"When I went there and entered upon my vocation of preaching," says Mr. Beecher, "I found a church, occupying a little brick building, with nineteen or twenty members. There was one man, and the rest were women. With the exception of two persons, there was not one of them who was not obliged to gain a livelihood by the labor of the hands. So you will understand how very poor they were.... "I was sexton in the church. There were no lamps there, so I went and bought some and filled them and lit them. I swept the church, and lighted my own fires. I did not ring the bell because there was none. I opened the church before every meeting, and shut and locked it after every meeting. I took care of everything in the church." The salary was to be $300--it was raised from $250--of which the Home Missionary Society was to give $150. His friends in Cincinnati opposed his going to so small a field; but he carried out the advice which he gave years afterward to theological students: "_Don't hang_ round idle, waiting for a _good offer_. Enter the first field God opens for you. If he needs you in a larger one, he will open the gate for you to enter." Young Beecher, having waited nearly seven years to claim his bride,--he was now but twenty-four,--wrote to Miss Bullard that he would be ready for the marriage Aug. 3. Arriving at her home on the evening of July 29, he picked over and stoned with her the raisins for the wedding-cake, beat the eggs, and in every way helped on the joyful event. At the hour chosen for the ceremony, a heavy thunder-storm came on. The bride determined to wait; and an hour after the appointed time, under a brilliant rainbow, they were married, and started for their missionary labors in the West. They boarded for a short time, and then decided to go to housekeeping. Mrs. Beecher, during the absence of her husband at a synodical meeting, found two rooms over a stable, at a rental of forty dollars per year. She went to Cincinnati by boat, to the home of the Beechers, and received, to help in furnishing these rooms, a bedstead, a stove, some sheets and pillow-cases, and a piece of carpet. Through the sale of her cloak for thirty dollars, she obtained a husk mattress, a table, wash-tubs, and groceries. On Mr. Beecher's return he helped scrub the floors--the landlord objected to their being painted, as it _would injure the wood_! Mrs. Beecher found in the back yard a broken table and shelves, which had been thrown away as useless; and covering the former with the skirts of Mr. Beecher's old coat, it became quite an elegant writing-table for the young minister. The flour-barrel and sugar-barrel--sent in by friends--were curtained from the rest of the room by a piece of four-cent calico.