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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK I AND MY CHIMNEY ***
I and My Chimney
By Herman Melville
I and my chimney, two grey-headed old smokers, reside in the country.
We are, I may say, old settlers here; particularly my old chimney,
which settles more and more every day.
Though I always say, _I and my chimney_, as Cardinal Wolsey used to
say, “_I and my King_,” yet this egotistic way of speaking, wherein I
take precedence of my chimney, is hardly borne out by the facts; in
everything, except the above phrase, my chimney taking precedence of
me.
Within thirty feet of the turf-sided road, my chimney—a huge, corpulent
old Harry VIII of a chimney—rises full in front of me and all my
possessions. Standing well up a hillside, my chimney, like Lord Rosse’s
monster telescope, swung vertical to hit the meridian moon, is the
first object to greet the approaching traveler’s eye, nor is it the
last which the sun salutes. My chimney, too, is before me in receiving
the first-fruits of the seasons. The snow is on its head ere on my hat;
and every spring, as in a hollow beech tree, the first swallows build
their nests in it.
But it is within doors that the pre-eminence of my chimney is most
manifest. When in the rear room, set apart for that object, I stand to
receive my guests (who, by the way call more, I suspect, to see my
chimney than me) I then stand, not so much before, as, strictly
speaking, behind my chimney, which is, indeed, the true host. Not that
I demur. In the presence of my betters, I hope I know my place.
From this habitual precedence of my chimney over me, some even think
that I have got into a sad rearward way altogether; in short, from
standing behind my old-fashioned chimney so much, I have got to be
quite behind the age too, as well as running behindhand in everything
else. But to tell the truth, I never was a very forward old fellow, nor
what my farming neighbors call a forehanded one. Indeed, those rumors
about my behindhandedness are so far correct, that I have an odd
sauntering way with me sometimes of going about with my hands behind my
back. As for my belonging to the rear-guard in general, certain it is,
I bring up the rear of my chimney—which, by the way, is this moment
before me—and that, too, both in fancy and fact. In brief, my chimney
is my superior; my superior by I know not how many heads and shoulders;
my superior, too, in that humbly bowing over with shovel and tongs, I
much minister to it; yet never does it minister, or incline over to me;
but, if anything, in its settlings, rather leans the other way.
My chimney is grand seignior here—the one great domineering object, not
more of the landscape, than of the house; all the rest of which house,
in each architectural arrangement, as may shortly appear, is, in the
most marked manner, accommodated, not to my wants, but to my chimney’s,
which, among other things, has the centre of the house to himself,
leaving but the odd holes and corners to me.
But I and my chimney must explain; and as we are both rather obese, we
may have to expatiate.
In those houses which are strictly double houses—that is, where the
hall is in the middle—the fireplaces usually are on opposite sides; so
that while one member of the household is warming himself at a fire
built into a recess of the north wall, say another member, the former’s
own brother, perhaps, may be holding his feet to the blaze before a
hearth in the south wall—the two thus fairly sitting back to back. Is
this well? Be it put to any man who has a proper fraternal feeling. Has
it not a sort of sulky appearance? But very probably this style of
chimney building originated with some architect afflicted with a
quarrelsome family.
Then again, almost every modern fireplace has its separate
flue—separate throughout, from hearth to chimney-top. At least such an
arrangement is deemed desirable. Does not this look egotistical,
selfish? But still more, all these separate flues, instead of having
independent masonry establishments of their own, or instead of being
grouped together in one federal stock in the middle of the
house—instead of this, I say, each flue is surreptitiously honey-combed
into the walls; so that these last are here and there, or indeed almost
anywhere, treacherously hollow, and, in consequence, more or less weak.
Of course, the main reason of this style of chimney building is to
economize room. In cities, where lots are sold by the inch, small space
is to spare for a chimney constructed on magnanimous principles; and,
as with most thin men, who are generally tall, so with such houses,
what is lacking in breadth, must be made up in height. This remark
holds true even with regard to many very stylish abodes, built by the
most stylish of gentlemen. And yet, when that stylish gentleman, Louis
le Grand of France, would build a palace for his lady, friend, Madame
de Maintenon, he built it but one story high—in fact in the cottage
style. But then, how uncommonly quadrangular, spacious, and
broad—horizontal acres, not vertical ones. Such is the palace, which,
in all its one-storied magnificence of Languedoc marble, in the garden
of Versailles, still remains to this day. Any man can buy a square foot
of land and plant a liberty-pole on it; but it takes a king to set
apart whole acres for a grand Trianon.
But nowadays it is different; and furthermore, what originated in a
necessity has been mounted into a vaunt. In towns there is large
rivalry in building tall houses. If one gentleman builds his house four
stories high, and another gentleman comes next door and builds five
stories high, then the former, not to be looked down upon that way,
immediately sends for his architect and claps a fifth and a sixth story
on top of his previous four. And, not till the gentleman has achieved
his aspiration, not till he has stolen over the way by twilight and
observed how his sixth story soars beyond his neighbor’s fifth—not till
then does he retire to his rest with satisfaction.
Such folks, it seems to me, need mountains for neighbors, to take this
emulous conceit of soaring out of them.
If, considering that mine is a very wide house, and by no means lofty,
aught in the above may appear like interested pleading, as if I did but
fold myself about in the cloak of a general proposition, cunningly to
tickle my individual vanity beneath it, such misconception must vanish
upon my frankly conceding, that land adjoining my alder swamp was sold
last month for ten dollars an acre, and thought a rash purchase at
that; so that for wide houses hereabouts there is plenty of room, and
cheap. Indeed so cheap—dirt cheap—is the soil, that our elms thrust out
their roots in it, and hang their great boughs over it, in the most
lavish and reckless way. Almost all our crops, too, are sown broadcast,
even peas and turnips. A farmer among us, who should go about his
twenty-acre field, poking his finger into it here and there, and
dropping down a mustard seed, would be thought a penurious,
narrow-minded husbandman. The dandelions in the river-meadows, and the
forget-me-nots along the mountain roads, you see at once they are put
to no economy in space. Some seasons, too, our rye comes up here and
there a spear, sole and single like a church-spire. It doesn’t care to
crowd itself where it knows there is such a deal of room. The world is
wide, the world is all before us, says the rye. Weeds, too, it is
amazing how they spread. No such thing as arresting them—some of our
pastures being a sort of Alsatia for the weeds. As for the grass, every
spring it is like Kossuth’s rising of what he calls the peoples.
Mountains, too, a regular camp-meeting of them. For the same reason,
the same all-sufficiency of room, our shadows march and countermarch,
going through their various drills and masterly evolutions, like the
old imperial guard on the Champs de Mars. As for the hills, especially
where the roads cross them the supervisors of our various towns have
given notice to all concerned, that they can come and dig them down and
cart them off, and never a cent to pay, no more than for the privilege
of picking blackberries. The stranger who is buried here, what
liberal-hearted landed proprietor among us grudges him his six feet of
rocky pasture?
