Disappointments and Perplexities

MRS. WESLEY, it will be remembered, had a brother, Samuel Annesley, who went to India, which, in those days, was regarded almost as live-long banishment. He left a wife and perhaps young children behind him, who seem to have resided at Shore House, Hackney, a fine old red brick residence which was in the fields when Jane Shore lived there, and was approached by her royal lover by a footpath from the main road, known for many generations as King Edward's Path, but now widened and built over, and called King Edward's Road. Shore House is well remembered by numbers of people still living, but it has shared the fate of so many similar edifices, and been pulled down, the old bricks being used in the erection of small villas built over what was once a fertile and wellstocked garden, and forming a short thoroughfare called Shore Road. Samuel Annesley must have been in fairly prosperous circumstances to have established his family at Shore House, and it is nearly certain that after the fire at Epworth Rectory one or two of his nieces stayed with them for a time, and produced a favourable impression. In going out to India Mr. Annesley hoped to amass a fortune, and is supposed to have done so, though at the time he was expected to return to England he was lost sight of, and nointelligence of his fate, nor any of the money he had obtained, ever reached his relatives. About 1712-13 he wrote to Mr. Wesley, requesting that he would act as his agent in England with the East India Company ; and after some hesitation Mr. Wesley accepted the post, hoping, with the assistance of his son at Westminster, to be able to do so satisfactorily. He was not, however, a man of business, and as soon as his brother-in-law discovered this, he transferred the agency to someone else. Mr. Annesley not unnaturally wrote to his sister, complaining of her husband's short-lived administration of his affairs, and she as naturally showed a wifely spirit in defending him. Letters in those days took a great while to go and come, and a long and interesting letter from Mrs. Wesley to her brother, was written on her birthday, and gives us one of the few glimpses we have at the then condition of her family : — " SIR, " Epworth, Jan. 20th, 1721-2.

"The unhappy differences between you and Mr. Wesley have prevented my writing for some years, not knowing whether a letter from me would be acceptable, and being unwilling to be troublesome. But feeling life ebb apace, and having a desire to be at peace with all men, especially you, before my exit, I have ventured to send one letter more, hoping you will give yourself the trouble to read it without prejudice.

" I am, I believe, got on the right side of fifty, infirm and weak ; yet, old as I am, since I have taken my husband ' for better or for worse/ I '11 take my residence with him, ' where he lives will I live, and where he dies will I die, and there will I be buried. God do so to me, and more also, if aught but death part him and me.' Confinement is nothing to one that by sickness is compelled to spend great part of her time in a chamber ; and I sometimes think that if it were not on account of Mr. Wesley and the •children, it would be perfectly indifferent to my soul whether she ascended to the supreme Origin of being from a jail or a palace, for God is everywhere : — No walls, nor locks, nor bars, nor deepest shade, Nor closest solitude excludes His presence ; And in what place soever He vouchsafes To manifest His presence, there is heaven.

And that man whose heart is penetrated with Divine love, and enjoys the manifestations of God's blissful presence is happy, let his outward condition be what it will. He is rich, as having nothing, yet possessing all things. This world, this present state of things, is but for a time. What is now future will 'be present, as what is already past once was; and then, as Mr. Pascal observes, a little earth thrown on our cold head will for ever determine our hopes and our condition ; nor will it signify much who personated the prince or the beggar, since, with respect to the exterior, all must stand on the same level after death.

" Upon the best observation I could ever make, I am induced to believe that it is much easier to be •contented without riches than with them. It is so natural for a rich person to make his gold his god (for whatever a person loves most, that thing, be it what it will, he will certainly make his god) ; it is so very difficult not to trust in, not to depend on it for support and happiness, that I do not know one rich man in the world with whom I would exchange conditions.

" You say, ' I hope you have recovered your loss by fire long since.' No, and, it is to be doubted, never shall. Mr. Wesley rebuilt his house in less than one year, but nearly thirteen years are elapsed since it was burned, yet it is not half furnished, nor his wife and children half clothed to this day. It is true that by the benefactions of his friends, together with what he had himself, he paid the first ; but the latter is not paid yet, or, what is much the same, money which was borrowed for clothes and furniture is yet unpaid. You go on : ' My brother's living of .£300 a year, as they tell me.' They, — who ? I wish those who say so were compelled to make it so. It may be as truly said that his living is £10,000 a year as £300. I have, Sir, formerly laid before you the true state of affairs. I have told you that the living was always let for £160 a year ; that taxes, poor assessments, sub-rents, tenths, procurations, synodals, &c., took up nearly £30 of that moiety, so that there needs no great skill in arithmetic to compute what remains.

