And I ketched Josiah Allen that day a-figgerin’ on a blank page in Fox’s Book of Martyrs how he could carry the waste heat to the barn and heat up the cattle. But I kep’ calm through it all. Of course I knew from the agent’s talk that we wuz takin’ a great resk onto us, almost like goin’ to a torrid zone in the fall of the year. And though I did in my secret thoughts apprehend sunstrokes and prostrations, and perused the medical portion of the Almanac in my hours of leisure, for directions to fetch folks to when they wuz prostrated by heat, still I kep’ a calm demeanor on the outside of me, and never let on to Josiah that I had a apprehension. That is my way, to keep still, and calm, and do everything I can to avert danger. [Illustration: “I ketched Josiah a-figgerin’.”] In the same quiet way, I got out three old palm-leaf fans, and put new bindin’s round the edges, and hemmed over the bottom of my old lawn dress, and I bought eleven yards of cheese bandage cloth at a outlay of five cents a yard, and colored it a soft gray with plum boughs. If I couldn’t wear calico in the winter, as I mistrusted I couldn’t from the agent’s talk, why, I laid out to be prepared. And if my apprehensions wuz futile, why, I laid out to make it into a comforter for my bed. Ten yards would make the comforter, and the odd yard I needed for a wipin’-cloth. They wuz quite a long time a-settin’ up the furnace. It seemed to me to take a good while, but I wuzn’t used to the common behavior of furnaces, and didn’t know but it wuz one of their habits to be a good while a-bein’ sot up. Of course, Josiah bein’ a man, and bein’ round with the workmen more, and hearin’ more of the skairful talk of that agent, about the heat that wuz soon a-goin’ to pour onto us, it wuz nateral that he should get skairter than I wuz, and it wuz on the very afternoon that they finished settin’ it up, and I s’poze the agent had acted very skairful, and also the men that wuz a-helpin’ set it up (for of course it wuz nateral that they should all be linked together in their talk about it). It wuz that very afternoon, along towards night, that I overheard Josiah, out by the gate, a-tryin’ to sell his clothes, all his thick ones. And I walked right out bareheaded, and interfered. But Josiah sez, “What will I ever want of ’em ag’in?” And I sez, “You act like a luny. Hain’t you got to go out any more to mill or to meetin’?” But sez he, “I am only sellin’ them that I wear round the house winters.” But I sez, “Do you desist imegiatly,” sez I. “If the clothes hain’t wanted, I need ’em for carpet-rags.” “Carpets!” sez he. “Do you s’poze we can stand carpets in such a heat? I am goin’ to buy mattin’, mattin’ of the very coolest kind.” Sez I, sternly, “Do you stop sellin’ or buyin’, and wait.” “Yes,” sez he, bitterly, “wait! till we all have sunstrokes, and are dead and buried.”