Nevertheless, cheap, after all, as our land is, and much as it is
trodden under foot, I, for one, am proud of it for what it bears; and
chiefly for its three great lions—the Great Oak, Ogg Mountain, and my
chimney.
Most houses, here, are but one and a half stories high; few exceed two.
That in which I and my chimney dwell, is in width nearly twice its
height, from sill to eaves—which accounts for the magnitude of its main
content—besides showing that in this house, as in this country at
large, there is abundance of space, and to spare, for both of us.
The frame of the old house is of wood—which but the more sets forth the
solidity of the chimney, which is of brick. And as the great wrought
nails, binding the clapboards, are unknown in these degenerate days, so
are the huge bricks in the chimney walls. The architect of the chimney
must have had the pyramid of Cheops before him; for, after that famous
structure, it seems modeled, only its rate of decrease towards the
summit is considerably less, and it is truncated. From the exact middle
of the mansion it soars from the cellar, right up through each
successive floor, till, four feet square, it breaks water from the
ridge-pole of the roof, like an anvil-headed whale, through the crest
of a billow. Most people, though, liken it, in that part, to a razeed
observatory, masoned up.
The reason for its peculiar appearance above the roof touches upon
rather delicate ground. How shall I reveal that, forasmuch as many
years ago the original gable roof of the old house had become very
leaky, a temporary proprietor hired a band of woodmen, with their huge,
cross-cut saws, and went to sawing the old gable roof clean off. Off it
went, with all its birds’ nests, and dormer windows. It was replaced
with a modern roof, more fit for a railway wood-house than an old
country gentleman’s abode. This operation—razeeing the structure some
fifteen feet—was, in effect upon the chimney, something like the
falling of the great spring tides. It left uncommon low water all about
the chimney—to abate which appearance, the same person now proceeds to
slice fifteen feet off the chimney itself, actually beheading my royal
old chimney—a regicidal act, which, were it not for the palliating fact
that he was a poulterer by trade, and, therefore, hardened to such
neck-wringings, should send that former proprietor down to posterity in
the same cart with Cromwell.
Owing to its pyramidal shape, the reduction of the chimney inordinately
widened its razeed summit. Inordinately, I say, but only in the
estimation of such as have no eye to the picturesque. What care I, if,
unaware that my chimney, as a free citizen of this free land, stands
upon an independent basis of its own, people passing it, wonder how
such a brick-kiln, as they call it, is supported upon mere joists and
rafters? What care I? I will give a traveler a cup of switchel, if he
want it; but am I bound to supply him with a sweet taste? Men of
cultivated minds see, in my old house and chimney, a goodly old
elephant-and-castle.
All feeling hearts will sympathize with me in what I am now about to
add. The surgical operation, above referred to, necessarily brought
into the open air a part of the chimney previously under cover, and
intended to remain so, and, therefore, not built of what are called
weather-bricks. In consequence, the chimney, though of a vigorous
constitution, suffered not a little, from so naked an exposure; and,
unable to acclimate itself, ere long began to fail—showing blotchy
symptoms akin to those in measles. Whereupon travelers, passing my way,
would wag their heads, laughing; “See that wax nose—how it melts off!”
But what cared I? The same travelers would travel across the sea to
view Kenilworth peeling away, and for a very good reason: that of all
artists of the picturesque, decay wears the palm—I would say, the ivy.
In fact, I’ve often thought that the proper place for my old chimney is
ivied old England.
In vain my wife—with what probable ulterior intent will, ere long,
appear—solemnly warned me, that unless something were done, and
speedily, we should be burnt to the ground, owing to the holes
crumbling through the aforesaid blotchy parts, where the chimney joined
the roof. “Wife,” said I, “far better that my house should burn down,
than that my chimney should be pulled down, though but a few feet. They
call it a wax nose; very good; not for me to tweak the nose of my
superior.” But at last the man who has a mortgage on the house dropped
me a note, reminding me that, if my chimney was allowed to stand in
that invalid condition, my policy of insurance would be void. This was
a sort of hint not to be neglected. All the world over, the picturesque
yields to the pocketesque. The mortgagor cared not, but the mortgagee
did.
So another operation was performed. The wax nose was taken off, and a
new one fitted on. Unfortunately for the expression—being put up by a
squint-eyed mason, who, at the time, had a bad stitch in the same
side—the new nose stands a little awry, in the same direction.
Of one thing, however, I am proud. The horizontal dimensions of the new
part are unreduced.
Large as the chimney appears upon the roof, that is nothing to its
spaciousness below. At its base in the cellar, it is precisely twelve
feet square; and hence covers precisely one hundred and forty-four
superficial feet. What an appropriation of terra firma for a chimney,
and what a huge load for this earth! In fact, it was only because I and
my chimney formed no part of his ancient burden, that that stout
peddler, Atlas of old, was enabled to stand up so bravely under his
pack. The dimensions given may, perhaps, seem fabulous. But, like those
stones at Gilgal, which Joshua set up for a memorial of having passed
over Jordan, does not my chimney remain, even unto this day?
Very often I go down into my cellar, and attentively survey that vast
square of masonry. I stand long, and ponder over, and wonder at it. It
has a druidical look, away down in the umbrageous cellar there whose
numerous vaulted passages, and far glens of gloom, resemble the dark,
damp depths of primeval woods. So strongly did this conceit steal over
me, so deeply was I penetrated with wonder at the chimney, that one
day—when I was a little out of my mind, I now think—getting a spade
from the garden, I set to work, digging round the foundation,
especially at the corners thereof, obscurely prompted by dreams of
striking upon some old, earthen-worn memorial of that by-gone day,
when, into all this gloom, the light of heaven entered, as the masons
laid the foundation-stones, peradventure sweltering under an August
sun, or pelted by a March storm. Plying my blunted spade, how vexed was
I by that ungracious interruption of a neighbor who, calling to see me
upon some business, and being informed that I was below said I need not
be troubled to come up, but he would go down to me; and so, without
ceremony, and without my having been forewarned, suddenly discovered
me, digging in my cellar.
“Gold digging, sir?”
“Nay, sir,” answered I, starting, “I was merely—ahem!—merely—I say I
was merely digging-round my chimney.”
“Ah, loosening the soil, to make it grow. Your chimney, sir, you regard
as too small, I suppose; needing further development, especially at the
top?”
“Sir!” said I, throwing down the spade, “do not be personal. I and my
chimney—”
“Personal?”
“Sir, I look upon this chimney less as a pile of masonry than as a
personage. It is the king of the house. I am but a suffered and
inferior subject.”
In fact, I would permit no gibes to be cast at either myself or my
chimney; and never again did my visitor refer to it in my hearing,
without coupling some compliment with the mention. It well deserves a
respectful consideration. There it stands, solitary and alone—not a
council—of ten flues, but, like his sacred majesty of Russia, a unit of
an autocrat.