" What we shall or shall not need hereafter God only knows, but at present there hardly ever was a greater coincidence of unprosperous events in one family than is now in ours. I am rarely in health, Mr. Wesley declines apace; my dear Emily, who in my present exigencies would greatly comfort me, is compelled to go to service in Lincoln, where she is a teacher in a boarding-school; my second daughter Sukey, a pretty woman, and worthy a better fate, when by your last unkind letters she perceived that all her hopes in you were frustrated, rashly threw herself away upon a man (if a man he may be called who is little inferior to the apostate angels in wickedness) that is not only her plague, but a constant affliction to the family. Oh, Sir ! oh, brother ! happy, thrice happy are you, happy is my sister, that buried your children in infancy, secure from temptation, secure from guilt, secure from want or shame, or loss of friends ! They are safe beyond the reach of pain or sense of misery ; being gone hence, nothing can touch them further. Believe me, Sir, it is better to mourn ten children dead than one living, and I have buried many. But here I must pause awhile.

" The other children, though wanting neither industry nor capacity for business, we cannot put to any, by reason we have neither money nor friends to assist us in doing it ; nor is there a gentleman's family near us in which we can place them, unless as common servants, and that even yourself would not think them fit for, if you saw them ; so that they must . stay at home, while they have a home, — and how long will that be ? Innumerable are other uneasinesses, too tedious to mention, insomuch that, what with my own indisposition, my master's infirmities, the absence of my eldest, the ruin of my second daughter, and the inconceivable distress of all the rest, I have enough to turn a stronger head than mine. And were it not that God supports, and by His omnipotent goodness often totally suspends all sense of worldly things, I could not sustain the weight many days, perhaps hours. But even in this low ebb of fortune, I am not without some kind interval. Unspeakable are the blessings of privacy and leisure, when the mind 9 * emerges from the corrupt animality to which she is united, and, by a flight peculiar to her nature, soars beyond the bounds of time and place in contemplation of the Invisible Supreme, whom she perceives to be her only happiness, her proper centre, in whom she finds repose inexplicable, such as the world can neither give nor take away.

" The late Archbishop of York once said to me (when my master was in Lincoln Castle) among other things, ' Tell me/ said he, ' Mrs. Wesley, whether you ever really wanted bread ? ' ' My lord/ said I, ' I will freely own to your Grace, that, strictly speaking, I never did want bread. But then I had so much care to get it before it was eat, and to pay for it after, as has often made it very unpleasant to me ; and, I think, to have bread on such terms is the next degree of wretchedness to having none at all.' * You are certainly in the right/ replied my lord, and seemed for a while very thoughtful. Next morning he made me a handsome present, nor did he ever repent having done so. On the contrary, I have reason to believe it afforded him comforting reflections before his exit/' A passage in which Mrs. Wesley declares that her husband had done his disinterested best with regard to Mr. Annesley's business, even if he had not understood the wisest way of managing affairs, has here by common consent been omitted. She proceeds : — " These things are unkind, very unkind. Add not misery to affliction ; if you will not reach out a friendly hand to support, yet, I beseech you, forbear to throw water on a people already sinking.

" But I shall go on with your letter to me. You proceed : ' When I come home ' — oh, would to God that might ever be ! — ' should any of your daughters need me ' — as I think they will not — ' I shall do as God enables me ! ' I must answer this with a sigh from the bottom of my heart. Sir, you know the proverb, ' While the grass grows, the steed starves/ That passage relating to Ansley I have formerly replied to ; therefore I '11 pass it over, together with some hints I am not willing to understand. You go on: 'My brother has one invincible obstacle to my business, his distance from London/ Sir, you may please to remember I put you in mind of this long since. ' Another hindrance : I think he is too zealous for the party he fancies in the right, and has unluckily to do with the opposite faction/ Whether those you employ are factious or not, I '11 not determine, but very sure I am Mr. Wesley is not so ; he is zealous in a good cause, as everyone ought to be, but the farthest from being a party man of any man in the world/' Here blazes out for a moment the keen partizanship of the woman who acknowledged the Divine Right of the " King over the water" and of no other. The remainder of the letter shows that she was not one of those who are blind to the shortcomings of a husband, and also proves how completely she understood that he had not found the exact niche in life which his talents and energies best fitted him to fill.

