Catherine's story of the rainy day in _Wuthering Heights_ was written by her in childhood on "a 'red-hot' Methodist's tract." Hence it is interesting to read Charlotte Brontë's words in _Villette_, where as Lucy Snowe she says she had "once read when a child certain Wesleyan Methodist tracts seasoned with ... excitation to fanaticism." As Caroline Helstone[21] in _Shirley_, Charlotte tells us she had read "some mad Methodist magazines, full of miracles and apparitions, of preternatural warnings, ominous dreams, and frenzied fanaticism; ... from these faded flowers Caroline had in her childhood extracted the honey--they were tasteless to her now." Let the reader compare Charlotte Brontë's reference to Briar Chapel and the shouts, yells, ejaculations, frantic cries of "the assembly" in Chapter IX. of _Shirley_ with the references in Chapter III. of _Wuthering Heights_ to the frantic zeal of "the assembly" of the chapel of Gimmerden Sough. It will be at once recognized that the former is but the extension of the other, amplified by the same hand. Thus, in the light of the name Branderham ("Brander'em," from "brander," a hot iron over a fire) for the name of the zealous Rev. Jabes Branderham,[22] of the chapel of Gimmerden Sough, of _Wuthering Heights_, we see a connection with the play Charlotte Brontë makes upon "burning and fire" in the hymn sung at Briar Chapel in Chapter IX. of _Shirley_:-- "For every fight Is dreadful and loud-- The warrior's delight Is slaughter and blood; His foes overturning Till all shall expire-- And this is with burning And fuel and fire." In the rainy day incident Charlotte Brontë as Catherine vowed "she hated a good book," and this rebellion against the thrusting upon her of religious "lumber," as she calls it in _Wuthering Heights_, was a characteristic of her childhood shown also in the "Jane Eyre and Mr. Brocklehurst" incident, where the latter asks-- "And the Psalms? I hope you like them?" "No, sir," replied Jane. "No? Oh, shocking!" At heart, however, Charlotte Brontë was a true Christian, though disliking excessive zealousness in the demonstrations of the members of any church. Read what M. Emanuel says in Chap. XXXVI. of _Villette_; the last paragraph. Lockwood tells us in the incident connected with Catherine's diary that "a glare of white letters started from the dark as vivid as spectres--the air swarmed with Catherines." This, Charlotte Brontë's idea of spectral writing running in the air, occurs in Chap. XV. of _Jane Eyre_, where Rochester speaks of a phantom hag (see Charlotte Brontë's phantom hag in Chap. XII. of _Wuthering Heights_), who "wrote in the air a memento which ran in lurid hieroglyphics all along the house-front." Says Lockwood in _Wuthering Heights_, continuing:--"An immediate interest kindled within me for the unknown Catherine, and I began ... to decipher her hieroglyphics"--the diary. CHAPTER V.