The latter magazine devoted itself to histories dealing with youthful saints abroad; and its cover was decorated with a representation of young black persons apparently engaged in some religious exercise.

In this picture the frock coats and top hats were conspicuous by their absence.
There were two pictures in the breakfast-room at the Willows which occupied an important place in Elisabeth's childish imaginings.

The first hung over the mantelpiece, and was called The Centenary Meeting.
It represented a chapel full of men in suffocating cravats, turning their backs upon the platform and looking at the public instead--a more effective if less realistic attitude than the ordinary one of sitting the right way about; because--as Elisabeth reasoned, and reasoned rightly--if these gentlemen had not happened to be behind before when their portraits were taken, nobody would ever have known whose portraits they were.

It was a source of great family pride to her that her grandfather appeared in this galaxy of Methodist worth; but the hero of the piece, in her eyes, was one gentleman who had managed to swarm up a pillar and there screw himself "to the sticking-place"; and how he had done it Elisabeth never could conceive.
The second picture hung over the door, and was a counterfeit presentment of John Wesley's escape from the burning rectory at Epworth.

In those days Elisabeth was so small and the picture hung so high that she could not see it very distinctly; but it appeared to her that the boy Wesley (whom she confused in her own mind with the infant Samuel) was flying out of an attic window by means of flowing white wings, while a horse was suspended in mid-air ready to carry him straight to heaven.
Every Sunday she accompanied her cousins to East Lane Chapel, at the other end of Sedgehill, and here she saw strange visions and dreamed strange dreams.