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."