" ' Another remora is, these matters are out of his way/ That is a remora indeed, and ought to have been considered on both sides before he entered on your business : for I am verily persuaded that that, and that alone, has been the cause of any mistakes or inadvertency he has been guilty of, and the true reason why God has not blessed him with desired success. ' He is apt to rest upon deceitful promises.' Would to heaven that neither he nor I, nor any of our children, had ever trusted to deceitful promises. But it is a right-hand error, and I hope God will forgive us all. ' He wants Mr. Eaton's thrift/ This I can readily believe. ' He is not fit for worldly business/ This I likewise assent to, and must own I •was mistaken when I did think him fit for it: my own experience hath since convinced me that he is one of those who, our Saviour saith, ' are not so wise in their generation as the children of this world.' And did I not know that Almighty Wisdom hath views and ends in fixing the bounds of our habitation, which are out of our ken, I should think it a thousand pities that a man of his brightness and rare endowments of learning and useful knowledge in relation to the Church of God should be confined to an obscure corner of this country, where his talents are buried, and he determined to a way of life for which he is not so well qualified as I could wish ; and it is with pleasure that I behold in my eldest son an aversion from accepting a small country cure, since, blessed be God ! he has a fair reputation for learning and piety, preaches well, and is capable of doing more good where he is. You conclude, ' My wife will make my cousin Emily ? ' It was a small and insignificant present to my sister indeed; but, poor girl, it was her whole estate ; and if it had been received as kindly as it was meant, she would have been highly pleased. I shall not detain you any longer — not so much as to apologise for the tedious length of this letter.

"I should be glad if my service could be made acceptable to my sister, to whom, with yourself, the children tender their humblest duty. We all join in wishing you a Happy New Year, and very many of them.

" I am your obliged and most obedient Servant and Sister, " SUSANNA WESLEY."

The above letter was written evidently in reply to some not very distant communication from Mr. Annesley, and it is not quite clear whether the date is according to the Old Style or the New. It is also uncertain whether it was ever received, as no reply came to it in any form, and when, two or three years later, the newspapers of the day announced that Mr. Annesley was, or would be, a passenger on board a certain homeward-bound vessel, and some of his relatives arranged to meet him, they were disappointed, as he did not arrive, and nothing definite could be heard about him.

Life at Ep worth was at this time very uncomfortable, and the old adage, that " when poverty comes in at the door, love flies out at the window," seems to some extent to have been verified in the case of the Wesleys. On one occasion Mrs. Wesley wrote to one of her sons that unfortunately his father and she never thought alike, and the eldest son Samuel, in a familiar letter to his brother John, who was then in Lincolnshire, and had written a confidential account of the state of affairs, says he would to God that his father and mother were as easy in one another as himself and his wife. Emilia, the eldest daughter, speaks of being in " intolerable want and affliction/' in " scandalous want of necessaries/' of her mother being ill in bed all one winter, and even expected to die, while she herself did her best to keep the large family on a very small sum of money. Kezia and Martha, and, in fact, all the girls, told the same tale of the scantiness of money and clothes, and how their mother's ill-health was to a great extent caused by want of common comforts. Mary, the deformed girl, appears to have been almost the family drudge ; and the others, who would fain have gone out as governesses or companions, or, in fact, in any capacity, were unable to do so for want of clothes in which to make a decent appearance. The only chance they saw of bettering their circumstances was marriage, and to that most of their thoughts seem to have been directed. One or two of them loved very deeply and truly, but bestowed their affections on men who were not worthy of them, and ultimately made marriages in which there was little or no prospect of happiness. Many suitors appeared for one or the other of them, but were refused by the parents, perhaps not always on sufficient grounds, for, taken altogether, the matrimonial affairs of the daughters were eminently unhappy. Hetty, who was a pretty, clever, sprightly girl, went wrong altogether, and was treated by both her parents with the harshness of rigid virtue that has never known temptation. They utterly refused to see or forgive her; and had not her brothers and uncle pitied and made allowances for her, her fate would have been even worse than it was. Samuel probably interceded and reconciled them during his visit home in 1725. She still had some lingering hope of being married to the man who had beguiled her and whom she truly loved ; but her father and mother looked on this as the climax of everything undesirable, and absolutely commanded her to accept a suitor named Wright, a journeyman plumber and glazier at Lincoln, with whom her life proved one long purgatory. Sukey appears to have accepted the first offer she received after losing all expectation of a little money from her uncle Annesley, who, from the time she spent with him after the fire at Epworth, had held out some hopes that he would ultimately provide for her.

