his reply to a friend who asked him if he would not send for his truant wife home again. He answered in Latin, but this is what his words mean, "I did not send her away, and I will not fetch her back again." Carey acted with much kindness and discretion toward his miserable partner; but he found it harder to transform her into a sensible woman than to transform his own Baptist Conference into a missionary society.[39] [39] It ought to be said that in 1808, about a year after the death of his first wife, Carey married Miss Rhumohr, a Danish lady of good family and education, who proved a most congenial companion and helper in his work. He was three times married: his third wife, who survived him, was an excellent partner for a missionary. In 1786, he took the pastorate of a small church at Moulton; yet, even here, he was obliged to eke out his poor living by shoemaking, and even to add to his other labors the task of teaching a school. For this task he was utterly unfit. However well he might teach himself, he could never teach boys. He knew this, and was accustomed to say, "When I kept school, it was the boys who kept me." His circumstances at this time ought to be fully stated in order that the reader may form some idea of the hardship Carey had to endure and the absorbing personal duties and cares in the midst of which he began to cherish his great purpose "to convey the gospel of Jesus Christ to some portion of the heathen world." His ministerial stipend from all sources and the proceeds of his school would not together put him in the position of Goldsmith's ideal village pastor, who was "passing rich on forty pounds a year." So that he was obliged, even at Moulton, to have recourse to shoemaking. A friend of his at the time remarks, "Once a fortnight Carey might be seen walking eight or ten miles to Northampton, with his wallet full of shoes on his shoulder, and then returning home with a fresh supply of leather."