 Preface to the House of the Seven Gables. When a writer calls his work a romance, it need hardly be observed that he wishes to claim a certain latitude, both as to its fashion and material, which he would not have felt himself entitled to assume had he professed to be writing a novel. The latter form of composition is presumed to aim at a very minute fidelity, not merely to the possible, but to the probable and ordinary course of man's experience. The former, while as a work of art, it must rigidly subject itself to laws, and while it sins unpardonably, so far as it may swerve aside from the truth of the human heart, has fairly a right to present that truth under circumstances, to a great extent, of the writer's own choosing or creation. If he think fit, also he may so manage his atmospherical medium as to bring out or mellow the lights, and deepen and enrich the shadows of the picture. He will be wise, no doubt, to make a very moderate use of the privileges here stated, and especially to mingle the marvelous rather as a slight, delicate and evanescent flavor than as any portion of the actual substance of the dish offered to the public. He can hardly be said, however, to commit a literary crime even if he disregard this caution. In the present work, the author has proposed to himself, but with what success fortunately is not for him to judge, to keep undeviatingly within his immunities. The point of view in which this tale comes under the romantic definition lies in the attempt to connect a bygone time with the very present that is flitting away from us. It is a legend prolonging itself from an epic now gray in the distance down into our own broad daylight and bringing along with it some of its legendary mist which the reader, according to his pleasure, may either disregard or allow it to float almost imperceptibly about the characters and events for the sake of a picturesque effect. The narrative, it may be, is woven of so humble a texture as to require this advantage and at the same time to render it the more difficult of attainment. Many writers lay very great stress upon some definite moral purpose at which they profess to aim their works. Not to be deficient in this particular, the author has provided himself with a moral, the truth, namely, that the wrongdoing of one generation lives into the successive ones and divesting itself of every temporary advantage becomes a pure and uncontrollable mischief and he would feel it a singular gratification if this romance might effectually convince mankind or indeed any one man of the folly of tumbling down an avalanche of ill-gotten gold or real estate on the heads of an unfortunate posterity, thereby to maim and crush them until the accumulated mass shall be scattered abroad in its original atoms. In good faith, however, he is not sufficiently imaginative to flatter himself with the slightest hope of this kind. When romances do really teach anything or produce any effective operation, it is usually through a far more subtle process than the ostensible one. The author has considered it hardly worth his while, therefore, relentlessly to impale the story with its moral as with an iron rod or rather as by sticking a pin through a butterfly. Thus it wants depriving it of life and causing it to stiffen in an ungainly and unnatural attitude. A high truth indeed, fairly, finely and skillfully wrought out, brightening at every step and crowning the final development of a work of fiction, may add an artistic glory but is never any truer and seldom any more evident at the last page than at the first. The reader may perhaps choose to assign an actual locality to the imaginary events of this narrative if permitted by the historical connection, which though slight was essential to his plan, the author would very willingly have avoided anything of this nature. Not to speak of other objections, it exposes the romance to an inflexible and exceedingly dangerous species of criticism by bringing his fancy pictures almost into positive contact with the realities of the moment. It has been no part of his object, however, to describe local manners nor in any way to meddle with the characteristics of a community for whom he cherishes a proper respect and a natural regard. He trusts not to be considered as unpardonably offending by laying out a street that infringes upon nobody's private rights and appropriating a lot of land which had no visible owner and building a house of materials long in use for constructing castles in the air. The personages of the tale, though they give themselves out to be of ancient stability and considerable prominence, are really of the author's own making or at all events of his own mixing. Their virtues can shed no luster nor their defects redound in the remotest degree to the discredit of the venerable town of which they profess to be inhabitants. He would be glad, therefore, if especially in the quarter to which he alludes, the book may be read strictly as a romance, having a great deal more to do with the clouds overhead than with any portion of the actual soil of the county of Essex. Linux, January 27, 1851. End of the Preface of the House of the Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Read by Nicodemus. Chapter 1. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Chapter 1 of The House of the Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Read by Nicodemus. The Old Pension Family. Halfway down a by-street of one of our New England towns stands a rusty wooden house with seven acutely-peaked gables facing towards various points of the compass and a huge clustered chimney in the midst. The street is Pension Street. The house is the Old Pension House. And an elm tree of wide circumference, rooted before the door, is familiar to every town-born child by the title of the Pension Elm. On my occasional visits to the town of Forsed, I seldom fail to turn down Pension Street for the sake of passing through the shadow of these two antiquities, the Great Elm Tree and the weather-beaten Edifice. The aspect of the venerable mansion has always affected me like a human countenance, bearing the traces not merely of outward storm and sunshine, but expressive also of the long lapse of mortal life and accompanying vicissitudes that have passed within. Were these to be worthily recounted, they would form a narrative of no small interest and instruction and possessing moreover a certain remarkable unity which might almost seem the result of artistic