Shirley

by Charlotte Brontë

Cheerfulness, it would appear, is a matter which depends fully as much on the state of things within as on the state of things without and around us.

"But not love! Love is real—the most real, the most lasting, the sweetest and yet the bitterest thing we know."

"My dear, it is very bitter. It is said to be strong—strong as death! Most of the cheats of existence are strong. As to their sweetness, nothing is so transitory; its date is a moment, the twinkling of an eye. The sting remains for ever. It may perish with the dawn of eternity, but it tortures through time into its deepest night."

The future sometimes seems to sob a low warning of the events it is bringing us, like some gathering though yet remote storm, which, in tones of the

wind, in flushings of the firmament, in clouds strangely torn, announces a blast strong to strew the sea with wrecks; or commissioned to bring in fog the yellow taint of pestilence covering white Western isles with the poisoned exhalations of the East, dimming the lattices of English homes with the breath of Indian plague. At other times this future bursts suddenly, as if a rock had rent, and in it a grave had opened, whence issues the

body of one that slept. Ere you are aware you stand face to face with a shrouded and unthough...

To respect himself, a man must believe he renders justice to his fellow-men.