Even to me, its dimensions, at times, seem incredible. It does not look
so big—no, not even in the cellar. By the mere eye, its magnitude can
be but imperfectly comprehended, because only one side can be received
at one time; and said side can only present twelve feet, linear
measure. But then, each other side also is twelve feet long; and the
whole obviously forms a square and twelve times twelve is one hundred
and forty-four. And so, an adequate conception of the magnitude of this
chimney is only to be got at by a sort of process in the higher
mathematics by a method somewhat akin to those whereby the surprising
distances of fixed stars are computed.
It need hardly be said, that the walls of my house are entirely free
from fireplaces. These all congregate in the middle—in the one grand
central chimney, upon all four sides of which are hearths—two tiers of
hearths—so that when, in the various chambers, my family and guests are
warming themselves of a cold winter’s night, just before retiring,
then, though at the time they may not be thinking so, all their faces
mutually look towards each other, yea, all their feet point to one
centre; and, when they go to sleep in their beds, they all sleep round
one warm chimney, like so many Iroquois Indians, in the woods, round
their one heap of embers. And just as the Indians’ fire serves, not
only to keep them comfortable, but also to keep off wolves, and other
savage monsters, so my chimney, by its obvious smoke at top, keeps off
prowling burglars from the towns—for what burglar or murderer would
dare break into an abode from whose chimney issues such a continual
smoke—betokening that if the inmates are not stirring, at least fires
are, and in case of an alarm, candles may readily be lighted, to say
nothing of muskets.
But stately as is the chimney—yea, grand high altar as it is, right
worthy for the celebration of high mass before the Pope of Rome, and
all his cardinals—yet what is there perfect in this world? Caius Julius
Caesar, had he not been so inordinately great, they say that Brutus,
Cassius, Antony, and the rest, had been greater. My chimney, were it
not so mighty in its magnitude, my chambers had been larger. How often
has my wife ruefully told me, that my chimney, like the English
aristocracy, casts a contracting shade all round it. She avers that
endless domestic inconveniences arise—more particularly from the
chimney’s stubborn central locality. The grand objection with her is,
that it stands midway in the place where a fine entrance-hall ought to
be. In truth, there is no hall whatever to the house—nothing but a sort
of square landing-place, as you enter from the wide front door. A roomy
enough landing-place, I admit, but not attaining to the dignity of a
hall. Now, as the front door is precisely in the middle of the front of
the house, inwards it faces the chimney. In fact, the opposite wall of
the landing-place is formed solely by the chimney; and hence-owing to
the gradual tapering of the chimney—is a little less than twelve feet
in width. Climbing the chimney in this part, is the principal
staircase—which, by three abrupt turns, and three minor landing-places,
mounts to the second floor, where, over the front door, runs a sort of
narrow gallery, something less than twelve feet long, leading to
chambers on either hand. This gallery, of course, is railed; and so,
looking down upon the stairs, and all those landing-places together,
with the main one at bottom, resembles not a little a balcony for
musicians, in some jolly old abode, in times Elizabethan. Shall I tell
a weakness? I cherish the cobwebs there, and many a time arrest Biddy
in the act of brushing them with her broom, and have many a quarrel
with my wife and daughters about it.
Now the ceiling, so to speak, of the place where you enter the house,
that ceiling is, in fact, the ceiling of the second floor, not the
first. The two floors are made one here; so that ascending this turning
stairs, you seem going up into a kind of soaring tower, or lighthouse.
At the second landing, midway up the chimney, is a mysterious door,
entering to a mysterious closet; and here I keep mysterious cordials,
of a choice, mysterious flavor, made so by the constant nurturing and
subtle ripening of the chimney’s gentle heat, distilled through that
warm mass of masonry. Better for wines is it than voyages to the
Indias; my chimney itself a tropic. A chair by my chimney in a November
day is as good for an invalid as a long season spent in Cuba. Often I
think how grapes might ripen against my chimney. How my wife’s
geraniums bud there! Bud in December. Her eggs, too—can’t keep them
near the chimney, on account of the hatching. Ah, a warm heart has my
chimney.
How often my wife was at me about that projected grand entrance-hall of
hers, which was to be knocked clean through the chimney, from one end
of the house to the other, and astonish all guests by its generous
amplitude. “But, wife,” said I, “the chimney—consider the chimney: if
you demolish the foundation, what is to support the superstructure?”
“Oh, that will rest on the second floor.” The truth is, women know next
to nothing about the realities of architecture. However, my wife still
talked of running her entries and partitions. She spent many long
nights elaborating her plans; in imagination building her boasted hall
through the chimney, as though its high mightiness were a mere spear of
sorrel-top. At last, I gently reminded her that, little as she might
fancy it, the chimney was a fact—a sober, substantial fact, which, in
all her plannings, it would be well to take into full consideration.
But this was not of much avail.
And here, respectfully craving her permission, I must say a few words
about this enterprising wife of mine. Though in years nearly old as
myself, in spirit she is young as my little sorrel mare, Trigger, that
threw me last fall. What is extraordinary, though she comes of a
rheumatic family, she is straight as a pine, never has any aches; while
for me with the sciatica, I am sometimes as crippled up as any old
apple-tree. But she has not so much as a toothache. As for her
hearing—let me enter the house in my dusty boots, and she away up in
the attic. And for her sight—Biddy, the housemaid, tells other people’s
housemaids, that her mistress will spy a spot on the dresser straight
through the pewter platter, put up on purpose to hide it. Her faculties
are alert as her limbs and her senses. No danger of my spouse dying of
torpor. The longest night in the year I’ve known her lie awake,
planning her campaign for the morrow. She is a natural projector. The
maxim, “Whatever is, is right,” is not hers. Her maxim is, Whatever is,
is wrong; and what is more, must be altered; and what is still more,
must be altered right away. Dreadful maxim for the wife of a dozy old
dreamer like me, who dote on seventh days as days of rest, and out of a
sabbatical horror of industry, will, on a week day, go out of my road a
quarter of a mile, to avoid the sight of a man at work.
That matches are made in heaven, may be, but my wife would have been
just the wife for Peter the Great, or Peter the Piper. How she would
have set in order that huge littered empire of the one, and with
indefatigable painstaking picked the peck of pickled peppers for the
other.
But the most wonderful thing is, my wife never thinks of her end. Her
youthful incredulity, as to the plain theory, and still plainer fact of
death, hardly seems Christian. Advanced in years, as she knows she must
be, my wife seems to think that she is to teem on, and be inexhaustible
forever. She doesn’t believe in old age. At that strange promise in the
plain of Mamre, my old wife, unlike old Abraham’s, would not have
jeeringly laughed within herself.
Judge how to me, who, sitting in the comfortable shadow of my chimney,
smoking my comfortable pipe, with ashes not unwelcome at my feet, and
ashes not unwelcome all but in my mouth; and who am thus in a
comfortable sort of not unwelcome, though, indeed, ashy enough way,
reminded of the ultimate exhaustion even of the most fiery life; judge
how to me this unwarrantable vitality in my wife must come, sometimes,
it is true, with a moral and a calm, but oftener with a breeze and a
ruffle.
