{"id":"01KG6G87R05ZVD6CF094CVPYFT","cid":"bafkreidsudxtn3yu7iedbm2f2ynxpgdtqvqqdzuorgc5jywz7oahu364rm","type":"chunk","properties":{"end_line":9289,"extracted_at":"2026-01-30T03:48:16.153Z","extracted_by":"structure-extraction-lambda","label":"Chunk 9","source_file":"01KG6FXSCNX5F3D880P3YP3PKR","start_line":9229,"text":"youthful incredulity, as to the plain theory, and still plainer fact of\r\ndeath, hardly seems Christian. Advanced in years, as she knows she must\r\nbe, my wife seems to think that she is to teem on, and be inexhaustible\r\nforever. She doesn’t believe in old age. At that strange promise in the\r\nplain of Mamre, my old wife, unlike old Abraham’s, would not have\r\njeeringly laughed within herself.\r\n\r\nJudge how to me, who, sitting in the comfortable shadow of my chimney,\r\nsmoking my comfortable pipe, with ashes not unwelcome at my feet, and\r\nashes not unwelcome all but in my mouth; and who am thus in a\r\ncomfortable sort of not unwelcome, though, indeed, ashy enough way,\r\nreminded of the ultimate exhaustion even of the most fiery life; judge\r\nhow to me this unwarrantable vitality in my wife must come, sometimes,\r\nit is true, with a moral and a calm, but oftener with a breeze and a\r\nruffle.\r\n\r\nIf the doctrine be true, that in wedlock contraries attract, by how\r\ncogent a fatality must I have been drawn to my wife! While spicily\r\nimpatient of present and past, like a glass of ginger-beer she overflows\r\nwith her schemes; and, with like energy as she puts down her foot, puts\r\ndown her preserves and her pickles, and lives with them in a continual\r\nfuture; or ever full of expectations both from time and space, is ever\r\nrestless for newspapers, and ravenous for letters. Content with the\r\nyears that are gone, taking no thought for the morrow, and looking for\r\nno new thing from any person or quarter whatever, I have not a single\r\nscheme or expectation on earth, save in unequal resistance of the undue\r\nencroachment of hers.\r\n\r\nOld myself, I take to oldness in things; for that cause mainly loving\r\nold Montaigne, and old cheese, and old wine; and eschewing young people,\r\nhot rolls, new books, and early potatoes, and very fond of my old\r\nclaw-footed chair, and old club-footed Deacon White, my neighbour, and\r\nthat still nigher old neighbour, my betwisted old grape-vine, that of a\r\nsummer evening leans in his elbow for cosy company at my window-sill,\r\nwhile I, within doors, lean over mine to meet his; and above all, high\r\nabove all, am fond of my high-manteled old chimney. But she, out of that\r\ninfatuate juvenility of hers, takes to nothing but newness; for that\r\ncause mainly, loving new cider in autumn, and in spring, as if she were\r\nown daughter of Nebuchadnezzar, fairly raving after all sorts of salads\r\nand spinages, and more particularly green cucumbers (though all the time\r\nNature rebukes such unsuitable young hankerings in so elderly a person,\r\nby never permitting such things to agree with her), and has an itch\r\nafter recently-discovered fine prospects (so no graveyard be in the\r\nbackground), and also after Swedenborgianism, and the Spirit Rapping\r\nphilosophy, with other new views, alike in things natural and unnatural;\r\nand immortally hopeful, is forever making new flower-beds even on the\r\nnorth side of the house, where the bleak mountain wind would scarce\r\nallow the wiry weed called hard-hack to gain a thorough footing; and on\r\nthe road-side sets out mere pipe-stems of young elms; though there is no\r\nhope of any shade from them, except over the ruins of her\r\ngreat-granddaughters’ gravestones; and won’t wear caps, but plaits her\r\ngray hair; and takes the Ladies’ Magazine for the fashions; and always\r\nbuys her new almanac a month before the new year; and rises at dawn; and\r\nto the warmest sunset turns a cold shoulder; and still goes on at odd\r\nhours with her new course of history, and her French, and her music; and\r\nlikes young company; and offers to ride young colts; and sets out young\r\nsuckers in the orchard; and has a spite against my elbowed old\r\ngrape-vine, and my club-footed old neighbour, and my claw-footed old\r\nchair, and above all, high above all, would fain persecute, unto death,\r\nmy high-manteled old chimney. By what perverse magic, I a thousand times\r\nthink, does such a very autumnal old lady have such a very vernal young\r","title":"Chunk 9"},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KG6G6QRNCH782S2B3576MSHF","peer_type":"article","predicate":"in"},{"peer":"01KG6FXSCNX5F3D880P3YP3PKR","peer_type":"file","predicate":"extractedFrom"},{"peer":"01KG2T49K0H5GDRB0G4YDTPG8H","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"},{"peer":"01KG6G87QQPJPTNMCGCY2ZJ9FS","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"prev"},{"peer":"01KG6G87R0N0N64AA1KB3041W7","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"next"}],"ver":2,"created_at":"2026-01-30T03:48:19.840Z","ts":"2026-01-30T03:48:30.645Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KFF0H3YRP9ZSM033AM0QJ47H"}}