- description
- # Narrator's final resolve and wife's new, subtle tactic involving Mr. Scribe's residence
## Overview
This segment, titled "Narrator's final resolve and wife's new, subtle tactic involving Mr. Scribe's residence," is an excerpt from the short story "[I and My Chimney](arke:01KG8AJ72QDX8N8STJ3550X2NW)". It spans lines 744 to 777 of the source text and was extracted from the file "[i_and_my_chimney.txt](arke:01KG89J1H4TA19251AXAPE3ZWC)".
## Context
This segment is part of the larger collection "[Melville Complete Works](arke:01KG89HMDZKNY753EZE1CJ8HZW)". It follows the segment "[Mr. Scribe's return for an estimate and narrator's renewed resistance](arke:01KG8AJN4ZPSHC168HKXHHGB7M)" and precedes the segment "[Letter from Hiram Scribe](arke:01KG8AJN5MM0AE05S66NQSBYYJ)".
## Contents
The narrator expresses his inability to part with his chimney, despite his wife's attempts to persuade him. His wife employs a subtle tactic, using the nickname "Holofernes" for him when he resists her "ambitious innovations." She further reinforces her point by reading newspaper accounts of domestic tyrants. However, for a few days, she remains unusually calm and frequently visits the residence of Mr. Scribe, an architect known for his ornate style. The segment concludes as the narrator receives a note from his wife.
- description_generated_at
- 2026-01-30T20:48:01.386Z
- description_model
- gemini-2.5-flash-lite
- description_title
- Narrator's final resolve and wife's new, subtle tactic involving Mr. Scribe's residence
- end_line
- 777
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T20:47:36.358Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 744
- text
- The truth is, resolve how I would, at the last pinch I and my chimney
could not be parted.
“So Holofernes will have his way, never mind whose heart breaks for
it,” said my wife next morning, at breakfast, in that half-didactic,
half-reproachful way of hers, which is harder to bear than her most
energetic assault. Holofernes, too, is with her a pet name for any fell
domestic despot. So, whenever, against her most ambitious innovations,
those which saw me quite across the grain, I, as in the present
instance, stand with however little steadfastness on the defence, she
is sure to call me Holofernes, and ten to one takes the first
opportunity to read aloud, with a suppressed emphasis, of an evening,
the first newspaper paragraph about some tyrannic day-laborer, who,
after being for many years the Caligula of his family, ends by beating
his long-suffering spouse to death, with a garret door wrenched off its
hinges, and then, pitching his little innocents out of the window,
suicidally turns inward towards the broken wall scored with the
butcher’s and baker’s bills, and so rushes headlong to his dreadful
account.
Nevertheless, for a few days, not a little to my surprise, I heard no
further reproaches. An intense calm pervaded my wife, but beneath
which, as in the sea, there was no knowing what portentous movements
might be going on. She frequently went abroad, and in a direction which
I thought not unsuspicious; namely, in the direction of New Petra, a
griffin-like house of wood and stucco, in the highest style of
ornamental art, graced with four chimneys in the form of erect dragons
spouting smoke from their nostrils; the elegant modern residence of Mr.
Scribe, which he had built for the purpose of a standing advertisement,
not more of his taste as an architect, than his solidity as a
master-mason.
At last, smoking my pipe one morning, I heard a rap at the door, and my
wife, with an air unusually quiet for her brought me a note. As I have
- title
- Narrator's final resolve and wife's new, subtle tactic involving Mr. Scribe's residence