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, an account of the
hatching. Ah, a warm heart has my chimney.
How often my wife was at me about that projected grand
entrance-hall of hers, which was to be knocked clean through the
chimney, from one end of the house to the other, and astonish all
guests by its generous amplitude. "But, wife," said I, "the
chimney--consider the chimney: if you demolish the foundation,
what is to support the superstructure?" "Oh, that will rest on
the second floor." The truth is, women know next to nothing about
the realities of architecture. However, my wife still talked of
running her entries and partitions. She spent many long nights
elaborating her plans; in imagination building her boasted hall
through the chimney, as though its high mightiness were a mere
spear of sorrel-top. At last, I gently reminded her that, little
as she might fancy it, the chimney was a fact--a sober,
substantial fact, which, in all her plannings, it would be well
to take into full consideration. But this was not of much avail.
And here, respectfully craving her permission, I must say a few
words about this enterprising wife of mine. Though in years
nearly old as myself, in spirit she is young as my little sorrel
mare, Trigger, that threw me last fall. What is extraordinary,
though she comes of a rheumatic family, she is straight as a
pine, never has any aches; while for me with the sciatica, I am
sometimes as crippled up as any old apple-tree. But she has not
so much as a toothache. As for her hearing--let me enter the
house in my dusty boots, and she away up in the attic. And for
her sight--Biddy, the housemaid, tells other people's housemaids,
that her mistress will spy a spot on the dresser straight through
the pewter platter, put up on purpose to hide it. Her faculties
are alert as her limbs and her senses. No danger of my spouse
dying of torpor. The longest night in the year I've known her lie
awake, planning her campaign for the morrow. She is a natural
projector. The maxim, "Whatever is, is right," is not hers. Her
maxim is, Whatever is, is wrong; and what is more, must be
altered; and what is still more, must be altered right away.
Dreadful maxim for the wife of a dozy old dreamer like me, who
dote on seventh days as days of rest, and out of a sabbatical
horror of industry, will, on a week day, go out of
my road a quarter of a mile, to avoid the sight of a man at work.
That matches are made in heaven, may be, but my wife would have
been just the wife for Peter the Great, or Peter the Piper. How
she would have set in order that huge littered empire of the one,
and with indefatigable painstaking picked the peck of pickled
peppers for the other.
But the most wonderful thing is, my wife never thinks of her end.
Her youthful incredulity, as to the plain theory, and still
plainer fact of death, hardly seems Christian. Advanced in years,
as she knows she must be, my wife seems to think that she is to
teem on, and be inexhaustible forever. She doesn't believe in old
age. At that strange promise in the plain of Mamre, my old wife,
unlike old Abraham's, would not have jeeringly laughed within
herself.
Judge how to me, who, sitting in the comfortable shadow of my
chimney, smoking my comfortable pipe, with ashes not unwelcome at
my feet, and ashes not unwelcome all but in my mouth; and who am
thus in a comfortable sort of not unwelcome, though, indeed, ashy
enough way, reminded of the ultimate exhaustion even of the most
fiery life; judge how to me this unwarrantable vitality in my
wife must come, sometimes, it is true, with a moral and a calm,
but oftener with a breeze and a ruffle.
If the doctrine be true, that in wedlock contraries attract, by
how cogent a fatality must I have been drawn to my wife! While
spicily impatient of present and past, like a glass of
ginger-beer she overflows with her schemes; and, with like energy
as she puts down her foot, puts down her preserves and her
pickles, and lives with them in a continual future; or ever full
of expectations both from time and space, is ever restless for
newspapers, and ravenous for letters. Content with the years that
are gone, taking no thought for the morrow, and looking for no
new thing from any person or quarter whatever, I have not a
single scheme or expectation on earth, save in unequal resistance
of the undue encroachment of hers.
