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Title: I and My Chimney
Author: Herman Melville
Release Date: July, 2001 [eBook #2694]
[Most recently updated: June 28, 2023]
Language: English
Produced by: Stephan J. Macaluso
*** 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:—
NEWPETRA, 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,
HIRAMSCRIBE.
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:
CHIMNEYSIDE, 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,
IAND MYCHIMNEY.
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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