- end_line
- 2651
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T07:57:45.581Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 2603
- text
- them in a continual future; or ever full of expectations both from
time and space, is ever restless for newspapers, and ravenous for
letters. Content with the years that are gone, taking no thought for
the morrow, and looking for no new thing from any person or quarter
whatever, I have not a single scheme or expectation on earth, save in
unequal resistance of the undue encroachment of hers.
Old myself, I take to oldness in things; for that cause mainly loving
old Montague, and old cheese, and old wine; and eschewing young people,
hot rolls, new books, and early potatoes and very fond of my old
claw-footed chair, and old club-footed Deacon White, my neighbor, and
that still nigher old neighbor, my betwisted old grape-vine, that of a
summer evening leans in his elbow for cosy company at my window-sill,
while I, within doors, lean over mine to meet his; and above all, high
above all, am fond of my high-mantled old chimney. But she, out of the
infatuate juvenility of hers, takes to nothing but newness; for that
cause mainly, loving new cider in autumn, and in spring, as if she
were own daughter of Nebuchadnezzar, fairly raving after all sorts of
salads and spinages, and more particularly green cucumbers (though all
the time nature rebukes such unsuitable young hankerings in so elderly
a person, by never permitting such things to agree with her), and has
an itch after recently-discovered fine prospects (so no graveyard be
in the background), and also after Swedenborganism, and the Spirit
Rapping philosophy, with other new views, alike in things natural and
unnatural; and immortally hopeful, is forever making new flower-beds
even on the north side of the house, where the bleak mountain wind
would scarce allow the wiry weed called hard-hack to gain a thorough
footing; and on the road-side sets out mere pipe-stems of young elms;
though there is no hope of any shade from them, except over the ruins
of her great granddaughter's gravestones; and won't wear caps, but
plaits her gray hair; and takes the Ladies' Magazine for the fashions;
and always buys her new almanac a month before the new year; and rises
at dawn; and to the warmest sunset turns a cold shoulder; and still
goes on at odd hours with her new course of history, and her French,
and her music; and likes a young company; and offers to ride young
colts; and sets out young suckers in the orchard; and has a spite
against my elbowed old grape-vine, and my club-footed old neighbor, and
my claw-footed old chair, and above all, high above all, would fain
persecute, until death, my high-mantled old chimney. By what perverse
magic, I a thousand times think, does such a very autumnal old lady
have such a very vernal young soul? When I would remonstrate at times,
she spins round on me with, "Oh, don't you grumble, old man (she always
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.
- title
- Chunk 6