And although the good Rector prayed, “From all vanity and pride of spirit, good Lord, deliver us,” it never occurred to him that he was vain of his tall daughter Jane, and I’m glad it didn’t.  There is no more crazy bumblebee gets into a mortal’s bonnet than the buzzing thought that God is jealous of the affection we have for our loved ones.  If we are ever damned, it will be because we have too little love for our fellows, not too much.

But, egad! brother, it’s no small delight to be sixty and a little stooped and a trifle rheumatic, and have your own blessed daughter, sweet and stately, comb your thinning gray locks, help you on with your overcoat, find your cane, and go trooping with you, hand in hand, down the lane on merciful errand bent.  It’s a temptation to grow old and feign sciatica; and if you could only know that, some day, like old King Lear, upon your withered cheek would fall Cordelia’s tears, the thought would be a solace.

So Jane Austen began to write stories about the simple folks she knew.  She wrote in the family sitting-room at a little mahogany desk that she could shut up quickly if prying neighbors came in to tell their woes and ask questions about all those sheets of paper!  And all she wrote she read to her father and to her sister Cassandra.  And they talked it all over together and laughed and cried and joked over it.  The kind old minister thought it a good mental drill for his girls to write and express their feelings.  The two girls collaborated—­that is to say, one wrote and the other looked on.  Neither girl had been “educated,” except what their father taught them.  But to be born into a bookish family, and inherit the hospitable mind and the receptive heart, is better than to be sent to Harvard Annex.  Preachers, like other folks, sometimes assume a virtue when they have it not.  But George Austen didn’t pretend—­he was.  And that’s the better plan, for no man can deceive his children—­they take his exact measurement, whether others ever do or not—­and the only way to win and hold the love of a child (or a grown-up) is to be frank and simple and honest.  I’ve tried both schemes.

I can not find that George Austen ever claimed he was only a worm of the dust, or pretended to be more or less than he was, or to assume a knowledge that he did not possess.  He used to say:  “My dears, I really do not know.  But let’s keep the windows open and light may yet come.”

It was a busy family of plain, average people—­not very rich, and not very poor.  There were difficulties to meet, and troubles to share, and joys to divide.

Jane Austen was born in Seventeen Hundred Seventy-five; “Jane Eyre” in Eighteen Hundred Sixteen—­one year before Jane Austen died.