Page:Susanna Wesley (Clarke 1886).djvu/224

212

family group that surrounded Mrs. Wesley's death-bed consisted of her daughters Emilia, Susanna, Hetty, Anne, and Martha, and her son John. Emilia, Mrs. Harper, was now fifty years of age, a widow, and childless; for though an infant had been born to her, it speedily died. She had known but little comfort during either her single or her married life; her temper was exacting and not very sweet; she was conscious of possessing talents, and painfully aware that she had had no opportunity of shining. In youth she was engaged to a Mr. Leybourne, and though in consequence of the disapproval of Mrs. Wesley and Samuel the match was broken off, Emilia was not a woman to forget, or to love again readily. This disappointment embittered her whole life. She was very fond of her mother, and her affection for John, who was eleven years her junior, had a good deal of the maternal element in it, but when Hetty stumbled she was hard upon her. Poverty takes a great deal of the sweetness out of a woman's nature, and after her marriage she suffered even more from this cause than when in her girlhood money and clothes were scarce at Epworth. Mr. Harper was scarcely able to maintain himself, the profits of her school did not go very far, she fell into ill-health, had to sell her clothes in