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Page 7
The Christmas holidays, extending from the 25th of December to the 2d of
January, are a period of entire suspension of labor on the plantation.
In anticipation of their arrival, a large quantity of fire-wood is
hauled from the forests and piled up around the cabins; but the negroes
spend very little of this interval of leisure in their own homes, unless
a bad spell of weather has set in and continues. They are either out in
the open air or at the "store." This latter serves the purpose of a
club, and is a very popular resort. Even at other times of the year it
is always packed at night; but during the Christmas holidays it is full
to overflowing in the day-time. At this gay season the fires are kept
burning very fiercely; the Sunday suits and dresses are worn every day;
the tables are covered with more abundant fare of the plainer as well
as rarer sort. All visitors are received with increased hospitality, and
work of every kind that usually goes on in the precincts of the dwelling
is, if possible, deferred until the opening of the new year. Many
strange faces are now seen on the plantation, and many faces that were
once familiar, but whose owners have removed elsewhere. The negro is as
closely bound in affection to the scenes of his childhood as the white
man, and he thinks that he has certain rights there of which absence
even cannot deprive him, although he may have left for permanent
settlement at a distance. When he dies elsewhere he is always anxious in
his last hours that his body shall be brought back and buried in the old
graveyard of the plantation where he was born and where he grew up to
manhood. And when he comes back to the well-known localities for a brief
stay, he feels as if he were at home again in the house of his fathers,
where he has an absolute and inalienable right to be.
PHILIP A. BRUCE.
SCENES OF CHARLOTTE BRONT�'S LIFE IN BRUSSELS.
We had "done" Brussels after the approved fashion,--had faithfully
visited the churches, palaces, museums, theatres, galleries, monuments,
and boulevards, had duly admired the beautiful windows and the exquisite
wood-carvings of the grand old cathedral of St. Gudule, the tower and
tapestry and frescos and fa�ade of the magnificent H�tel-de-Ville, the
stately halls and the gilded dome of the immense new Courts of Justice,
and the consummate beauty of the Bourse, had diligently sought out the
na�ve boy-fountain, and had made the usual excursion to Waterloo.
This delightful task being conscientiously discharged, we proposed to
devote our last day in the beautiful Belgian capital to the
accomplishment of one of the cherished projects of our lives,--the
searching out of the localities associated with Charlotte Bront�'s
unhappy school-life here, which she has so graphically portrayed. For
our purpose no guide was available, or needful, for the topography and
local coloring of "Villette" and "The Professor" are as vivid and
unmistakable as in the best work of Dickens himself. Proceeding from St.
Gudule, by the little street at the back of the cathedral, to the Rue
Royale, and a short distance along that grand thoroughfare, we reached
the park and a locality familiar to Miss Bront�'s readers. Seated in
this lovely pleasure-ground, the gift of the empress Maria Theresa, with
its cool shade all about us, we noted the long avenues and the paths
winding amid stalwart trees and verdant shrubbery, the dark foliage
ineffectually veiling the gleaming statuary and the sheen of bright
fountains, "the stone basin with its clear depth, the thick-planted
trees which framed this tremulous and rippled mirror," the groups of
happy people filling the seats in secluded nooks or loitering in the
cool mazes and listening to the music,--we noted all this, and felt that
Miss Bront� had revealed it to us long ago. It was across this park that
Lucy Snowe was piloted from the bureau of the diligence by the
chivalrous stranger, Dr. John, on the night when she, despoiled,
helpless, and solitary, arrived in Brussels. She found the park deserted
and dark, the paths miry, the water "dripping from its trees." "In the
double gloom of tree and fog she could not see her guide, and could only
follow his tread" in the darkness. We recalled another scene under these
same tail trees, on a night when the iron gateway was "spanned by a
naming arch of massed stars." The park was a "forest with sparks of
purple and ruby and golden fire gemming the foliage," and Lucy, driven
from her couch by mental torture, wandered unrecognized amid the gay
throng at the midnight concert of the Festival of the Martyrs and looked
upon her lover, her friends the Brettons, and the secret junta of her
enemies, Madame Beck, Madame Walravens, and P�re Silas.
The sense of familiarity with the vicinage grew as we observed our
surroundings. Facing us, at the extremity of the park, was the
unpretentious palace of the king, in the small square across the Rue
Royale at our right was the statue of General B�liard, and we knew that
just behind it we should find the Rue Fossette and Charlotte Bront�'s
_pensionnat_, for Crimsworth, "The Professor," standing by the statue,
had "looked down a great staircase" to the door-way of the school, and
poor Lucy, on that forlorn first night in "Villette," to avoid the
insolence of a pair of ruffians, had hastened down a flight of steps from
the Rue Royale, and had come, not to the inn she sought, but to the
_pensionnat_ of Madame Beck.
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