Page:Susanna Wesley (Clarke 1886).djvu/105

Rh intends him to be simply a healthy young animal, may be questioned. In this instance the reaction set in soon after he left home for school, and from the age of eleven to that of twenty-two he appears to have been like other youths, and neither to have made any special profession of religion, nor to have contemplated going into the Church.

There is no doubt that from the time of settling down in the new rectory and gathering together of her flock, Mrs. Wesley and her husband, when at home, concentrated their attention on John's education, that he might start fairly and be a credit to himself and them on entering a public school. He was a disputatious youngster, given to very cool deliberation and much argument. One of his biographers says that if asked between meals whether he would take a piece of bread or fruit he would answer, with cool unconcern, "I thank you, I will think of it"; but this is somewhat at variance with the mother's accepted rule that no child was permitted to eat anything between meals. His impetuous father was on one occasion so far provoked with the boy that he exclaimed: "Child, you think to carry everything by dint of argument; but you will find how little is ever done in the world by close reasoning." This characteristic love of argument, which always makes a child trying to teach and manage, is further illustrated by Mr. Wesley's jocosely affectionate remark to his wife: "I profess, sweetheart, I think our Jack would not attend to the most pressing necessities of nature, unless he could give a reason for it."

But whatever else Mrs. Wesley found to occupy her, she still made time to write to her eldest son, even if the letter were short; and there is one epistle, dated