If the doctrine be true, that in wedlock contraries attract, by how
cogent a fatality must I have been drawn to my wife! While spicily
impatient of present and past, like a glass of ginger-beer she
overflows with her schemes; and, with like energy as she puts down her
foot, puts down her preserves and her pickles, and lives with them in a
continual future; or ever full of expectations both from time and
space, is ever restless for newspapers, and ravenous for letters.
Content with the years that are gone, taking no thought for the morrow,
and looking for no new thing from any person or quarter whatever, I
have not a single scheme or expectation on earth, save in unequal
resistance of the undue encroachment of hers.
Old myself, I take to oldness in things; for that cause mainly loving
old Montaigne, and old cheese, and old wine; and eschewing young
people, hot rolls, new books, and early potatoes and very fond of my
old claw-footed chair, and old club-footed Deacon White, my neighbor,
and that still nigher old neighbor, my betwisted old grape-vine, that
of a summer evening leans in his elbow for cosy company at my
window-sill, while I, within doors, lean over mine to meet his; and
above all, high above all, am fond of my high-mantled old chimney. But
she, out of the infatuate juvenility of hers, takes to nothing but
newness; for that cause mainly, loving new cider in autumn, and in
spring, as if she were own daughter of Nebuchadnezzar, fairly raving
after all sorts of salads and spinages, and more particularly green
cucumbers (though all the time nature rebukes such unsuitable young
hankerings in so elderly a person, by never permitting such things to
agree with her), and has an itch after recently-discovered fine
prospects (so no graveyard be in the background), and also after
Swedenborgianism, and the Spirit Rapping philosophy, with other new
views, alike in things natural and unnatural; and immortally hopeful,
is forever making new flower-beds even on the north side of the house
where the bleak mountain wind would scarce allow the wiry weed called
hard-hack to gain a thorough footing; and on the road-side sets out
mere pipe-stems of young elms; though there is no hope of any shade
from them, except over the ruins of her great granddaughter’s
gravestones; and won’t wear caps, but plaits her gray hair; and takes
the Ladies’ Magazine for the fashions; and always buys her new almanac
a month before the new year; and rises at dawn; and to the warmest
sunset turns a cold shoulder; and still goes on at odd hours with her
new course of history, and her French, and her music; and likes a young
company; and offers to ride young colts; and sets out young suckers in
the orchard; and has a spite against my elbowed old grape-vine, and my
club-footed old neighbor, and my claw-footed old chair, and above all,
high above all, would fain persecute, unto death, my high-mantled old
chimney. By what perverse magic, I a thousand times think, does such a
very autumnal old lady have such a very vernal young soul? When I would
remonstrate at times, she spins round on me with, “Oh, don’t you
grumble, old man (she always calls me old man), it’s I, young I, that
keep you from stagnating.” Well, I suppose it is so. Yea, after all,
these things are well ordered. My wife, as one of her poor relations,
good soul, intimates, is the salt of the earth, and none the less the
salt of my sea, which otherwise were unwholesome. She is its monsoon,
too, blowing a brisk gale over it, in the one steady direction of my
chimney.
Not insensible of her superior energies, my wife has frequently made me
propositions to take upon herself all the responsibilities of my
affairs. She is desirous that, domestically, I should abdicate; that,
renouncing further rule, like the venerable Charles V, I should retire
into some sort of monastery. But indeed, the chimney excepted, I have
little authority to lay down. By my wife’s ingenious application of the
principle that certain things belong of right to female jurisdiction, I
find myself, through my easy compliances, insensibly stripped by
degrees of one masculine prerogative after another. In a dream I go
about my fields, a sort of lazy, happy-go-lucky, good-for-nothing,
loafing old Lear. Only by some sudden revelation am I reminded who is
over me; as year before last, one day seeing in one corner of the
premises fresh deposits of mysterious boards and timbers, the oddity of
the incident at length begat serious meditation. “Wife,” said I, “whose
boards and timbers are those I see near the orchard there? Do you know
anything about them, wife? Who put them there? You know I do not like
the neighbors to use my land that way, they should ask permission
first.”
She regarded me with a pitying smile.
“Why, old man, don’t you know I am building a new barn? Didn’t you know
that, old man?”
This is the poor old lady that was accusing me of tyrannizing over her.
To return now to the chimney. Upon being assured of the futility of her
proposed hall, so long as the obstacle remained, for a time my wife was
for a modified project. But I could never exactly comprehend it. As far
as I could see through it, it seemed to involve the general idea of a
sort of irregular archway, or elbowed tunnel, which was to penetrate
the chimney at some convenient point under the staircase, and carefully
avoiding dangerous contact with the fireplaces, and particularly
steering clear of the great interior flue, was to conduct the
enterprising traveler from the front door all the way into the
dining-room in the remote rear of the mansion. Doubtless it was a bold
stroke of genius, that plan of hers, and so was Nero’s when he schemed
his grand canal through the Isthmus of Corinth. Nor will I take oath,
that, had her project been accomplished, then, by help of lights hung
at judicious intervals through the tunnel, some Belzoni or other might
have succeeded in future ages in penetrating through the masonry, and
actually emerging into the dining-room, and once there, it would have
been inhospitable treatment of such a traveler to have denied him a
recruiting meal.
But my bustling wife did not restrict her objections, nor in the end
confine her proposed alterations to the first floor. Her ambition was
of the mounting order. She ascended with her schemes to the second
floor, and so to the attic. Perhaps there was some small ground for her
discontent with things as they were. The truth is, there was no regular
passage-way up-stairs or down, unless we again except that little
orchestra-gallery before mentioned. And all this was owing to the
chimney, which my gamesome spouse seemed despitefully to regard as the
bully of the house. On all its four sides, nearly all the chambers
sidled up to the chimney for the benefit of a fireplace. The chimney
would not go to them; they must needs go to it. The consequence was,
almost every room, like a philosophical system, was in itself an entry,
or passage-way to other rooms, and systems of rooms—a whole suite of
entries, in fact. Going through the house, you seem to be forever going
somewhere, and getting nowhere. It is like losing one’s self in the
woods; round and round the chimney you go, and if you arrive at all, it
is just where you started, and so you begin again, and again get
nowhere. Indeed—though I say it not in the way of faultfinding at
all—never was there so labyrinthine an abode. Guests will tarry with me
several weeks and every now and then, be anew astonished at some
unforeseen apartment.
