The old man,
walking feebly up the aisle, shading his eyes with his right hand, and
supporting himself with a cane, the quiet congregation, and the singular
dress and venerable bald head of the old preacher, all formed a
character-picture, that is not often seen. His sermon was extempore, and
consisted of a series of running paraphrases and simple and touching
explanations upon a few verses selected from the Lamentations of Jeremiah.
* * * * *
After church, my friend the stationer walked with me on the moors.
Charlotte Bronte's experience of the world was so very limited, that in
drawing the characters in her novels, she had to select the real, living
people in the vicinity. Thus, my friend pointed out one house and another
to me as being the residence of many of the originals of many of the
characters in her works, especially in "Shirley." Soon, however, our path
across the moors took us out of human habitations, and among the moorland
solitudes the Bronte sisters so fondly loved. Cold and desolate as they
appear from a distance, a nearer examination proves them to be replete
with exquisite beauty. Delicate heather-blooms carpet the immense slope,
and bend like nodding plumes, in graceful waves, to the breezes that play
heedlessly down the hill-side.
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