loosen 'em from their four sockets. The tremenjous responsibility
that laid onto us to get the paper on smooth and onwrinkled.

It wuz, takin' it altogether, the most fearful and wearisome hour of my
hull life.

Every female in the room held her breath in deathless anxiety (about
thirty breaths). And every eye in the room wuz on us (about fifty-nine
eyes--Miss Shelmadine hain't got but one workin' eye, the other is
glass, though it hain't known, and must be kep).

Wall, it wuz a-goin' on smooth and onwrinkled--smiles broke out on every
face, about thirty smiles--a half a minute more and it would be done,
and done well. When at that tryin' and decisive moment when the fate of
our meetin' house wuz, as you may say, at the stake, we heard the sound
of hurryin' feet, and the door suddenly opened, and in walked Josiah
Allen, Deacon Sypher, and Deacon Henzy followed by what seemed to me at
the time to be the hull male part of the meetin' house.

But we found out afterwerds that there wuz a few men in the meetin'
house that thought wimmen ort to set; they argued that when wimmen had
been standin' so long they out to set down; they wuz good dispositioned.
But as I sez at the time, it looked to us as if every male Methodist in
the land wuz there and present.

They wuz in great spirits, and their means wuz triumphant and satisfied.

They had jest got the last news from the Conference in New York village,
and had come down in a body to disseminate it to us.

They said the Methodist Conference had decided that the seven wimmen
that had been stood up there in New York for the last week, couldn't
set, that they wuz too weak and fraguile to set on the Conference.

And then the hull crowd of men, with smiles and haughty linements, beset
Josiah to read it out to us.

So Josiah Allen, with his face nearly wreathed with a smile, a blissful
smile, but as high headed a one as I ever see, read it all out to us.
But he should have to hurry, he said, for he had got to carry the great
and triumphant news all round, up as fur as Zoar, if he had time.

[Illustration: "THE METHODIST CONFERENCE HAD DECIDED THAT WIMMEN WUZ
TOO WEAK TO SET."]

And so he read it out to us, and as we see that that
breadth wuz spilte, we stopped our work for a minute and heard it.

And after he had finished it, they all said it wuz a masterly dockument,
the decision wuz a noble one, and it wuz jest what they had always said.
They said they had always known