Page:Susanna Wesley (Clarke 1886).djvu/41

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CHAPTER V.

TEACHING AND TRAINING.

John Wesley certainly could not have remembered the beginning of his mother's educational work, as it commenced before his birth; but he must have experienced its benefits, as she, with some assistance from her husband in rudimentary classics and mathematics, prepared him to enter the Charterhouse at eleven years of age with considerable credit to himself and his teachers. He pressed her repeatedly in after life to write down full details for his information, and she was evidently somewhat loath to do it, for at the end of a letter dated February 21st, 1732, she says:-

"The writing anything about my way of education I am much averse to. It cannot, I think, be of service to anyone to know how I, who have lived such a retired life for so many years, used to employ my time and care in bringing up my children. No one can, without renouncing the world, in the most literal sense, observe my method; and there are few, if any, that would entirely devote above twenty years of the prime of life in hopes to save the souls of their children, which they think may be saved without so much ado; for that