Page:Susanna Wesley (Clarke 1886).djvu/226

214 A memorandum on the back of this note, in John Wesley's own hand, affirms that it was answered on the 18th, but that answer has not been preserved. "Jeffery" was an agent who usually proclaimed himself by raps and noises, and since, on the 8th of February, about a week previous to the date of the note, London had been thrown into confusion and alarm by a smart shock of earthquake, persons whose faith in the supernatural is not very strong, may be pardoned for imagining that Mrs. Harper may have mistaken noises produced by that convulsion of nature for those by which the sprite of Epworth had been in the habit of manifesting its presence.

When the Wesleyan body took the well-known chapel in West Street, Mrs. Harper and the old servant removed to the house which joined it, and took up their abode in rooms which communicated with the chapel by means of a gallery behind the pulpit and a window which, when thrown open, enabled the inmates to join in the services without being seen themselves. Mrs. Harper became a kindly and much subdued old lady when she had lost her memory, and died from general decay of nature in 1771, when nearly eighty years of age.

It will be remembered that Susanna Wesley, the second daughter of the Epworth family, married Richard Ellison in 1721, and that, though in fairly good circumstances, he was always considered an unpleasant son-in-law. When the four children born of this union were grown or growing up, a fire occurred in Mr. Ellison's house, and from that time his wife refused to live with him, and resided with first one and then another of her sons and daughters in London. The deserted husband tried by every means