mill that I first heard
the news that wimmen wuz goin' to make a effort to set on the Methodist
Conference, and the way I heerd on't wuz as follows:

Josiah Allen brought home to me that night a paper that one of the
foreign deacons, Deacon Keeler, had lent him. It contained a article
that wuz wrote by Deacon Keeler's son, Casper Keeler--a witherin'
article about wimmen's settin' on the Conference. It made all sorts of
fun of the projeck.

We found out afterwards that Casper Keeler furnished nearly all the
capital for the buzz saw mill enterprise at his father's urgent request.
His father, Deacon Keeler, didn't have a cent of money of his own; it
fell onto Casper from his mother and aunt. They had kept a big millinery
store in the town of Lyme, and a branch store in Loontown, and wuz great
workers, and had laid up a big property. And when they died, the aunt,
bein' a maiden woman at the time, the money naturally fell onto Casper.
He wuz a only child, and they had brung him up tender, and fairly
worshipped him.

They left him all the money, but left a anuety to be paid yearly to his
father, Deacon Keeler, enough to support him.

The Deacon and his wife had always lived happy together--she loved to
work, and he loved to have her work, so they had similar tastes, and wuz
very congenial--and when she died he had the widest crape on his hat
that wuz ever seen in the town of Lyme. (The crape was some she had left
in the shop.)

He mourned deep, both in his crape and his feelin's, there hain't a
doubt of that.

Wall, Miss Keelerses will provided money special for Casper to be
educated high. So he went to school and to college, from the time he was
born, almost. So he knew plenty of big words, and used 'em fairly lavish
in this piece. There wuz words in it of from six to seven syllables.
Why, I hadn't no idee till I see 'em with my own eye, that there wuz
any such words in the English language, and words of from four to six
syllables wuz common in it.

His father, Deacon Keeler, wouldn't give the paper to my companion, he
thought so much of it, but he offered to lend it to him, because he said
he felt that the idees it promulgated wuz so sound and deep they ought
to be disseminated abroad.

The idees wuz, "that wimmen hadn't no business to set on the Conference.
She wuz too weak to set on it. It wuz too high a place for her too
ventur' on, or to set on with any ease. There wuzn't no more than room
up there for what m