THE FAITHFUL HELPMATE. Europe. The cell in which the proudly-humble spirit of John Bunyan was cooped up was limited in space, and comfortless, as was the whole jail; and its narrow window was grated. There were several Nonconformists imprisoned at the same time among criminals of various degrees of vice. " Imagination " wrote Howard, in after years, " can hardly realise the miseries of fifty or sixty pious men and women, taken from a place of worship and incarcerated in such dungeons with felons, -as was the case while Bunyan was a prisoner. How justly did the poor pilgrim call it ' a certain den ! "' Being as " effectually called away from his pots and kettles as the Apostles were from mending their nets," he cast about in his mind for some method of earning a subsistence for Elizabeth and the little ones. He learned to make tagged thread stay-laces, the sale of which sufficed to gain for them what must have been, at best, but a scanty livelihood. Almost dailyElizabeth would visit him, bringing her children,-particularly the poor little blindMary; and manywere the hours of affectionate and even cheerful chat, in the circumscribed prison cell, which had scarcely anything else to make it endurable. It was poorly furnished to the eye ; but there was a Bible, a Concordance, and a copy, in three worn black-letter folio volumes, of Fox's Martyrology, which John interlined with numerous doggrel verses, and adorned with his own name in letters half an inch high at the foot of each title- 29
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