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- 3129
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T07:57:45.581Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 3043
- text
- had never 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 favorably
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 my chimney as to render its set destruction superfluous? That my
wife wished to get rid of the chimney, it needed no reflection to show;
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 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 inclosures, 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 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 vapors.
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."
"Secret ash-hole, wife, why don't you have it? Yes, I dare say there is
a secret ash-hole in the chimney; for where do all the ashes go to that
drop down the queer hole yonder?"
- title
- Chunk 14