Introduction and Setting

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description

# Introduction and Setting ## Overview This segment, titled "Introduction and Setting," is part of the short story "[I and My Chimney](arke:01KG8AJ72QDX8N8STJ3550X2NW)". It spans lines 112 to 152 of the source text and was extracted from the file "[i_and_my_chimney.txt](arke:01KG89J1H4TA19251AXAPE3ZWC)". ## Context This segment is situated within the larger narrative of "[I and My Chimney](arke:01KG8AJ72QDX8N8STJ3550X2NW)", a work collected in "[Melville Complete Works](arke:01KG89HMDZKNY753EZE1CJ8HZW)". It follows the segment "[Philosophical digressions on architecture and space](arke:01KG8AJK339Y3G5VXTJRZDV6VQ)" and precedes "[Description of the House and Chimney's Solidity](arke:01KG8AJK37P8Y7ZQAJZSEPPSB2)". ## Contents The text reflects on the abundance of space in the narrator's locale, contrasting it with the perceived need for mountains to temper human ambition. The narrator humorously describes the cheapness of land, the uninhibited growth of crops and weeds, and the vastness of the landscape, even personifying rye and weeds as asserting their freedom. The segment also touches upon the expansive nature of shadows and the open invitation for anyone to "dig down" hills. It concludes with the narrator's pride in his land, specifically mentioning its "three great lions": the Great Oak, Ogg Mountain, and his own chimney.

description_generated_at

2026-01-30T20:47:56.242Z

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gemini-2.5-flash-lite

description_title

Introduction and Setting

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152

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2026-01-30T20:47:36.358Z

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structure-extraction-lambda

source_file

01KG89J1H4TA19251AXAPE3ZWC

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112

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Such folks, it seems to me, need mountains for neighbors, to take this emulous conceit of soaring out of them. If, considering that mine is a very wide house, and by no means lofty, aught in the above may appear like interested pleading, as if I did but fold myself about in the cloak of a general proposition, cunningly to tickle my individual vanity beneath it, such misconception must vanish upon my frankly conceding, that land adjoining my alder swamp was sold last month for ten dollars an acre, and thought a rash purchase at that; so that for wide houses hereabouts there is plenty of room, and cheap. Indeed so cheap—dirt cheap—is the soil, that our elms thrust out their roots in it, and hang their great boughs over it, in the most lavish and reckless way. Almost all our crops, too, are sown broadcast, even peas and turnips. A farmer among us, who should go about his twenty-acre field, poking his finger into it here and there, and dropping down a mustard seed, would be thought a penurious, narrow-minded husbandman. The dandelions in the river-meadows, and the forget-me-nots along the mountain roads, you see at once they are put to no economy in space. Some seasons, too, our rye comes up here and there a spear, sole and single like a church-spire. It doesn’t care to crowd itself where it knows there is such a deal of room. The world is wide, the world is all before us, says the rye. Weeds, too, it is amazing how they spread. No such thing as arresting them—some of our pastures being a sort of Alsatia for the weeds. As for the grass, every spring it is like Kossuth’s rising of what he calls the peoples. Mountains, too, a regular camp-meeting of them. For the same reason, the same all-sufficiency of room, our shadows march and countermarch, going through their various drills and masterly evolutions, like the old imperial guard on the Champs de Mars. As for the hills, especially where the roads cross them the supervisors of our various towns have given notice to all concerned, that they can come and dig them down and cart them off, and never a cent to pay, no more than for the privilege of picking blackberries. The stranger who is buried here, what liberal-hearted landed proprietor among us grudges him his six feet of rocky pasture? Nevertheless, cheap, after all, as our land is, and much as it is trodden under foot, I, for one, am proud of it for what it bears; and chiefly for its three great lions—the Great Oak, Ogg Mountain, and my chimney.

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Introduction and Setting