out this time our friend Thomas, seeing that his old playmate at
Chalfont was destined for another, turned his attention towards a "young
Friend, named Mary Ellis." He had been for several years acquainted with
her, but now he "found his heart secretly drawn and inclining towards
her." "At length," he tells us, "as I was sitting all alone, waiting
upon the Lord for counsel and guidance in this, in itself and to me,
important affair, I felt a word sweetly arise in me, as if I had heard a
Voice which said, Go, and prevail! and faith springing in my heart at the
word, I immediately rose and went, nothing doubting." On arriving at her
residence, he states that he "solemnly opened his mind to her, which was
a great surprisal to her, for she had taken in an apprehension, as others
had also done," that his eye had been fixed elsewhere and nearer home.
"I used not many words to her," he continues, "but I felt a Divine Power
went along with the words, and fixed the matter expressed by them so fast
in her breast, that, as she afterwards acknowledged to me, she could not
shut it out."

"I continued," he says, "my visits to my best-beloved Friend until we
married, which was on the 28th day of the eighth month, 1669. We took
each other in a select meeting of the ancient and grave Friends of that
country. A very solemn meeting it was, and in a weighty frame of spirit
we were." His wife seems to have had some estate; and Ellwood, with that
nice sense of justice which marked all his actions, immediately made his
will, securing to her, in case of his decease, all her own goods and
moneys, as well as all that he had himself acquired before marriage.
"Which," he tells, "was indeed but little, yet, by all that little, more
than I had ever given her ground to expect with me." His father, who was
yet unreconciled to the son's religious views, found fault with his
marriage, on the ground that it was unlawful and unsanctioned by priest
or liturgy, and consequently refused to render him any pecuniary
assistance. Yet, in spite of this and other trials, he seems to have
preserved his serenity of spirit. After an unpleasant interview with his
father, on one occasion, he wrote, at his lodgings in an inn, in London,
what he calls _A Song of Praise_. An extract from it will serve to show
the spirit of the good man in affliction:--

"Unto the Glory of Thy Holy Name,
Eternal God! whom I both love and fear,