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- 9759
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T03:55:03.883Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 9682
- text
- had never before dreamed of such a revelation as Mr. Scribe’s; yet upon
the first suggestion they instinctively saw the extreme likelihood of
it. In corroboration, they cited first my kinsman, and second, my
chimney; alleging that the profound mystery involving the former, and
the equally profound masonry involving the latter, though both
acknowledged facts, were alike preposterous on any other supposition
than the secret closet.
But all this time I was quietly thinking to myself: Could it be hidden
from me that my credulity in this instance would operate very favourably
to a certain plan of theirs? How to get to the secret closet, or how to
have any certainty about it at all, without making such fell work with
the chimney as to render its set destruction superfluous? That my wife
wished to get rid of the chimney, it needed no reflection to shew; and
that Mr. Scribe, for all his pretended disinterestedness, was not
opposed to pocketing five hundred dollars by the operation, seemed
equally evident. That my wife had, in secret, laid heads together with
Mr. Scribe, I at present refrain from affirming. But when I consider her
enmity against my chimney, and the steadiness with which at the last she
is wont to carry out her schemes, if by hook or by crook she can,
especially after having been once baffled, why, I scarcely knew at what
step of hers to be surprised.
Of one thing only was I resolved, that I and my chimney should not
budge.
In vain all protests. Next morning I went out into the road, where I had
noticed a diabolical-looking old gander, that, for its doughty exploits
in the way of scratching into forbidden 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 houses of secret closets on the same unlawful footing
with the keeping of gunpowder. But it had no effect.
A few days after, my spouse changed her key.
It was nearly midnight, and all were in bed but ourselves, who sat up,
one in each chimney-corner; she, needles in hand, indefatigably knitting
a sock; I, pipe in mouth, indolently weaving my vapours.
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.’
- title
- Chunk 17