But in the mornin’ I waked up so cold that it seemed as if I would have loved to go to Greenland to have warmed up some, or Iceland would have been a grateful change. Waked up with a cold ketched there in my peaceful bed, that brung me down to the very verge of the grave. Yes, I went down so close to the dark river that I could almost hear the mysterious swashin’ of its waves against the shores of the Present. For eight long weeks did I lay there and suffer, and doctors and nurses a-sufferin’ too; for it wuzn’t only me they had to take care on, they had to take constant and broodin’ care of that poor feeble little furnace: that had to be sot up with jest as regular as I did. Sometimes they hired a man to set up with it regular till two in the mornin’, thinkin’ then it would survive till mornin’. Sometimes they tried waitin’ on it three or four times a night, and keepin’ it alive that way. Wall, after eight or nine weeks of sufferin’ almost onexampled, I got better; but the poor little furnace kep’ on a-growin’ weaker and more weak, its circulation more and more clogged up, and its inward fires a-expirin’ gradual. And finally consent wuz giv that we should put in a new furnace. And we imegiatly and to once bought a big noble-sized one, with a good healthy circulation, that makes our house like summer all the time, day and night. Why, it fairly fools the house-plants, makes the silly things think it _is_ summer. And up stairs and down, in almost every livin’-room their big green leaves and dewy blossoms shine out, not mistrustin’ that it hain’t June. And the red and green parrot sets and talks and looks wise, and is a-s’pozin’ all the time that he is in New Mexico. Wall, the day that the little furnace wuz took out of the suller (poor little weak broken-down creeter, I can’t help bein’ sorry for it), that very day I paid my doctor’s bill,—a good hefty one. The nurse’s bill, and the bills of them that had sot up with me, and sot up with the furnace, hadn’t come in yet; but I knew they would be big, and ort to be, a-takin’ care on us both. The doctor had just gone, and I wuz a-settin’ in my room relapsted into meditation and a big rockin’-chair,—for I wuz far from bein’ strong yet,—when all of a sudden my pardner burst into the room, all rousted up and agitated to a extreme degree, and sez he,— “What do you s’poze we have discovered now, Samantha? How old do you think that furnace is, Samantha Allen?” And I sez, “I don’t feel like guessin’ on deep subjects, feelin’ as I do, weak as a cat.” “Wall,” sez he, “the body part of it is the very same old potash-kettle that George Washington made potash in before the war of 1812.” Sez I, “I don’t believe any such thing,” and sez I, a-leanin’ back in my copperplate chair,—