- end_line
- 9036
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T20:48:26.985Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 8973
- text
- chiefly for its three great lions--the Great Oak, Ogg Mountain, and my
chimney.
Most houses here are but one and a half stories high; few exceed two.
That in which I and my chimney dwell, is in width nearly twice its
height, from sill to eaves--which accounts for the magnitude of its main
content--besides showing that in this house, as in this country at
large, there is abundance of space, and to spare, for both of us.
The frame of the old house is of wood--which but the more sets forth the
solidity of the chimney, which is of brick. And as the great wrought
nails, binding the clap-boards, are unknown in these degenerate days, so
are the huge bricks in the chimney walls. The architect of the chimney
must have had the pyramid of Cheops before him; for after that famous
structure it seems modelled, only its rate of decrease toward the summit
is considerably less, and it is truncated. From the exact middle of the
mansion it soars from the cellar, right up through each successive
floor, till, four feet square, it breaks water from the ridge-pole of
the roof, like an anvil-headed whale through the crest of a billow. Most
people, though, liken it, in that part, to a razeed observatory, masoned
up.
The reason for its peculiar appearance above the roof touches upon
rather delicate ground. How shall I reveal that, forasmuch as many years
ago the original gable roof of the old house had become very leaky, a
temporary proprietor hired a band of woodmen, with their huge, cross-cut
saws, and went to sawing the old gable roof clean off. Off it went, with
all its birds’ nests and dormer windows. It was replaced with a modern
roof, more fit for a railway wood-house than an old country gentleman’s
abode. This operation--razeeing the structure some fifteen feet--was, in
effect upon the chimney, something like the falling of the great spring
tides. It left uncommon low water all about the chimney--to abate which
appearance, the same person now proceeds to slice fifteen feet off the
chimney itself, actually beheading my royal old chimney--a regicidal
act, which, were it not for the palliating fact that he was a poulterer
by trade, and, therefore, hardened to such neck-wringings, should send
that former proprietor down to posterity in the same cart with Cromwell.
Owing to its pyramidal shape, the reduction of the chimney inordinately
widened its razeed summit. Inordinately, I say, but only in the
estimation of such as have no eye to the picturesque. What care I, if,
unaware that my chimney, as a free citizen of this free land, stands
upon an independent basis of its own, people passing it, wonder how such
a brick-kiln, as they call it, is supported upon mere joists and
rafters? What care I? I will give a traveller a cup of switchel, if he
want it; but am I bound to supply him with a sweet taste? Men of
cultivated minds see, in my old house and chimney, a goodly old
elephant-and-castle.
All feeling hearts will sympathise with me in what I am now about to
add. The surgical operation above referred to, necessarily brought into
the open air a part of the chimney previously under cover, and intended
to remain so, and, therefore, not built of what are called
weather-bricks. In consequence, the chimney, though of a vigorous
constitution, suffered not a little, from so naked an exposure; and,
unable to acclimate itself, ere long began to fail--showing blotchy
symptoms akin to those in measles. Whereupon travellers, passing my way,
would wag their heads, laughing: ‘See that wax nose--how it melts off!’
But what cared I? The same travellers would travel across the sea to
view Kenilworth peeling away, and for a very good reason: that of all
artists of the picturesque, decay wears the palm--I would say, the ivy.
In fact, I’ve often thought that the proper place for my old chimney is
ivied old England.
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