The puzzling nature of the mansion, resulting from the chimney, is
peculiarly noticeable in the dining-room, which has no less than nine
doors, opening in all directions, and into all sorts of places. A
stranger for the first time entering this dining-room, and naturally
taking no special heed at what door he entered, will, upon rising to
depart, commit the strangest blunders. Such, for instance, as opening
the first door that comes handy, and finding himself stealing up-stairs
by the back passage. Shutting that door, he will proceed to another,
and be aghast at the cellar yawning at his feet. Trying a third, he
surprises the housemaid at her work. In the end, no more relying on his
own unaided efforts, he procures a trusty guide in some passing person,
and in good time successfully emerges. Perhaps as curious a blunder as
any, was that of a certain stylish young gentleman, a great exquisite,
in whose judicious eyes my daughter Anna had found especial favor. He
called upon the young lady one evening, and found her alone in the
dining-room at her needlework. He stayed rather late; and after
abundance of superfine discourse, all the while retaining his hat and
cane, made his profuse adieus, and with repeated graceful bows
proceeded to depart, after the fashion of courtiers from the Queen, and
by so doing, opening a door at random, with one hand placed behind,
very effectually succeeded in backing himself into a dark pantry, where
he carefully shut himself up, wondering there was no light in the
entry. After several strange noises as of a cat among the crockery, he
reappeared through the same door, looking uncommonly crestfallen, and,
with a deeply embarrassed air, requested my daughter to designate at
which of the nine he should find exit. When the mischievous Anna told
me the story, she said it was surprising how unaffected and
matter-of-fact the young gentleman’s manner was after his reappearance.
He was more candid than ever, to be sure; having inadvertently thrust
his white kids into an open drawer of Havana sugar, under the
impression, probably, that being what they call “a sweet fellow,” his
route might possibly lie in that direction.
Another inconvenience resulting from the chimney is, the bewilderment
of a guest in gaining his chamber, many strange doors lying between him
and it. To direct him by finger-posts would look rather queer; and just
as queer in him to be knocking at every door on his route, like
London’s city guest, the king, at Temple-Bar.
Now, of all these things and many, many more, my family continually
complained. At last my wife came out with her sweeping proposition—in
toto to abolish the chimney.
“What!” said I, “abolish the chimney? To take out the backbone of
anything, wife, is a hazardous affair. Spines out of backs, and
chimneys out of houses, are not to be taken like frosted lead pipes
from the ground. Besides,” added I, “the chimney is the one grand
permanence of this abode. If undisturbed by innovators, then in future
ages, when all the house shall have crumbled from it, this chimney will
still survive—a Bunker Hill monument. No, no, wife, I can’t abolish my
backbone.”
So said I then. But who is sure of himself, especially an old man, with
both wife and daughters ever at his elbow and ear? In time, I was
persuaded to think a little better of it; in short, to take the matter
into preliminary consideration. At length it came to pass that a
master-mason—a rough sort of architect—one Mr. Scribe, was summoned to
a conference. I formally introduced him to my chimney. A previous
introduction from my wife had introduced him to myself. He had been not
a little employed by that lady, in preparing plans and estimates for
some of her extensive operations in drainage. Having, with much ado,
extorted from my spouse the promise that she would leave us to an
unmolested survey, I began by leading Mr. Scribe down to the root of
the matter, in the cellar. Lamp in hand, I descended; for though
up-stairs it was noon, below it was night.
We seemed in the pyramids; and I, with one hand holding my lamp over
head, and with the other pointing out, in the obscurity, the hoar mass
of the chimney, seemed some Arab guide, showing the cobwebbed mausoleum
of the great god Apis.
“This is a most remarkable structure, sir,” said the master-mason,
after long contemplating it in silence, “a most remarkable structure,
sir.”
“Yes,” said I complacently, “every one says so.”
“But large as it appears above the roof, I would not have inferred the
magnitude of this foundation, sir,” eyeing it critically.
Then taking out his rule, he measured it.
“Twelve feet square; one hundred and forty-four square feet! Sir, this
house would appear to have been built simply for the accommodation of
your chimney.”
“Yes, my chimney and me. Tell me candidly, now,” I added, “would you
have such a famous chimney abolished?”
“I wouldn’t have it in a house of mine, sir, for a gift,” was the
reply. “It’s a losing affair altogether, sir. Do you know, sir, that in
retaining this chimney, you are losing, not only one hundred and
forty-four square feet of good ground, but likewise a considerable
interest upon a considerable principal?”
“How?”
“Look, sir!” said he, taking a bit of red chalk from his pocket, and
figuring against a whitewashed wall, “twenty times eight is so and so;
then forty-two times thirty—nine is so and so—ain’t it, sir? Well, add
those together, and subtract this here, then that makes so and so,”
still chalking away.
To be brief, after no small ciphering, Mr. Scribe informed me that my
chimney contained, I am ashamed to say how many thousand and odd
valuable bricks.
“No more,” said I fidgeting. “Pray now, let us have a look above.”
In that upper zone we made two more circumnavigations for the first and
second floors. That done, we stood together at the foot of the stairway
by the front door; my hand upon the knob, and Mr. Scribe hat in hand.
“Well, sir,” said he, a sort of feeling his way, and, to help himself,
fumbling with his hat, “well, sir, I think it can be done.”
“What, pray, Mr. Scribe; _what_ can be done?”
“Your chimney, sir; it can without rashness be removed, I think.”
“I will think of it, too, Mr. Scribe,” said I, turning the knob and
bowing him towards the open space without, “I will _think_ of it, sir;
it demands consideration; much obliged to ye; good morning, Mr.
Scribe.”
“It is all arranged, then,” cried my wife with great glee, bursting
from the nighest room.
“When will they begin?” demanded my daughter Julia.
“To-morrow?” asked Anna.
“Patience, patience, my dears,” said I, “such a big chimney is not to
be abolished in a minute.”
Next morning it began again.
“You remember the chimney,” said my wife. “Wife,” said I, “it is never
out of my house and never out of my mind.”
“But when is Mr. Scribe to begin to pull it down?” asked Anna.
“Not to-day, Anna,” said I.
“_When_, then?” demanded Julia, in alarm.
Now, if this chimney of mine was, for size, a sort of belfry, for
ding-donging at me about it, my wife and daughters were a sort of
bells, always chiming together, or taking up each other’s melodies at
every pause, my wife the key-clapper of all. A very sweet ringing, and
pealing, and chiming, I confess; but then, the most silvery of bells
may, sometimes, dismally toll, as well as merrily play. And as touching
the subject in question, it became so now. Perceiving a strange relapse
of opposition in me, wife and daughters began a soft and dirge-like,
melancholy tolling over it.
At length my wife, getting much excited, declared to me, with pointed
finger, that so long as that chimney stood, she should regard it as the
monument of what she called my broken pledge. But finding this did not
answer, the next day, she gave me to understand that either she or the
chimney must quit the house.
Finding matters coming to such a pass, I and my pipe philosophized over
them awhile, and finally concluded between us, that little as our
hearts went with the plan, yet for peace’ sake, I might write out the
chimney’s death-warrant, and, while my hand was in, scratch a note to
Mr. Scribe.
