- description
- # Fondness for the Chimney and Wife's Newness
## Overview
This segment, titled "Fondness for the Chimney and Wife's Newness," is an excerpt from the short story "I and My Chimney." It details the narrator's contrasting preferences for old things with his wife's penchant for newness, highlighting their differing outlooks on life and domesticity. The segment spans lines 445 to 480 of the source text.
## Context
This segment is part of the short story "[I and My Chimney](arke:01KG8AJ72QDX8N8STJ3550X2NW)," which is included in the larger collection "[Melville Complete Works](arke:01KG89HMDZKNY753EZE1CJ8HZW)." The text was extracted from the file "[i_and_my_chimney.txt](arke:01KG89J1H4TA19251AXAPE3ZWC)." It follows the segment "[Narrator's Love for Old Things](arke:01KG8AJKWRGV3XS03DNPXVH0VF)" and precedes "[Wife's Ambitions and Domestic Abdication](arke:01KG8AJMK77TYMCZV5KNNGGT7Z)."
## Contents
The narrator expresses a deep affection for his old, high-mantled chimney, symbolizing his preference for the familiar and aged. In contrast, he describes his wife's infatuation with newness, citing her love for new cider, salads, spinages, and cucumbers, despite her age. Her pursuit of novelty extends to new prospects, Swedenborgianism, spirit rapping, and constant re-landscaping of their home with young plants and trees. She also embraces modern fashions and eagerly anticipates the new year. The narrator humorously questions how such an "elderly" woman possesses such a "vernal young soul," noting that she claims her youthful spirit keeps him from stagnating. He concludes that her vibrant energy, though sometimes disruptive, is ultimately beneficial, likening her to the "salt of the earth" and a "monsoon" that invigorates his life.
- description_generated_at
- 2026-01-30T20:47:59.960Z
- description_model
- gemini-2.5-flash-lite
- description_title
- Fondness for the Chimney and Wife's Newness
- end_line
- 480
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T20:47:36.358Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 445
- text
- 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
Swedenborgianism, 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, unto 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
- Fondness for the Chimney and Wife's Newness