Saturday, January 3, 2026

NEW YEAR CHIMES...

"A new heart for a New Year, always!"

                                                 -Charles Dickens, "The Chimes"  published December 1844


"The Chimes are ringing in the New Year. Hear them!" 

"Had he ( Trotty) dreamed? Or, are his joys and sorrows, and the actors in them, but a dream...


...himself a dream; the teller of this tale a dreamer, waking but now?
If it be so, O listener, dear to him in all his visions, try to bear in mind the stern realities from which these shadows come...
and in your sphere, none is too wide, and none too limited for such an end...
endeavour to correct, improve, and soften them...


So may the New Year be a happy one to you...

happy to many more whose happiness depends on you!
So may each year be happier than the last!"
"They WERE ringing! Bless their sturdy hearts."
"Great Bells they were; melodious, deep-mouthed, noble Bells!" 
"Some new remembrance of the ghostly figures in the Bells; some faint impression of the ringing of the Chimes."
"the Bells, the old familiar Bells, his own dear, constant friends, the Chimes, began to ring the joy...peals for a New Year..."
Photographs 2026.  Quotes from 1844 " The Chimes" by Charles Dickens