Old myself, I take to oldness in things; for that cause mainly
loving old Montague, and old cheese, and old wine; and eschewing
young people, hot rolls, new books, and early potatoes and very
fond of my old claw-footed chair, and old club-footed Deacon
White, my neighbor, and that still nigher old neighbor, my
betwisted old grape-vine, that of a summer evening leans in his
elbow for cosy company at my window-sill, while I, within doors,
lean over mine to meet his; and above all, high above all, am
fond of my high-mantled old chimney. But she, out of the
infatuate juvenility of hers, takes to nothing but newness; for
that cause mainly, loving new cider in autumn, and in spring, as
if she were own daughter of Nebuchadnezzar, fairly raving after
all sorts of salads and spinages, and more particularly green
cucumbers (though all the time nature rebukes such unsuitable
young hankerings in so elderlv a person, by never permitting such
things to agree with her), and has an itch after recently-
discovered fine prospects (so no graveyard be in the background),
and also after Sweden-borganism, and the Spirit Rapping
philosophy, with other new views, alike in things natural and
unnatural; and immortally hopeful, is forever making new
flower-beds even on the north side of the house where the bleak
mountain wind would scarce allow the wiry weed called hard-hack
to gain a thorough footing; and on the road-side sets out mere
pipe-stems of young elms; though there is no hope of any shade
from them, except over the ruins of her great granddaughter's
gravestones; and won't wear caps, but plaits her gray hair; and
takes the Ladies' Magazine for the fashions; and always buys her
new almanac a month before the new year; and rises at dawn; and
to the warmest sunset turns a cold shoulder; and still goes on at
odd hours with her new course of history, and her French, and her
music; and likes a young company; and offers to ride young colts;
and sets out young suckers in the orchard; and has a spite
against my elbowed old grape-vine, and my club-footed old
neighbor, and my claw-footed old chair, and above all, high above
all, would fain persecute, until death, my high-mantled old
chimney. By what perverse magic, I a thousand times think, does
such a very autumnal old lady have such a very vernal young soul?
When I would remonstrate at times, she spins round on me with,
"Oh, don't you grumble, old man (she always calls me old man),
it's I, young I, that keep you from stagnating." Well, I suppose
it is so. Yea, after all, these things are well ordered. My wife,
as one of her poor relations, good soul, intimates, is the salt
of the earth, and none the less the salt of my sea, which
otherwise were unwholesome. She is its monsoon, too, blowing a
brisk gale over it, in the one steady direction of my chimney.
Not insensible of her superior energies, my wife has frequently
made me propositions to take upon herself all the
responsibilities of my affairs. She is desirous that,
domestically, I should abdicate; that, renouncing further rule,
like the venerable Charles V, I should retire intoo some sort of
monastery. But indeed, the chimney excepted, I have little
authority to lay down. By my wife's ingenious application of the
principle that certain things belong of right to female
jurisdiction, I find myself, through my easy compliances,
insensibly stripped by degrees of one masculine prerogative after
another. In a dream I go about my fields, a sort of lazy,
happy-go-lucky, good-for-nothing, loafing old Lear. Only by some
sudden revelation am I reminded who is over me; as year before
last, one day seeing in one corner of the premises fresh deposits
of mysterious boards and timbers, the oddity of the incident at
length begat serious meditation. "Wife," said I, "whose boards
and timbers are those I see near the orchard there? Do you know
anything about them, wife? Who put them there? You know I do not
like the neighbors to use my land that way, they should ask
permission first."
She regarded me with a pitying smile.
"Why, old man, don't you know I am building a new barn? Didn't
you know that, old man?"
This is the poor old lady who was accusing me of tyrannizing over
her.
