{"id":"01KG6YGMRP5R2E77S92F1GJXRD","cid":"bafkreienomz6qhvog2vyw7lpxe7emcr2wxbtjjtfliyyxioxdtze5jzrwa","type":"chunk","properties":{"end_line":437,"extracted_at":"2026-01-30T07:57:35.240Z","extracted_by":"structure-extraction-lambda","label":"Chunk 2","source_file":"01KG6YDDFE1YJ2Q37Q9JT1AJVB","start_line":375,"text":"nights elaborating her plans; in imagination building her boasted hall\r\nthrough the chimney, as though its high mightiness were a mere spear of\r\nsorrel-top. At last, I gently reminded her that, little as she might\r\nfancy it, the chimney was a fact—a sober, substantial fact, which, in\r\nall her plannings, it would be well to take into full consideration.\r\nBut this was not of much avail.\r\n\r\nAnd here, respectfully craving her permission, I must say a few words\r\nabout this enterprising wife of mine. Though in years nearly old as\r\nmyself, in spirit she is young as my little sorrel mare, Trigger, that\r\nthrew me last fall. What is extraordinary, though she comes of a\r\nrheumatic family, she is straight as a pine, never has any aches; while\r\nfor me with the sciatica, I am sometimes as crippled up as any old\r\napple-tree. But she has not so much as a toothache. As for her\r\nhearing—let me enter the house in my dusty boots, and she away up in\r\nthe attic. And for her sight—Biddy, the housemaid, tells other people’s\r\nhousemaids, that her mistress will spy a spot on the dresser straight\r\nthrough the pewter platter, put up on purpose to hide it. Her faculties\r\nare alert as her limbs and her senses. No danger of my spouse dying of\r\ntorpor. The longest night in the year I’ve known her lie awake,\r\nplanning her campaign for the morrow. She is a natural projector. The\r\nmaxim, “Whatever is, is right,” is not hers. Her maxim is, Whatever is,\r\nis wrong; and what is more, must be altered; and what is still more,\r\nmust be altered right away. Dreadful maxim for the wife of a dozy old\r\ndreamer like me, who dote on seventh days as days of rest, and out of a\r\nsabbatical horror of industry, will, on a week day, go out of my road a\r\nquarter of a mile, to avoid the sight of a man at work.\r\n\r\nThat matches are made in heaven, may be, but my wife would have been\r\njust the wife for Peter the Great, or Peter the Piper. How she would\r\nhave set in order that huge littered empire of the one, and with\r\nindefatigable painstaking picked the peck of pickled peppers for the\r\nother.\r\n\r\nBut the most wonderful thing is, my wife never thinks of her end. Her\r\nyouthful 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\r\noverflows with her schemes; and, with like energy as she puts down her\r\nfoot, puts down her preserves and her pickles, and lives with them in a\r\ncontinual future; or ever full of expectations both from time and\r\nspace, is ever restless for newspapers, and ravenous for letters.\r\nContent with the years that are gone, taking no thought for the morrow,\r\nand looking for no new thing from any person or quarter whatever, I\r\nhave not a single scheme or expectation on earth, save in unequal\r\nresistance of the undue encroachment of hers.\r\n\r","title":"Chunk 2"},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KG6YGAG0XF41PYX0D598Y7TN","peer_type":"segment","predicate":"in"},{"peer":"01KG6YDDFE1YJ2Q37Q9JT1AJVB","peer_type":"file","predicate":"extractedFrom"},{"peer":"01KG6YCG626JN4FCG8QK17CQCF","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"},{"peer":"01KG6YGMRRJZTAB18J22A2FAWK","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"prev"},{"peer":"01KG6YGMRRR37S3R3EGDJ2B16F","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"next"}],"ver":2,"created_at":"2026-01-30T07:57:35.382Z","ts":"2026-01-30T07:57:36.844Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KFF0H3YRP9ZSM033AM0QJ47H"}}