For a season, the town rang a bell every hour at any house whose lamp had gone out, to remind the household to end the day properly. The intention was kind. The effect was a town kept awake by its own courtesy.
Brasse Halloway, bell-reformer, put the argument in one line: the knock came every hour, kind and useless as a rung bell tolled at someone giving up the ghost. If the letter is sent and the hand is cold, ring once, and then hush. The reform passed. The bell now checks whether the letter was actually sent — evidence, not assertion — and rings a single time.
The augurs note that on the town's founding day the bell rang once at dawn, which they take to mean the reform is holding.