Trinity Church Chimes

Includes program; to be given at various intervals up to noon.

“Quite a crowd of early celebrators assembled about Old Trinity yesterday to hear the chimes that for years beyond the memory of living man have rung in all the great holidays of the Republic. Chimes as a general thing are more musical to the ear when they are a mile or two in the distance, and their merry greetings of Independence Day were, doubtless, more grateful to hearers on Brooklyn Heights than to those patriotic auditors who listened directly underneath their resounding clangor. And to the veteran Ayliffe himself, who, by municipal invitation, performs upon them at least four times a year, their tones must tear and rend his tympanum until he, doubtless, wishes there were no Christmases or Fourths of July. But it has been the custom to ring chimes ever since Bow Bells turned young Whittington to fortune and the Mayoralty, and so long as it is a custom or there is a possibility of their impressing any resident young Whittingtons, they ought to be encouraged. Notwithstanding the clangor and creaking of the clappers, and their striking more notes than the musical scale called for, the crowd, impressed with the honest patriotism of the ringing, listened with demonstrative delight around the doorways and churchyard of the grand old cathedral, while across the clear waters of the old North and East Rivers the Silvery notes drifted with a harmony as sweet as the fabled singing of the sirens. ‘Hail Columbia,’ ‘Yankee Doodle,’ ‘The Red, White and Blue’ and other pieces especially in accord with the patriotic sentiment of the day, were vociferously cheered, while such sweet airs as ‘The Last Rose of Summer’ and the Scotch melodies from ‘Guy Mannering’ were received with a milder, but still appreciative approbation.”