{"id":"01KG8AK9DMSYQ1EN8MV7DGCA8J","cid":"bafkreicupu3tpq5jrt3lmsf5l42vjtkcb6gr4myyqveb72hrmgvdrkodku","type":"chunk","properties":{"end_line":2588,"extracted_at":"2026-01-30T20:47:56.336Z","extracted_by":"structure-extraction-lambda","label":"Chunk 8","source_file":"01KG89J1C1N72JCD0ZBGTBX0EX","start_line":2530,"text":"that warm mass of masonry. Better for wines is it than voyages to\r\nthe Indias; my chimney itself a tropic. A chair by my chimney in a\r\nNovember day is as good for an invalid as a long season spent in Cuba.\r\nOften I think how grapes might ripen against my chimney. How my wife's\r\ngeraniums bud there! Bud in December. Her eggs, too--can't keep them\r\nnear the chimney, on account of the hatching. Ah, a warm heart has my\r\nchimney.\r\n\r\nHow often my wife was at me about that projected grand entrance-hall\r\nof hers, which was to be knocked clean through the chimney, from one\r\nend of the house to the other, and astonish all guests by its generous\r\namplitude. \"But, wife,\" said I, \"the chimney--consider the chimney: if\r\nyou demolish the foundation, what is to support the superstructure?\"\r\n\"Oh, that will rest on the second floor.\" The truth is, women know\r\nnext to nothing about the realities of architecture. However, my wife\r\nstill talked of running her entries and partitions. She spent many long\r\nnights 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,\r\nthat threw me last fall. What is extraordinary, though she comes of\r\na rheumatic family, she is straight as a pine, never has any aches;\r\nwhile for me with the sciatica, I am sometimes as crippled up as any\r\nold apple-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\r\nin the attic. And for her sight--Biddy, the housemaid, tells other\r\npeople's housemaids, that her mistress will spy a spot on the dresser\r\nstraight through the pewter platter, put up on purpose to hide it.\r\nHer faculties are alert as her limbs and her senses. No danger of my\r\nspouse dying of torpor. The longest night in the year I've known her\r\nlie awake, planning her campaign for the morrow. She is a natural\r\nprojector. The maxim, \"Whatever is, is right,\" is not hers. Her maxim\r\nis, Whatever is, is wrong; and what is more, must be altered; and what\r\nis still more, must be altered right away. Dreadful maxim for the wife\r\nof a dozy old dreamer like me, who dote on seventh days as days of\r\nrest, and out of a sabbatical horror of industry, will, on a week day,\r\ngo out of my road a quarter of a mile, to avoid the sight of a man at\r\nwork.\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\r\nthe plain of Mamre, my old wife, unlike old Abraham's, would not have\r\njeeringly laughed within herself.\r\n\r","title":"Chunk 8"},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KG8AJJJM9B1B6R0AVRGKYSED","peer_type":"chapter","predicate":"in"},{"peer":"01KG89J1C1N72JCD0ZBGTBX0EX","peer_type":"file","predicate":"extractedFrom"},{"peer":"01KG89HMDZKNY753EZE1CJ8HZW","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"},{"peer":"01KG8AK9DPYMA7XS0W4M0S6EM0","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"prev"},{"peer":"01KG8AK9DMKCQKH05WKMME9GZR","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"next"}],"ver":2,"created_at":"2026-01-30T20:47:59.412Z","ts":"2026-01-30T20:48:06.946Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KFF0H3YRP9ZSM033AM0QJ47H"}}