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- 9185
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T03:55:03.883Z
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- structure-extraction-lambda
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- 9134
- text
- 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
Cæsar, 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 flavour, 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 Indies;
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 hatching. Ah, a warm heart has my chimney.
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