Some little increase of comfort seems to have come in 1724, when the little living of Wroote, four and a. half miles off, and worth about fifty pounds a year, was given to Mr. Wesley ; and though the parsonage was very far inferior to the one at Epworth, the family moved into it and lived there for some years. The country round was a mere swamp, the house a poor thatched dilapidated place, and the parishioners rustics of the lowest order. It is possible that a tenant may have offered for the rectory of Epworth for a time, but this is mere conjecture. Emilia had now been a teacher at a boarding-school at Lincoln for about five years, and, although she worked hard for them, was able to purchase comfortable garments, and enjoyed the unwonted luxury of having a little money in her pocket. The state of things for some years at Wroote is told by an extract from a long letter which she wrote to her brother John, after she had lived at home again a little more than a year : — " The school broke up ; and my father having got Wroote living, my mother was earnest for my return. I was told what pleasant company was at Bawtry, Doncaster, &c., and that this addition to my father, with God's ordinary blessing, would make him a rich man in a few years; that they did not desire to confine me always here, but would allow me all the liberties in their power. Then I came home again in an evil hour for me. I was well clothed, and, while I wanted nothing, was easy enough. . . . Thus far we went on tolerably well ; but this winter, when my own necessaries began to decay, and my money was most of it spent (I having maintained myself since I came home, but now could do it no longer), I found what a condition I was in : every trifling want was either not supplied, or I had more trouble to procure it than it was worth. I know not when we have had so good a year, both at Wroote and at Epworth, as this year ; but, instead of saving anything to clothe my sisters or myself, we are just where we were. A noble crop has almost all gone, beside Epworth living, to pay some part of those infinite debts my father has run into, which are so many, as I have lately found out, that were he to save fifty pounds a year he would not be clear in the world this seven years. So here is a fine prospect indeed of his growing rich ! Not but he may be out of debt sooner if he chance to have three or four such years as this has been ; but for his getting any matter to leave behind him more than is necessary for my mother's maintenance is what I see no likelihood of at present. . . . Yet in this distress we enjoy many comforts. "We have plenty of good meat and drink, fuel, &c., have no duns, nor any of that tormenting care for to provide bread which we had at Epworth. In short, could I lay aside all thought of the future, and could be content without three things, money, liberty, and clothes, I might live very comfortably. While my mother lives I am inclined to stay with her ; she is so very good to me, and has so little comfort in the world besides, that I think it barbarous to abandon her. As soon as she is in heaven, or perhaps sooner if I am quite tired out, I have fully fixed on a state of life — a way indeed that my parents may disapprove, but that I do not regard. Bread must be had, and I won't starve to please any or all the friends I have in the world."

It must have been about the time of the removal to Wroote that Mrs. "Wesley heard that her brother was coming home in one of the East India Company's ships as before mentioned, and undertook the. journey to London in order to meet him. Her son John was by that time at Oxford, having obtained a Charterhouse scholarship worth forty pounds a year, which, however, did not cover his expenses. Samuel, who was just then laid up with a broken leg, and knew how glad his mother would be to see her second son, asked him to come up to Westminster. This letter gave the youth so much pleasure that he wept for joy, for he had longed exceedingly to see his mother again, as well as to go to Westminster. But as money was scarce, and he was already in debt, he was unable to leave Oxford ; and, as soon as Mrs. Wesley got home, she wrote him an anxious yet hopeful little note : — " DEAR JACK, " Wroote, August 19th, 1724.