arrangement. But the story would include a chain of events extending over the better part of two centuries and written out with reasonable amplitude would fill a bigger folio volume or a longer series of duodesimos than can prudently be appropriated to the annals of all New England during a similar period. It consequently becomes imperative to make short work with most of the traditionary lore of which the Old Pension House, otherwise known as the House of the Seven Gables, has been the theme. With the brief sketch, therefore, of the circumstances amid which the foundation of the house was laid and a rapid glimpse at its quaint exterior, as it grew black in the prevalent East Wind, pointing to, here and there, at some spot of more verdant mossiness on its roof and walls, we shall commence the real action of our tale at an epoch not very remote from the present day. Still, there will be a connection with the long past, a reference to forgotten events and personages and to manners, feelings and opinions almost are wholly obsolete, which, if adequately translated to the reader, would serve to illustrate how much of old material goes to make up the freshest novelty of human life. Hence, too, might be drawn a weighty lesson from the little regarded truth that the act of the passing generation is the germ which may and must produce good or evil fruit in a far distant time. That, together with the seed of the merely temporary crop, which mortals term expediency, they inevitably sow the acorns of a more enduring growth which may darkly overshadow their posterity. The House of the Seven Gables, antique as it now looks, was not the first habitation erected by civilized man on precisely the same spot of ground. St. Vincent Street formally bore the humbler appellation of Maul's Lane from the name of the original occupant of the soil, before whose cottage door it was a cowpath. A natural spring of soft and pleasant water, a rare treasure on the Seagurt Peninsula where the Puritan settlement was made, had early induced Matthew Maul to build a hut, shaggy with thatch at this point, although somewhat too remote from what was then the centre of the village. In the growth of the town, however, after some thirty or forty years, the site covered by this rude hobble had become exceedingly desirable in the eyes of a prominent and powerful personage who asserted plausible claims to the proprietorship of this and a large adjacent tract of land on the strength of a grant from the legislature. Colonel Pynchon, the claimant, as we gather from whatever traits of him are preserved, was characterized by an iron energy of purpose. Matthew Maul, on the other hand, was an obscure man, was stubborn in the defence of what he considered his right, and for several years he succeeded in protecting the acre or two of earth which, with his own toil, he had hewn out of the primeval forest to be his garden ground and homestead. No written record of this dispute is known to be in existence. Our acquaintance with the whole subject is derived chiefly from tradition. It would be bold, therefore, and possibly unjust to venture a decisive opinion as to its merits. Although it appears to have been at least a matter of doubt whether Colonel Pynchon's claim were not unduly stretched in order to make it cover the small meets and bounds of Matthew Maul. What greatly strengthens such a suspicion is the fact that this controversy between two ill-matched antagonists, at a period moreover lauded as we may when personal influence had far more weight than now, remained for years undecided and came to a close only with the death of the party occupying the disputed soil. The mode of his death, too, affects the mind differently in our day from what it did a century and a half ago. It was a death that blasted with strange horror the humble name of the dweller in the cottage and made it seem almost a religious act to drive the plow over the little area of his habitation and obliterate his place and memory from among men. Old Matthew Maul, in a word, was executed for the crime of witchcraft. He was one of the martyrs to that terrible delusion which should teach us, among its other morals, that the influential classes and those who take upon themselves to be leaders of the people are fully liable to all the passionate error that has ever characterized the maddest mob. And, judges, statesmen, the wisest, calmest, holiest persons of their day stood in the inner circle round about the gallows, loudest to applaud the work of blood, latest to confess themselves miserably deceived. If any one part of their proceedings can be said to deserve less blame than another, it was the singular indiscrimination with which they persecuted, not merely the poor and aged as in former judicial massacres, but people of all ranks, their own equals, brethren, and wives. Amid the disorder of such various ruin, it is not strange that a man of inconsiderable note, like Maul, should have trodden the martyr's path to the hill of execution, almost unremarked in the throng of his fellow sufferers. But in after-days, when the frenzy of that hideous epoch had subsided, it was remembered how loudly Colonel Pension had joined in the general cry to urge the land from witchcraft. Nor did it fail to be whispered that there was an invidious acrimony in the zeal with which he had sought the condemnation of Matthew Maul. It was well known that the victim had recognized the bitterness of personal enmity in his persecutor's conduct towards him, and that he declared himself hunted to death for his spoil. At the moment of execution, with the halter about his neck, and while Colonel Pension sat on horseback, gazing at the scene, Maul had addressed him from the scaffold and uttered a prophecy of which history, as well as fireside tradition, has preserved the very words. God said the dying man, pointing his finger with a ghastly look at the undismayed countenance of his enemy, God will give him blood to drink. After the reputed wizard's death, his humble homestead had fallen an easy spoil into Colonel Pension's grasp. When it was first understood, however, that the Colonel intended to erect a family mansion, spacious, ponderously framed of oak and timber, and calculated to endure for many generations of his posterity over the spot first covered by the log-built hut of Matthew Maul, there was much shaking of the head among the village gossips. Without absolutely expressing a doubt whether the stalwart Puritan had acted as a man of