- end_line
- 2574
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T07:57:45.581Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 2515
- text
- 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.
And here, respectfully craving her permission, I must say a few words
about this enterprising wife of mine. Though in years nearly old as
myself, in spirit she is young as my little sorrel mare, Trigger,
that threw me last fall. What is extraordinary, though she comes of
a rheumatic family, she is straight as a pine, never has any aches;
while for me with the sciatica, I am sometimes as crippled up as any
old apple-tree. But she has not so much as a toothache. As for her
hearing--let me enter the house in my dusty boots, and she away up
in the attic. And for her sight--Biddy, the housemaid, tells other
people's housemaids, that her mistress will spy a spot on the dresser
straight through the pewter platter, put up on purpose to hide it.
Her faculties are alert as her limbs and her senses. No danger of my
spouse dying of torpor. The longest night in the year I've known her
lie awake, planning her campaign for the morrow. She is a natural
projector. The maxim, "Whatever is, is right," is not hers. Her maxim
is, Whatever is, is wrong; and what is more, must be altered; and what
is still more, must be altered right away. Dreadful maxim for the wife
of a dozy old dreamer like me, who dote on seventh days as days of
rest, and out of a sabbatical horror of industry, will, on a week day,
go out of my road a quarter of a mile, to avoid the sight of a man at
work.
- title
- Chunk 4