cannot know a wife till it is too late to part with her.

2. Marriage brings after it a hundred cares and expenses; children,
a family, etc.

3. If matrimony is not happy, it is the most fertile source of
scandal.

4. I have a thousand to one to fear that a wife, instead of being a
help, may be indolent, and consequently useless; or humoursome,
haughty, capricious, and consequently a heavy curse.


Fortunately for Mary Bosanquet, towards the end of these two years
there came to London her friend Mrs. Ryan (housekeeper of Wesley's new
Room at Bristol), who fell ill, was nursed by her with great devotion,
and afterwards taken home to share her rooms.

"I acknowledge," she writes, "I neither gained honour, gold, nor
indulgence to the flesh by uniting myself to a sickly, persecuted
saint; but I gained such a spiritual helper as I shall eternally
praise God for."

Shortly after their union a house of Miss Bosanquet's at Leytonstone
became vacant, and in March, 1763, the Friends moved into it, and
began private and public meetings under their own roof-tree.

One evening, as Miss Bosanquet was speaking to a large company
assembled in her kitchen, the fore-gate bell clashed with a mighty
peal. The servant went to answer it, and meantime there strode through