conscience and integrity throughout the proceedings which have been sketched, they nevertheless hinted that he was about to build his house over an unquiet grave. His home would include the home of the dead and buried wizard, and would thus afford the ghost of the latter a kind of privilege to haunt its new apartments and the chambers into which future bridegrooms were to lead their brides and where children of the Pension blood were to be born. The terror and ugliness of Maul's crime and the wretchedness of his punishment would darken the freshly plastered walls and infect them early with the scent of an old and melancholy house. Why then, while so much of the soil around him was bestrewed with the virgin forest leaves, why should Colonel Pynchon prefer a site that had already been accursed? But the Puritan soldier in Magistrate was not a man to be turned aside from his well-considered scheme, either by dread of the wizard's ghost or by flimsy sentimentalities of any kind, however specious. Had he been told of a bad air, it might have moved him somewhat, but he was ready to encounter an evil spirit on his own ground. Endowed with common sense, as massive in as hard as blocks of granite, fastened together by stern rigidity of purpose as with iron clamps, he followed out his original design, probably without so much as imagining an objection to it. On the score of delicacy or any scrupulousness which a finer sensibility might have taught him, the Colonel, like most of his breed and generation, was impenetrable. He therefore dug his cellar and laid the deep foundations of his mansion on the square of earth whence Matthew Mall, 40 years before, had first swept away the fallen leaves. It was a curious, and as some people thought an ominous fact, that very soon after the workmen began their operations, a spring of water, above mentioned, entirely lost the deliciousness of its pristine quality. Whether its sources were disturbed by the depth of the new cellar or whatever subtler cause might lurk at the bottom, it is certain that the water of Mall's well, as it continued to be called, grew hard and brackish. Even such we find it now, and any old woman of the neighborhood will certify that it is productive of intestinal mischief to quench their thirst there. The reader may deem it singular that the head carpenter of the new edifice was no other than the son of the very man from whose dead gripe the property of the soil had been rested. Not improbably, he was the best workman of his time, or perhaps the Colonel thought it expedient or was impelled by some better feeling, thus openly to cast aside all animosity against the race of his fallen antagonist. Nor was it out of keeping with the general coarseness in matter of fact character of the age that the son should be willing to earn an honest penny or rather a weighty amount of sterling pounds from the purse of his father's deadly enemy. At all events, Thomas Mall became the architect of the House of the Seven Gables and performed his duty so faithfully that the timber framework fastened by his hands still holds together. Thus the great house was built, familiar as it stands in the writer's recollection for it has been an object of curiosity with him from boyhood, both as a specimen of the best and stateliest architecture of a long past epoch and as the scene of events more full of human interest perhaps than those of a grey feudal castle. Familiar as it stands in its rusty old age it is therefore only the more difficult to imagine the bright novelty with which it first caught the sunshine. The impression of its actual state at this distance of 160 years darkens inevitably through the picture which we would feign give of its appearance on the morning when the Puritan magnate bade all the town to be his guests. A ceremony of consecration, festive as well as religious, was now to be performed. A prayer and discourse from the reverend Mr. Higginson and the outpouring of a psalm from the general throat of the community was to be made acceptable to the grosser sense by ale, cider, wine and brandy and copious effusion and as some authorities aver by an ox roasted whole or at least by the weight and substance of an ox in more manageable joints and sirloins. The carcass of a deer shot within 20 miles had supplied material for the vast circumference of a pasty. A codfish of 60 pounds caught in the bay had been dissolved into the rich liquid of a chowder. The chimney of the new house in short belching forth its kitchen smoke impregnated the whole air with the scent of meats, fowls and fishes spicily concocted with odiferous herbs and onions in abundance. The mere smell of such festivity making its way to everybody's nostrils was at once an invitation and an appetite. Maul's Lane, or Pension Street as it were now more decorous to call it was thronged at the appointed hour as with the congregation on its way to church. All as they approached looked upward at the imposing edifice which was henceforth to assume its rank among the habitations of mankind. There it rose a little withdrawn from the line of the street but in pride not modesty. Its whole visible exterior was ornamented with quaint figures conceived in the grotesqueness of a gothic fancy and drawn or stamped in the glittering plaster composed of lime, pebbles and bits of glass with which the woodwork of the walls was overspread. On every side the seven gables pointed sharply towards the sky and presented the aspect of a whole sisterhood of edifices breathing through the spiracles of one great chimney. The many lattices with their small diamond shaped panes admitted the sunlight into hall and chamber while nevertheless the second story projecting far over the base and itself retiring beneath the third through a shadowy and thoughtful gloom into the lower rooms. Carved globes of wood were affixed under the jutting stories. Little spiral rods of iron beautified each of the seven peaks. On the triangular portion of the gable that fronted next to the street was a dial put up that very morning and on which the sun was still marking the passage of the first bright hour in a history that was not destined to be all so bright. All around were scattered shavings, chips, shingles, and broken halves of bricks. These together with the lately turned earth on which the grass had not begun to grow contributed to the impression of strangeness and novelty proper to a house that had yet its place to make among men's daily interests. The principal