" I am uneasy because I have not heard from you. I don't think you do well to stand upon points, and to write only letter for letter. Let me hear from you often, and inform me of the state of your health, and whether you have any reasonable hopes of being out of debt. I am most concerned for the good, generous man that lent you ten pounds, and am ashamed to beg a mouth or two longer, since he has been so kind as to grant us so much time already. We were amused with your uncle's coming from India ;

but I suppose these fancies are laid aside. I wish there had been anything in it, for then, perhaps, it would have been in my power to have provided for you. But, if all things fail, I hope God will not forsake us. We have still His good providence ta depend on, which has a thousand expedients to relieve us beyond our view.

" Dear Jack, be not discouraged ; do your duty ; keep close to your studies, and hope for better days. Perhaps, notwithstanding all, we shall pick up a few crumbs for you before the end of the year.

" Dear Jacky, I beseech Almighty God to bless thee !

" SUSANNA WESLEY."

Less than a month afterwards she wrote again : — "DEAR JACKY, " Wroote, Sept. 10th, 1724.

" I am nothing glad that Mr. has paid himself out of your exhibition ; for though I cannot hope, I do not despair of my brother's coming, or at least remembering me where he is.

" The small-pox has been very mortal at Epworth most of this summer. Our family have all had it except me, and I hope God will preserve me from it.

" I heartily wish you were in orders, and could come and serve as one of your father's curates. Then I should see you often, and could be more helpful to you than it is possible to be at this distance."

The burden of debt did not press very heavily on the shoulders of the young undergraduate, and his replies to his mother contained only a little news of •what went on around him, some mention of Dr. Cheyne's Book of Health, which was interesting to him because he himself was delicate, and requests for more home news. These communications must have been pretty frequent, as will be seen by Mrs. Wesley's xeply : — •" DEAR JACKY, " Wroote, Nov. 24th, 1724.

1 ' I have now three of your letters before me unanswered. I take it very kindly that you write so often. I am afraid of being chargeable, or I should miss few posts ; it being exceedingly pleasant to me, in this solitude, to read your letters, which, however, would be pleasing anywhere. Your disappointment in not seeing us at Oxon was not of such consequence as mine in not meeting my brother in London; not but your wonderful curiosities might excite a person of greater faith than mine to travel to your museum to visit them. It is almost a pity that somebody does not cut the weazand of that keeper for lying so enormously.

"I wish you would save all the money you can conveniently spare, not to spend on a visit, but for a wiser and better purpose — to pay debts, and make yourself easy. I am not without hope of meeting you next summer, if it please God to prolong my mortal life. If you then be willing, and have time allowed you to accompany me to Wroote, I will bear your charges as God shall enable me.

"I hope, at your leisure, you will oblige me with some more verses on any, but rather on a religious subject.

" Dear Jack, I beseech Almighty God to bless you.

" SUSANNA WESLEY.'' Perhaps it was Mrs. Wesley's wish that John should take orders and become one of his father's curates that weighed with him, for about this time he had some correspondence with Mr. Wesley on the subject, who very properly warned him against undue haste and also against mercenary motives. To his mother the young man confided many of his mental moods, as well as his doubts and questions. The next of her letters that has been preserved deals with these as well as with his desire for ordination : — " DEAR JACKY, " February 23rd, 1735.

" The alteration of your temper has occasioned me much speculation. I, who am apt to be sanguine, hope it may proceed from the operation of God's Holy Spirit, that, by taking away your relish of sensual enjoyments, He may prepare and dispose your mind for a more serious and close application to things of a more sublime and spiritual nature. If it be so, happy are you if you cherish these dispositions, and now, in good earnest, resolve to make religion the business of your life; for, after all, that is the one thing that, strictly speaking, is necessary, and all things else are comparatively little to the purposes of life. I heartily wish you would now enter upon a serious examination of yourself, that you may know whether you have a reasonable hope of salvation ; that is, whether you are in a state of faith and repentance or not, which you know are the conditions of the gospel covenant on our part. If you are, the satisfaction of knowing it would abundantly reward your pains ; if not, you will find a more reasonable occasion for tears than can be met with in a tragedy.

