LIFE LIFE, believe, is not a dream So dark as sages say; Oft a little morning rain Foretells a pleasant day. Sometimes there are clouds of gloom, But these are transient all; If the shower will make the roses bloom, O why lament its fall ? Rapidly, merrily, Life's sunny hours flit by, Gratefully, cheerily, Enjoy them as they fly ! What though Death at times steps in And calls our Best away ? What though sorrow seems to win, O'er hope, a heavy sway ? Yet hope again elastic springs, Unconquered, though she fell; Still buoyant are her golden wings, Still strong to bear us well. Manfully, fearlessly, The day of trial bear, For gloriously, victoriously, Can courage quell despair ! Charlotte Bronte BRONTE is the family name of three sisters who became famous novelists - Charlotte, Emily and Anne. Their lives and works are associated with the lonely moors of Yorkshire, England, where they were born Their brother Branwell painted a lovely portrait of his sisters. Their father, born Patrick BRUNTY in Emdale, parish of Drumgallyroney, County Down, Ireland, on St. Patrick's Day 1777, was a poor, rather eccentric Irishman who became the parish clergyman in the small, isolated town of Haworth, Yorkshire in England. Charlotte's famous novel, "Jane Eyre," (1847) was largely biographical. Through the heroine, Charlotte relived the hated boarding school and her experiences as a governess in a large house, although the hero and master of the house, Rochester, was fictional. At the time it was published, some of her contemporaries were shocked that the character, Jane, wanted to be regarded as a thinking and independent person as opposed to a weak woman. Charlotte wrote a first-hand account of her visit to the Crystal Palace at the Great Exhibition, in 1851, at Hyde Park, London. Sir Joseph PAXTON's Crystal Palace contained a floor area of more than 800,000 square feet and contained over eight miles of display tables. Charlotte wrote - "Yesterday, I went for the second time to the Crystal Palace. We remained in it about three hours, and I must say I was more struck with it on this occasion than at my first visit It is a wonderful place - vast, strange, new, and impossible to describe. Its grandeur does not consist in one thing, but in the unique assemblage of all things. Whatever human industry has created you will find there, from the great compartments filled with railway engines and boilers, with mill machinery in full work, with splendid carriages of all kinds, with harness of every description, to the glass-covered and velvet-spread stands loaded with the most gorgeous work of the goldsmith and silversmith, and the carefully guarded caskets full of real diamonds and pearls worth hundreds of thousands of pounds. It may be called a bazaar or a fair, but it is such a bazaar or fair as Eastern genii might have created. It seems as if only magic could have gathered this mass of wealth from all the ends of the earth -- as if none but supernatural hands could have arranged it thus, with such a blaze and contrast of colours and marvellous power of effect. The multitude filling the great aisles seems ruled and subdued by some invisible influence. Amongst the thirty thousand souls that peopled it the day I was there not one loud noise was to be heard, not one irregular movement seen; the living tide rolls on quietly, with a deep hum like the sea heard from the distance."