The Savannah morning news. (Savannah, Ga.) 1900-current, 1903-06-25

when she wished, and she devoted her
self to Wesley.
THE evangelist's fatal weakness of
falling in love with those who We're
kind to him when he was i'll was this
time to produce a lasting result. A
few days later he told his brother,
Charles. that he was resolved to mar
ry. This time it was beyond the ia
nous hymn-writer's power to rescue
him. In despair he writes: I groaned
all the day, and several following ones,
under my own and the peoples bur-
dens. l could eat no pleasant food, nor
preach, no rest, either by night or
by day.
Married Tartar.
1.-The courtship lasted some fifteen
days, and John Wesley and the widow
was a marriage at once more i'll adj
vised and ill-assorted, than this One
of his biographers declares that if he
had searched the whole kingdom the
evangelist would hardly have found a
woman more unsuitable than she whom
he married. She was absurdly jeal-
GUS of him, almost from the start, and
quarreled at him whenever he was in
her presence. She did not even confine
herself to her tongue in her attacks.
ION one occasion she seized his let
ters and other papers and put them
into the hands of people she knew
to be his enemies that they might be
printed, thinking they would damage
his reputation She even interpoated
letter which she had intercepted so as
to make them bear a bad construction,
and then read them to different per-
sons in private for the purpose of de-
flaming him. In one or two instances
she published interpolated or forged
letters in the newspapers. She would
sometimes drive a hundred miles across
the country to observe who was in the
carriage with her husband on his en-
tering a town.
Dragged by His Hair.
More than once she laid violent
hands on him. Jack said John
Hampson to his son, i was once on
the point of committing murder. 1t
was when / was in the North of Ire
land and l went into a room, and
found Mrs. Wesley foamng with fury.
Her husband was on the floor where
she had been trailing him by the hair
of his head and she herself was still
holding in her hand venerable locks
which she had plucked up by the roots.
| felt concluded Hampson, who was
a giant of a man, though not one of
Wesley's warmest friends, I felt as
though 1 could have knocked the soul
out of her.
"Southey, the poet, in his life of John
Wesley, says: 'Fain would she have
made him like Marc Antony give up
all for love; and, being disappointed
in that hope, she tormented him in
such a manner, by her outrageous jeal-
ousy and abominable temper, that she
deserves to be classed in a triad with
Xantippe, and the wife of Job, as one
of the three bad wives. 1t went on
like this for twenty years. One can
hardly imagine the sorrows that Wes-
ley must have endured.
while he had been very hasty and
unwise in his marriage, there is every
indication that he was a most loving
and patient husband. Charles Wes-
ley, who never failed in clear-headed
and keen criticism of his brother, John,
where he thought he deserved it, writes
er's patience in bearing with his per-
verse and peevish spouse. Several of
his letters to her, written after their
marriage, have been preserved and
display the tenderest affection, and JUS
tify the opinion that, had it been his
happiness to be married to a woman
who was worthy of him, he would have
been a most loving husband.
THE last ten years of her life she
spent largely away from him, finally
dying at the age of II, Oct. s, 1881.
The epitaph on her tombstone de-
scrlbes her as "A woman of exemplary
piety, a tender parent and a sincere
friend 1t is wisely silent concerning
her characteristics as a wife. Thus,
John Wesley, one of the greatest as
we'll as purest of men, in the course
of his long life, loved three women,
not one of whom gave him happiness"