Page:Susanna Wesley (Clarke 1886).djvu/103

Rh the battle from afar and did his share of the fighting gratuitously.

Having proved himself so good a spokesman for his party, the clergy of the diocese once more chose him as their representative in Convocation; so he journeyed to London in November 1710, ill as he could afford it, and did so seven winters successively, while his family at home were in want of clothes, food, and, in fact, of all the necessaries of life. Mrs. Wesley suffered a great deal from weakness, and possibly from the damp inevitable in a house inhabited before it was properly seasoned; and, according to her daughter Emilia, from insufficient nourishment and clothing. No doubt the husband and father hoped that, being in London, he should find literary employment, and he might reasonably have looked for some pecuniary help from the party he so zealously served.

In spite of weakness and weariness the mother struggled on, and, in proportion as her family's little comforts in this world decreased, her anxiety for their happiness in a future state grew and strengthened. In Mr. Wesley's absence Emilia, probably rummaging in his study for a book to read, met with the account of a Danish mission to Tranquebar, written by the two devoted and saintly men who had worked in it. Missions were then uncommon, and the story brought with it the thrill of a new interest, and diverted the mother's thoughts from her own surroundings. Emilia, who was a good reader her brother John said the best he had ever heard, when the book happened to be Milton's poems read it aloud, and Mrs. Wesley herself told her husband how it affected her. "Soon after you went to London," she wrote to him, "Emilia found in your study the account of