Page:Susanna Wesley (Clarke 1886).djvu/38

26 It was a rapid and pleasant process, for she wrote that "he had such a prodigious memory that I do not remember to have told him the same word twice. What was more strange, any word he had learned in his lesson he knew wherever he saw it, either in his Bible or any other book, by which means he learned very soon to read an English author well." For two years or so, Samuel was her only pupil, and from her experience with him she never attempted to teach any of her children the alphabet till they were turned five, although the youngest of all, Kezia, picked up her letters before that age. Her mother regretted this, and said it was none of her doing, but reading must have been in the atmosphere. Mrs. Wesley's ninth child was born at Epworth in 1698, but, the parish registers having been destroyed by fire, it is not known whether it was a boy or girl. This child speedily died, and the next addition to the family was a John who was followed the next year by a Benjamin, both of whom died in infancy.

It appears that during the earlier part of the time at Epworth, Mr. Wesley's aged mother lived with him, and was, probably, a valuable assistance to the young wife, who always had a baby 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