ELIZABETH BUNYAN, quickly as possible, and return to his jocund corn- panions, without the slightest intention of ever reforming. Despite his unenviable reputation, however, a young girl was found who consented to share the fortunes of the Sabbath-breaking, boisterous, evil- speaking, 'though well-dispositioned young tinker, and to journey through life with him, less for " better," it was to be feared, than for " worse." As they were both equally poor, " not having so much household stuff," he himself naïvely admitted, "as a dish or a spoon betwixt them," there was very little worldly prudence in the union ; but it was a happy day for John Bunyan when he married Mary. Her parents had been honest, God-fearing persons, who had instructed her, as well as they were able, in the ways of truth and holiness ; her father had been " counted godly," and she held his honoured example constantly before her eyes. She possessed, as her only dower, two excellent books, the " Prac- tice of Piety," and that pious old Puritan Dent's " Plain Man's Pathway to Heaven." Obedient, affectionate, and wifely, this young woman yet gently wiled her husband into the right path, towards which his inherent tendencies really inclined him, for he was by no means radically vicious. She would tell him of her good father's excellent ways, what a strict and holy life he led, both in word and deed ; and by a marvel of affection, contrived to induce him to look into the two old books which 8
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