I sat up half of last night reading Jane Eyre. Are you old enough,
Daddy, to remember sixty years ago? And, if so, did people talk
that way?

The haughty Lady Blanche says to the footman, `Stop your chattering,
knave, and do my bidding.' Mr. Rochester talks about the metal
welkin when he means the sky; and as for the mad woman who laughs
like a hyena and sets fire to bed curtains and tears up wedding
veils and BITES--it's melodrama of the purest, but just the same,
you read and read and read. I can't see how any girl could have written
such a book, especially any girl who was brought up in a churchyard.
There's something about those Brontes that fascinates me.
Their books, their lives, their spirit. Where did they get it?
When I was reading about little Jane's troubles in the charity
school, I got so angry that I had to go out and take a walk.
I understood exactly how she felt. Having known Mrs. Lippett,
I could see Mr. Brocklehurst.

Don't be outraged, Daddy. I am not intimating that the John Grier
Home was like the Lowood Institute. We had plenty to eat and plenty
to wear, sufficient water to wash in, and a furnace in the cellar.
But there was one deadly likeness. Our lives were absolutely monotonous
and uneventful. Nothing nice ever happened, except ice-cream
on Sundays, and even that was regular. In all the eighteen years
I was there I only had one adventure--when the woodshed burned.
We had to get up in the night and dress so as to be ready in case
the house should catch. But it didn't catch and we went back
to bed.