entrance which had almost the breadth of a church door was in the angle between the two front gables and was covered by an open porch with benches beneath its shelter. Under this arched doorway scraping their feet on the unworn threshold now trod the clergymen, the elders, the magistrates, the deacons, and whatever of aristocracy there was in town or county. This or two thronged the plebeian classes as freely as their betters and in larger number. Just within the entrance however stood two serving men pointing some of the guests to the neighborhood of the kitchen and ushering others into the statelier rooms. Hospitable alike to all but still with a scrutinizing regard to the high or low degree of each. Velvet garments somber but rich, stiffly plated ruffs and bands, embroidered gloves, venerable beards, the mean and countenance of authority made it easy to distinguish the gentleman of worship at that period from the tradesmen with his plodding air or the laborer in his leathern jerken stealing all stricken into the house which he had perhaps helped to build. One in auspicious circumstance there was which awakened a hardly concealed displeasure in the breasts of a few of the more punctilious visitors. The founder of this stately mansion, a gentleman noted for the square and ponderous courtesy of his demeanor ought surely to have stood in his own hall and to have offered the first welcome to so many eminent personages as he represented themselves in honor of his solemn festival. He was yet invisible. The most favored of his guests had not beheld him. This sluggishness on Colonel Pynchon's part became still more unaccountable when the second dignitary of the province made his appearance and found no more ceremonious a reception. The Lieutenant Governor, although his visit was one of the anticipated glories of the day, had alighted from his horse and assisted his lady from her sidesaddle and crossed the Colonel's threshold without other greeting than that of the principal domestic. This person, a gray-headed man of quiet and most respectful deportment, found it necessary to explain that his master still remained in his study or private apartment, on entering which an hour before he had expressed a wish on no account to be disturbed. "'Do not you see,' fellow,' said the high sheriff of the county, taking the servant aside, "'that this is no less a man than the Lieutenant Governor.'" Summon Colonel Pynchon at once. I know that he received letters from England this morning, and in the perusal and consideration of them an hour may have passed away without his noticing it, but he will be ill-pleased, I judge, if you suffer him to neglect the courtesy due to one of our chief rulers and who may be said to represent King William in the absence of the Governor himself. Call your master instantly. "'Nay, please,' your worship,' answered the man, in much perplexity, but with the backwardness that strikingly indicated the hard and severe character of Colonel Pynchon's domestic rule. My master's orders were exceeding strict, and as your worship knows he permits of no discretion in the obedience of those who owe him service. "'Let who list open yonder door, I dare not, though the Governor's own voice should bid me do it.'" "'Poo, poo,' Master Sheriff, cried the Lieutenant Governor, who had overheard the foregoing discussion and felt himself high enough in station to play a little with his dignity. "'I will take the matter into my own hands. It is time that the good Colonel came forth to greet his friends. Else we shall be apt to suspect that he has taken a sip too much of his canary wine and his extreme deliberation which casket were best to broach in honour of the day. But since he is so much behindhand, I will give him a remembrance or myself. Accordingly, with such a tramp of his ponderous writing-boots as might of itself have been audible in the remotest of the seven gables, he advanced to the door which the servant pointed out and made its new panels re-echo with a loud, free knock. Then, looking round with a smile to the spectators, he awaited a response. As none came, however, he knocked again, but with the same unsatisfactory result he burst. And now, being a trifle caloric in his temperament, the Lieutenant Governor uplifted the heavy hilt of his sword wherewith he so beat and banged upon the door that as some of the bystanders whispered the racket might have disturbed the dead. Be that as it might, it seemed to produce no awakening effect on Colonel Pension. When the sound subsided, the silence through the house was deep, dreary and oppressive, understanding that the tongues of many of the guests had already been loosened by a surreptitious cup or two of wine or spirits. Strange forsooth, very strange, cried the Lieutenant Governor whose smile was changed to a frown, but seeing that our host sets us the good example of forgetting ceremony, I shall likewise throw it aside and make free to intrude on his privacy. He tried the door which yielded to his hand a long wide open by a sudden gust of wind that passed, as with a loud sigh from the outermost portal through all the passages and apartments of the new house. It rustled the silk garments of the ladies and waved the long curls of the gentlemen's wigs and shook the window hangings and the curtains of the bed chambers, causing everywhere a singular stir which yet was more like a hush. A shadow of awe and half fearful anticipation, nobody knew where for nor of what, had all at once fallen over the company. They thronged, however, to the now open door pressing the Lieutenant Governor in the eagerness of their curiosity into the room in advance of them. At the first glimpse they beheld nothing extraordinary, a handsomely furnished room of moderate size somewhat darkened by curtains, books arranged on shelves, a large map on the wall and likewise a portrait of Colonel Pynchon beneath which sat the original Colonel himself in an oaken elbow chair with a pen in his hand. Letters, parchment and blank sheets of paper were on the table before him. He appeared to gaze at the curious crowd in front of which stood the Lieutenant Governor and there was a frown on his dark and massive countenance as if sternly resentful of the boldness that had impelled them into his private retirement. A little boy, the Colonel's grandchild and the only human being that ever dared to be familiar with him now made his way among the guests and ran towards the seated figure then pausing half way he began