" Now I mention this, it calls to mind your letter to your father about taking orders. I was much pleased with it, and liked the proposal well; but it is an unhappiness almost peculiar to our family that your father and I seldom think alike. I approve the disposition of your mind, and think the sooner you are a deacon the better ; because it may be an inducement to greater application in the study of practical divinity, which I humbly conceive is the best study for candidates for orders. Mr. Wesley differs from me, and would engage you, I believe, in critical learning, which, though accidentally of use, is in no wise preferable to the other. I earnestly pray God to avert that great evil from you of engaging in trifling studies to the neglect of such as are absolutely necessary. I dare advise nothing ; God Almighty direct and bless you ! I have much to say, but cannot write you more at present. I long to see you. We hear nothing of H , which gives us some uneasiness. We have all writ, but can get no answer. I wish all be well. Adieu !

" SUSANNA WESLEY/' In the following June, after receiving a letter in which John quoted St. Thomas a Kempis, Mrs. Wesley gave an opinion of that old author which is perfectly just and perspicacious, with an explanation of her meaning, philosophical rather than exclusively theological : — " I have a Kempis by me ; but have not read him lately. I cannot recollect the passages you mention ; but believing you do him justice, I do positively aver that he is extremely in the wrong in that impious, I was about to say blasphemous suggestion, that God, by an irreversible degree, has determined any man to be miserable even in this world. His intentions, as Himself, are holy, just, and good ; and all the miseries incident to men here and hereafter proceed from themselves. The case stands thus : — This life is a state of probation, wherein eternal happiness or misery are proposed to our choice ; the one as a reward of a virtuous, the other as a consequence of a vicious life. Man is a compound being, a strange mixture of spirit and matter, or rather a creature wherein those opposite principles are united without mixture, yet each principle, after an incomprehensible manner, subject to the influence of the other. The true happiness of man, under this consideration, consists in a due subordination of the inferior to the superior powers, of the animal to the rational nature, and of both to God.

" This was his original righteousness and happiness that was lost in Adam ; and to restore man to his happiness by the recovery of his original righteousness was certainly God's design in admitting him to the state of trial in the world, and of our redemption by Jesus Christ. And, surely this was a design truly -worthy of God, and the greatest instance of mercy that even omnipotent goodness could exhibit to us.

" As the happiness of man consists in a due subordination of the inferior to the superior powers, &c., so the inversion of this order is the true source of human misery. There is in us all a natural propension towards the body and the world. The beauty, pleasures, and ease of the body strangely charm us ; the wealth and honours of the world allure us; and all, under the management of a subtle malicious adversary, give a prodigious force to present things ; and if the animal life once get the ascendant of our reason, it is the greatest folly imaginable, because he seeks it where has not designed he shall ever find it. But this is the case of the generality of men ; they live as mere animals, wholly given up to the interests and pleasures of the body ; and all the use of their understanding is to make provision for the flesh to fulfil the lusts thereof, without the least regard to future happiness or misery.

" I take a Kempis to have been an honest weak man, with more zeal than knowledge, by his condemning all mirth or pleasure as sinful or useless, in opposition to so many plain and direct texts of Scripture. Would you judge of the lawfulness or unlawfulness of pleasure ; of the innocence or malignity of actions ? Take this rule : whatever weakens your reason, impairs the tenderness of your conscience, obscures your sense of God, or takes off the relish of spiritual things; in short, whatever increases the strength and authority of your body over your mind, that thing is sin to you, however innocent it may be in itself. And so on the contrary.

" 'Tis stupid to say nothing is an affliction to a good man. That is an affliction that makes an affliction either to good or bad. Nor do I understand how any man can thank God for present misery, yet do I very well know what it is to rejoice in the midst of deep afflictions ; not in the affliction itself, for then would it cease to be one ; but in this we may rejoice, that we are in the hand of a God who never did and never can exert His power in any act of injustice, oppression, or cruelty, in the power of that Superior Wisdom which disposes all events, and has promised that all things shall work together for good, for the spiritual and eternal good of those that love Him. We may rejoice in hope that Almighty Goodness will not suffer us to be tempted above that we are able, but will with the 146 xrSANNA WESLEY.

temptation make a way to escape that we may be able to bear it. In a word, we may and ought to rejoice that God has assured us He will never leave nor forsake us ; but, if we continue to be faithful to Him, He will take care to conduct us safely through all the changes and chances of this mortal life to those blessed regions of joy and immortality where sin and sorrow can never enter.

