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SHIRLEY
Charlotte Brontë
CONTENTS
Chapter 4: Mr. Yorke (continued)
Chapter 12: Shirley and Caroline
Chapter 13: Further Communications on Business
Chapter 14: Shirley Seeks to be Saved by Works
Chapter 15: Mr. Donne’s Exodus
Chapter 18: Which the Genteel Reader is Recommended to Skip, Low Persons Being Here introduced
Chapter 24: The Valley of the Shadow of Death
Chapter 25: The West Wind Blows
Chapter 27: The First Bluestocking
Chapter 30: Rushedge—A Confessional
Chapter 32: The Schoolboy and the Wood-nymph
Chapter 35: Wherein Matters Make Some Progress, But Not Much
Chapter 36: Written in the Schoolroom
Classic Literature: Words and Phrases Adapted from the Collins English Dictionary
Of late years an abundant shower of curates has fallen upon the north of England: they lie very thick on the hills; every parish has one or more of them; they are young enough to be very active, and ought to be doing a great deal of good. But not of late years are we about to speak; we are going back to the beginning of this century: late years—present years are dusty, sunburnt, hot, arid; we will evade the noon, forget it in siesta, pass the midday in slumber, and dream of dawn.
If you think, from this prelude, that anything like a romance is preparing for you, reader, you never were more mistaken. Do you anticipate sentiment, and poetry, and reverie? Do you expect passion, and stimulus, and melodrama? Calm your expectations; reduce them to a lowly standard. Something real, cool, and solid lies before you; something unromantic as Monday morning, when all who have work wake with the consciousness that they must rise and betake themselves thereto. It is not positively affirmed that you shall not have a taste of the exciting, perhaps towards the middle and close of the meal, but it is resolved that the first dish set upon the table shall be one that a Catholic—ay, even an Anglo-Catholic—might eat on Good Friday in Passion Week: it shall be cold lentils and vinegar without oil; it shall be unleavened bread with bitter herbs, and no roast lamb.
Of late years, I say, an abundant shower of curates has fallen upon the north of England; but in eighteen-hundred-eleven-twelve that affluent rain had not descended. Curates were scarce then: there was no Pastoral Aid—no Additional Curates’ Society to stretch a helping hand to worn-out old rectors and incumbents, and give them the wherewithal