d out. Some of them shook my hand as they went, and
others pounded me on the back for luck, and several of the girls got my
tag and shouted, "You're it!"

I used to think that Yorkshire folks were hopelessly dull and sublimely
stupid, quarrelsome withal and pigheaded to the thirty-second degree; but
I have partially come to the conclusion that their glum ways often conceal
a peculiar kind of grim humor, and beneath the tough husk is considerable
good nature.

The absence of large trees makes it possible to see the village of Haworth
several miles away. It seems to cling to the stony hillside as if it
feared being blown into space. There is a hurrying, rushing rill here,
too, that turns a little woolen-mill. Then there is a "Black Bull" tavern,
with a stable-yard at the side and rows of houses on the one street, all
very straight up and down. One misses the climbing roses of the ideal
merry England, and the soft turf and spreading yews and the flowering
hedgerows where throstles and linnets play hide-and-seek the livelong day.
It is all cold gray stone, lichen-covered, and the houses do not invite
you to enter, and the gardens bid no welcome, and only the great purple
wastes of moorland greet you as a friend and brother.

Outside the Black Bull sits a solitary hostler, who feels it would be a
weakness to show any good humor. So he bottles his curiosity and scowls
from under red, bushy eyebrows.

Turning off the main street is a narrow road leading to the church--square
and gray and cold. Next to it is the parsonage, built of the same
material, and beyond is the crowded city of the dead.

I plied the knocker at the parsonage door and asked for the rector. He was
away at Kendal to attend a funeral, but his wife was at home--a pleasant,
matronly woman of near sixty, with smooth, white hair. She came to the
door knitting furiously, but from her regulation smile I saw that visitors
were not uncommon.

"You want to see the home of the Brontes? That's right, come right in.
This was the study of the Reverend Patrick Bronte, Incumbent of this
Parish for fifty years."

She sang her little song and knitted and shifted the needles and measured
the foot, for the stocking was nearly done. It was a blue stocking
(although she wasn't) with a white toe; and all the time she led me from
room to room telling me about the Brontes--how there were the father,
mother and six children. They all came together. The mother died shortly,
an