{"id":"01KG8AM7T7WTMJPRZ6FA6B2ZZ3","cid":"bafkreiedqrpuif4dfnv4bxhltjqjq2krvtrhat3wkjc74333y24qnozdrm","type":"chunk","properties":{"end_line":9235,"extracted_at":"2026-01-30T20:48:26.985Z","extracted_by":"structure-extraction-lambda","label":"Chunk 8","source_file":"01KG89J1FFTGRE9J93Z3K29NGY","start_line":9179,"text":"warm mass of masonry. Better for wines is it than voyages to the Indies;\r\nmy chimney itself a tropic. A chair by my chimney in a November day is\r\nas good for an invalid as a long season spent in Cuba. Often I think how\r\ngrapes might ripen against my chimney. How my wife’s geraniums bud\r\nthere! Bud in December. Her eggs, too--can’t keep them near the chimney,\r\non account of hatching. Ah, a warm heart has my chimney.\r\n\r\nHow often my wife was at me about that projected grand entrance-hall of\r\nhers, which was to be knocked clean through the chimney, from one end of\r\nthe 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 next\r\nto nothing about the realities of architecture. However, my wife still\r\ntalked of running her entries and partitions. She spent many long nights\r\nelaborating her plans; in imagination building her boasted hall through\r\nthe 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. But\r\nthis 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.[12] 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, planning\r\nher campaign for the morrow. She is a natural projector. The maxim,\r\n‘Whatever is, is right,’ is not hers. Her maxim is, Whatever is, is\r\nwrong; and what is more, must be altered; and what is still more, must\r\nbe altered right away. Dreadful maxim for the wife of a dozy old dreamer\r\nlike me, who dotes 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","title":"Chunk 8"},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KG8AJWC2XZP9WWPK8DAFVAR9","peer_type":"segment","predicate":"in"},{"peer":"01KG89J1FFTGRE9J93Z3K29NGY","peer_type":"file","predicate":"extractedFrom"},{"peer":"01KG89HMDZKNY753EZE1CJ8HZW","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"},{"peer":"01KG8AM79MPVG3NJPXJE7032VG","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"prev"},{"peer":"01KG8AM7T7H5FH693PCJ5ZW2A5","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"next"}],"ver":2,"created_at":"2026-01-30T20:48:30.535Z","ts":"2026-01-30T20:48:43.538Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KFF0H3YRP9ZSM033AM0QJ47H"}}