Every eye in the meetin' house wuz on us. We felt nerved up to do our
best, even if we perished in so doin', and I didn't know some of the
time but we would fall at our two posts. The job wuz so much more
wearin' and awful than we had foreboded, and we had foreboded about it
day and night for weeks and weeks, every one on us.

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'