We didn't make no move in public, but we kinder met round to each other's housen, sort o' private like, and talked, and talked, and prayed—we all knew that wuzn't aginst the church rules, so we jest rastled in prayer, for help to pay our honest debts, and keep the Methodist meetin' house from disgrace, for the men wuz that worked up and madded, that they didn't seem to care whether the meetin' house come to nothin' or not.
Wall, after settin' day after day (not public settin', oh, no! we knew our places too well, and wouldn't be ketched a-settin' public till we had a right to).
After settin' and talkin' it over back and forth, we concluded the very best thing we could do wuz to give a big fair and try to sell things enough to raise some money.
It wuz a fearful tuff job we had took onto ourselves, for we had got to make all the things to sell out of what we could get holt of, for, of course, our husbands all kep the money purses in their own hands, as the way of male pardners is. But we laid out to beset 'em when they wuz cleverer than common (owin' to extra good vittles) and get enough money out of 'em to buy the materials to work with, bedquilts (crazy, and otherwise), embroidered towels, shawl straps, knit socks and suspenders, rugs, chair covers, lap robes, etc., etc., etc.
It wuz a tremendus hard undertakin' we had took onto ourselves, with all our spring's work on hand, and not one of us Sisters kep a hired girl at the time, and we had to do our own house cleanin', paintin' floors, makin' soap, spring sewin', etc., besides our common housework.
But the very worst on't wuz the meetin' house wuz in such a shape that we couldn't do a thing till that wuz fixed.
The men had undertook to fix over the meetin' house jest before the hardness commenced. The men and wimmen both had labored side by side to fix up the old house a little.
The men had said that in such church work as that wimmen had a perfect right to help, to stand side by side with the male brothers, and do half, or more than half, or even all the work. They said it wuzn't aginst the Discipline, and all the Bishops wuz in favor of it, and always had been. They said it wuz right accordin' to the Articles. But when it come to the hard and arjuous duties of drawin' salleries with 'em, or settin' up on Conferences with 'em, why there a line had to be drawed, wimmen must not be permitted to strain herself in no such ways—nor resk the tender delicacy of her nature, by settin' in a meetin' house as a delegate by the side of a man once a year. It wuz too resky. But we could lay holt and work with 'em in public, or in private, which we felt wuz indeed a privelege, for the interests of the Methodist meetin' house wuz dear to our hearts, and so wuz our pardners' approvals—and they wuz all on 'em unanimus on this pint—we could work all we wanted to.
So we had laid holt and worked right along with the men from day to day, with their full and free consents, and a little help from 'em, till we had got the work partly done. We had got the little Sabbath-school room painted and papered, and the cushions of the main room new covered, and we had engaged to have it frescoed, but the frescoer had turned out to be a perfect fraud, and, of all the lookin' things, that meetin' house wuz about the worst. The plaster, or whatever it wuz he had put on, had to be all scraped off before it could be papered, the paper wuz bought, and the scrapin' had begun.
