call myself a board, more business like. Wall, I wuz the board
appointed to lay the things on -- to see that they wuz all took
care of, and put where they couldn't get eat up, or any other
casuality happen to 'em.

And I declare if some of the queerest lookin' creeters didn't come
up to the table and talk to me. There wuz lots of 'em there that
I didn't know, folks that come from Zoar, Jim Smedley's old
neighborhood.

There wuz a long table stretched acrost one end of the settin'
room, and I stood behind it some as if I wuz a dry goods merchant
or grocery, and some like a preacher.

And the women would come up to me and talk. There wuz one woman
who got real talkative to me before the evenin' wuz out. She said
her home wuz over two miles beyond Zoar.

She had a young babe with her, a dark complexioned babe, with a
little round black head, that looked some like a cannon ball. She
said she had shingled the child that day about eight o'clock in
the forenoon; she talked real confidential to me.

She said the babe had sights of hair, and she told her husband
that day that if he would shingle the babe she would come to the
party and if he wouldn't shingle it she wouldn't come. It seemed
they had had a altercation on the subject; she wanted it shingled
and he didn't. But it seemed that ruther than stay away from the
party -- he consented, and shingled it. So they come.