care. The storms of life were past; the crowd of business, the rush of
labor, the study of complicated lines of duty--all these have gone by like
a storm, and left a great calm. Still they find some little to do with what
little strength they can command and the limited income left them.




CHAPTER II.


JOSHUA ARNOLD.

No life experience of Elizabeth would seem at all complete without a
chapter giving a somewhat connected view of her _companion_, near a half
century by her side, in her toils, liberality, and church work. Did she,
when driven by persecution from her father's house, take up, under stress
of calamity, an inferior associate for life? Let us see. If, as many claim,
the wisest matches are founded on contrast, this must have been _par
excellence_. For if we except their large size and mutual endowment
of sound common sense, there was very little natural similarity. In
Connecticut the farms of the Arnolds and the Wards joined, and yet they
were not intimate as families, for there was, for that day, too great
disparity in property and style. Both were moral and intelligent, but the
large Arnold family on the hill, though in comfortable circumstances, did
not train in the same "set" with the elegant establishment at the Cove.

Of the numerous family (of almost giant size) of Ebenezer and Anna Miller
Arnold there were only two sons. Ebenezer, among the eldest, had the
ancestral name, took to a mariner's life, was a few years a sea captain,