You see the distress of the cook when the sooty invader rushed down,
"like a wolf on the fold," full spring on the Sunday joint. You hear
the exclamations of the mistress (perhaps a bride,--house newly
furnished) when, with white apron and cap, she ventured into the
drawing-room, and was straightway saluted by a joyous dance of those
monads called vulgarly "smuts." You feel manly indignation at the brute
of a bridegroom who rushes out from the door, with the smuts dancing
after him, and swears, "Smoked out again! By the Arch-smoker himself,
I'll go and dine at the club!" All this might well have been, till the
chimney-pot was raised a few feet nearer heaven; and now perhaps that
long-suffering family owns the happiest home in the Row. Such
contrivances to get rid of the smoke! It is not every one who merely
heightens his chimney; others clap on the hollow tormentor all sorts of
odd head-gear and cowls. Here, patent contrivances act the purpose of
weather-cocks, swaying to and fro with the wind; there, others stand as
fixed as if, by a sic jubeo, they had settled the business.

But of all those houses that in the street one passes by, unsuspicious
of what's the matter within, there is not one in a hundred but what
there has been the devil to do to cure the chimneys of smoking! At that
reflection Philosophy dismisses the subject, and decides that, whether
one lives in a but or a palace, the first thing to do is to look to the
hearth and get rid of the vapors.

New beauties demand us. What endless undulations in the various
declivities and ascents,--here a slant, there a zigzag! With what
majestic disdain yon roof rises up to the left! Doubtless a palace of
Genii, or Gin (which last is the proper Arabic word for those builders
of halls out of nothing, employed by Aladdin). Seeing only the roof of
that palace boldly breaking the sky-line, how serene your