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- 2407
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T07:57:45.581Z
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- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 2351
- text
- 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.
All feeling hearts will sympathize with me in what I am now about to
add. The surgical operation, above referred to, necessarily brought
into the open air a part of the chimney previously under cover, and
intended to remain so, and, therefore, not built of what are called
weather-bricks. In consequence, the chimney, though of a vigorous
constitution, suffered not a little, from so naked an exposure; and,
unable to acclimate itself, ere long began to fail--showing blotchy
symptoms akin to those in measles. Whereupon travelers, passing my way,
would wag their heads, laughing; "See that wax nose--how it melts off!"
But what cared I? The same travelers would travel across the sea to
view Kenilworth peeling away, and for a very good reason: that of all
artists of the picturesque, decay wears the palm--I would say, the ivy.
In fact, I've often thought that the proper place for my old chimney is
ivied old England.
In vain my wife--with what probable ulterior intent will, ere long,
appear--solemnly warned me, that unless something were done, and
speedily, we should be burnt to the ground, owing to the holes
crumbling through the aforesaid blotchy parts, where the chimney joined
the roof. "Wife," said I, "far better that my house should burn down,
than that my chimney should be pulled down, though but a few feet.
They call it a wax nose; very good; not for me to tweak the nose of my
superior." But at last the man who has a mortgage on the house dropped
me a note, reminding me that, if my chimney was allowed to stand in
that invalid condition, my policy of insurance would be void. This was
a sort of hint not to be neglected. All the world over, the picturesque
yields to the pocketesque. The mortgagor cared not, but the mortgagee
did.
So another operation was performed. The wax nose was taken off, and a
new one fitted on. Unfortunately for the expression--being put up by
a squint-eyed mason, who, at the time, had a bad stitch in the same
side--the new nose stands a little awry, in the same direction.
Of one thing, however, I am proud. The horizontal dimensions of the new
part are unreduced.
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