- end_line
- 2696
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T07:57:45.581Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 2645
- text
- calls me old man), it's I, young I, that keep you from stagnating."
Well, I suppose it is so. Yea, after all, these things are well
ordered. My wife, as one of her poor relations, good soul, intimates,
is the salt of the earth, and none the less the salt of my sea, which
otherwise were unwholesome. She is its monsoon, too, blowing a brisk
gale over it, in the one steady direction of my chimney.
Not insensible of her superior energies, my wife has frequently made
me propositions to take upon herself all the responsibilities of my
affairs. She is desirous that, domestically, I should abdicate; that,
renouncing further rule, like the venerable Charles V, I should retire
into some sort of monastery. But indeed, the chimney excepted, I have
little authority to lay down. By my wife's ingenious application of the
principle that certain things belong of right to female jurisdiction,
I find myself, through my easy compliances, insensibly stripped by
degrees of one masculine prerogative after another. In a dream I go
about my fields, a sort of lazy, happy-go-lucky, good-for-nothing,
loafing old Lear. Only by some sudden revelation am I reminded who
is over me; as year before last, one day seeing in one corner of the
premises fresh deposits of mysterious boards and timbers, the oddity of
the incident at length begat serious meditation. "Wife," said I, "whose
boards and timbers are those I see near the orchard there? Do you know
anything about them, wife? Who put them there? You know I do not like
the neighbors to use my land that way; they should ask permission
first."
She regarded me with a pitying smile.
"Why, old man, don't you know I am building a new barn? Didn't you know
that, old man?"
This is the poor old lady who was accusing me of tyrannizing over her.
To return now to the chimney. Upon being assured of the futility of her
proposed hall, so long as the obstacle remained, for a time my wife
was for a modified project. But I could never exactly comprehend it.
As far as I could see through it, it seemed to involve the general
idea of a sort of irregular archway, or elbowed tunnel, which was to
penetrate the chimney at some convenient point under the staircase,
and carefully avoiding dangerous contact with the fireplaces, and
particularly steering clear of the great interior flue, was to conduct
the enterprising traveler from the front door all the way into the
dining-room in the remote rear of the mansion. Doubtless it was a bold
stroke of genius, that plan of hers, and so was Nero's when he schemed
his grand canal through the Isthmus of Corinth. Nor will I take oath,
that, had her project been accomplished, then, by help of lights hung
at judicious intervals through the tunnel, some Belzoni or other might
have succeeded in future ages in penetrating through the masonry, and
actually emerging into the dining-room, and once there, it would have
been inhospitable treatment of such a traveler to have denied him a
recruiting meal.
- title
- Chunk 7