Elizabeth: the Disinherited Daughter | Page 9

of plain people, they did not consider a long courtship necessary. They were both of Yankee stock, both escaping from Calvinism and ardently attached to Methodism, both studious and competent to teach, and loved to teach, and both were active workers in the church they ardently loved.
So Joshua Arnold, aged twenty-nine, and Elizabeth Ward, aged twenty-one, were united in holy matrimony in the charming month of May, the last year of the eighteenth century. Thus closed the maiden life and homeless loneliness of the disinherited daughter.
She had been ruthlessly turned out of a stately mansion which she loved as her birthplace and childhood home, disinherited from her rightful heirship to several thousands, and disowned by her family, whose well-being she had faithfully labored to promote, and all for no fault of hers, but wholly for a matter of conscience and principle. But in less than a year she was settled in life in a home of which she was mistress, with a worthy husband, of church membership and affinities like her own, and in the free enjoyment of church privileges and holy fellowships, for which her persecuted soul had "panted as the hart panteth for the water brooks."


PART II.
THE GREAT WORK OF LIFE.
* * * * *
CHAPTER I.
ELIZABETH AS MISTRESS OF THE "COTTAGE CHAPEL."
One of the most natural consultations of the newly married couple is the plan of their first house. How chatty and cheery a pair of newly mated birds appear, in counsel over their nest-building! This schoolmaster and mistress are home from their toil and care for the day, and are again devoting an evening to the scheme of their first dwelling. It is not a large or magnificent concern, but it has already been neatly draughted, carefully considered, and builders' estimates footed up. All seems to be about right; but Elizabeth has gone off into a brown study. Her countenance betrays unusual agitation, and her pensive eye is filled with tears. Her husband supposes she is thinking of the mansion from which she has been spurned, as contrasted with the humble dwelling they are planning, but she hastens to correct the mistake and assure him that her musings were in the opposite direction entirely. "I was thinking of our dear people, and how much they need in this suburb of the town some place to hold meetings in. And this thought struck my mind almost like an inspiration: Why not extend our plan up high enough for an 'upper room' for meetings?" This notion, carefully considered, not only in these consultations but in the prayers that closed them, impressed them both as a divine suggestion. The house was built accordingly. An outside staircase gave access to the upper story, which was all finished off in a rough, cheap manner for a chapel, and immediately and for a few years was occupied by the Methodist people of the south part of Middletown and of the farms adjoining, for prayer meetings, class meetings, and occasional exhortation and preaching.
Among the church privileges which had cost this disinherited daughter so dearly few ever equaled in sweet enjoyment this cottage chapel arrangement. She no longer had to steal away and snatch a few minutes once or twice a month to associate with the advocates of free grace, as she once did, nor be shut entirely away from their beloved society, as for nearly a year, in that terrible season of persecution and despair. The church she loved came to her door. Her home echoed their prayers, songs, testimonies, and shouts. She lived, toiled, ate, and slept under the shadow of the hallowed "upper room," so often, like the one in Jerusalem, "filled with the Holy Ghost." She knew, as no one else could, how much such privileges had cost her, but still insisted that they never cost a tithe of what they were worth. Nor was the gratification of this ardent lover of Methodism the chief result of this chapel arrangement. There the Church found asylum from persecution; and if we may estimate the value of such a refuge from the alarm of the enemy it must have proved a precious boon. Often were the pious band obliged to come early and lock themselves in to escape the fury of the mob, which would curse and mock without. But sometimes, unable to reach them or seriously to annoy them by their howlings, they would vent their spite upon the premises. Now it would be by breaking windows. Again, finding the windows guarded with thick board blinds, they would tear down fences, fill the well with wood, etc. In several instances it came out in one way and another that some attendant of the "standing order" furnished the rum that stimulated the rabble to make these attempts to drive off these "deceivers of