Considering that I, and my chimney, and my pipe, from having been so
much together, were three great cronies, the facility with which my
pipe consented to a project so fatal to the goodliest of our trio; or
rather, the way in which I and my pipe, in secret, conspired together,
as it were, against our unsuspicious old comrade—this may seem rather
strange, if not suggestive of sad reflections upon us two. But, indeed,
we, sons of clay, that is my pipe and I, are no whit better than the
rest. Far from us, indeed, to have volunteered the betrayal of our
crony. We are of a peaceable nature, too. But that love of peace it was
which made us false to a mutual friend, as soon as his cause demanded a
vigorous vindication. But I rejoice to add, that better and braver
thoughts soon returned, as will now briefly be set forth.
To my note, Mr. Scribe replied in person.
Once more we made a survey, mainly now with a view to a pecuniary
estimate.
“I will do it for five hundred dollars,” said Mr. Scribe at last, again
hat in hand.
“Very well, Mr. Scribe, I will think of it,” replied I, again bowing
him to the door.
Not unvexed by this, for the second time, unexpected response, again he
withdrew, and from my wife, and daughters again burst the old
exclamations.
The truth is, resolve how I would, at the last pinch I and my chimney
could not be parted.
“So Holofernes will have his way, never mind whose heart breaks for
it,” said my wife next morning, at breakfast, in that half-didactic,
half-reproachful way of hers, which is harder to bear than her most
energetic assault. Holofernes, too, is with her a pet name for any fell
domestic despot. So, whenever, against her most ambitious innovations,
those which saw me quite across the grain, I, as in the present
instance, stand with however little steadfastness on the defence, she
is sure to call me Holofernes, and ten to one takes the first
opportunity to read aloud, with a suppressed emphasis, of an evening,
the first newspaper paragraph about some tyrannic day-laborer, who,
after being for many years the Caligula of his family, ends by beating
his long-suffering spouse to death, with a garret door wrenched off its
hinges, and then, pitching his little innocents out of the window,
suicidally turns inward towards the broken wall scored with the
butcher’s and baker’s bills, and so rushes headlong to his dreadful
account.
Nevertheless, for a few days, not a little to my surprise, I heard no
further reproaches. An intense calm pervaded my wife, but beneath
which, as in the sea, there was no knowing what portentous movements
might be going on. She frequently went abroad, and in a direction which
I thought not unsuspicious; namely, in the direction of New Petra, a
griffin-like house of wood and stucco, in the highest style of
ornamental art, graced with four chimneys in the form of erect dragons
spouting smoke from their nostrils; the elegant modern residence of Mr.
Scribe, which he had built for the purpose of a standing advertisement,
not more of his taste as an architect, than his solidity as a
master-mason.
At last, smoking my pipe one morning, I heard a rap at the door, and my
wife, with an air unusually quiet for her brought me a note. As I have
no correspondents except Solomon, with whom, in his sentiments, at
least, I entirely correspond, the note occasioned me some little
surprise, which was not diminished upon reading the following:—
NEW PETRA, April 1st.
SIR—During my last examination of your chimney, possibly you may have
noted that I frequently applied my rule to it in a manner apparently
unnecessary. Possibly also, at the same time, you might have observed
in me more or less of perplexity, to which, however, I refrained from
giving any verbal expression.
I now feel it obligatory upon me to inform you of what was then but a
dim suspicion, and as such would have been unwise to give utterance to,
but which now, from various subsequent calculations assuming no little
probability, it may be important that you should not remain in further
ignorance of.
It is my solemn duty to warn you, sir, that there is architectural
cause to conjecture that somewhere concealed in your chimney is a
reserved space, hermetically closed, in short, a secret chamber, or
rather closet. How long it has been there, it is for me impossible to
say. What it contains is hid, with itself, in darkness. But probably a
secret closet would not have been contrived except for some
extraordinary object, whether for the concealment of treasure, or what
other purpose, may be left to those better acquainted with the history
of the house to guess.
But enough: in making this disclosure, sir, my conscience is eased.
Whatever step you choose to take upon it, is of course a matter of
indifference to me; though, I confess, as respects the character of the
closet, I cannot but share in a natural curiosity. Trusting that you
may be guided aright, in determining whether it is Christian-like
knowingly to reside in a house, hidden in which is a secret closet,
I remain,
With much respect,
Yours very humbly,
HIRAM SCRIBE.
My first thought upon reading this note was, not of the alleged mystery
of manner to which, at the outset, it alluded-for none such had I at
all observed in the master-mason during his surveys—but of my late
kinsman, Captain Julian Dacres, long a ship-master and merchant in the
Indian trade, who, about thirty years ago, and at the ripe age of
ninety, died a bachelor, and in this very house, which he had built. He
was supposed to have retired into this country with a large fortune.
But to the general surprise, after being at great cost in building
himself this mansion, he settled down into a sedate, reserved, and
inexpensive old age, which by the neighbors was thought all the better
for his heirs: but lo! upon opening the will, his property was found to
consist but of the house and grounds, and some ten thousand dollars in
stocks; but the place, being found heavily mortgaged, was in
consequence sold. Gossip had its day, and left the grass quietly to
creep over the captain’s grave, where he still slumbers in a privacy as
unmolested as if the billows of the Indian Ocean, instead of the
billows of inland verdure, rolled over him. Still, I remembered long
ago, hearing strange solutions whispered by the country people for the
mystery involving his will, and, by reflex, himself; and that, too, as
well in conscience as purse. But people who could circulate the report
(which they did), that Captain Julian Dacres had, in his day, been a
Borneo pirate, surely were not worthy of credence in their collateral
notions. It is queer what wild whimsies of rumors will, like
toadstools, spring up about any eccentric stranger, who, settling down
among a rustic population, keeps quietly to himself. With some,
inoffensiveness would seem a prime cause of offense. But what chiefly
had led me to scout at these rumors, particularly as referring to
concealed treasure, was the circumstance, that the stranger (the same
who razeed the roof and the chimney) into whose hands the estate had
passed on my kinsman’s death, was of that sort of character, that had
there been the least ground for those reports, he would speedily have
tested them, by tearing down and rummaging the walls.
Nevertheless, the note of Mr. Scribe, so strangely recalling the memory
of my kinsman, very naturally chimed in with what had been mysterious,
or at least unexplained, about him; vague flashings of ingots united in
my mind with vague gleamings of skulls. But the first cool thought soon
dismissed such chimeras; and, with a calm smile, I turned towards my
wife, who, meantime, had been sitting nearby, impatient enough, I dare
say, to know who could have taken it into his head to write me a
letter.
“Well, old man,” said she, “who is it from, and what is it about?”
“Read it, wife,” said I, handing it.
Read it she did, and then—such an explosion! I will not pretend to
describe her emotions, or repeat her expressions. Enough that my
daughters were quickly called in to share the excitement. Although they
had never before dreamed of such a revelation as Mr. Scribe’s; yet upon
the first suggestion they instinctively saw the extreme likelihood of
it. In corroboration, they cited first my kinsman, and second, my
chimney; alleging that the profound mystery involving the former, and
the equally profound masonry involving the latter, though both
acknowledged facts, were alike preposterous on any other supposition
than the secret closet.
