One feels as glad at this kindness, as though she were one’s own little sister. We find her, at this time, not playing with the other romping girls, but standing in the playground with a book, or looking dreamily at the scenery. When urged to join them in their sports, she said No—always pleasantly. Playing ball, and such healthful games, she probably disliked, as much, perhaps, for lack of bodily strength, as from any other cause; though that would have come by degrees, had she only allowed herself to try; it was a great pity she did not. However, she was always so good-natured and amiable, that she was a favorite with the girls, although she wouldn’t play with them. Sometimes, with the natural freedom of their age, they would tell her that she was “awkward,” or ugly; but this never displeased her, though, I have no doubt, she felt sorry that they thought so. In the portraits of that fine face of hers, which I have seen, the term “ugly” seems to be sadly misapplied. Those might think so, who fancy a pink and white doll-face; but neither could such see the moral beauty of her daily life, over that thorny road, every meek, patient step of which was as the Saviour’s at Gethsemane.
Charlotte remained a year at this school, studying very hard. This was well, had she also remembered that her fragile body needed equal care with her mind; for of what use is knowledge if there is no bodily strength by which we can make it useful to those about us? Charlotte had no watchful mother, to impress this upon her as a religious duty; to remind her that she was as responsible for the care of her body, as for the improvement of her mind. And so her mind kept on expanding, and threatening to shatter its feeble prison house in pieces. It was a great pity; but it seems even in England, where so much more attention is paid than here to “raising” perfect, robust specimens of men and women, such things do happen. At Miss Woolen’s school, Charlotte formed an agreeable intimacy with two schoolmates—young ladies of her own age. This was a great benefit to her, because she had been made so prematurely old in her feelings, by loneliness and sorrow. One cannot help catching animation and hope from a bright, joyous, fresh-hearted, breezy companion, though one is ever so apt to look on the gloomy side of things. And so it is quite cheering to know that, upon leaving Miss Woolen’s school, and going back to her father’s dull house, these young girls exchanged letters and visits with one another. And now, perhaps, you suppose, that when Charlotte reached home, she sat down and folded her hands in utter hopelessness, saying, “How awful dull it is here! there is no use in trying to live in such a desolate old cage of a place; it is really too bad for a young creature like me to be shut up here. It is too bad for any girl so fond of reading, writing, and drawing, to be a mere drudge in this lonesome place!” Perhaps you think that, as she was a “genius,” she said or thought all this. Not at all; and I’ll tell you why; because her genius was genuine, not sham. It is only make believe geniuses who think the every-day duties of life beneath their intellects. I want you to remember that Charlotte Brontë did not shrink from one of them. She swept, and she dusted, and she made beds, and she made bread (good, light, wholesome bread, too), and pared potatoes, and watched the pot boil, and kept everything in as nice order as if she had no taste for anything but housekeeping. Perhaps you think then that she folded her hands, and said, “I should think I had done enough now!” There you are wrong again. She looked from her window into the little churchyard, where her mother was lying, and said, “Now I must be a mother to my brothers and sisters!” and she repaired their clothes, and she taught them; for she had thoroughly learned her own lessons and all those things she had studied at school. There’s a girl for you! and all this, when she was so very fond of reading and writing, which stood to her lonely heart in place of loving friends, for whom she longed.
At length, on account of want of money, it became necessary for some one of the family to go out into the world to earn it. Who should it be? One would have naturally supposed the brother, as being a sturdy, healthy fellow, better able to fight his way than his delicate sisters, who shrank timidly from the sight of strange faces and strange voices. It seemed not the thing for them to go out into the wilderness, to make the path easy for his feet? If so, which of the sisters should do this? Emily? Anne? or Charlotte? Emily grew homesick to that degree when away, that her life was in danger, and was obliged to be recalled for that reason. So, whoever was sent, she must not go; for were there not two sisters already in the churchyard? Anne was too young. Charlotte, then, was, as usual, to buckle on the armor of duty over her brave heart, and stagger forth with what strength she might, to face the world. She was to be a governess! Imagine, if you can, the most torturing situation in which to place such a nature as hers; and the daily trial of it, could not come up to that included to her in the little word “governess.” Fortunately, her first experiment was with Miss Woolen, her old teacher—her scholars being younger sisters of her own playmates. Whatever she did, she did with her might; therefore, so zealous was she to make herself useful in her new situation, and so conscientious in the discharge of duties which a less noble girl would have dodged, or evaded sufficiently, at least, to make the position bearable, that we soon hear of the breaking down of her feeble body, so that she almost became crazy.