To return now to the chimney. Upon being assured of the futility
of her proposed hall, so long as the obstacle remained, for a
time my wife was for a modified project. But I could never
exactly comprehend it. As far as I could see through it, it
seemed to involve the general idea of a sort of irregular
archway, or elbowed tunnel, which was to penetrate the chimney at
some convenient point under the staircase, and carefully avoiding
dangerous contact with the fireplaces, and particularly steering
clear of the great interior flue, was to conduct the enterprising
traveler from the front door all the way into the dining-room in
the remote rear of the mansion. Doubtless it was a bold stroke of
genius, that plan of hers, and so was Nero's when he schemed his
grand canal through the Isthmus of Corinth. Nor will I take oath,
that, had her project been accomplished, then, by help of lights
hung at judicious intervals through the tunnel, some Belzoni or
other might have succeeded in future ages in penetrating through
the masonry, and actually emerging into the dining-room, and once
there, it would have been inhospitable treatment of such a
traveler to have denied him a recruiting meal.
But my bustling wife did not restrict her objections, nor in the
end confine her proposed alterations to the first floor. Her
ambition was of the mounting order. She ascended with her schemes
to the second floor, and so to the attic. Perhaps there was some
small ground for her discontent with things as they were. The
truth is, there was no regular passage-way up-stairs or down,
unless we again except that little orchestra-gallery before
mentioned. And all this was owing to the chimney, which my
gamesome spouse seemed despitefully to regard as the bully of the
house. On all its four sides, nearly all the chambers sidled up
to the chimney for the benefit of a fireplace. The chimney would
not go to them; they must needs go to it. The consequence was,
almost every room, like a philosophical system, was in itself an
entry, or passage-way to other rooms, and systems of rooms--a
whole suite of entries, in fact. Going through the house, you
seem to be forever going somewhere, and getting nowhere. It is
like losing one's self in the woods; round and round the chimney
you go, and if you arrive at all, it is just where you started,
and so you begin again, and again get nowhere. Indeed--though I
say it not in the way of faultfinding at all--never was there so
labyrinthine an abode. Guests will tarry with me several weeks
and every now and then, be anew astonished at some unforseen
apartment.
The puzzling nature of the mansion, resulting from the chimney,
is peculiarly noticeable in the dining-room, which has no less
than nine doors, opening in all directions, and into all sorts of
places. A stranger for the first time entering this dining-room,
and naturally taking no special heed at which door he entered,
will, upon rising to depart, commit the strangest blunders. Such,
for instance, as opening the first door that comes handy, and
finding himself stealing up-stairs by the back passage. Shutting
that he will proceed to another, and be aghast at the cellar
yawning at his feet. Trying a third, he surprises the housemaid
at her work. In the end, no more relying on his own unaided
efforts, he procures a trusty guide in some passing person, and
in good time successfully emerges. Perhaps as curious a blunder
as any, was that of a certain stylish young gentleman, a great
exquisite, in whose judicious eyes my daughter Anna had found
especial favor. He called upon the young lady one evening, and
found her alone in the dining-room at her needlework. He stayed
rather late; and after abundance of superfine discourse, all the
while retaining his hat and cane, made his profuse adieus, and
with repeated graceful bows proceeded to depart, after fashion of
courtiers from the Queen, and by so doing, opening a door at
random, with one hand placed behind, very effectually succeeded
in backing himself into a dark pantry, where be carefully shut
himself up, wondering there was no light in the entry. After
several strange noises as of a cat among the crockery, he
reappeared through the same door, looking uncommonly crestfallen,
and, with a deeply embarrassed air, requested my daughter to
designate at which of the nine he should find exit. When the
mischievous Anna told me the story, she said it was surprising
how unaffected and matter-of-fact the young gentleman's manner
was after his reappearance. He was more candid than ever, to be
sure; having inadvertently thrust his white kids into an open
drawer of Havana sugar, under the impression, probably, that
being what they call "a sweet fellow," his route might possibly
lie in that direction.
Another inconvenience resulting from the chimney is, the
bewilderment of a guest in gaining his chamber, many strange
doors lying between him and it. To direct him by finger-posts
would look rather queer; and just as queer in him to be knocking
at every door on his route, like London's city guest, the king,
at Temple-Bar.
