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- 2537
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T20:47:56.336Z
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- structure-extraction-lambda
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- 2484
- text
- only to keep them comfortable, but also to keep off wolves, and other
savage monsters, so my chimney, by its obvious smoke at top, keeps off
prowling burglars from the towns--for what burglar or murderer would
dare break into an abode from whose chimney issues such a continual
smoke--betokening that if the inmates are not stirring, at least fires
are, and in case of an alarm, candles may readily be lighted, to say
nothing of muskets.
But stately as is the chimney--yea, grand high altar as it is, right
worthy for the celebration of high mass before the Pope of Rome, and
all his cardinals--yet what is there perfect in this world? Caius
Julius Caesar, had he not been so inordinately great, they say that
Brutus, Cassius, Antony, and the rest, had been greater. My chimney,
were it not so mighty in its magnitude, my chambers had been larger.
How often has my wife ruefully told me, that my chimney, like the
English aristocracy, casts a contracting shade all round it. She avers
that endless domestic inconveniences arise--more particularly from
the chimney's stubborn central locality. The grand objection with her
is, that it stands midway in the place where a fine entrance-hall
ought to be. In truth, there is no hall whatever to the house--nothing
but a sort of square landing-place, as you enter from the wide front
door. A roomy enough landing-place, I admit, but not attaining to the
dignity of a hall. Now, as the front door is precisely in the middle
of the front of the house, inwards it faces the chimney. In fact, the
opposite wall of the landing-place is formed solely by the chimney;
and hence--owing to the gradual tapering of the chimney--is a little
less than twelve feet in width. Climbing the chimney in this part, is
the principal staircase--which, by three abrupt turns, and three minor
landing-places, mounts to the second floor, where, over the front door,
runs a sort of narrow gallery, something less than twelve feet long,
leading to chambers on either hand. This gallery, of course, is railed;
and so, looking down upon the stairs, and all those landing-places
together, with the main one at bottom, resembles not a little a balcony
for musicians, in some jolly old abode, in times Elizabethan. Shall I
tell a weakness? I cherish the cobwebs there, and many a time arrest
Biddy in the act of brushing them with her broom, and have many a
quarrel with my wife and daughters about it.
Now the ceiling, so to speak, of the place where you enter the house,
that ceiling is, in fact, the ceiling of the second floor, not the
first. The two floors are made one here; so that ascending this turning
stairs, you seem going up into a kind of soaring tower, or lighthouse.
At the second landing, midway up the chimney, is a mysterious door,
entering to a mysterious closet; and here I keep mysterious cordials,
of a choice, mysterious flavor, made so by the constant nurturing
and subtle ripening of the chimney's gentle heat, distilled through
that warm mass of masonry. Better for wines is it than voyages to
the Indias; my chimney itself a tropic. A chair by my chimney in a
November day is as good for an invalid as a long season spent in Cuba.
Often I think how grapes might ripen against my chimney. How my wife's
geraniums bud there! Bud in December. Her eggs, too--can't keep them
near the chimney, on account of the hatching. Ah, a warm heart has my
chimney.
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