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- 199
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T07:57:35.240Z
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- 164
- text
- 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 razeed
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.
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