gain, I'll
call the watch, to see what he thinks of such doings, I will. And now,
once for all, you can't come in here to-night."

"Can't, indeed!--why can't I?--not come into my own house! Do you
call this a free country, on the gineral average, if such rebellions
are to be tolerated?"

"Your house, Mr. Moggs--yours?--who pays the rent, Moggs--who feeds
you and the children, Moggs--who finds the fire and every thing else?
Tell us that?"

This was somewhat of the nature of a home-thrust, and Moggs, rather
conscience-stricken, was dumb-founded and appalled. Moggs was very
cold, and therefore, for the time being, deficient in his usual pride
and self-esteem, leaving himself more pervious to the assault of
reproach from without and within, than he would have been in a more
genial state of the atmosphere. No man is courageous when he is
thoroughly chilled; and it had become painfully evident that this was
not a momentary riot, but an enduring revolution, through the
intermedium of a civil war.

"Ho, ho!" faintly responded Moggs, though once more preparing to carry
the citadel by storm, "I'll settle this business in a twinkling."

Splash!

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--wh