his bride knew that a hard life was in store for them, but they felt strong in the love they bore each other. They were simple backwoods folk, and their wants were few. "When I started as a traveling preacher," he said fifty-three years afterward, "a single preacher was allowed to receive eighty dollars per annum if his circuit would give it to him; but single preachers in those days seldom received over thirty or forty dollars, and often much less; and had it not been for a few presents made us by the benevolent friends of the church, and a few dollars we made as marriage fees, we must have suffered much more than we did. But the Lord provided, and, strange as it may appear to the present generation, we got along without starving or going naked." There is something awe-inspiring in the simple trust in God which this good man displayed in every stage of his life. Once satisfied that he was in the path of duty, he never allowed the future to trouble him. He provided for it as far as he could, and left the rest to the Master whose work he was doing. Poverty and hardship had no terrors for this brave young couple, and it was very far from their thoughts to wait until a better day to marry. They would go out hand in hand into the world and meet their trials together. Children would come, they knew, and those little mouths would have to be fed, but they would be industrious, saving, and patient, and "God would provide."
Peter Cartwright's mission was to plant the Methodist Episcopal Church in the West as well as to preach the Gospel. For that end he worked and prayed. The Methodist Episcopal Church was his haven of safety. Without, all was storm and darkness; within its fold all was peace and light. He believed his church to be the best door to heaven, if indeed it was not in his estimation the only one. He was a fanatic, pure and simple, as regarded his own denomination, but a fanatic full of high and noble purposes, and one whose zeal was productive only of good. This fanaticism was necessary to the success of his labors. It was his perfect belief that his was the only church in which sinners could find perfect peace that carried him through the difficulties which encompassed him.