But all this time I was quietly thinking to myself: Could it be hidden
from me that my credulity in this instance would operate very favorably
to a certain plan of theirs? How to get to the secret closet, or how to
have any certainty about it at all, without making such fell work with
the chimney as to render its set destruction superfluous? That my wife
wished to get rid of the chimney, it needed no reflection to show; and
that Mr. Scribe, for all his pretended disinterestedness, was not
opposed to pocketing five hundred dollars by the operation, seemed
equally evident. That my wife had, in secret, laid heads together with
Mr. Scribe, I at present refrain from affirming. But when I consider
her enmity against my chimney, and the steadiness with which at the
last she is wont to carry out her schemes, if by hook or by crook she
can, especially after having been once baffled, why, I scarcely knew at
what step of hers to be surprised.
Of one thing only was I resolved, that I and my chimney should not
budge.
In vain all protests. Next morning I went out into the road, where I
had noticed a diabolical-looking old gander, that, for its doughty
exploits in the way of scratching into forbidden inclosures, had been
rewarded by its master with a portentous, four-pronged, wooden
decoration, in the shape of a collar of the Order of the Garotte. This
gander I cornered and rummaging out its stiffest quill, plucked it,
took it home, and making a stiff pen, inscribed the following stiff
note:
CHIMNEY SIDE, April 2.
_Mr. Scribe._
SIR:—For your conjecture, we return you our joint thanks and
compliments, and beg leave to assure you, that
We shall remain,
Very faithfully,
The same,
I AND MY CHIMNEY.
Of course, for this epistle we had to endure some pretty sharp raps.
But having at last explicitly understood from me that Mr. Scribe’s note
had not altered my mind one jot, my wife, to move me, among other
things said, that if she remembered aright, there was a statute placing
the keeping in private houses of secret closets on the same unlawful
footing with the keeping of gunpowder. But it had no effect.
A few days after, my spouse changed her key.
It was nearly midnight, and all were in bed but ourselves, who sat up,
one in each chimney-corner; she, needles in hand, indefatigably
knitting a sock; I, pipe in mouth, indolently weaving my vapors.
It was one of the first of the chill nights in autumn. There was a fire
on the hearth, burning low. The air without was torpid and heavy; the
wood, by an oversight, of the sort called soggy.
“Do look at the chimney,” she began; “can’t you see that something must
be in it?”
“Yes, wife. Truly there is smoke in the chimney, as in Mr. Scribe’s
note.”
“Smoke? Yes, indeed, and in my eyes, too. How you two wicked old
sinners do smoke!—this wicked old chimney and you.”
“Wife,” said I, “I and my chimney like to have a quiet smoke together,
it is true, but we don’t like to be called names.”
“Now, dear old man,” said she, softening down, and a little shifting
the subject, “when you think of that old kinsman of yours, you _know_
there must be a secret closet in this chimney.”
“Secret ash-hole, wife, why don’t you have it? Yes, I dare say there is
a secret ash-hole in the chimney; for where do all the ashes go to that
we drop down the queer hole yonder?”
“I know where they go to; I’ve been there almost as many times as the
cat.”
“What devil, wife, prompted you to crawl into the ash-hole? Don’t you
know that St. Dunstan’s devil emerged from the ash-hole? You will get
your death one of these days, exploring all about as you do. But
supposing there be a secret closet, what then?”
“What then? why what should be in a secret closet but—”
“Dry bones, wife,” broke in I with a puff, while the sociable old
chimney broke in with another.
“There again! Oh, how this wretched old chimney smokes,” wiping her
eyes with her handkerchief. “I’ve no doubt the reason it smokes so is,
because that secret closet interferes with the flue. Do see, too, how
the jambs here keep settling; and it’s down hill all the way from the
door to this hearth. This horrid old chimney will fall on our heads
yet; depend upon it, old man.”
“Yes, wife, I do depend on it; yes indeed, I place every dependence on
my chimney. As for its settling, I like it. I, too, am settling, you
know, in my gait. I and my chimney are settling together, and shall
keep settling, too, till, as in a great feather-bed, we shall both have
settled away clean out of sight. But this secret oven; I mean, secret
closet of yours, wife; where exactly do you suppose that secret closet
is?”
“That is for Mr. Scribe to say.”
“But suppose he cannot say exactly; what, then?”
“Why then he can prove, I am sure, that it must be somewhere or other
in this horrid old chimney.”
“And if he can’t prove that; what, then?”
“Why then, old man,” with a stately air, “I shall say little more about
it.”
“Agreed, wife,” returned I, knocking my pipe-bowl against the jamb,
“and now, to-morrow, I will for a third time send for Mr. Scribe. Wife,
the sciatica takes me; be so good as to put this pipe on the mantel.”
“If you get the step-ladder for me, I will. This shocking old chimney,
this abominable old-fashioned old chimney’s mantels are so high, I
can’t reach them.”
No opportunity, however trivial, was overlooked for a subordinate fling
at the pile.
Here, by way of introduction, it should be mentioned, that besides the
fireplaces all round it, the chimney was, in the most haphazard way,
excavated on each floor for certain curious out-of-the-way cupboards
and closets, of all sorts and sizes, clinging here and there, like
nests in the crotches of some old oak. On the second floor these
closets were by far the most irregular and numerous. And yet this
should hardly have been so, since the theory of the chimney was, that
it pyramidically diminished as it ascended. The abridgment of its
square on the roof was obvious enough; and it was supposed that the
reduction must be methodically graduated from bottom to top.
“Mr. Scribe,” said I when, the next day, with an eager aspect, that
individual again came, “my object in sending for you this morning is,
not to arrange for the demolition of my chimney, nor to have any
particular conversation about it, but simply to allow you every
reasonable facility for verifying, if you can, the conjecture
communicated in your note.”
Though in secret not a little crestfallen, it may be, by my phlegmatic
reception, so different from what he had looked for; with much apparent
alacrity he commenced the survey; throwing open the cupboards on the
first floor, and peering into the closets on the second; measuring one
within, and then comparing that measurement with the measurement
without. Removing the fireboards, he would gaze up the flues. But no
sign of the hidden work yet.
Now, on the second floor the rooms were the most rambling conceivable.
They, as it were, dovetailed into each other. They were of all shapes;
not one mathematically square room among them all—a peculiarity which
by the master-mason had not been unobserved. With a significant, not to
say portentous expression, he took a circuit of the chimney, measuring
the area of each room around it; then going down stairs, and out of
doors, he measured the entire ground area; then compared the sum total
of all the areas of all the rooms on the second floor with the ground
area; then, returning to me in no small excitement, announced that
there was a difference of no less than two hundred and odd square
feet—room enough, in all conscience, for a secret closet.
“But, Mr. Scribe,” said I, stroking my chin, “have you allowed for the
walls, both main and sectional? They take up some space, you know.”
