Wall, I gin my shawl a closter wrop round my chilly frame, and pinted my frigid forefinger towards the empty coal-ben, and sez,— “If four tons of coal hain’t a test, what do you call one?” And sez I, “If that hain’t a test, there is a woman a-perishin’ out there now, a-settin’ on the regester: bring her in for a test if you want another.” But no; one of ’em recommended givin’ her whiskey to keep her temperature up till she got the carpet down. But Josiah rousted up at that, and said “he wuzn’t goin’ to stand the expense of keepin’ folkses heat up with brandy.” (That man is close.) And I repudiated the idee, and said, “I put more faith in soapstuns and woollen shawls.” And I sez ag’in, in eloquent axents, “Take out that furnace, and put in a bigger one, and I will move in and test it.” And then they said “they wouldn’t.” And we said “we wouldn’t.” And then the man threw some hints at us about the law. And then Tirzah Ann throwed some back at him, about its not bein’ a new furnace. Such news had come to us, and come very straight and direct. Miss Deacon Elikum Peck told she that wuz Hetty Avery, and she that wuz Hetty told old Miss Blodgett, and she told the editor of the Augurses wife, and she told Miss Preserved Green, and she told Tirzah Ann. It come straight. And then the man said that it hadn’t never been sot up before, and also that it had all been fixed over sense it wuz sot up. This wuz very satisfactory to Josiah, but not to me, and I told him ag’in, impressively,— “Take out that furnace. My life I feel is at the stake.” But they stood firm. And when one party stands firm and won’t move, the other party has got to; that is, if there is any movement. So finally, with a forebodin’ mind and a frosty frame, I took the venter. I had a large coal stove in the kitchen, so I knew that part of the house wuz habitable. So I moved in, accompanied by a good wood stove, which wuz sot up in my room. Wall, the first thing that happened to me wuz a cold that set my teeth to achin’ so hard it seemed as if they must shatter the gooms, and my face swelled up almost enormous. I lay in the most excrutiating agony for a week. The pain I suffered every hour wuz costly enough to me to buy the furnace, pipe and all, if pain could profit a man or woman. At last I got easier through the constant application of hot poultices, mustard, catnip, etcetery. And a hot fire in my wood stove made me comfortable in frame. I couldn’t sleep, so I could ’tend to havin’ the wood put in. One night, the coldest of the season, worn out with long watchin’ and pain, I slept sound. So did the one who took care on me: we slept so sound that my wood fire languished and went out, and we wuz left in our weakness, in the silence and darkness, to the mercy of that poor little furnace. Curious little thing, it wuzn’t to blame: it did the best it could with its circulation and size.