Not four months of married life had passed before she began to complain of her husband. Before their marriage she agreed that he should not be expected to travel a mile less, or preach one sermon less, than before their union. But now she began to complain of everything--long journeys, bad roads, and poor fare. She was not willing to remain at home, for then she was without the attention she had a right to receive; and when he was at home he was preaching two or three times a day, visiting the sick, looking after the societies, and carrying on extensive correspondence. From fancying herself neglected by her husband she became jealous of him--a most absurd and insane idea. But on this her insanity knew no bounds. She is said to have traveled a hundred miles in order to intercept him at some town, and watch from a window to ascertain who might be in the carriage with him. She went so far as to open his private letters and abstract his papers and place them in the hands of those who would use them to his damage. She would add to his letters--usually those from his female correspondents--to make them appear to contain words of questionable character. She used the newspapers to blacken his reputation. She went so far at times as to lay violent hands upon him, tear his hair, and otherwise abuse him. Said Mr. Hampson (who was not one of Mr. Wesley's warmest friends) to his son one day: "Jack, I was once on the point of committing murder. When I was in the north of Ireland I went into a room, and found Mrs. Wesley flaming with fury. Her husband was on the floor, where she had been trailing him by the hair of his head; she herself was still holding in her hand venerable locks which she had plucked up by the roots. I felt," said the gigantic Hampson, "as though I could have knocked the soul out of her." Even Southey says: "Fain would she have made him, like Mark Antony, give up all for love; and, being disappointed in that hope, she tormented him in such a manner by her outrageous jealousy and abominable temper that she deserved to be classed in a triad with Xantippe and the wife of Job as one of the three bad wives." But finally she gathered up a quantity of his journals and other papers and left him, never to return. The only record which the good man makes is this: "I did not forsake her; I did not dismiss her; I will not recall her." Wesley may not have been in all respects in this matter faultless. But no one could ever affirm that he was wanting in genuine affection. Charles Wesley, who knew the inwardness of all John's domestic troubles, affirms that "nothing could surpass my brother's patience with his perverse, peevish spouse." Mrs. Wesley died in 1781, and the church people had it inscribed upon her tombstone that she was "a woman of exemplary piety." "But," says the late Professor Sheppard, "you know a tombstone is like a corporation--it has no body to be burned, and no soul to be damned." CHAPTER X. WESLEY'S PERSECUTIONS.