I AND MY CHIMNEY

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 hereby 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 wanning 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 honeycombed

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 triannon.

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 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 razed

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 Montague, 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 Swedenborganism, 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, until 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 who 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 fault-finding 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

unforseen 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 which 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 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 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 fingerposts 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, exhorted 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, resolved 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 dismissed 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 for

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,