dle of the mansion it soars from the cellar, right up through each
successive floor, till, four feet square, it breaks water from the
ridge-pole of the roof, like an anvil-headed whale, through the crest
of a billow. Most people, though, liken it, in that part, to a razed
observatory, masoned up.

The reason for its peculiar appearance above the roof touches upon
rather delicate ground. How shall I reveal that, forasmuch as many years
ago the original gable roof of the old house had become very leaky, a
temporary proprietor hired a band of woodmen, with their huge, cross-cut
saws, and went to sawing the old gable roof clean off. Off it went, with
all its birds' nests, and dormer windows. It was replaced with a modern
roof, more fit for a railway wood-house than an old country gentleman's
abode. This operation--razeeing the structure some fifteen feet--was, in
effect upon the chimney, something like the falling of the great spring
tides. It left uncommon low water all about the chimney--to abate which
appearance, the same person now proceeds to slice fifteen feet off the
chimney itself, actually beheading my royal old chimney--a regicidal
act, which, were it not for the palliating fact that he was a poulterer
by trade, and, therefore, hardened to such neck-wringings, should send
that former proprietor down to posterity in the same cart with Cromwell.

Owing to its pyramidal shape, the reduction of the chimney inordinately
widened its razeed summit. Inordinately, I say, but only in the
estimation of such as have no eye to the picturesque. What care I, if,
unaware that my chimney, as a free citizen of this free land, stands
upon an independent basis of its own, people passing it, wonder how
such a brick-kiln, as they call it, is supported upon mere joists and
rafters? What care I? I will give a traveler a cup of switchel, if
he want it; but am I bound to supply him with a sweet taste? Men
of cultivated minds see, in my old house and chimney, a goodly old
elephant-and-castle.

All feeling hearts will sympathize with me in what I am now about to
add. The surgical operation, above referred to, necessarily brought into
the open air a part of the chimney previously under cover, and
intended to remain so, and, therefore, not built of what are called
weather-bricks. In consequence, the chimney, though of a vigorous
constitution, suffered not a little, from so naked an exposure; and,
unable to acclimate itself, ere long began to