"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!"