'I was delighted to see thy note, old squire, but I do not understand one sentence--you will perhaps know what I mean.... How are all about you? I long to hear and see them again. How is the "Devil's Thumb," whom men call ---- ----, and the "Devil in Mourning," whom they call ---- ----? How are ---- ----, and ---- ----, and the Doctor; and him who will be used as the tongs of hell--he whose eyes Satan looks out of, as from windows--I mean ---- ----, esquire? How are little ---- ----, ---- "Longshanks," ---- ----, and the rest of them? Are they married, buried, devilled, and damned? When I come I'll give them a good squeeze of the hand; till then I am too godly for them to think of. That bow-legged devil used to ask me impertinent questions which I answered him in kind. Beelzebub will make of him a walking-stick! Keep to thy teetotalism, old squire, till I return; it will mend thy old body.... Does "Little Nosey" think I have forgotten him? No, by Jupiter! nor his clock either.[30] I'll send him a remembrancer some of these days! But I must talk to some one prettier than thee; so good-night, old boy, and 'Believe me thine, 'THE PHILOSOPHER. 'Write directly. Of course you won't show this letter; and, for Heaven's sake, blot out all the lines scored with red ink.' [30] The clock mentioned by Branwell was one that stood in a corner of the 'Snug' at 'The Bull,' inside the door of which the landlord--'Little Nosey'--used to chalk up the 'shots' of his guests. This letter, as I have intimated, was never intended for more than a moment's amusement, at most, to a small circle of acquaintances at Haworth, and was not to exist after having been read. But John Brown kept the letter, which I saw and copied. It is a curious circumstance, illustrating the hold which it obtained over the Haworth circle, that, though the original was lost so long since as 1874, the brother of the sexton knew it by heart, and could repeat it with considerable accuracy. In this way it has been several times written down. No allusion would have been made to the letter in the present work, if Miss Robinson--strange to say--had not thought it a fitting embellishment for her 'Emily Brontë.' If Branwell had known its fate at the moment he wrote it, it would never have reached the 'Worshipful Master of the Lodge of the Three Graces,' but would have been committed to the flames by his own hand; for, as we have seen, he was ashamed of some expressions scored in red, which he begged might be obliterated.