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- 9832
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T20:48:26.985Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 9750
- text
- ‘Smoke? Yes, indeed, and in my eyes, too. How you two wicked old sinners
do smoke!--this wicked old chimney and you.’
‘Wife,’ said I, ‘I and my chimney like to have a quiet smoke together,
it is true, but we don’t like to be called names.’
‘Now, dear old man,’ said she, softening down, and a little shifting the
subject, ‘when you think of that old kinsman of yours, you _know_ there
must be a secret closet in this chimney.’
‘Secret ash-hole, wife, why don’t you have it? Yes, I dare say there is
a secret ash-hole in the chimney; for where do all the ashes go to that
we drop down the queer hole yonder?’
‘I know where they go to; I’ve been there almost as many times as the
cat.’
‘What devil, wife, prompted you to crawl into the ash-hole! Don’t you
know that St. Dunstan’s devil emerged from the ash-hole? You will get
your death one of these days, exploring all about as you do. But,
supposing there be a secret closet, what then?’
‘What then? Why, what should be in a secret closet but----’
‘Dry bones, wife,’ broke in I with a puff, while the sociable old
chimney broke in with another.
‘There again! Oh, how this wretched old chimney smokes,’ wiping her eyes
with her handkerchief. ‘I’ve no doubt the reason it smokes so is,
because that secret closet interferes with the flue. Do see, too, how
the jambs here keep settling; and it’s down hill all the way from the
door to this hearth. This horrid old chimney will fall on our heads yet;
depend upon it, old man.’
‘Yes, wife, I do depend on it; yes, indeed, I place every dependence on
my chimney. As for its settling, I like it. I, too, am settling, you
know, in my gait. I and my chimney are settling together, and shall keep
settling, too, till, as in a great feather-bed, we shall both have
settled away clean out of sight. But this secret oven; I mean, secret
closet of yours, wife; where exactly do you suppose that secret closet
is?’
‘That is for Mr. Scribe to say.’
‘But suppose he cannot say exactly; what then?’
‘Why, then, he can prove, I am sure, that it must be somewhere or other
in this horrid old chimney.’
‘And if he can’t prove that; what then?’
‘Why then, old man,’ with a stately air, ‘I shall say little more about
it.’
‘Agreed, wife,’ returned I, knocking my pipe-bowl against the jamb; ‘and
now, to-morrow, I will a third time send for Mr. Scribe. Wife, the
sciatica takes me; be so good as to put this pipe on the mantel.’
‘If you get the step-ladder for me, I will. This shocking old chimney,
this abominable old-fashioned old chimney’s mantels are so high, I can’t
reach them.’
No opportunity, however trivial, was overlooked for a subordinate fling
at the pile.
Here, by way of introduction, it should be mentioned, that besides the
fireplaces all round it, the chimney was, in the most haphazard way,
excavated on each floor for certain curious out-of-the-way cupboards and
closets, of all sorts and sizes, clinging here and there, like nests in
the crotches of some old oak. On the second floor these closets were by
far the most irregular and numerous. And yet this should hardly have
been so, since the theory of the chimney was, that it pyramidically
diminished as it ascended. The abridgment of its square on the roof was
obvious enough; and it was supposed that the reduction must be
methodically graduated from bottom to top.
‘Mr. Scribe,’ said I, when, the next day, with an eager aspect, that
individual again came, ‘my object in sending for you this morning is,
not to arrange for the demolition of my chimney, nor to have any
particular conversation about it, but simply to allow you every
reasonable facility for verifying, if you can, the conjecture
communicated in your note.’
- title
- Chunk 18