It seemed as
though we could never get warmed through. For an hour or more we hovered
about the stove. The camp was as hot as an oven; I have no doubt that we
kept the temperature at 110 deg.; and yet we were not warm.
"Put in more wood!" Addison or Thomas would exclaim. "Cram that stove
full again! Let's get warm!"
We thought so little of ventilation that we shut the camp door tight and
stopped every aperture that we could find. We needed heat to counteract
the effect of those long hours of cold and wind.
By the time we had eaten our supper and thawed out, we grew sleepy, and
under all our bedclothing, curled up in the bunk. So fearful were we
lest the fire should go out in the night that we gathered a huge heap of
fuel, and we all agreed to get up and stuff the stove whenever we waked
and found the fire abating.
Among the neighbors for whom we were cutting ice was Rufus Sylvester. He
was not a very careful or prosperous farmer, and not likely to be
successful at dairying. But because the old Squire and others were
embarking in that business, Rufus wished to do so, too. He had no
ice-house, but thought he could keep ice buried in sawdust, in the shade
of a large apple-tree near his barn; and I may add here that he tried it
with indifferent success for three years, and that it killed the
apple-tree.
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