She had frightful thoughts and gloomy ideas about religious things; anxiety about her sister Emily, who, resolving not to burden her father with her support, had concluded to go forth likewise. Then she was troubled, too, about the home affairs, which, as the elder sister, she could not, even at a distance, shake off; and thus, leaving childhood, which had been but childhood in name to her, we find Charlotte a woman, brave yet fearful; timid but courageous; the lion’s heart in the humming bird’s body. I meant only to have told you about her childhood; and yet you may ask me, was Charlotte never again comfortable, light-hearted, and happy? Did nobody but her sisters ever love her very dearly? Did nobody else find out what a good, intelligent, gifted girl she was? Oh yes, at last! At last came fame and honor to the little, quiet Charlotte. Great men and great women wanted to know her, because she wrote so beautifully, or, as they said, was “a genius;” and she had plenty of complimentary letters and invitations to visit, and all the publishers wanted to publish her books; and she earned money enough to put a great many pretty things in the little dull parlor at home, so that she hardly knew it to be the same room; but, dear me! by that time all her sisters lay in the little churchyard with her mother; and poor Charlotte looked about at all these pretty things, and great tears came into her eyes, as she thought, Oh, why didn’t all my money and my friends come while they were alive, and could have been made comfortable and happy by them, so that we could all have lived at home together, and not been separated, to go away and teach school? Why? Poor Charlotte could not find out that why, as she sat in that little parlor, looking, with tearful eyes, at all the pretty things her money had bought. Perhaps you ask what her father said now to his good, gifted daughter. Oh, he sat up alone in his room, and was very proud of her; but that didn’t warm her heart any, you know. By and by a gentleman came along and asked her to be his wife. And after a while she said, Yes, I will. I suppose she thought, I want to be loved, more than anything in this world. It is very well, perhaps, to be “a genius,” and to be admired; but my heart aches all the same. Yes, I will be loved; and then I shall be happy; for, after all, the brightest world is cold and chilly, without love to warm it. I am glad she was married; because her husband was good and kind to her, and she began to smile, and look so bright you would not have known her. She was happier than she had ever been in all her life. But one day, not long after she was married, she caught a very bad cold, and everybody saw that she was going to die; she had suffered very much in her life, and she was not strong enough to struggle any more. Now, don’t say, “What a pity!” when I tell you that she really died. It is never a pity, when the loving and the tender-hearted go where there is no more grieving.
THE KIND WORD.
Not many years since, a poor blind man was feeling his way through some of the public roads to a small town in England, in search of employment, having only about him a small sum of money, contributed by some friends of the same trade as himself. Though he could see nothing, he yet felt the blessed, warm sunshine, and the soft southwest breeze that lifted his locks so gently, and bore to him the perfume of the early flowers. This was a joy. On his way a young woman, a foot traveler like himself, inquired of him if he could tell her whether she was on the right way to a certain town she wished to reach. Her voice was tremulous. The kind-hearted blind man said at once to himself, the poor young thing is desolate and troubled. I will help her. His kindness gave her confidence, and she told him, as well as she could for her tears, that she was turned out of her own father’s house by the unkindness of a mother-in-law, and was then looking out for a situation as house maid in some respectable family. The blind man was older than she; he knew well the danger to which her youth exposed her. He immediately found the young girl a safe place to lodge, and the next day gave himself no rest, till he had groped his way through the streets of the town, and found a kind family, who agreed to take her under the shelter of their roof. Afterward he learned from her, that this act of kindness had saved her from throwing herself into the river, when the poor creature was nearly crazy with misery. I tell you this little bit of a story, to show you that there is nobody in this world so poor or so miserable, that he cannot help somebody else. Because kind words, you know, cost nothing; and one can certainly always give them to the unfortunate. Of what use is a kind word? Oh, surely you never were in trouble, or you could not ask that! I believe heaven is full of those whom a kind word has helped there; and our jails and prison houses here are full of poor creatures who have gone there for want of a kind word when they were tempted to do wrong—for want of somebody to say, Don’t do it! for if nobody else cares for you, God cares for you; and you must care for yourself, because you are to live forever.
THE CORSICAN AND THE CREOLE.
