A great love is a pain, yet it is a benison and a benediction.  If we carry any possession from this world to another it is the memory of a great love.  For even in the last hour, when the coldness of death shall creep into the stiffening limbs, and the brain shall be stunned and the thoughts stifled, there shall come to the tongue a name, a name not mentioned aloud for years—­there shall come a name; and as the last flickering rays of life flare up to go out on earth forever, the tongue will speak this name that was long, long ago burned into the soul by the passion of a love that fadeth not away.

CHARLOTTE BRONTE

I was not surprised, when I went down into the hall, to see that a brilliant June morning had succeeded to the tempest of the night, and to feel through the open glass door the breathing of a fresh and fragrant breeze.  Nature must be gladsome when I was so happy.  A beggar woman and her little boy, pale, ragged objects both, were coming up the walk, and I ran down and gave them all the money I happened to have in my purse—­some three or four shillings:  good or bad they must partake of my jubilee.  The rooks cawed and blither birds sung, but nothing was so merry or so musical as my own rejoicing heart. —­Jane Eyre

[Illustration:  Charlotte Bronte]

Rumor has it that there be Americans who are never happy unless passing for Englishmen.  And I think I have discovered a like anomaly on the part of the sons of Ireland—­a wish to pass for Frenchmen.  On Continental hotel-registers the good, honest name of O’Brian often turns queer somersaults, and more than once in “The States” does the kingly prefix of O evolve itself into Van or De, which perhaps is quite proper, seeing they all mean the same thing.  One cause of this tendency may lie in the fact that Saint Patrick was a native of France; although Saint Patrick may or may not have been chosen patron saint on account of his nationality.  But the patron saint of Ireland being a Frenchman, what more natural, and therefore what more proper, than that the whole Emerald Isle should slant toward the people who love art and rabbit-stew!  Anyway, from the proud patronymic of Patricius to plain Pat is quite a drop, and my heart is with Paddy in his efforts to get back.

When Patrick Prunty of County Down, Ireland, shook off the shackles of environment, and the mud of the peat-bog, and went across to England, presenting himself at the gates of Saint John’s College, Cambridge, asking for admittance, I am glad he handed in his name as Mr. P. Bronte, accent on the last syllable.