Morning journal and courier., 1891-04-04
MIR. wAKEMAN,s JOURNEyINGs.
At Haworth, EnGIand-Its Descrip- tfon-The Surroundings Of the Place-The BrOnte Family


 Place-The BrOnte Family
 HAwoRTH, England, March 20. To the Editor of the JOURNAL AND COURIER: In the entire history of the relation of woman to English literature there cannot be found anything like the same winsome, if somewhat melancholy, interest that will always cling to the irreproachable name, the obscure surroundings and the extraor- dinary personality of the author of "Jane Eyre"
 Because of this, Haworth, though inter esting for little else than once having been the home of the Bronte family, is worth going long way to see. And it is long and a dreary way one has to come. Perched up here among the bleak hills of the West Riding of Yorkshire alongside the moors and fells of Lancashire, the place is almost as unknown and inaccessi- ble as the grave of Byron at Hucknall Torkard, in Nottinghamshire.
 If your impulse is to visit Haworth come in the summer only. Then there is at least sunshine. Then fieecy clouds struggle over and between the hills as if shadowy hosts were marshalling behind the horizon. Here and there splatches of color lie against old walls and house fronts. The heather blushes from the un- dulant green of the moors. And one can then easily imagine bits of Apul:nn pasto- ral scenery here in the shepherds and their focks, like cameo reliefs on beds of dag zling emerald, with a perspective of bill lowy lines and misty clouds, and here and there a savage kite or moor-buzzard cir | cling above the scene, fierce and endless in its hunger for unwary heath-poults or grouse.
 | But at any other time. your impressions, all the way from Keighley up the little valley of the Worth river, the stream be- ing nowhere more than tiny beck or moorland Till, will be dismal ones indeed. | This entire Yorkshire district, of which Bradford is the trade metropolis, is given over to the manufacture of worsteds. To the right and left of the little branch of the Midland railway, which follows the stream up the valley past Haworth to OK enhope, are clusters of deserted olden hand-loom mills; rotten weirs; grimy steam-power mills with their huge hall smoke hidden chimneys; decaying arches rows of factory hand cottages with slat ternly women at the door; gnarled, stunt ed trees springing meagerly from impo verished soil in shsdpwy gorge and glen and, in farthest reaches of prospect, be meath leaden- colored sky, the grim out lines of barren hills, the hollows between showing farther, dinner outlines of bleak bare moors, suggesting the wastes of
 mountainous waved, measureless sea.
 The tiny Haworth railway station stand in the center of the horse shoe shaped val ! ley head to which you have come from tn north. There could be no more chee, 1 less sight than that presenting itself in ey
 cry direction es you alight from your rail
 way carriage. The station-master, tn ; single human in sight, in q sparsely cut
 threadbare uniform, trots around shivel 1 ingly for a moment as if feeble, starve { and cold; and then snaps himself up i
 his little den with sharp click, as if i
 flight from the surrounding dreariness
 Across the track where there has some
 times been little patch of flowers lone ly, almost featherless, altogether bedrae
 gled hen pecks at the dead stalks feebly
 enormously. This is all of life there
 near the station. Over to the left, lon
 distance away on the level bed of the va ley, are several huge mills. They ar prisons in every sense. The black smok rolls sullenly from their stacks. But n
 human being is visible. Then there are
 half score rows of workmens' houses, ti tie, mean, hard and cramped, huddled
 grimy, denuded spaces, or set on the bra