I think you
know in the right spirit how to withdraw yourself from the vexation,
the care, the meanness of life, and to derive comfort from purer
sources than this world can afford. You know how to do it silently,
unknown to others, and can avail yourself of that hallowed communion
the Bible gives us with God. I am charged to transmit your mother's
and sister's love. Receive mine in the same parcel, I think it will
scarcely be the smallest share. Farewell, my dear Ellen.
'C. BRONTE.'
TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY
'_May_ 15_th_, 1840.
'MY DEAR ELLEN,--I read your last letter with a great deal of
interest. Perhaps it is not always well to tell people when we
approve of their actions, and yet it is very pleasant to do so; and
as, if you had done wrongly, I hope I should have had honesty enough
to tell you so, so now, as you have done rightly, I shall gratify
myself by telling you what I think.
'If I made you my father confessor I could reveal weaknesses which
you do not dream of. I do not mean to intimate that I attach a _high
value_ to empty compliments, but a word of panegyric has often made
me feel a sense of confused pleasure which it required my strongest
effort to conceal--and on the other hand, a hasty expression which I
could construe into neglect or disapprobation has tortured me till I
have lost half a night's rest from its rankling pangs.
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