She was a close student here, and a favorite with the girls, whom she would frighten half out of their senses by her wonderful stories. So great was their effect at times, that her listeners were thrown into real hysterics. After leaving this school, Charlotte returned home, and began keeping house and teaching her sisters. Here several quiet years were passed, busy but monotonous. The girls spent their time in study, in household tasks, walking, and drawing, of which they were very fond. They also read very thoroughly the few books which were accessible to them. At nineteen Charlotte went as a teacher to Miss Woolner's school, where she was very happy, and remained until her health failed. It was a nervous trouble, which seemed at one time like a complete breaking down, but from which she gradually recovered after her return home. Emily now took her turn in teaching, going to a school at Halifax, where she came near literally dying from homesickness. Emily could never live away from Haworth and her moors; and in this school she labored incessantly from six in the morning till eleven at night, with only one half-hour for exercise between. To a free, wild, untamable spirit like Emily's, this was indeed slavery. She returned home after a time, and Charlotte again went out to teach. They felt the necessity of earning money, as their father's stipend was small, and he was both liberal and charitable,--and there was their brother Branwell to be provided for. Of this brother we have not before spoken; but he occupied an important place in their home and in their lives. He had been the pride and the hope of the family from early youth. He was possessed of brilliant talents, and was full of noble impulses, but was very fond of pleasure, and soon formed irregular habits, which were the ruin of his life and the source of unmeasured grief to his whole family. They had desired to send him to study at the Royal Academy, as he had the family's fondness for drawing, and they fancied he would develop great talent as an artist. Had his habits been good, their hopes might have been realized; but he fell so early into profligacy, that the idea of becoming an artist was given up, and he took a place as a private tutor. He had formed his intemperate habits when a mere boy, at the public house in Haworth village, where he was esteemed royal company,--as no doubt he was, with his brilliant conversational powers,--and was often sent for to entertain chance guests, in whom he delighted, as they could tell him so much of that distant world beyond the confining hills, for which he yearned. The pity of it was infinite; for had he been kept in regular courses for a few years longer, his own ambition and love of the good opinion of others might have restrained him altogether from excess. As it was, before his judgment was matured or he had any real knowledge of the fatal effect of the habits he was forming, he was firmly fixed in the