Any thing but cold water in quantity at a crisis like this. Who could endure a shower-bath under such ungenial circumstances? Not Priessnitz himself. It is not, then, to be wondered at that Montezuma Moggs now quailed, having nothing in him of the amphibious nature.
"Water is cheap, Mr. Moggs; and you'd better take keer. There's several buckets yet up here of unkommon cold water, all of which is at your service without charge—wont ask you nothin', Moggs, for your washin'; and if you're feverish, may be it will do you good."
Everybody laughed, as you know everybody will, at any other body's misfortune or disaster. Everybody laughed but Moggs, and he shivered.
"I'll sattinly ketch my death," moaned he; "I'll be friz, standing straight up, like a big icicle; or if I fall over when I'm friz, the boys will slide on me as they go to school, and call it fun as they go whizzing over my countenance with nails in their shoes, scratching my physimohogany all to pieces. They tell me that being friz is an easy death—that you go to sleep and don't know nothing about it. I wish they'd get their wives to slouse 'em all over with a bucket of water, on sich a night as this, and then try whether it is easy. Call being friz hard an easy thing! I'd rather be biled any time. What shill I do—what shill I do?"
"Perhaps they'll put you in an ice-house, and kiver you up with tan till summer comes—you'd be good for something then, which is more nor you are now," observed Mrs. Moggs from the window.
"Quit twitting a man with his misfortunes," whined Montezuma, of the now broken-heart.
"Why, my duck!"
"Y-e-e-s—y-e-e-s! that's it—I am a duck, indeed! but by morning I'll be only a snow-ball—the boys will take my head for a snow-ball. What shill I do—I guvs up, and I guvs in."
"Well, I'll tell you, Montezuma Moggs, what you must do to be thawed. Promise me faithfully only to work half as hard as I do, and you may come to the fire—the ten-plate stove is almost red-hot. Promise to mend boots, mind shop, and tend baby; them's the terms—that's the price of admission."
Hard terms, certainly—the severest of terms—but then hard terms, and severe terms, are good terms, if no other terms are to be had. One must do the best he can in this world, if it be imperative upon him to do something, as it evidently was in Moggs' case.