In due time, as the children grew a little older, days of the week were allotted to each of them, for special opportunity of conversation with their mother, as distinct from being catechised by her. This was for the purpose of dealing with "doubts and difficulties." Of the well-recorded list of days and names the "Thursday with Jacky," and "Saturday with Charles," will mostly arrest the reader now. These days came to be fondly treasured in the memory of all the children. Twenty years after John Wesley had left home, it is touching to hear him say---"In many things you have interceded for me and prevailed. Who knows but in this too--a complete renunciation of the world--you may be successful?" "If you can spare me only that little part of Thursday evening which you formerly bestowed upon me in another manner, I doubt not it would be as useful now for correcting my heart, as it was then for forming my judgment." Yet one more feature of Mrs. Wesley's plan of education was that of the children's appointed conversations with one another, the eldest with the youngest, the second eldest with the next in age, and so on. To this good purpose was devoted the better space available in the rooms of the "New Rectory," built after the fire. VII. STRUGGLES WITH POVERTY. All this work of education, intellectual and spiritual, was conducted under severe pressure of poverty. When Mr. Wesley received the living of Epworth, it cost him fifty pounds to have the great seal affixed to his title, and to remove his family to the place. This unfortunately was but a specimen of the hard conditions under which he held his cure. Lord Oxford wrote to the celebrated Dean Swift, soliciting his name as a subscriber to Mr. Wesley's book on Job--"The person concerned is a worthy, honest man; and by this work of his, he is in hopes to get free of a load of debt which has hung upon him some years. This debt is not owing to any folly or extravagance of his, but to the calamity of his house having been twice burnt, which he was obliged to rebuild. This is in short the case of an honest, poor, worthy clergyman, and I hope you will take him under your protection." A wealthy brother of Mr. Wesley professed himself quite "scandalised" at the constant struggles of the family, and did a little for the wiping away of the reproach, but no more. "Tell me, Mrs. Wesley, whether you ever really wanted bread?" said the good Archbishop Sharp one day, by way of preface to a very generous donation on the spot. "My Lord," was the reply, "I will freely own to your grace that, strictly speaking, I never did want bread. But then I had so much care to get it before it was eat, and to pay for it after as has often made it very unpleasant to me. And I think to have bread on such terms is the next degree of wretchedness to having none at all."