ng if you insist upon it. You
know we are not a rich parish--the wool all goes to Manchester now, and
the factory-hands are on half-pay and times are scarce. You will come
again some time, come when the heather is in bloom, won't you? That's
right. Oh, stay! the boxwood there in the garden was planted by
Charlotte's own hands--perhaps you would like a sprig of it--there, I
thought you would!

* * * * *

All who write concerning the Brontes dwell on the sadness and the tragedy
of their lives. They picture Charlotte's earth-journey as one devoid of
happiness, lacking all that sweetens and makes for satisfaction. They
forget that she wrote "Jane Eyre," and that no person utterly miserable
ever did a great work; and I assume that they know not of the wild,
splendid, intoxicating joy that follows a performance well done. To be
sure, "Jane Eyre" is a tragedy, but the author of a tragedy must be
greater than the plot--greater than his puppets. He is their creator, and
his life runs through and pervades theirs, just as the life of our Creator
flows through us. In Him we live and move and have our being. And I submit
that the writer of a tragedy is not cast down or undone at the time he
pictures his heroic situations and conjures forth his strutting spirits.
When the play ends and the curtain falls on the fifth act, there is still
one man alive, and that is the author. He may be gorged with crime and
surfeited with blood, but there is a surging exultation in his veins as he
views the ruin that his brain has wrought.

Charlotte loved the great stretch of purple moors, hill on hill fading
away into eternal mist. And the wild winds that sighed and moaned at
casements or raged in sullen wrath, tugging at the roof, were her friends.
She loved them all, and thought of them as visiting spirits. They were her
properties, and no writer who ever lived has made such splendid use of
winds and storm-clouds and driving rain as did Charlotte Bronte. People
who point to the chasing, angry clouds and the swish of dripping
rosebushes blown against the cottage-windows as proof of Charlotte
Bronte's chronic depression know not the eager joy of a storm walk. And I
am sure they never did as one I know did last night: saddle a horse at ten
o'clock and gallop away into the darkness; splash, splash in the sighing,
moaning, bellowing, driving November rain. There's joy for you! ye who
toast your feet on the fender and cul