The Chimes is a reminder that, though the world is plagued with misfortune, ugliness, and tragedy, it remains the duty of every man and woman to improve and advance with spirits unconquered by the terrors that besiege and batter.

The Chimes by Charles Dickens

by Edward Mordrake

Ahard year.

But listen! Pick yourselves up. The voice of Time cries to man, Advance! A hard year still! A year to fill the mouth of Time with lamentation.

Dare we turn back?

The Boston bombers. The Cleveland kidnapper. The Jodi Arias Murder Trial. The demise of DOMA. The NSA scandal. Syrian civil war. The Washington Navy yard shooting. The Nairobi mall siege….

What is the common man to think? What did one Toby Veck think when considering the degradations and depravations of his fellows as he stood shivering under the chiming church bells of a New Year’s Eve?

Wrong every way. Wrong every way! Born bad. No business here! I have no business with the New Year nor with the old one neither. Let me die!

Listen!
Hear the Chimes!

Mr. Dickens hauls and hangs on the bell-ropes and pulleys of the human heart: “Cheer up! Don’t give way. A new heart for a New Year, always!” he cries in the song of the Chimes—a song that hunts and haunts.
There is perhaps no better tale to ring an old year out and a new year in than Charles Dickens’ goblin story, The Chimes. This little drama by the great storyteller deals with the temptation to look back on the tragedies of a year gone by with dejection, believing—and truly believing—that Man is “born bad.”

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