to shriek with terror. The company, tremulous as the leaves of a tree when all are shaking together, drew nearer and perceived that there was an unnatural distortion in the fixedness of Colonel Pynchon's stare, that there was blood on his rough and that his hoary beard was saturated with it. It was too late to give assistance. The iron-hearted Puritan, the relentless persecutor, the grasping and strong-willed man was dead, dead in his new house. There is a tradition only worth alluding to as lending a tinge of superstitious awe to a scene perhaps gloomy enough without it that a voice spoke loudly among the guests, the tones of which were like those of old Matthew Mall, the executed wizard. God hath given him blood to drink. Thus, early had that one guest, the only guest who is certain at one time or another, to find his way into every human dwelling. Thus, early had death stepped across the threshold of the house of the seven gables. Colonel Pynchon's sudden and mysterious end made a vast deal of noise in its day. There were many rumors, some of which have vaguely drifted down to the present time, how that appearance is indicated violence, that there were the marks of fingers on his throat and the print of a bloody hand on his plated rough, and that his peaked beard was disheveled as if it had been fiercely clutched and pulled. It was a word likewise that the lattice window near the Colonel's chair was open, and that only a few minutes before the fatal occurrence the figure of a man had been seen clambering over the garden fence in the rear of the house. But it were folly to lay any stress on stories of this kind, which are sure to spring up around such an event as that now related, and which, as in the present case, sometimes prolong themselves for ages afterwards, like the toadstools that indicate where the fallen and buried trunk of a tree has long since molded into the earth. For our own part, we allow them just as little credence as to that other fable of the skeleton hand which the Lieutenant Governor was said to have seen at the Colonel's throat, but which vanished away as he advanced farther into the room. Certain it is, however, that there was a great consultation in dispute of doctors over the dead body. One, John Swinerton by name, who appears to have been a man of eminence, upheld it if we have rightly understood his terms of art to be a case of apoplexy. His professional brethren, each for himself, adopted various hypotheses, more or less plausible, but all dressed out in a perplexing mystery of phrase, which, if it do not show bewilderment of mind in these erudite physicians, certainly causes it in the unlearned peruser of their opinions. The Coroner's jury sat upon the corpse, and like sensible men, returned an unassailable verdict of blood and death. It is indeed difficult to imagine that there could have been a serious suspicion of murder, or the slightest grounds for implicating any particular individual as the perpetrator. The rank, wealth, and eminent character of the deceased must have ensured the strictest scrutiny into every ambiguous circumstance. As none such is on record, it is safe to assume that none existed. Tradition, which sometimes brings down truth that history may slip, but is often the wild babble of the time, such as was formerly spoken at the fireside and now congeals in newspapers, tradition is responsible for all contrary averments. In Colonel Pynchon's funeral sermon, which was printed and is still extant, the reverend Mr. Higginson enumerates among the many felicities of his distinguished parishioner's earthly career, the happy seasonableness of his death. His duties all performed, the highest prosperity attained, his race and future generations fixed on a stable basis, and with a stately roof to shelter them for centuries to come. What other upward step remained for this good man to take, saved the final step from earth to the golden gate of heaven. The pious clergyman surely would not have uttered words like these, had he in the least suspected that the Colonel had been thrust out of violence upon his throat. The family of Colonel Pynchon, at the epoch of his death, seemed destined to as fortunate a permanence as can any wise consist with the inherent instability of human affairs. It might fairly be anticipated that the progress of time would rather increase and ripen their prosperity than wear away and destroy it. For not only had his son and heir come into immediate enjoyment of a rich estate, but there was a claim through an Indian deed confirmed by a subsequent grant of the General Court to a vast and as yet unexplored and unmeasured tract of eastern lands. These possessions, for as such they might almost certainly be reckoned, comprised the greater part of what is now known as Waldo County in the state of Maine, and were more extensive than many adductum or even a reigning prince's territory on European soil. When the pathless forest that still covered this wild principality should give place, as it inevitably must, though perhaps not till ages hence, to the golden fertility of human culture, it would be the source of incalculable wealth to the pension blood. Had the colonel survived only a few weeks longer, it is probable that his great political influence and powerful connections at home and abroad would have consummated all that was necessary to render the claim available. But in spite of good Mr. Higginson's congratulatory eloquence, this appeared to be the one thing which Colonel Pynchon, provident and sagacious as he was, had allowed to go at loose ends. So far as the prospective territory was concerned, he unquestionably died too soon. His son lacked not merely the father's eminent position, but the talent and force of character to achieve it. He could therefore affect nothing by dentive political interest, and the bare justice or legality of the claim was not so apparent after the colonel's decease, as it had been pronounced in his lifetime. Some connecting link had slipped out of the evidence and could not anywhere be found. Efforts, it is true, were made by the Pynchons, not only then, but at various periods for nearly a hundred years afterwards to obtain what they stubbornly persisted in deeming their right. But in course of time, the territory was partly regretted to more favored individuals, and partly cleared and occupied by actual settlers. These last, if they ever heard of the Pynchon title, would have laughed at the idea of any man's asserting a right