The extreme hite of the ceilin'; the slipperyness and fragility of the lengths of paper; the fearful hite and tottlin'ness of the barells; the dizzeness that swept over us at times, in spite of our marble efforts to be calm. The dretful achin' and strainin' of our armpits, that bid fair to 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.