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 this new one bravely. They next tried romance. Anne wrote "Agnes Grey," Charlotte "The Professor," and Emily "Wuthering Heights." When these tales were completed, all three were sent in one parcel from publisher to publisher, only to return as often to the hands of their unhappy authors. Then it occurred to them to try their fate separately, and after further waiting and discouragement, "Wuthering Heights" and "Agnes Grey" found a firm willing to take the risk of printing them. "The Professor" was not so fortunate.

Meanwhile, another sorrow had come into the melancholy parsonage: Mr. Brontë had begun to lose his eyesight. He could still grope his way about, but he could not read nor use his eyes for many of the ordinary purposes of life, and it was evident that unless the cataract could be removed his sight would soon be entirely destroyed. So, in August of 1846, Charlotte accompanied him to Manchester for the purpose of having an operation performed. Upon the very day on which the operation was to take place, Charlotte, lonely, anxious, and miserable, had "The Professor" once more returned to her, "declined," by some busy publisher without even the usual thanks. She was in the room with her father while the cataract was removed, sitting breathless and quiet in a corner, and she nursed him through the illness of the following days, when he was confined to his bed in a darkened room, hoping, but not yet certain, that his sight was restored to him.

And it was at this time, in the midst of sorrow, suffering, anxiety, and disappointment, alone with her invalid father in a great, black, strange city—it was at this time, on the evening of the day of the operation, that Charlotte Brontë, her brave spirit still undaunted, sent forth her old story for another trial, and, sitting down in her bare, ugly little boarding-house room, wrote swiftly,