"Be noble! and the nobleness that lies In other men, sleeping, but never dead, Will rise in majesty to meet thine own." CHAPTER V MRS. EDWARDS AND HOME TRAINING Much of the capacity and talent, intensity and character of the more than 1,400 of the Edwards family is due to Mrs. Edwards. None of the brothers or sisters of Jonathan Edwards had families with any such marvelous record as his, and to his wife belongs not a little of the credit. At the age of twenty-four Mr. Edwards was married to Sarah Pierrpont, aged seventeen. She had an inheritance even more refined and vigorous than that of Mr. Edwards. She was descended on her father's side from the choicest of the Pierrpont family of England and New England. Her father was one of the most famous of New Haven clergymen, one of the principal founders, and a trustee and lecturer of Yale College. On her mother's side she was a granddaughter of Rev. Thomas Hooker, of Hartford, "the father of the Connecticut churches," and one of the grand men in early American history. Personally, she was so beautiful and so noble-minded that at the age of thirteen she was known far and near for her Christian character and exceptional ability. While she was still but thirteen and Mr. Edwards twenty, he wrote in a purely disinterested way of the remarkable girl: "She is of a wonderful sweetness, calmness, and universal benevolence of mind. She will sometimes go about from place to place singing sweetly; and seems to be always full of joy and pleasure; and no one knows for what." Mr. Edwards was desirious of being married when he went to Northampton as associate pastor with his grandfather, Dr. Stoddard. Miss Pierrpont was only sixteen years of age, and she declined to be married until she was seventeen. He insisted, but she persisted in her refusal. Mrs. Edwards lived in her children. To her husband came honor and glory in his lifetime, but to her came denial, toil and care. At eighteen, this young, beautiful, brilliant wife became a mother, and until she was forty, there was never a period of two years in which a child was not born to them, and no one of the eleven children died until after the last child was born. It was a home of little children. Her husband had no care for the household and she wished him to have none. It was her insistence that he should have thirteen hours of every twenty-four for his study. Whatever may have been the contribution of Mr. Edwards to the inheritance of the family, they owed the charming environment of the home to their mother.