and
supply all those expressions of warm and genuine regard which the
increasing darkness will not permit me to insert.

'CHARLOTTE BRONTE.'

TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY

'HAWORTH, _February_ 11_th_, 1834.

'DEAR ELLEN,--My letters are scarcely worth the postage, and
therefore I have, till now, delayed answering your last
communication; but upwards of two months having elapsed since I
received it, I have at length determined to take up my pen in reply
lest your anger should be roused by my apparent negligence. It
grieved me extremely to hear of your precarious state of health. I
trust sincerely that your medical adviser is mistaken in supposing
you have any tendency to a pulmonary affection. Dear Ellen, that
would indeed be a calamity. I have seen enough of consumption to
dread it as one of the most insidious and fatal diseases incident to
humanity. But I repeat it, I _hope_, nay _pray_, that your alarm is
groundless. If you remember, I used frequently to tell you at school
that you were constitutionally nervous--guard against the gloomy
impressions which such a state of mind naturally produces. Take
constant and regular exercise, and all, I doubt not, will yet be
well. What a remarkable winter we have had! Rain and wind
continually, but an almost total absence of frost and snow. Has
_general_ ill health been the consequence of wet weather at Birstall
or not? With us an unusual number of deaths have lately taken place.
According to custom I have no news to communicate, indeed I do not
write either to retail gossip or to impart solid information; my
motives for maintaining our mutual correspondence are, in the first
place, to get intelligence from you, and in the second that we may
remind each other of our separate existences; without some such
medium of reciprocal converse, according to the nature of things,
_you_, who are surrounded by society and friends, would soon forget
that such an insignificant being as myself ever lived. _I_, however,
in the solitude of our wild little hill village, think of my only
unrelated friend, my dear ci-devant school companion daily--nay,
almost hourly. Now Ellen, don't you think I have very cleverly
contrived to make up a let