another child was hourly expected. Every penny was collected together, but they could only muster six shillings between them. The coals were sent for, but the pockets were empty. On Thursday morning there was a joyful surprise. Kind Archbishop Sharpe, who knew how poverty pinched the family at Epworth, and all about the debts, and how hard the rector worked in hammering rhyme and prose out of his brains for London publishers, spoke to several of the nobility about him, and even appealed to the House of Lords in his behalf. The Countess of Northampton, moved by the tale of privation, gave twenty pounds for the Archbishop's proteges, ten of which, at Mr. Wesley's desire, were left in his Lordship's hands for old Mrs. Wesley, and the other ten were sent by hand to the Rector, arriving on the morning that found him penniless. The money was not an hour too soon, for that very evening twins, a boy and girl, were born. In, announcing the event to the Archbishop, Mr. Wesley wrote:—
"Last night my wife brought me a few children. There are but two yet, a boy and a girl, and I think they are all at present; we have had four in two years and a day, three of which are living."
Neither the twins nor the boy who preceded them survived many months, and in 1702 Anne was born; and the mother having now, for a wonder, only one baby in hand, while little Mehetabel, or Hetty as she was called, having attained the dignified age of five years, Mrs. Wesley began to keep regular school with her family for six hours a day, and kept it up, for twenty years, with only the few unavoidable interruptions caused by successive confinements, and a fire at the Rectory.
