CHAPTER VII.
THE QUARTERLY MEETINGS.
These meetings, held in the summer season upon these premises for near a dozen years, were greatly enjoyed by Elizabeth and the family. The circuit was large, and most of its two or three dozen appointments would be represented at what they called the "quarterly visitation." For two or three hours before noon on Saturday the people were pouring in from all parts of the circuit, and some from adjoining circuits. Besides what would consent to sit down to dinner, "lunch" was freely distributed, which very few refused after a long ride or walk. This lunch business was very handy, and not unpopular. No plates were used; the people in house or yard took in their hands the cold meats, biscuit, cheese, and doughnuts, while pans of milk and pails of water, provided with tin cups, were set conveniently. After the Saturday sermon the preacher in charge distributed the guests among the hospitable homes of the society. But as the Quarterly Conference was yet to be held the local preachers, exhorters, stewards, and class leaders, and usually their families, either stayed there or, perhaps, a few of them, at the nearest neighbors'.
However scattered during Saturday night and Sunday night, they had a rallying time at the place of meeting before starting for home Monday, when, by more or less delay, time wore on, and the "lunch" came around again. Fifty to a hundred meals, and two or more general lunches, were not remarkable at the cottage chapel; while for lodging, divided bedding and shawls scantily covered upon beds, benches, and floors, the women and children in the house, and a little new hay divided among the men and boys in the barn, made their rest somewhat tolerable.
At this distance of time and custom one would be sure that the hostess, after such a siege, would be worn down, nervous, and melancholy; but those who understood her best could have borne witness to a change of spirits, if any, in the opposite direction. As early as Monday on ordinary occasions, and Tuesday after the great quarterly visitation, the brick oven was sure to turn out its usual supplies for the family.
Nor could the holding out of strength and spirits be credited principally to a good constitution; but while much was due to the pious joy with which she did all, more, perhaps, is to be laid to what her Yankee friends called "faculty." Solomon's temple was not more accurately prepared than this housewife's arrangements for receiving and caring for her meeting guests. Nor was she less skillful in selecting and directing such youngerly women from among the guests as she needed for helpers and waiters. Her stock of aprons was marvelous, and the dispatch with which she equipped her corps and clothed their ruddy countenances in smiles was only equaled by the speed with which everything was finished in time for meeting call, and her "girls" and herself in their places in good time. And whatever woman in the meeting did not do her part of the praying, speaking, singing, and, on occasion, shouting too, that woman was not Elizabeth Arnold.
When Zion's hospitable entertainers shall be acknowledged before assembled worlds, and all their liberality and painstaking in the spirit of their Master, who fed the multitude, shall be mentioned to his glory and their credit through his grace, will not the humble name of Elizabeth Arnold be spoken with the honorable mention of that host of noble, patient toilers who fed the people, that they might thus detain them under the influence of Him who stood waiting to feed them with the bread of eternal life?