Alice Bronte also span nearly all the garments which she wore, and her tall and comely daughters after her were dressed in clothes which their own hands had taken from the fleece. On principle, as well as from necessity, the Brontes wore woollen garments, and the vicar carried the same taste with him to England, where his dislike of everything made of cotton was attributed by his biographer to dread of fire. The absurd servants' gossip as to his cutting up his wife's silk gown had possibly a grain of truth in it, owing to his preference for woollen garments; but the atrocity spun out of the gossip by Mrs. Gaskell was probably an exaggeration of an innocent act. At any rate, the old man characterized the statement, I believe truly, by a small but ugly word. All the Brontes, father, mother, sons, and daughters, to the number of twelve, were clad in wool, and they were the healthiest, handsomest, strongest, heartiest family in the whole country. They were a standing proof of the excellency of the woollen theory, and it is interesting to note how Hugh Bronte's theory and practice have received approval in our own day. For a time the Brontes had to look to others to weave their yarn into the blankets and friezes that they required, but Patrick was taught to weave as soon as he was able to throw the shuttle and roll the beam, and then his father's house manufactured for themselves everything they wore, from the raw staple to the gracefully fitting corset. Even the scarlet mantle for which "Ayles" Bronte is still remembered in Ballynaskeagh was carded, spun, knitted, and dyed by Mrs. Bronte's own hands. The spirit of independence manifested by the Brontes in England was a survival of a still sturdier spirit that had had its origin in one of the humblest cabins in County Down. As time passed Hugh Bronte became a famous ditcher. There is a very old man called Hugh Norton, living in Ballynaskeagh, who remembers him making fences and philosophizing at the same time. It is very probable that the introduction of corn-kilns constructed of burnt pottery may have left him without custom for his straw-mat kiln, just as the introduction of machinery at a later period left the country hand-looms idle. In Hugh Bronte's time more careful attention began to be given to the land. Bogs were drained, fields fenced, roads constructed, bridges made, houses built, with greater energy than had ever been known before, and, although the landlord generally raised the rent on every improvement effected by the tenant, the wave of prosperity and improvement continued. Hugh Bronte was a good, steady workman, and found constant employment, and at that time wages rose from sixpence per day to eightpence and tenpence. The sod fences made by him still stand as a monument of honest work, and there are few country districts where huntsmen would find greater difficulty with the fences than in Emdale and Ballynaskeagh.