- end_line
- 8981
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T03:48:16.153Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 8930
- text
- 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 neighbour’s fifth--not till then
does he retire to his rest with satisfaction.
Such folks, it seems to me, need mountains for neighbours, 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 Champ
de Mars. As for the hills, especially where the roads cross them, the
supervisors of our various towns have given notice to all concerned,
that they can come and dig them down and cart them off, and never a cent
to pay, no more than for the privilege of picking blackberries. The
stranger who is buried here, what liberal-hearted landed proprietor
among us grudges him his six feet of rocky pasture?
Nevertheless, cheap, after all, as our land is, and much as it is
trodden under foot, I, for one, am proud of it for what it bears; and
chiefly for its three great lions--the Great Oak, Ogg Mountain, and my
chimney.
Most houses here are but one and a half stories high; few exceed two.
That in which I and my chimney dwell, is in width nearly twice its
height, from sill to eaves--which accounts for the magnitude of its main
content--besides showing that in this house, as in this country at
large, there is abundance of space, and to spare, for both of us.
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