d replaced (after a sort) at least a
dozen times, and my clothes had been patched till it was difficult to
detect the original. I had concluded to make my way home and get another
outfit. I was in Marietta, and had just seventy-five cents in my pocket.
How I would get home and pay my way I could not tell."

He did reach home, however, after many characteristic adventures, and
obtained another outfit, and while there he took an important step--he
married. "After a mature deliberation and prayer," he says, "I thought
it was my duty to marry, and was joined in marriage to Frances Gaines,
on the 18th of August, 1808, which was her nineteenth birthday." Peter
and 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