the Castle at Oxford--many for debt. He lived to take the measure of
this kindness, and to see it repeated by his sons.

_Maggots: or Poems on Several Subjects never before Handled_ was no
very marketable book of rhymes. Yet it served its purpose and helped
him, through Dunton, to become acquainted with a few men of letters
and learning. He had something better, too, to cheer his start in
London. Dunton in 1682 had married Elizabeth, one of the many
daughters of Dr. Samuel Annesley, the famous Dissenter, then
preaching at a Nonconformist church which he had opened in Little St.
Helen's, Bishopsgate. Young Wesley, a student at Newington Green,
had been present at the wedding, with a copy of verses in his pocket:
and there, in a corner of the Doctor's gloomy house in Spital Yard,
he came on the Doctor's youngest daughter, a slight girl of fourteen,
seated and watching the guests.

She was but a child, and just then an unhappy one, though with no
childish trouble. Minds ripened early in Annesley House, where
scholars and divines resorted to discuss the battle raging between
Church and Dissent. Susanna Annesley had listened and brooded upon
what she heard; and now her convictions troubled her, for she saw, or
thought she saw, the Church to be in the right, and herself an alien
in her father's house, secretly rebellious against those she loved
and preparing to disappoint them cruelly. She knew her father's
beliefs to be as strong and deep as they were temperately expressed.

So it happened that Samuel Wesley, halting awkwardly (as a
hobbledehoy will) before this slip of a girl and stammering some
words meant to comfort her for losing her sister, presently found
himself answering strange questions, staring into young eyes which