“Be calm, Josiah Allen. Don’t let’s be too hasty in our movements. I
dare persume to say we may suffer from the heat ofttimes. But you know
it is three or four sizes smaller than the one we laid out to have.”
[Illustration: “Before they got it sot up.”]
“Yes,” sez Josiah. “But this is such a heater, Samantha, I s’poze there
hain’t nothin’ like it in the country for pourin’ out the heat in
torrents. And it takes next to nothin’ in coal to run it. I am sorry I
got so much coal,” sez he, dreamily, a-lookin’ at the big heaped-up ben.
“It is all onnecessary; it hain’t a-goin’ to take more’n a ton, if it
duz that, to run it all winter.”
“Oh, shaw!” sez I.
“Wall, it won’t take but a few pounds more, anyway. I know it won’t from
what the agent sez. I am sorry,” sez he, “that I didn’t get it by the
pound as we needed it. It hain’t likely we shall ever empty that ben,
not if we don’t live beyond the nateral age of mortals.”
And Josiah looked sad.
But I merely sez ag’in, “Oh, shaw!” For I didn’t fall in with his idees
at all. And the idee looked silly to me of his goin’ to Jonesville and
bringin’ coal home a few pounds at a time, like tea, or suger; and so I
sez “Oh, shaw!” to it.
And then he started off on a new tact, and sez he, “I am afraid it is
resky, anyway, to have it round. I am afraid it will burn up the house.”
But I kep’ on a-counselin’ him to keep calm, and try it, and then he
begin on a new idee, about heatin’ the door-yard with it from the
furnace-room door, and raisin’ vegitables and flowers for market.
But I sez, “With snow eight or ten feet deep, and old zero a-goin’ down
to forty, I guess we can’t raise many vegitables and flowers in the
door-yard.”
“Of course we couldn’t without the furnace,” sez he. “But that furnace,
from what that agent sez, would jest melt the snow right down and keep
it warm as summer clear to the orchard fence. And the meltin’ snow would
make the ground moist and rich. Why,” sez he, “Samantha, I believe we
could make our everlastin’ fortune by it.”
[Illustration: “Raisin’ vegitables and flowers for market.”]
And he sot down and crossed his legs, and begin to calculate, on the
back of the Almanac, how much string-beans would fetch in January, and
how our lettuce would be sought for in December, and how much he ort to
have a head for it.
But I looked on this like one of the many bubbles I had seen him throw
up rosy and gold tinted, to break anon over his devoted but bald head,
and drizzle down into damp mist and nothin’ness.