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+The Project Gutenberg Etext I and My Chimney, by Herman Melville
+#4 in our series by Herman Melville
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+Title:  I and My Chimney
+
+Author:  Herman Melville
+
+July, 2001  [Etext #2694]
+[Yes, we are about one year ahead of schedule]
+
+The Project Gutenberg Etext I and My Chimney, by Herman Melville
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+Prepared by Stephan J. Macaluso <ref@matrix.newpaltz.edu>
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+
+
+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 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, 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 modem 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 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 chinmey--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 bum 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, an 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 elderlv 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 Sweden-borganism, 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 intoo 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 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 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 be 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, 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 togetber, 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 wbit 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, I remain, with much respect, 
+Yours very humbly, 
+
+HIRAM SCRIBE. 
+
+
+My first thought upon reading this note was, not of the alleged
+mystery of manner to which, at the outset, it alluded-for none
+such had I at all observed in the master-mason during his
+surveys--but of my late kinsman, Captain Julian Dacres, long a
+ship-master and merchant in the Indian trade, who, about thirty
+years ago, and at the ripe age of ninety, died a bachelor, and in
+this very house, which he had built.  He was supposed to have
+retired into this country with a large fortune.  But to the
+general surprise, after being at great cost in building himself
+this mansion, he settled down into a sedate, reserved and
+inexpensive old age, which by the neighbors was thought all the
+better for his heirs: but lo! upon opening the will, his property
+was found to consist but of the house and grounds, and some ten
+thousand dollars in stocks; but the place, being found heavily
+mortgaged, was in consequence sold. Gossip had its day, and left
+the grass quietly to creep over the captain's grave, where he
+still slumbers in a privacy as unmolested as if the billows of
+the Indian Ocean, instead of the billows of inland verdure,
+rolled over him. Still, I remembered long ago, hearing strange
+solutions whispered by the country people for the mystery
+involving his will, and, by reflex, himself; and that, too, as
+well in conscience as purse. But people who could circulate the
+report (which they did), that Captain Julian Dacres had, in his
+day, been a Borneo pirate, surely were not worthy of credence in
+their collateral notions. It is queer what wild whimsies of
+rumors will, like toadstools, spring up about any eccentric
+stranger, who settling down among a rustic population, keeps
+quietly to himself. With some, inoffensiveness would seem a prime
+cause of offense. But what chiefly had led me to scout at these
+rumors, particularly as referring to concealed treasure, was the
+circumstance, that the stranger (the same who razeed the roof and
+the chimney) into whose hands the estate had passed on my
+kinsman's death, was of that sort of character, that had there
+been the least ground for those reports, he would speedily have
+tested them, by tearing down and rummaging the walls. 
+
+Nevertheless, the note of Mr. Scribe, so strangely recalling the
+memory of my kinsman, very naturally chimed in with what had been
+mysterious, or at least unexplained, about him; vague flashings
+of ingots united in my mind with vague gleamings of skulls. But
+the first cool thought soon dismissed such chimeras; and, with a
+calm smile, I turned towards my wife, who, meantime, had been
+sitting nearby, impatient enough, I dare say, to know who could
+have taken it into his head to write me a letter. 
+
+"Well, old man," said she, "who is it from, and what is it
+about?" 
+
+"Read it, wife," said I, handing it.
+
+ Read it she did, and then--such an explosion! I will not pretend
+to describe her emotions, or repeat her expressions. Enough that
+my daughters were quickly called in to share the excitement.
+Although they had never 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 my 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 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
+enclosures, had been rewarded by its master with a portentous,
+four-pronged, wooden decoration, in the shape of a collar of the
+Order of the Garotte. This gander I cornered and rummaging out
+its stiffest quill, plucked it, took it home, and making a stiff
+pen, inscribed the following stiff note: 
+
+CHIMNEY SIDE, April 2. 
+MR. SCRIBE
+Sir:-For your conjecture, we return you our joint thanks and
+compliments, and beg leave to assure you, that we shall remain, 
+Very faithfully, 
+The same, 
+I AND MY CHIMNEY. 
+
+Of course, for this epistle we had to endure some pretty sharp
+raps. But having at last explicitly understood from me that Mr.
+Scribe's note had not altered my mind one jot, my wife, to move
+me, among other things said, that if she remembered aright, there
+was a statute placing the keeping in private 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 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 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 Moses?"
+
+The truth is, my wife, like all the rest of the world, cares not
+a fig for 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 my 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. 
+
+
+
+
+
+The Project Gutenberg Etext I and My Chimney, by Herman Melville
+