“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.
And I kep’ on a-tellin’ him to be mejum, and to go slow. Sez I,—
“Don’t you go to breakin’ up ground and puttin’ in garden-seeds in November on the strength of that furnace.”
But sez he, “The heat of it ort to be utilized. It is not only resky to have so much heat a-layin’ loose round, but it seems wicked to waste it.”
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.