CHAPTER IX.
AS A CAMP MEETING WORKER.
When health and distance would permit, Mrs. Elizabeth could be depended upon as a tent holder and laborer at every camp meeting. She had a superior tent, and it was in its place and order from the first to the last hour.
It was a little odd that Mr. Arnold had very little camp meeting zeal, when his wife had so much. He would go when entirely convenient, enjoy a few sermons and some pleasant conversations with friends, when he "must go home, see to things, and regain the rest he had lost." "Mother and the children were sufficient to see to the tent, and enjoyed such mode of life better than he did."
With her the camp meeting was neither a place of recreation nor weariness. Its single object was to save souls. True to this purpose, she forecast for weeks to obtain as tent guests thoughtful persons of honorable character whom she could bring and hold under the influence of the meeting until they were converted.
For one meeting a Presbyterian deacon, who lived in a neglected neighborhood, was induced to bring his children and near a dozen more, all young people nearly or quite grown, and stay through the meeting. Of course these guests would help stock the tent, and would feel bound in courtesy to attend the meetings of the tent as well as preaching at the stand, and the good deacon have to do his share in conducting these tent meetings. When the deacon returned home he carried with him a beautiful flock of the Saviour's lambs; and while the most of his own children joined his church, several miles away, the rest of these lambs were gathered into a Methodist fold at their own schoolhouse, the nucleus of a church which now has a good church edifice and has long had a prosperous existence. It is worthy of remark that to this day this church is next neighbor to the one founded soon after upon the work of the exhorters before alluded to.