coming, and was frequently confined to her room and couch for six months at a time; though, as she rarely had more than one maidservant for all purposes, she must have managed the children even in her moments of greatest weakness. And it was this perpetual strain of mind and body that added so much to her feebleness.

On the 16th of May, 1701, husband and wife took counsel together. Money was terribly scarce and coals were wanted; for though it was almost summer, it would not have done to be without firing when another child was hourly expected. Every penny was collected together, but they could only muster six shillings between them. The coals were sent for, but the pockets were empty. On Thursday morning there was a joyful surprise. Kind Archbishop Sharpe, who knew how poverty pinched the family at Epworth, and all about the debts, and how hard the rector worked in hammering rhyme and prose out of his brains for London publishers, spoke to several of the nobility about him, and even appealed to the House of Lords in his behalf. The Countess of Northampton, moved by the tale of privation, gave twenty pounds for the Archbishop's protégés, ten of which, at Mr. Wesley's desire, were left in his Lordship's hands

for old Mrs. Wesley, and the other ten were sent by hand to the rector, arriving on the morning that found him penniless. The money was not an hour too soon; for that very evening twins, a boy and girl, were born. In announcing the event to the Archbishop Mr. Wesley wrote:

"Last night my wife brought me a few children. There are but two yet, a boy and a girl, and I think they are all at present; we have had four in two years and a day, three of which are living."

Neither the twins nor the boy who preceded them survived many months, and in 1702 Anne was born; and the mother having now, for a wonder, only one baby in hand, while little Mehetabel, or Hetty as she was called, having attained the dignified age of five years, Mrs. Wesley began to keep regular school with her family for six hours a day, and kept it up for twenty years, with only the few unavoidable interruptions caused by successive confinements, and a fire at the Rectory.

How patiently she taught was shown when one day her husband had the curiosity to sit by and count while she repeated the same thing to one child more than twenty times. "I wonder at your patience," said he; "you have told that child twenty times that same thing."

If

I had satisfied myself by mentioning it only nineteen times," she answered, "I should have lost all my labor. It was the twentieth time that crowned it."

Mrs. Wesley does not seem to have thought much of her own system of education, but she could not suffer her children to run wild, and could not afford either governesses, tutors, or schools. The only way of teaching them was to do it herself; and while they were quietly gathered round her with their tasks, she plied her needle, kept the glebe accounts, wrote her letters, and nursed her baby in far more ease and comfort than she could have done if the little crew had been racing about and getting into boisterous mischief. It was at the desire of her son John, when a man of thirty, and perhaps with his own aspirations to family life, that she wrote down the details of how she brought up and taught her children; and that record is best given in her own words.

CHAPTER V.

TEACHING AND TRAINING.

JOHN WESLEY certainly could not have remembered the beginning of his mother's educational work, as it commenced before his birth; but he must have experienced its benefits, as she, with some assistance from her husband in rudimentary classics and mathematics, prepared him to enter the Charterhouse at eleven years of age with considerable credit to himself and his teachers. He pressed her repeatedly in afterlife to write down full details for his information, and she was evidently somewhat loath to do it, for at the end of a letter dated February 21, 1732, she says:

"The writing anything about my way of education I am much averse to. It cannot, I think, be of service to any one to know how I, who have lived such a retired life for so many years, used to employ my time and care in bringing up my children. No one can, without renouncing the world in the most literal sense, observe my method; and there are few, if any, that would entirely devote above twenty years of the prime

of life in hopes to save the souls of their children, which they think may be saved without so much ado; for that was my principal intention, however unskilfully and unsuccessfully managed."

Happily she did ultimately allow herself to be persuaded, and wrote to her son John as follows:

-

EPWORTH, July 24, 1732.

DEAR SON, According to your desire, I have collected the principal rules I observed in educating my family.

The children were always put into a regular method of living, in such things as they were capable of, from their birth; as in dressing and undressing, changing their linen, etc. The first quarter commonly passes in sleep. After that they were, if possible, laid into their cradle awake, and rocked to sleep, and so they were kept rocking till it was time for them to awake. This was done to bring them to a regular course of sleeping, which at first was three hours in the morning and three in the afternoon afterwards two hours, till they needed none at all. When turned a year old (and some before) they were taught to fear the rod and to cry softly, by which means they escaped abundance of correction which they might otherwise have had; and that most odious noise of the crying of children was rarely heard in the house, but the family usually lived in as much quietness as if there had not been a child among them.