neighbors call a forehanded one. Indeed, those rumors about
my behindhandedness are so far correct, that I have an odd sauntering
way with me sometimes of going about with my hands behind my back. As
for my belonging to the rear-guard in general, certain it is, I bring up
the rear of my chimney--which, by the way, is this moment before me--and
that, too, both in fancy and fact. In brief, my chimney is my superior;
my superior, too, in that humbly bowing over with shovel and tongs, I
much minister to it; yet never does it minister, or incline over to me;
but, if anything, in its settlings, rather leans the other way.

My chimney is grand seignior here--the one great domineering object, not
more of the landscape, than of the house; all the rest of which house,
in each architectural arrangement, as may shortly appear, is, in the
most marked manner, accommodated, not to my wants, but to my chimney's,
which, among other things, has the centre of the house to himself,
leaving but the odd holes and corners to me.

But I and my chimney must explain; and as we are both rather obese, we
may have to expatiate.

In those houses which are strictly double houses--that is, where the
hall is in the middle--the fireplaces usually are on opposite sides;
so that while one member of the household is warming himself at a fire
built into a recess of the north wall, say another member, the former's
own brother, perhaps, may be holding his feet to the blaze before a
hearth in the south wall--the two thus fairly sitting back to back. Is
this well? Be it put to any man who has a proper fraternal feeling.
Has it not a sort of sulky appearance? But very probably this style
of chimney building originated with some architect afflicted with a
quarrelsome family.

Then again, almost every modern fireplace has its separate flue--separate
throughout, from hearth to chimney-top. At least such an arrangement
is deemed desirable. Does not this look egotistical, selfish? But still
more, all these separate flues, instead of having independent masonry
establishments of their own, or instead of being grouped together in one
federal stock in the middle of the house--instead of this, I say, each
flue is surreptitiously honey-combed into the walls; so that these last
are here and there, or indeed almost anywhere, treacherously hollow,
and, in consequence, more or less weak. Of course, the main reason of
this style of chimney building is to economize room. In