CHAPTER X.
"THE CHAMBER ON THE WALL."
The active part of the married life of Joshua and Elizabeth Arnold was over forty years. During that period their house—as may be inferred from preceding pages—was the ever welcome home for the itinerant preacher. The presiding elder and the preacher in charge often met there to counsel together. The junior preacher, who was usually a single man, made it one of his homes, where he came to rest and study. The "best room," with its fireplace, bed, table, etc., was occupied more by the preachers than by all other company, and was known as "the preachers' room." Both circuit preachers frequently passed a night there together in their rounds; but the senior, having a home somewhere, would speak of this as the junior's home, and of himself as "his guest," as well as the guest of the family. Sometimes all three of the itinerants would meet there for days at a time. Such were seasons of great joy all around, and of some little pleasantry, although cautiously indulged in in those days.
On one such occasion, as the three preachers and the family were sitting around the large fireplace on a winter evening, and conversation had about quieted to a lull, one of the elders hunched the junior, and with a significant wink suggested to him to ask counsel of Sister Arnold, who was busy sewing by the candle-stand. Now the said junior was a very promising boy of nineteen, but, withal, a little too boyish to quite suit the ideal of this grave woman. So while he stated the question she listened with her attention mostly upon her work. "Mother Arnold, I have, as our Discipline requires, counseled with these my seniors upon a very important question." She glances at him very slightly. "It is the question of marriage." Another glance, which is enough to wilt a boy of ordinary courage, and instantly her eye is on her work again. He rallies, however, and begins again: "I am advised by several to marry, and am thinking seriously of doing so. I now desire your advice." Slowly her spectacles mount to her forehead, her keen black eye seems to look right through him, and she slowly and gravely replies, "Well, my advice is, that you wait until you get to be a man." The effect of such a shot may be better imagined than told; not only there, but elsewhere, as long as he stayed on that circuit. He did wait, and in waiting made a more judicious choice, and one of the sons of that wise marriage is now one of our bishops.
Severe as this sounds, it was a word in season, and fully met the approval of the senior brethren, and of the junior himself, who greatly venerated her, and ran a very successful, although short, race, and left an excellent influence behind him.
Eternity alone will fully declare how valuable were the counsels of this
"Aquila and Priscilla," who in this itinerant's home took many a young
"Apollos" and "expounded unto him the way of the Lord more perfectly."
But while nothing Mr. and Mrs. Arnold did for the meetings at their home or anywhere excused them from personal activity in those meetings, no pains or expense in entertaining the preachers were ever a substitute for the regular support of the Gospel by prompt and liberal payment through the stewards.
But beyond the regular "quarterage" they appreciated the need of "presents." And probably, in the forty-two years of their active business life together, seldom, if ever, did a Gospel minister make a pastoral visit at their home and go away without carrying with him some little token of the veneration and love there cherished for his holy office and work, or of remembrance of his lone family, so much of the time deprived of his presence, and of many delicacies which he had among his people far away. The "fatted calf," lamb, or fowl would in many places be dressed for his feasting, while the family at home, in some inferior quarters, were having rather dry fare, if not scanty fare; the thought of which would often mar the pleasure of his most sumptuous entertainments.
Economical, not to say penurious, stewards demanded an "account of everything given to the preachers;" but Mrs. Arnold insisted that besides salary matters presents were needed, and it was the privilege of that house to give them at pleasure, and the left hand must not know what the right hand conferred. Often the minister himself knew nothing of it until some one of his family searched the box of his carriage seat, which they were not slow to do when it came from certain parts of the circuit—some article of provision for the table, common and plenty enough in the cellar or dairy of the farm, but not certain to be flush in the parsonage; some tidbit or condiment to humor a delicate appetite; some choice fruits or knickknacks for the children; some material from the sheep or flax of the farm spun by her own diligent fingers to be made up in the lonely parsonage for the wife or children, or underwear for the man of God. When the minister's family was within reach of this very busy mother in Israel she would often relieve the loneliness, and sometimes the wants, experienced in his "long rounds" by her visits to the sacred rooms, which in those early years of Methodism were oftener parts of some kind member's home than a regular "parsonage" or "rectory." So when the weary itinerant would return and find that his family had not been entirely neglected in his absence he would take new courage to pursue his toilsome way.
As already intimated, Mrs. Arnold usually made the "junior preacher" of the circuit an object of motherly care. He was generally a single man in those early days, and often scarcely out of his boyhood. Many a worn garment was overhauled and repaired; many a pair of new warm socks or mittens was laid with new underwear upon his pillow.
Although for several weeks of the year he and his horse had made the Arnold place a pilgrim's rest, never was a dollar paid the place for board, nor was the circuit permitted to charge him a farthing upon his salary for that or the presents he had received in that welcome home.
The junior preacher seldom served the same circuit more than one year of his apprenticeship. When he left this, his favorite home of rest, of study, and of repairs, the parting scene brought tears from all eyes; and long did the echo of those loving adieus ring in all ears, especially as uttered by that matronly voice, "Do well, and farewell. God bless you!"