were sad or happy.

As she told him how the old bell had given her comfort when she was in pain giving birth to him, and how it had tolled happily to the town, he gazed at the bell with a warm heart.

The old bell took a place in a part of the boy's memory. Soon, he grew up as a red-haired, freckled and tall young man. His eyes were as clear as a lake, and luckily, he could go to a military academy, where most of the students were aristocrats, without paying any tuition.

The young man's name was Marebaha, that is, John Christoph Friedrich von Schiller. He became a political exile, and one of the greatest and immortal poets of Germany who wrote poems about the legendary warrior of Switzerland, 'Wilhelm Tell' and 'Die Jungfrau von Orleans'.

What happened to the old church bell? The old bell was sold as a lump of metal and sent to Bayern in Germany. It was used as material to make a statue of a great heros who gave glory to the German people.

The old church bell melted and flowed into the frame of the statue of Johann Christoph and became a part of its head and chest. This statue has generally been known to the public now, after one hundred years from the day Marbaha was born. The statue is still standing on Stuttgart Square.