or the name of the Lord mentioned, save upon
a religious occasion, during the four months I
tarried at that place."

Told, after this, went out to Antigua in the
Ann and Judith, and then to Old Calabar, to
buy slaves for the South Carolina planters. In
1733 he sailed in a corn-vessel for Genoa and
Leghorn, with a captain who kept them beating
to windward in the Channel for five weeks,
during the whole of which time they had neither
cooked provisions nor dry clothes. On his
return home, off the Isle of Wight, poor Told,
eager for home and rest, was seized
(according to the cruel and arbitrary custom of
those days), put on board a tender, and sent
to the Phœnix man-of-war. A religious captain
on board this vessel gave new impulses
to Told's natural bias. He began to hear voices
and see visions. He gives a very naïve account
of a supernatural cure from rheumatism which
he was vouchsafed. "Early one morning," he
says, "God undertook my cause, and I began
thus to reason with myself: 'The rheumatism!
What is it?' and it was strongly suggested to
me in a manner not unlike a clear voice, 'It is
a violent cold.' I then, with great astonishment,
asked, 'What is most proper as a remedy
for the cold?' I was answered as before,
'Spring water.' The reason of this I could
not comprehend, and asked again, 'Why spring
water?' The answer to me (clear as a strong
voice) was: 'Man was created out of the dust
of the earth, and water springs out of the
bowels of the earth, therefore it is the more
adapted to his nature.'" He tried the simple
remedy suggested by his internal voice, and was,
he says, instantly cured.

In 1734, Told married Mary Verney, "a
virtuous young woman," and was soon after
sent in the Grafton (70 guns) to Lisbon, with
our fleet, to protect the Brazilian squadron
from the Spaniards. In 1736, after a narrow
escape from the ever-ready rocks of Scilly,
Told arrived in Chatham river, was paid off,
and left the sea for ever.

He now resolved on leading a life according
to his higher impulses. He was dissatisfied
with the life of Churchmen, yet could find no
surer foothold. "It pleased God," he says,
"to point me out, in a few months, a school at
Staplefoot Tauney, near Passingford Bridge, in
the county of Essex, erected by a Lady Luther,
who spared no pains in its building; and also
bestowed many donations towards the support
and maintenance thereof. My whole salary
amounted to fourteen pounds per annum, ten
pounds whereof was the neat salary from the
school; two pounds from Lady Luther, and the
like sum from Mr. Moot, a wealthy farmer, with
as many day-scholars as I could acquire for my
own account."

Lady Luther invited Told and the curate to
dine with her three days in the week, and
every other day (and this is a curious fact, as
illustrating social history) in the servants' hall.
The curate used frequently to invite Told, the
schoolmaster, to his lodgings to smoke a pipe,
share a bottle of punch, and sing a sea-song.
On rebuking the curate for these excesses,
which preyed upon his conscience, the curate
told him to his (Told's horror) that the Bible
was a pack of false theology, on which Told at
once renounced his friendship. Told was soon
after this deprived of his appointment by the
lord of the manor, because Told's boys picked
firewood on the land of a farmer of his, who
had himself given him leave without the squire's
consent.

Told returned to London, and became clerk
to a coal and timber merchant at the back
of Beaufort-buildings, and after that bookkeeper
to a bricklayer in Watling-street. It
was at this crisis of his fortunes that what he
considered his sudden conversion took place,
and he became a disciple of Wesley. Of his
earlier visions Told gives a curious and simple-
hearted account.

"When I was about twelve years old," he
says, "I was more profoundly acquainted with
divine things, but not with myself as a sinner.
Sitting one day in my order, and reading the
Pilgrim's Progress, I suddenly laid down the
book, leaned my right elbow on my right knee,
with my hand supporting my head, and meditated
in the most solemn thought upon the
awfulness of eternity. Suddenly I was struck
with a hand on the top of my head, which
affected my whole frame; the blow was
immediately followed by a voice with these words:
'Dark! dark! dark!' and although it alarmed
me prodigiously, yet, upon the recovery from
so sudden a motion, I found myself broad
awake in a world of sin. Notwithstanding all
my former happiness and bliss, I now found a
dreadful difference." On another occasion,
when bathing with some schoolfellows, he was
all but drowned in a brook near Bristol, and,
as he lay insensible, he had a vision of the
heavenly city, and of the spirits of the just gliding
over its crystal pavement.

In July, 1740, Told first went to Short's-
gardens, and after that to the Foundry, to
hear Mr. Wesley. Told was greatly prejudiced
against the Methodists, believing that they
listened to false prophets and cheats, who
wanted to turn a penny, and that they assembled
for bad purposes in cellars and dens. The
meeting was soon after four o'clock in the morning,
it being almost dangerous for them to meet at
all. The Foundry was a ruinous place, full of
holes and corners, with an old pantile roof and
a temporary pulpit built up of rotten timber.
At one corner, among some old crones, sat an
old woman who kept her face covered with her
apron the whole time. Every one's countenance
bore an expression of profound seriousness.
The sermon was on the suddenness of
conversion. Told heard a voice say to him, "This is
the truth." His soul seemed on fire, and he
said to the friend who had brought him:

"As long as I live, I will never part from
Mr. Wesley."

The now zealous Methodist became next a
clerk at a wharf at Wapping, but, at Mr. Wesley's