Page:The complete poems of Emily Bronte.djvu/32

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POEMS OF EMILY BRONTË

congruous. The three volumes are in brown cloth labelled on the back Wuthering Heights I.; Wuthering Heights II.; and Agnes Grey III. Emily has corrected some of the misprints. For example: 'The distance from the gate to the Grange is to (sic) miles.' 'They shut the house door below never noticing our absence, it was so full of people.' For 'it' is substituted 'the place.' One clause appears thus: 'Yah gooid fur nowt, slattenly witch! nip up nud bolt intuh th' haks t' minute yah heard t' master's horse fit clatter up t' road.' For 'nud' she puts 'and,' and for 'haks' 'house.'

1848 (September).—Patrick Branwell Brontë died. Charlotte Brontë wrote: 'I myself, with painful, mournful joy, heard him praying softly in his dying moments; and to the last prayer which my father offered up at his bedside, he added, "Amen." How unusual that word appeared from his lips, of course you, who did not know him, cannot conceive.' He was in the village just before his death. 'The removal of our only brother must necessarily be regarded by us rather in the light of a mercy than as a chastisement.'

1848 (29th October).—Charlotte Brontë writes: 'Emily's cold and cough are very