Thus favorably situated for study, she takes up the doctrines of the Gospel
as believed and taught by the Methodists, and makes rapid proficiency.
Her pastor, one of the flaming heralds of early Methodism in New England,
furnished her with the best of reading, and all her associates in the
studies and active work of Zion wondered at the rapid progress of the
disinherited girl. Little could they realize how vividly those doctrines
shone in her heart as she came out of the "fiery furnace," and how
intensely interested she now was in principles which had cost her so much,
yet were worth, in her account, infinitely more, and well deserved to be
studied and propagated.

A young man belonging to the Methodists of that city now enters into our
narrative. He is above the ordinary size, about twenty-eight years of age,
and some four or five years before this was clearly converted under the
preaching of Bishop Asbury. He also is a teacher, and a very sound, logical
student of Methodist doctrines and usages.

It is not many months before it is noticed that a mutual attachment seems
to be springing up between this young man and Elizabeth, above the ordinary
sympathies of teachers and church classmates. And as they had been
acquainted from childhood, and fully understood each other's history and
families, and were members together of a society 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