on the strength of mole departments, signed with the fated autographs of governors and legislators long dead and forgotten to the lands which they or their fathers had rested from the wild hand of nature by their own sturdy toil. This impalpable claim, therefore, resulted in nothing more solid than to cherish from generation to generation an absurd delusion of family importance, which all along characterized the Pynchons. It caused the poorest member of the race to feel as if he inherited a kind of nobility and might yet come into the possession of princely wealth to support it. In the better specimens of the breed, this peculiarity threw an ideal grace over the hard material of human life without stealing away any truly valuable quality. In the baser sort, its effect was to increase the liability to sluggishness and dependence and induce the victim of a shadowy hope to remit all self-effort while awaiting the realization of his dreams. Years and years after their claim had passed out of the public memory, the Pynchons were accustomed to consult the Colonel's ancient map which had been projected while Aldo County was still in unbroken wilderness. Where the old land surveyor had put down woods, lakes and rivers, they marked out the cleared spaces and dotted the villages and towns and calculated the progressively increasing value of the territory as if they were yet a prospect of its ultimately forming a Princeton for themselves. In almost every generation, nevertheless, there happened to be some one descendant of the family gifted with the portion of the hard, keen sense and practical energy that had so remarkably distinguished the original founder. His character, indeed, might be traced all the way down as distinctly if the Colonel himself, a little diluted, had been gifted with the sort of intermittent immortality on earth. At two or three epochs when the fortunes of the family were low, this representative of hereditary qualities had made his appearance and caused the traditionary gossips of the town to whisper among themselves. Here is the old pension come again, now the seven gables will be new shingled. From father to son they clung to the ancestral house with singular tenacity of home attachment. For various reasons, however, and from impressions often too vaguely founded to be put on paper, the writer cherishes the belief that many, if not most, of the successive proprietors of the estate were troubled with doubts as to their moral right to hold it. Of their legal tenure there could be no question, but old Matthew Mall, it is to be feared, trod downward from his own age to a far later one, planting a heavy footstep all the way on the conscience of a pension. If so, we are left to dispose of the awful query, whether each inheritor of the property, conscious of wrong and failing to rectify it, did not commit anew the great guilt of his ancestor and incur all its original responsibilities. And supposing such to be the case would it not be a far truer mode of expression to say of the pension family that they inherited a great misfortune than the reverse. We have already hinted that it is not our purpose to trace down the history of the pension family in its unbroken connection with the house of the seven gables, nor to show as in a magic picture how the rustiness and infirmity of age gathered over the venerable house itself. As regards its interior life, a large, dim looking glass used to hang in one of the rooms, and was fabled to contain within its depths all the shapes that had ever been reflected there. The old Colonel himself and his many descendants summoned the garb of antique babyhood and others in the bloom of feminine beauty or manly prime or saddened with the wrinkles of the age. Had we the secret of that mirror, we would gladly sit down before it and transfer its revelations to our page. But there was a story for which it is difficult to conceive any foundation, that the posterity of Matthew Mall had some connection with the mystery of the looking glass, and that by what appears to have been a sort of mesmeric process, they could make its inner region all alive with the departed pensions, not nor in their better and happier hours, but as doing over again some deed of sin or in the crisis of life's bitterest sorrow. The popular imagination, indeed, long kept itself busy with the affair of the old Puritan pension and the wizard Mall. The curse which the latter flung from his scaffold was remembered with the very important addition, that it had become a part of the pension inheritance. If one wriggle in his throat, a bystander would be likely enough to whisper between Jess and Ernest, he has Mall's blood to drink. The sudden death of a pension about a hundred years ago with circumstances very similar to what have been related of the Colonel's exit, was held as giving additional probability to the received opinion on this topic. It was considered, moreover, an ugly and ominous circumstance, that Colonel Pension's picture of obedience, it was said to a provision of his will, remain affixed to the wall of the room in which he died. Those stern and mitigable features seemed to symbolize an evil influence, and so darkly to mingle the shadow of their presence with the sunshine of the passing hour, that no good thoughts or purposes could ever spring up and blossom there. To the thoughtful mind there will be no tinge of superstition in what we figuratively saw, affirming that the ghost of a dead progenitor, perhaps as a portion of his own punishment, is often doomed to become the evil genius of his family. The Pensions, in brief, lived along for the better part of two centuries, with perhaps less of outward vicissitude than has attended most other New England families during the same period of time. Possessing very distinctive traits of their own, they nevertheless took the general characteristics of the little ones. A town noted for its frugal, discreet, well-ordered and home-loving inhabitants, as well as for the somewhat confined scope of its sympathies. But in which, be it said, there are other individuals, and now and then stranger occurrences than one meets with almost anywhere else. During the Revolution, the pension of that epoch, adopting the royal side, became a refugee, but repented and made his reappearance, just at the point of time, to preserve the house of the seven gables from confiscation. For the last seventy years, the most noted event in the pension annals had been likewise the heaviest