Now, of all these things and many, many more, my family
continually complained. At last my wife came out with her
sweeping proposition--in toto to abolish the chimney.
"What!" said I, "abolish the chimney? To take out the backbone of
anything, wife, is a hazardous affair. Spines out of backs, and
chimneys out of houses, are not to be taken like frosted lead
pipes from the ground. Besides," added I, "the chimney is the one
grand permanence of this abode. If undisturbed by innovators,
then in future ages, when all the house shall have crumbled from
it, this chimney will still survive--a Bunker Hill monument. No,
no, wife, I can't abolish my backbone."
So said I then. But who is sure of himself, especially an old
man, with both wife and daughters ever at his elbow and ear? In
time, I was persuaded to think a little better of it; in short,
to take the matter into preliminary consideration. At length it
came to pass that a master-mason--a rough sort of architect--one
Mr. Scribe, was summoned to a conference. I formally introduced
him to my chimney. A previous introduction from my wife had
introduced him to myself. He had been not a little employed by
that lady, in preparing plans and estimates for some of her
extensive operations in drainage. Having, with much ado, exhorted
from my spouse the promise that she would leave us to an
unmolested survey, I began by leading Mr. Scribe down to the root
of the matter, in the cellar. Lamp in hand, I descended; for
though up-stairs it was noon, below it was night.
We seemed in the pyramids; and I, with one hand holding my lamp
over head, and with the other pointing out, in the obscurity, the
hoar mass of the chimney, seemed some Arab guide, showing the
cobwebbed mausoleum of the great god Apis.
"This is a most remarkable structure, sir," said the
master-mason, after long contemplating it in silence, "a most
remarkable structure, sir."
"Yes," said I complacently, "every one says so."
"But large as it appears above the roof, I would not have
inferred the magnitude of this foundation, sir," eyeing it
critically.
Then taking out his rule, he measured it.
"Twelve feet square; one hundred and forty-four square feet!
Sir, this house would appear to have been built simply for the
accommodation of your chimney."
"Yes, my chimney and me. Tell me candidly, now," I added, "would
you have such a famous chimney abolished?"
"I wouldn't have it in a house of mine, sir, for a gift," was the
reply. "It's a losing affair altogether, sir. Do you know, sir,
that in retaining this chimney, you are losing, not only one
hundred and forty-four square feet of good ground, but likewise a
considerable interest upon a considerable principal?"
"How?"
Look, sir!" said he, taking a bit of red chalk from his pocket,
and figuring against a whitewashed wall, "twenty times eight is
so and so; then forty-two times thirty--nine is so and so--ain't
it,sir? Well, add those together, and subtract this here, then
that makes so and so, " still chalking away.
To be brief, after no small ciphering, Mr. Scribe informed me
that my chimney contained, I am ashamed to say how many thousand
and odd valuable bricks.
"No more," said I fidgeting. "Pray now, let us have a look
above."
In that upper zone we made two more circumnavigations for the
first and second floors. That done, we stood together at the foot
of the stairway by the front door; my hand upon the knob, and Mr.
Scribe hat in hand.
"Well, sir," said he, a sort of feeling his way, and, to help
himself, fumbling with his hat, "well, sir, I think it can be
done."
"What, pray, Mr. Scribe; WHAT can be done?"
"Your chimney, sir; it can without rashness be removed, I think."
"I will think of it, too, Mr. Scribe" said I, turning the knob
and bowing him towards the open space without, "I will THINK of
it, sir; it demands consideration; much obliged to ye; good
morning, Mr. Scribe."
"It is all arranged, then," cried my wife with great glee,
bursting from the nighest room.
"When will they begin?" demanded my daughter Julia.
"To-morrow?" asked Anna.
"Patience, patience, my dears," said I, "such a big chimney is
not to be abolished in a minute."
Next morning it began again.
"You remember the chimney," said my wife. "Wife," said I, "it is
never out of my house and never out of my mind."
