It was inevitable that her Methodist friends should suggest to her a less lonely life; some of them, indeed, went so far as to speak of her in connection with Mr. Fletcher. "Ah, if I were to marry _him_," she thought, "he would be a help and not a hindrance to my soul!" She little knew that Fletcher had been fighting the same thought. Indeed, it was not long after this that, in answer to Charles Wesley's practical suggestion, that a wife would be helpful in his lonely work, Fletcher drew up as quaint a set of _Reasons for and Against Matrimony_ as have ever been committed to paper:-- FOR. 1. A tender friendship is, after the love of Christ, the greatest felicity of life; and a happy marriage is nothing but such a friendship between two persons of different sexes. 2. A wife might deliver me from the cares of housekeeping, etc. 3. Some objections and scandals may be avoided by marriage. 4. A pious and zealous wife might be as useful as myself; nay, she might be much more so among my female parishioners, who greatly want an inspectress. AGAINST. 1. Death will shortly end all particular friendships. The happier the state of marriage, the more afflicting is the widowhood; besides, we may try a friend and reject him after trial; butwe 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 the back door into the kitchen four ill-looking men with clubs in their hands. The servant hurried back trembling, saying that a messenger had come to warn them of a great mob coming to upset them, the ringleaders being four men with clubs.