very favorably to a certain plan of theirs? How to get to the
secret closet, or how to have any certainty about it at all,
without making such fell work with my chimney as to render its
set destruction superfluous? That my wife wished to get rid of
the chimney, it needed no reflection to show; and that Mr.
Scribe, for all his pretended disinterestedness, was not opposed
to pocketing five hundred dollars by the operation, seemed
equally evident. That my wife had, in secret, laid heads together
with Mr. Scribe, I at present refrain from affirming. But when I
consider her enmity against my chimney, and the steadiness with
which at the last she is wont to carry out her schemes, if by
hook or crook she can, especially after having been once baffled,
why, I scarcely knew at what step of hers to be surprised.

Of one thing only was I resolved, that I and my chimney should
not budge.

In vain all protests. Next morning I went out into the road,
where I had noticed a diabolical-looking old gander, that, for
its doughty exploits in the way of scratching into forbidden
enclosures, had been rewarded by its master with a portentous,
four-pronged, wooden decoration, in the shape of a collar of the
Order of the Garotte. This gander I cornered and rummaging out
its stiffest quill, plucked it, took it home, and making a stiff
pen, inscribed the following stiff note:

CHIMNEY SIDE, April 2.
MR. SCRIBE
Sir:-For your conjecture, we return you our joint thanks and
compliments, and beg leave to assure you, that we shall remain,