calamity that ever befell the race, no less than the violent death, for so it was judged, of one member of the family by the criminal act of another. Certain circumstances attending this fatal occurrence had brought the deed irresistibly home to a nephew of the deceased pension. The young man was tried and convicted of the crime, but either the circumstantial nature of the evidence and possibly some lurking doubts in the breast of the executive, or lastly an argument of greater weight in a republic than it could have been under a monarchy, the high respectability and political influence of the criminals' connections had availed to mitigate his doom from death to perpetual imprisonment. This sad affair had chanced about thirty years before the action of our story commences. Laterally there were rumours which few believed and only one or two felt greatly interested in, that this long buried man was likely, for some reason or other, to be summoned forth from his living tomb. It is essential to say a few words respecting the victim of this now almost forgotten murder. He was an old bachelor and possessed of great wealth in addition to the house in real estate which constituted what remained of the ancient pension property. Being of an eccentric and melancholy turn of mind and greatly given to rummaging old records in hearkening to old traditions, he had brought himself, it is a word, to the conclusion that Matthew Maugh the wizard had been fowlly wronged out of his homestead if not out of his life. Such being the case and he the old bachelor in possession of the ill-gotten spoil with the black stain of blood sunk in deep into it and still to be scented by conscientious nostrils, the question occurred whether it were not imperative upon him, even at this late hour, to make a restitution to Maugh's posterity. To a man living so much in the past and so little in the present as the secluded and antiquarian old bachelor, a century and a half seemed not so vast a period as to obviate the propriety of substituting right for wrong. It was the belief of those who knew him best that he would positively have taken the very singular step of giving up the house of the seven gables to the representative of Matthew Maugh, but for the unspeakable tumult which a suspicion of the old gentleman's project awakened among his pension relatives. Their exertions had the effect of suspending his purpose, but it was feared that he would perform after death by the operation of his last will what he had so hardly been prevented from doing in his proper lifetime. But there is no one thing which men so rarely do whatever the provocation or inducement as to bequeath patrimonial property away from their own blood. They may love other individuals far better than their relatives, they may even cherish dislike or positive hatred to the latter, but yet in view of death the strong prejudice of propinquity revives and impels the testator to send down his estate and the line marked out by customs so immemorial that it looks like nature. In all the pensions this feeling had the energy of disease it was too powerful for the conscientious scruples of the old bachelor at whose death accordingly the mansion house together with most of the other riches passed into the possession of his next legal representative. This was a nephew the cousin of the miserable young man who had been convicted of the uncle's murder. The new heir up to the period of his ascension was reckoned rather a dissipated youth but had it once reformed and made himself an exceedingly respectable member of society. In fact he showed more of the pension quality and had won higher eminence in the world than any of his race since the time of the original Puritan. Applying himself in earlier manhood to the study of the law and having a natural tendency towards office he had attained many years ago to a judicial station in some inferior court which gave him for life the very desirable and imposing title of judge. Later he had engaged in politics and served a part of two terms in congress besides making a considerable figure in both branches of the state legislature. Judge pension was unquestionably an honor to his race. He had built himself a country seat within a few miles of his native town and there spent such portions of his time as could be spared from public service in the display of every grace and virtue as a newspaper phrased it on the eve of an election befitting the Christian, the good citizen, the horticulturist and the gentleman. There were few of the pensions left to sun themselves in the glow of the judge's prosperity. In respect to natural increase the breed had not thriven to be dying out. The only members of the family known to be extant were first the judge himself and a single surviving son who was now traveling in Europe. Next the 30 years prisoner already alluded to and a sister of the latter who occupied in an extremely retired manner the house of the seven gables in which she had a life estate by the will of the old bachelor. She was understood to be wretchedly poor and seemed to make it her choice to remain so in as much as her affluent cousin the judge had repeatedly offered her all the comforts of life either in the old mansion or his own modern residence. The last and youngest pension was a little country girl of 17 the daughter of another of the judge's cousins who had married a young woman of no family or property and died early and in poor circumstances. His widow had recently taken another husband. In Matthew Mall's posterity it was supposed now to be extinct for a very long period after the witchcraft delusion however the malls had continued to inhabit the town where their progenitor had suffered so unjust a death. To all appearance they were a quiet honest well-meaning race of people cherishing no malice against individuals or the public for the wrong which had been done them or if at their own fireside they transmitted from father to child any hostile recollection of the wizard's fate and their lost patrimony it was never acted upon nor openly expressed nor would it have been singular had they ceased to remember that the house of the seven gables was resting its heavy framework on a foundation that was rightfully their own there is something so massive stable and almost irresistibly imposing in the exterior of established rank and great possessions that their very existence seems to give them a right to exist at least so excellent a counterfeit of right that few