" Your brother has brought us a heavy reckoning for you and Charles. God be merciful to us all ! Dear Jack, I earnestly beseech Almighty God to bless you ! Adieu !

" SUSANNA WESLEY."

The brother here alluded to was Samuel, who, much to his mother's pleasure, came down to Wroote in the summer of 1725 with his wife and son. In taking Charles to live with him, he had stipulated that his father should provide the boy with clothes ; and he had also advanced some ready money to John, so that altogether the Rector owed him ten pounds. This visit was a great pleasure to Mrs. Wesley, but it appears to have been the cause of postponing John's ordination till September, probably on account of the necessary expenses. He was ultimately ordained in that month by Bishop Potter, and preached his first sermon at South Leigh, near Oxford. He then went down into Lincolnshire and assisted his father, and in the following March, mainly through the influence of Dr. Morley, Rector of Lincoln College, and of S cotton, near Gainsborough, was elected to a fellowship. This was a subject of great thankfulness and pride to Mr. and Mrs. Wesley ; the former wrote a jubilant letter to his "Dear Mr. Fellow Elect of Lincoln"; and, though he had no more than five pounds wherewith to keep his family till after harvest, and questioned what would be his own fate, added : " Wherever I am, my Jack is Fellow of Lincoln." The mother gave thanks with a full heart to God for his success, and speedily had one of her great desires fulfilled in having him with her during the whole summer, reading prayers and preaching twice every Sunday either at Epworth or Wroote. This assistance to his father must have come in the very nick of time, for in the spring the Rector had a slight stroke of paralysis which disabled his right hand. No sooner did John get back to Oxford in September than he was chosen Greek Lecturer and Moderator of the Classes ; and, as Charles was then at Christ Church, was in a position to be of considerable assistance to him.

The waters were out terribly that summer over the boggy ground between Epworth and Wroote, and the only communication between them was by boat. Emilia, who had suffered terribly from fever and malaria, had gone to Lincoln in quest of health and employment. Mrs. Wesley suffered very much from the damp, aggravated by continual anxiety and frequent privation. Early in July her husband wrote to John and Charles : " You will find your mother much altered. I believe what will kill a cat has almost killed her. I have observed of late little convulsions in her very frequently, which I don't like." A day or two later, news was sent to the absent boys that she was dangerously ill ; and John wrote at once supposing he should never see her more. But the blow was averted, and the cheery old Rector, who had been expressing his desire to be able to serve both his cures, and saying that if not he should die plea10 * santly in his last dyke, wrote a short bright letter, probably with his left hand : — "Wroote, July 18th, 1727. " DEAR SON JOHN, "We received last post your compliments of condolence and congratulation to your mother on the supposition of her near approaching demise, to which your sister Patty will by no means subscribe, for she says she is not so good a philosopher as you are, and that she can't spare her mother yet, if it please God, without very great inconveniency."

Patty was the eighth daughter and seventeenth child, and had been looked upon in the family as a special favourite with her mother. She denied that she had any greater share of maternal love than the other girls, saying : " What my sisters called partiality was what they might all have enjoyed if they had wished it, which was permission to sit in my mother's chamber when disengaged, to listen to her conversation with others, and to her remarks on things and books out of school hours."

The father's letter continues :

" And, indeed, though she has now and then some very sick fits, yet I hope the sight of you would revive her. However, when you come you will see a new face of things, my family being now pretty well colonised, and all perfect harmony — much happier, in no small straits, than perhaps we ever were before in our greatest affluence (!) ; and you will find a servant that will make us rich, if God gives us anything to work upon. I know not but it may be this prospect, together with my easiness in my family, which keeps my spirits from sinking, though they tell me I have lost some of my tallow between Wroote and Epworth ; but that I don't value, as long as I 've still strength to perform my office. . . .

" I 'm weary, but your loving Father, " SAMUEL WESLEY."

The two sons did come home, and found their mother better. On their way back to Oxford they stayed at Lincoln to see Emilia, who was assisting a Mrs. Taylor who kept a girls' school in that city, and Kezzy, the youngest of the family, who was also teaching there and probably receiving some instruction in return for her own and her sister's services. In the following year they both left, Emilia that she might nurse Mrs. Ellison, who was dangerously ill, and Kezzy because she could not remain without Emilia for lack of funds.