In our artificial civilization we have come to place too much store on the accident of wealth. Our Blessed Saviour, whom all the rich and luxurious call "Lord," was born in as lowly a condition of comfortless poverty as Patrick Bronte. Cows are now housed in Bronte's birthplace, but our Lord was born among the animals in the _caravanserai_. And yet, in our social code, we have reduced the Decalogue to this one commandment, "Thou shalt not be poor." Hugh Bronte did not choose poverty as his lot, but, being a working man, like the carpenter of Nazareth, he did the daily work that came to his hand, and then, side by side with Alice, he found the fulness of each day sufficient for all its wants. The happy home was soon crowded with children, and the family removed to a larger and better house, in the townland of Lisnacreevy. The parish register of Drumballyroney Church, to which the Brontes belonged, unfortunately goes no farther back than 1779, two years after the birth of Patrick. The register, which is now kept in the parish church of Drumgooland, belonged to the united parishes of Drumballyroney and Drumgooland, in which, when united, the Reverend Mr. Tighe was vicar for forty-two years. When Patrick Bronte was two years old, less one day, his brother William was baptized, and about every two succeeding years either a brother or a sister was added until the family numbered ten. II. THE DAILY ROUND. Hugh Bronte and his wife could not live wholly on love in a cottage, and Hugh had to bestir himself. He was an unskilled laborer, but he understood the art of burning lime. There was no limestone, however, in that part of County Down to burn, and as he could not have a lime-kiln, he resolved to have a corn-kiln. At the beginning of this century a corn-kiln in such a district in Ireland was a very simple affair. A floor of earthenware tiles, pierced nearly through from the underside, was arranged on a kind of platform or loft. Beneath there was a furnace, which was heated by burning the rough, dry seeds, or outer _shelling_, ground off the oats. In front of the furnace there was a hollow, called "the logie-hole," in which the kiln man sat, with the shelling or seeds heaped up within arm's length around him, and with his right hand he _beeked_ the kiln, by throwing, every few seconds, a sprinkling of seeds on the flame. In this way he kept up a warm glow under the corn till it was sufficiently dried for the mill.