fail--showing blotchy
symptoms akin to those in measles. Whereupon travelers, passing my way,
would wag their heads, laughing; "See that wax nose--how it melts off!"
But what cared I? The same travelers would travel across the sea to view
Kenilworth peeling away, and for a very good reason: that of all artists
of the picturesque, decay wears the palm--I would say, the ivy. In fact,
I've often thought that the proper place for my old chimney is ivied old
England.

In vain my wife--with what probable ulterior intent will, ere long,
appear--solemnly warned me, that unless something were done, and
speedily, we should be burnt to the ground, owing to the holes crumbling
through the aforesaid blotchy parts, where the chimney joined the roof.
"Wife," said I, "far better that my house should burn down, than that my
chimney should be pulled down, though but a few feet. They call it a wax
nose; very good; not for me to tweak the nose of my superior." But
at last the man who has a mortgage on the house dropped me a note,
reminding me that, if my chimney was allowed to stand in that invalid
condition, my policy of insurance would be void. This was a sort of hint
not to be neglected. All the world over, the picturesque yields to the
pocketesque. The mortgagor cared not, but the mortgagee did.

So another operation was performed. The wax nose was taken off, and a
new one fitted on. Unfortunately for the expression--being put up by
a squint-eyed mason, who, at the time, had a bad stitch in the same
side--the new nose stands a little awry, in the same direction.

Of one thing, however, I am proud. The horizontal dimensions of the new
part are unreduced.

Large as the chimney appears upon the roof, that is nothing to its
spaciousness below. At its base in the cellar, it is precisely twelve
feet square; and hence covers precisely one hundred and forty-four
superficial feet. What an appropriation of terra firma for a chimney,
and what a huge load for this earth! In fact, it was only because I
and my chimney formed no part of his ancient burden, that that stout
peddler, Atlas of old, was enabled to stand up so bravely under his
pack. The dimensions given may, perhaps, seem fabulous. But, like those
stones at Gilgal, which Joshua set up for a memorial of having passed
over Jordan, does not my chimney remain, even unto this day?

Very often I go down into my cellar, and attentively survey that vast
square of masonry. I stand long, and