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- 2026-01-30T07:57:35.240Z
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- 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, on 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.
- title
- Chunk 1