Page:Historic towns of the middle states (IA historictownsofm02powe).pdf/162

 *man, preached his first sermon in Newburgh, possibly from a text in the psalter for the day, "Why do the heathen so furiously rage together?"

Legend says some Lutheran boys on a moonless August night stole the bell and buried it in a swamp where, punished for apostasy, it lay for years tongue-tied in the black mud while hoarse frogs croaked their pessimistic comments over it. The defeated Lutherans would doubtless have been pleased could they have foreseen half a century later when all that savored of England, were it book, bell or candle, was out of favor, the Anglicans in their turn ejected, the building used as a schoolhouse, and the rent of the Glebe lands pass entirely from the Church.

The swamp in which the bell was hidden has of late years been transformed into one of Downing Park's lakes, and from its smooth waters one may hear on summer evenings the ghostly tolling of bells, as bells toll in the buried cities beneath Swiss lakes. The tolling has a martial sound, a call to arms, as if the little bell had forgotten the smaller church squabble in the larger quarrel between King George and his Colonies. Some authorities