{"id":"01KG6GMRM1FD4HA19K1X2F75G8","cid":"bafkreibezho2wdraw3upgkrr4tpiqcjh2pfl3npu5utduw5ri7arz7olha","type":"chunk","properties":{"end_line":10024,"extracted_at":"2026-01-30T03:55:03.883Z","extracted_by":"structure-extraction-lambda","label":"Chunk 21","source_file":"01KG6FXSCNX5F3D880P3YP3PKR","start_line":9953,"text":"gossip and knave. Yes, wife, a vile eavesdropping varlet was Momus.’\r\n\r\n‘Moses?--Mumps? Stuff with your mumps and your Moses!’\r\n\r\nThe truth is, my wife, like all the rest of the world, cares not a fig\r\nfor my philosophical jabber. In dearth of other philosophical\r\ncompanionship, I and my chimney have to smoke and philosophise together.\r\nAnd sitting up so late as we do at it, a mighty smoke it is that we two\r\nsmoky old philosophers make.\r\n\r\nBut my spouse, who likes the smoke of my tobacco as little as she does\r\nthat of the soot, carries on her war against both. I live in continual\r\ndread lest, like the golden bowl, the pipes of me and my chimney shall\r\nyet be broken. To stay that mad project of my wife’s, naught answers.\r\nOr, rather, she herself is incessantly answering, incessantly besetting\r\nme with her terrible alacrity for improvement, which is a softer name\r\nfor destruction. Scarce a day I do not find her with her tape-measure,\r\nmeasuring for her grand hall, while Anna holds a yard-stick on one side,\r\nand Julia looks approvingly on from the other. Mysterious intimations\r\nappear in the nearest village paper, signed ‘Claude,’ to the effect that\r\na certain structure, standing on a certain hill, is a sad blemish to an\r\notherwise lovely landscape. Anonymous letters arrive, threatening me\r\nwith I know not what, unless I remove my chimney. Is it my wife, too, or\r\nwho, that sets up the neighbours to badgering me on the same subject,\r\nand hinting to me that my chimney, like a huge elm, absorbs all moisture\r\nfrom my garden? At night, also, my wife will start as from sleep,\r\nprofessing to hear ghostly noises from the secret closet. Assailed on\r\nall sides, and in all ways, small peace have I and my chimney.\r\n\r\nWere it not for the baggage, we would together pack up, and remove from\r\nthe country.\r\n\r\nWhat narrow escapes have been ours! Once I found in a drawer a whole\r\nportfolio of plans and estimates. Another time, upon returning after a\r\nday’s absence, I discovered my wife standing before the chimney in\r\nearnest conversation with a person whom I at once recognised as a\r\nmeddlesome architectural reformer, who, because he had no gift for\r\nputting up anything, was ever intent upon pulling down; in various parts\r\nof the country having prevailed upon half-witted old folks to destroy\r\ntheir old-fashioned houses, particularly the chimneys.\r\n\r\nBut worst of all was that time I unexpectedly returned at early morning\r\nfrom a visit to the city, and upon approaching the house, narrowly\r\nescaped three brickbats which fell, from high aloft, at my feet.\r\nGlancing up, what was my horror to see three savages, in blue jean\r\noveralls, in the very act of commencing the long-threatened attack. Ay,\r\nindeed, thinking of those three brickbats, I and my chimney have had\r\nnarrow escapes.\r\n\r\nIt is now some seven years since I have stirred from home. My city\r\nfriends all wonder why I don’t come to see them, as in former times.\r\nThey think I am getting sour and unsocial. Some say that I have become a\r\nsort of mossy old misanthrope, while all the time the fact is, I am\r\nsimply standing guard over my mossy old chimney; for it is resolved\r\nbetween me and my chimney, that I and my chimney will never surrender.\r\n\r\n-----\r\n\r\nFootnote 12:\r\n\r\n  In the margin of the MS. of this Essay, Melville’s wife wrote the\r\n  following note:--\r\n\r\n  ‘All this about his wife, applied to his mother--who was very vigorous\r\n  and energetic about the farm, etc. The proposed removal of the chimney\r\n  is purely mythical.’\r\n\r\n------------------------------------------------------------------------\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r","title":"Chunk 21"},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KG6GKZ3MPDDZB30GXGTJ7ATV","peer_type":"section","predicate":"in"},{"peer":"01KG6FXSCNX5F3D880P3YP3PKR","peer_type":"file","predicate":"extractedFrom"},{"peer":"01KG2T49K0H5GDRB0G4YDTPG8H","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"},{"peer":"01KG6GMRKY7PKTAH48V2P8KKP3","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"prev"}],"ver":2,"created_at":"2026-01-30T03:55:10.337Z","ts":"2026-01-30T03:55:20.592Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KFF0H3YRP9ZSM033AM0QJ47H"}}