“Ah, I had forgotten that,” tapping his forehead; “but,” still
ciphering on his paper, “that will not make up the deficiency.”
“But, Mr. Scribe, have you allowed for the recesses of so many
fireplaces on a floor, and for the fire-walls, and the flues; in short,
Mr. Scribe, have you allowed for the legitimate chimney itself—some one
hundred and forty-four square feet or thereabouts, Mr. Scribe?”
“How unaccountable. That slipped my mind, too.”
“Did it, indeed, Mr. Scribe?”
He faltered a little, and burst forth with, “But we must now allow one
hundred and forty-four square feet for the legitimate chimney. My
position is, that within those undue limits the secret closet is
contained.”
I eyed him in silence a moment; then spoke:
“Your survey is concluded, Mr. Scribe; be so good now as to lay your
finger upon the exact part of the chimney wall where you believe this
secret closet to be; or would a witch-hazel wand assist you, Mr.
Scribe?”
“No, Sir, but a crowbar would,” he, with temper, rejoined.
Here, now, thought I to myself, the cat leaps out of the bag. I looked
at him with a calm glance, under which he seemed somewhat uneasy. More
than ever now I suspected a plot. I remembered what my wife had said
about abiding by the decision of Mr. Scribe. In a bland way, I resolved
to buy up the decision of Mr. Scribe.
“Sir,” said I, “really, I am much obliged to you for this survey. It
has quite set my mind at rest. And no doubt you, too, Mr. Scribe, must
feel much relieved. Sir,” I added, “you have made three visits to the
chimney. With a business man, time is money. Here are fifty dollars,
Mr. Scribe. Nay, take it. You have earned it. Your opinion is worth it.
And by the way,”—as he modestly received the money—“have you any
objections to give me a—a—little certificate—something, say, like a
steamboat certificate, certifying that you, a competent surveyor, have
surveyed my chimney, and found no reason to believe any unsoundness; in
short, any—any secret closet in it. Would you be so kind, Mr. Scribe?”
“But, but, sir,” stammered he with honest hesitation.
“Here, here are pen and paper,” said I, with entire assurance.
Enough.
That evening I had the certificate framed and hung over the dining-room
fireplace, trusting that the continual sight of it would forever put at
rest at once the dreams and stratagems of my household.
But, no. Inveterately bent upon the extirpation of that noble old
chimney, still to this day my wife goes about it, with my daughter
Anna’s geological hammer, tapping the wall all over, and then holding
her ear against it, as I have seen the physicians of life insurance
companies tap a man’s chest, and then incline over for the echo.
Sometimes of nights she almost frightens one, going about on this
phantom errand, and still following the sepulchral response of the
chimney, round and round, as if it were leading her to the threshold of
the secret closet.
“How hollow it sounds,” she will hollowly cry. “Yes, I declare,” with
an emphatic tap, “there is a secret closet here. Here, in this very
spot. Hark! How hollow!”
“Psha! wife, of course it is hollow. Who ever heard of a solid
chimney?” But nothing avails. And my daughters take after, not me, but
their mother.
Sometimes all three abandon the theory of the secret closet and return
to the genuine ground of attack—the unsightliness of so cumbrous a
pile, with comments upon the great addition of room to be gained by its
demolition, and the fine effect of the projected grand hall, and the
convenience resulting from the collateral running in one direction and
another of their various partitions. Not more ruthlessly did the Three
Powers partition away poor Poland, than my wife and daughters would
fain partition away my chimney.
But seeing that, despite all, I and my chimney still smoke our pipes,
my wife reoccupies the ground of the secret closet, enlarging upon what
wonders are there, and what a shame it is, not to seek it out and
explore it.
“Wife,” said I, upon one of these occasions, “why speak more of that
secret closet, when there before you hangs contrary testimony of a
master mason, elected by yourself to decide. Besides, even if there
were a secret closet, secret it should remain, and secret it shall.
Yes, wife, here for once I must say my say. Infinite sad mischief has
resulted from the profane bursting open of secret recesses. Though
standing in the heart of this house, though hitherto we have all
nestled about it, unsuspicious of aught hidden within, this chimney may
or may not have a secret closet. But if it have, it is my kinsman’s. To
break into that wall, would be to break into his breast. And that
wall-breaking wish of Momus I account the wish of a churchrobbing
gossip and knave. Yes, wife, a vile eavesdropping varlet was Momus.”
“Moses? Mumps? Stuff with your mumps and your Moses!”
The truth is, my wife, like all the rest of the world, cares not a fig
for my philosophical jabber. In dearth of other philosophical
companionship, I and my chimney have to smoke and philosophize
together. And sitting up so late as we do at it, a mighty smoke it is
that we two smoky old philosophers make.
But my spouse, who likes the smoke of my tobacco as little as she does
that of the soot, carries on her war against both. I live in continual
dread lest, like the golden bowl, the pipes of me and my chimney shall
yet be broken. To stay that mad project of my wife’s, naught answers.
Or, rather, she herself is incessantly answering, incessantly besetting
me with her terrible alacrity for improvement, which is a softer name
for destruction. Scarce a day I do not find her with her tape-measure,
measuring for her grand hall, while Anna holds a yardstick on one side,
and Julia looks approvingly on from the other. Mysterious intimations
appear in the nearest village paper, signed “Claude,” to the effect
that a certain structure, standing on a certain hill, is a sad blemish
to an otherwise lovely landscape. Anonymous letters arrive, threatening
me with I know not what, unless I remove my chimney. Is it my wife,
too, or who, that sets up the neighbors to badgering me on the same
subject, and hinting to me that my chimney, like a huge elm, absorbs
all moisture from my garden? At night, also, my wife will start as from
sleep, professing to hear ghostly noises from the secret closet.
Assailed on all sides, and in all ways, small peace have I and my
chimney.
Were it not for the baggage, we would together pack up, and remove from
the country.
What narrow escapes have been ours! Once I found in a drawer a whole
portfolio of plans and estimates. Another time, upon returning after a
day’s absence, I discovered my wife standing before the chimney in
earnest conversation with a person whom I at once recognized as a
meddlesome architectural reformer, who, because he had no gift for
putting up anything, was ever intent upon pulling them down; in various
parts of the country having prevailed upon half-witted old folks to
destroy their old-fashioned houses, particularly the chimneys.
But worst of all was, that time I unexpectedly returned at early
morning from a visit to the city, and upon approaching the house,
narrowly escaped three brickbats which fell, from high aloft, at my
feet. Glancing up, what was my horror to see three savages, in blue
jean overalls, in the very act of commencing the long-threatened
attack. Aye, indeed, thinking of those three brickbats, I and my
chimney have had narrow escapes.
It is now some seven years since I have stirred from home. My city
friends all wonder why I don’t come to see them, as in former times.
They think I am getting sour and unsocial. Some say that I have become
a sort of mossy old misanthrope, while all the time the fact is, I am
simply standing guard over my mossy old chimney; for it is resolved
between me and my chimney, that I and my chimney will never surrender.
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