"But when is Mr. Scribe to begin to pull it down?" asked Anna.
"Not to-day, Anna," said I.
"WHEN, then?" demanded Julia, in alarm.
Now, if this chimney of mine was, for size, a sort of belfry, for
ding-donging at me about it, my wife and daughters were a sort of
bells, always chiming together, or taking up each other's
melodies at every pause, my wife the key-clapper of all. A very
sweet ringing, and pealing, and chiming, I confess; but then, the
most silvery of bells may, sometimes, dismally toll, as well as
merrily play. And as touching the subject in question, it became
so now. Perceiving a strange relapse of opposition in me, wife
and daughters began a soft and dirge-like, melancholy tolling
over it.
At length my wife, getting much excited, declared to me, with
pointed finger, that so long as that chimney stood, she should
regard it as the monument of what she called my broken pledge.
But finding this did not answer, the next day, she gave me to
understand that either she or the chimney must quit the house.
Finding matters coming to such a pass, I and my pipe
philosophized over them awhile, and finally concluded between us,
that little as our hearts went with the plan, yet for peace'
sake, I might write out the chimney's death-warrant, and, while
my hand was in, scratch a note to Mr. Scribe.
Considering that I, and my chimney, and my pipe, from having been
so much together, were three great cronies, the facility with
which my pipe consented to a project so fatal to the goodliest of
our trio; or rather, the way in which I and my pipe, in secret,
conspired togetber, as it were, against our unsuspicious old
comrade--this may seem rather strange, if not suggestive of sad
reflections upon us two. But, indeed, we, sons of clay, that is
my pipe and I, are no wbit better than the rest. Far from us,
indeed, to have volunteered the betrayal of our crony. We are of
a peaceable nature, too. But that love of peace it was which made
us false to a mutual friend, as soon as his cause demanded a
vigorous vindication. But, I rejoice to add, that better and
braver thoughts soon returned, as will now briefly be set forth.
To my note, Mr. Scribe replied in person.
Once more we made a survey, mainly now with a view to a pecuniary
estimate.
"I will do it for five hundred dollars," said Mr. Scribe at last,
again hat in hand.
"Very well, Mr. Scribe, I will think of it," replied I, again
bowing him to the door.
Not unvexed by this, for the second time, unexpected response,
again he withdrew, and from my wife, and daughters again burst
the old exclamations.
The truth is, resolved 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 no correspondents except Solomon, with whom in
his sentiments, at least, I entirely correspond, the note
occasioned me some little surprise, which was not dismissed upon
reading the following:--
NEW PETRA, April 1st.
Sir--During my last examination of your chimney, possibly you may
have noted that I frequently applied my rule to it in a manner
apparently unnecessary. Possibly, also, at the same time, you
might have observed in me more or less of perplexity, to which,
however, I refrained from giving any verbal expression.
I now feel it obligatory upon me to inform you of what was then
but a dim suspicion, and as such would have been unwise to give
utterance to, but which now, from various subsequent calculations
assuming no little probability, it may be important that you
should not remain in further ignorance of.
It is my solemn duty to warn you, sir, that there is
architectural cause to conjecture that somewhere concealed in
your chimney is a reserved space, hermetically closed, in short,
a secret chamber, or rather closet. How long it has been there,
it is for me impossible to say. What it contains is hid, with
itself, in darkness. But probably a secret closet would not have
been contrived except for some extraordinary object, whether for
the concealment of treasure, or for what other purpose, may be
left to those better acquainted with the history of the house to
guess.
But enough: in making this disclosure, sir, my conscience is
eased. Whatever step you choose to take upon it, is of course a
matter of indifference to me; though, I confess, as respects the
character of the closet, I cannot but share in a natural
curiosity. Trusting that you may be guided aright, in determining
whether it is Christian-like knowingly to reside in a house,
hidden in which is a secret closet, I remain, with much respect,
Yours very humbly,
HIRAM SCRIBE.
