It lasted but a few moments, the sun went down, and darkness and
night gradually settled over the scene. The little incident seemed almost
like a type of the life of the gifted woman chiefly to whom Haworth owes
its fame; for her life, like this very day, had been dark and wearisome,
overshadowed by clouds of cares, tears falling like rain-drops upon
new-made graves, until near its close, when there came a sweet season of
bright domestic happiness, that lasted too shortly, and then gave place to
the darkness and night of death.
Strolling through the village, after my quiet meal at the Black Bull Inn,
which poor Branwell Bronte had so often frequented, I stopped to make some
trifling purchases at a stationery store, and casually asked the
proprietor--a small, delicate-looking man, with a bright eye and a highly
intellectual countenance--if he remembered the Bronte sisters. It was a
fortunate question, for he knew them well, and was a personal friend of
the authoress of Jane Eyre, to whose handsomely-framed portrait he
proudly pointed. He had provided her, as he said, with joyful delight,
with the paper on which she wrote the manuscripts of most of her novels;
he is referred to in one of Miss Bronte's letters to Mrs.
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