In the lovely island of Martinique, a little girl was born. With her soft, dark eyes, lithe form, and fairy step, she was beautiful enough to have been its fairy queen. The livelong day she sang and danced among the flowers, the soft breeze lifting her locks, and tinting her cheeks with rose. The servants who had charge of her, as she floated past them in her light tissue robes, exclaimed, How beautiful she is! She was good as well as beautiful; she did not abuse her power over them; therefore they loved as well as admired her. Pity she ever left that pretty island home, with its birds and flowers! Pity that diamonds should lie heavily on the brow that looked so fair from under its wild-rose wreath. But in another island—rugged, rocky, with bandit-infested mountains—a little boy was born.
His majestic, strong-hearted mother stepped like a Roman matron. One day this Corsican mother was bending over the little Napoleon as he lay upon her lap, when an old man came in. Looking at the child’s uncovered back, he called Madame Letitia’s attention to a mark upon it, which he said was that of a tree, feeble in its roots, but whose branches should reach to the heavens. “This child,” said the gray-haired old prophet, “will one day rule the world.” The beautiful young mother smiled incredulously, as she looked around their simple room, where little Napoleon’s brothers and sisters played and studied from day to day, under her own eye, their hours for refreshment, sleep, and lessons marked out by her, and never departed from, any more than if it were a convent, and she its stately but loving lady abbess. “Rule the world!” She looked into the baby’s calm blue eyes, and thought no more of it. Were they not happy enough? It was a loving mother’s thought, but none the less heaven-born for that. Rule the world! She took the white, dimpled baby hand in hers, but never dreamed of “Marengo” or Austerlitz, and alas!—least of all—St. Helena!
By and by this little boy grew out of his mother’s lap, and began to cry for a little cannon. When he got it, he collected around him a company of little Corsican boys, himself the commander—even his baby head never dreamed of taking any place but the highest—and began to drill them to fight a battle with another boy company in the town. You may be sure they all had to step to his tune, even his elder brothers; and as time went on, it was very soon understood in the family, that what Master Napoleon said, was pretty likely to be done. His father looked on and thought very deeply, and, like a wise man, carried his son to a military school, where his wishes could be gratified, under proper restraints—where he learned that he who wishes to command must first learn how to submit. Here, being in his element, he was happy, quiet, and diligent. Only once his fiery spirit broke out. His quartermaster, one day, for some fault, condemned him to eat his dinner on his knees, in the woolen dress of disgrace, at the door of the refectory. Napoleon’s “sense of honor” was so deeply wounded by this, that he fell upon the floor in a fit. When the headmaster heard of it, he became very angry, and said, “What! punish so severely my best mathematician!” It was a good, wholesome lesson for him, though, for all that. He didn’t die of it! On the contrary, when he went home to Ajaccio, his native place, to pay a visit in vacation, he gave his orders about the education of his brothers and sisters as if he were the father of the family, instead of the second son. We must do him the justice to say, however, that his advice on these subjects was sensible, and well timed. Perhaps his mother began to think there was something in the prophecy of the old man about her son, more than she had dreamed of. We can imagine her watching the young soldier, as he sat, for hours, under an old oak tree near the house, dreaming about a future with which he had already begun to grapple, although about it he could know so little. But dreaming did not content him. He formed clubs among the young men, delivered speeches, and, all unconsciously to himself, was working out the destiny, step by step, foretold on his baby back by the old Corsican herdsman. His eye had a strange fire in it, his voice a trumpet tone; and they who listened, bowed to its strange, wild music, they could scarce tell why. Even then he was no mere ranter; he had studied hard, studied ceaselessly; the more difficulties he encountered in any branch of knowledge, the more eager he grew to master them. It is said that at school he never spent an idle moment; and when he came among his young companions, they felt this. They knew, when Napoleon opened his mouth, that he had something to say. It is all very fine for boys to dodge school duties, and school tasks. Ah! how many of them, in after life, would give worlds to recall those wasted hours in some great crisis, when strong, powerful, well-chosen words, from him who knows how to use them, would place in their hands so mighty a sceptre for the defense of human rights! Not that this power is never perverted; but we are not to speak of this now. The habits of intense study, industry, and close application of the young Napoleon were the solid foundation upon which the superstructure of his future greatness rested. This concentration of mind it was that enabled him, in after years, with the rapidity of lightning, to despatch business over which other military men would have droned till the precious moment in which action would have been available, had flown past. Remember this of Napoleon: he was a hard student in his youth. Whatever he undertook he did thoroughly. He knew what he knew.