She first heard of the practice in March, 1717, and within a year her faith in its effect was so strong that in the spring of the following year she had her son inoculated at Pera--he was the first English person to undergo the operation.

"The boy was engrafted last Tuesday," she wrote to her husband the following Sunday, "and is at this time singing and playing, and very impatient for his supper....

I cannot engraft the girl; her nurse has not had the small-pox." It is amusing to learn that the inoculation of the young Edward Wortley Montagu proved presently to have an advantage which was certainly not at the time of the operation present to the mind of the mother.

At the age of six or thereabouts, the child ran away from Westminster school--he was always running away from school--and a reward of L20 and expenses was offered to whoever found him.

The advertisement gave the following clue: there are "two marks by which he is easily known, _viz_., on the back of each arm, about two or three inches above the wrist, a small roundish scar, less than a silver penny, like a large mark of the small-pox." When Lady Mary returned to London, she carried out her intention to introduce the operation.