- description
- # Narrator's Suspicions about Wife and Scribe's Motives
## Overview
This segment is an excerpt from the short story "[I and My Chimney](arke:01KG8AJ72QDX8N8STJ3550X2NW)" by Herman Melville. It is a section of text, lines 878-892, labeled "Narrator's Suspicions about Wife and Scribe's Motives." The segment was extracted on January 30, 2026.
## Context
This segment is part of the larger short story, "[I and My Chimney](arke:01KG8AJ72QDX8N8STJ3550X2NW)", which is contained within the [Melville Complete Works](arke:01KG89HMDZKNY753EZE1CJ8HZW) collection. The story was extracted from the file "[i_and_my_chimney.txt](arke:01KG89J1H4TA19251AXAPE3ZWC)". This segment follows "[Introduction of Wife and Her Reaction](arke:01KG8AJN5MBYK3XBAF94NSWDK1)" and precedes "[Narrator's Resolve and Initial Action](arke:01KG8AJNY3626TFK37DMQG9GV3)" within the narrative.
## Contents
The segment reveals the narrator's growing suspicions about his wife and Mr. Scribe. He questions whether their actions are part of a plan to get rid of his chimney, and perhaps discover a secret closet. He suspects his wife wants the chimney gone and that Mr. Scribe is motivated by the potential $500 payment for its removal. The narrator contemplates whether his wife and Mr. Scribe have secretly conspired, noting his wife's determination to achieve her goals.
- description_generated_at
- 2026-01-30T20:48:03.130Z
- description_model
- gemini-2.5-flash-lite
- description_title
- Narrator's Suspicions about Wife and Scribe's Motives
- end_line
- 892
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T20:47:36.358Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 878
- text
- But all this time I was quietly thinking to myself: Could it be hidden
from me that my credulity in this instance would operate very favorably
to a certain plan of theirs? How to get to the secret closet, or how to
have any certainty about it at all, without making such fell work with
the chimney as to render its set destruction superfluous? That my wife
wished to get rid of the chimney, it needed no reflection to show; and
that Mr. Scribe, for all his pretended disinterestedness, was not
opposed to pocketing five hundred dollars by the operation, seemed
equally evident. That my wife had, in secret, laid heads together with
Mr. Scribe, I at present refrain from affirming. But when I consider
her enmity against my chimney, and the steadiness with which at the
last she is wont to carry out her schemes, if by hook or by crook she
can, especially after having been once baffled, why, I scarcely knew at
what step of hers to be surprised.
- title
- Narrator's Suspicions about Wife and Scribe's Motives