It wuz a very cold day when I had the dinin’-room carpet put down, and I had hired a stout healthy woman, two hundred pounds wuz her weight, and her temperature wuz above normal, it wuz so good. I went over to the house that mornin’, and I shivered imperceptibly as I walked through the rooms,—I didn’t venter to set,—and I met Josiah a-comin’ up from the suller with his mittens on, and a comforter round his neck, and his teeth a-chatterin’. And I sez to him, “Hain’t you glad you didn’t sell your mittens and comforter, Josiah?” And he sez, real snappish, “I wouldn’t be a fool!” And I sez, “I didn’t mean no hurt, Josiah,” and I added further, as I clapped my hands together to warm ’em, “We are both sufferers, Josiah Allen.” “Wall,” sez he, “when we get into the house it will be different. Then we can give it a fair test.” And I sez, a-glancin’ at the empty coal-ben,— [Illustration: “A-comin’ up from the suller.”] “If four tons of coal hain’t a test, I don’t know a test when I see it.” We had got down in front of the furnace by this time, and I looked down on it pityin’ly, it looked so fearful small, and the cold all round it seemed so intense. And I sez, “The poor little thing hain’t to blame: it duz the best it can, but it has took too hefty a job on it for its size and constitution.” He wuz a-leanin’ over the top of the furnace, a-brushin’ off the icicles from his whiskers; and he sez, almost mechanically,— “You know the man said it wuz such a heater; you know he said it wuz fairly dangerous.” “Yes,” sez I, “but I learned long ago to put not your trust in princes, or agents,” sez I. “That is Bible, Josiah, part on’t.” Wall, he shivered so that I got him out of the furnace-room as quick as I could, and then I went up-stairs, a-wroppin’ my thick woollen shawl more closely round my frame, and I looked round to see what had become of my hired woman, for I feared the worst; I feared she had perished. But no, I found she wuz resusitated. I found her a-settin’ on the regester in the dinin’-room floor, the heat turned on to its utmost capacity, and she wuz a-sewin’ on the carpet. But she looked blue, and her frame shook. And she said she wuz cold, bitter cold. And she sez to me, in gloomy axents,— “How are you a-goin’ to stand it through the winter?” My soul wuz racked with the same agonizin’ apprehensions. But I tried to be calm; I wuz cool, I know,—freezin’ cool. Wall, that afternoon I made a voyalent effort to have that furnace took out, and a bigger one put in, and one that had a warmer circulation and a more healthy constitution inside of it. “For,” sez I, “if we enter this house with that furnace in it, we shall all likewise perish.” I thought mebby if I used a skriptural term the man would hear to me, seein’ he wuz a perfesser. But no, he stood firm. He said “we hadn’t tested it sufficient.” And the rest of the men a-standin’ round with blue noses, all jined in with him: “No, we hadn’t tested it.”