poor and humble men have moral force enough to question it even in their secret minds such is the case now after so many ancient prejudices have been overthrown and it was far more so in anti-revolutionary days when the aristocracy could venture to be proud and the low were content to be abased thus the malls at all events kept their resentments within their own breasts they were generally poverty stricken always plebian and obscure working with unsuccessful diligence at handicrafts laboring on the wharves or following the sea as sailors before the mast living here and there about the town in higher tenements and coming finally to the alms house as the natural home of their old age at last after creeping as it were for such a length of time in an opaque puddle of obscurity they had taken that downright plunge which sooner or later is the destiny of all families whether princely or plebian for thirty years past neither town record nor gravestone nor the directory nor the knowledge or memory of man bore any trace of matthew malls descendants his blood might possibly exist elsewhere here where its lowly current could be traced so far back to keep an onward course so long as any of the race were to be found they had been marked out from other men not strikingly nor as with the sharp line but with an effect that was felt rather than spoken of by an hereditary character of reserve their companions or those who endeavored to become such grew conscious of a circle round about the malls within the sanctity or the spell of which in spite of an exterior of sufficient frankness and good fellowship it was impossible for any man to step it was this indefinable peculiarity perhaps that by insulating them from human aid kept them always so unfortunate in life it certainly operated to prolong in their case and to confirm to them as their only inheritance those feelings of repugnance and superstitious terror with which the people of the town even after awakening from their frenzy continued to regard the memory of the reputed witches the mantle or rather the ragged cloak of old Matthew Maugh had fallen upon his children they were half believed to inherit mysterious attributes the family eye was said to possess strange power among other good for nothing properties and privileges one was especially assigned them that of exercising an influence over people's dreams the pensions if all stories were true haughtily as they bore themselves in the noonday streets of their native town were no better than bond servants to these plebian mauls on entering the topsy-turvy commonwealth of sleep modern psychology it may be will endeavor to reduce these alleged necromancies within a system instead of rejecting them as altogether fabulous a descriptive paragraph or two treating of the seven gabled mansion in its more recent aspect will bring this preliminary chapter to a close the street in which it upreared its venerable peaks has long ceased to be a fashionable quarter of the town so that though the old edifice was surrounded by habitations of modern date they were mostly small built entirely of wood and typical of the most plodding uniformity of common life doubtless however the whole story of human existence may be latent in each of them but with no picturesqueness externally that can attract the imagination or sympathy to seek it there but as for the old structure of our story its white oak frame and its boards, shingles and crumbling plaster and even the huge clustered chimney in the midst seemed to constitute only the least and meanest part of its reality so much of mankind's varied experience had passed there so much had been suffered and something too enjoyed that the very timbers were oozy as with the moisture of a heart it was itself like a great human heart with a life of its own and full of rich and sombre reminiscences the deep projection of the second story gave the house such a meditative look that you could not pass it without the idea that it had secrets to keep and an eventful history to moralize upon in front just on the edge of the unpaved sidewalk grew the pension elm which in reference to such trees as one usually meets with might well be termed gigantic it had been planted by a great grandson of the first pension and though now four score years of age or perhaps nearer a hundred was still in its strong and broad maturity throwing its shadow from side to side of the street overtopping the seven gables and sweeping the whole black roof with its pendant foliage it gave beauty to the old edifice and seemed to make it a part of nature the street having been widened about forty years ago the front gable was now precisely on a line with it on either side extended a ruinous wooden fence of open lattice work through which could be seen a grassy yard and especially in the angles of the building an enormous fertility of burdock with leaves it is hardly an exaggeration to say two or three feet long behind the house there appeared to be a garden which undoubtedly had once been extensive but was now infringed upon by other enclosures or shut in by habitations and outbuildings that stood on another street it would be an omission trifling indeed but unpardonable where we to forget the green moss that had long since gathered over the projections of the windows and on the slopes of the roof nor must we fail to direct the reader's eye to a crop not of weeds but flower shrubs which were growing aloft in the air not a great way from the chimney between two of the gables they were called Alice's posies the tradition was that a certain Alice pension had flung up the seeds in sport and that the dust of the street and the decay of the roof gradually formed a kind of soil for them out of which they grew when Alice had long been in her grave however the flowers might have come there it was both sad and sweet to observe how nature adopted to herself this desolate decaying gusty rusty old house of the pension family and how the ever returning summer did her best to gladden it with tender beauty and grew melancholy in the effort there is one other feature very essential to be noticed but which we greatly fear may damage any picturesque and romantic impression which we have been willing to throw over our sketch of this respectable edifice and the front gable under the impending brow of the second story and contiguous to the street was a shop door divided horizontally in the midst and with the window for its upper segment such as is often seen in dwellings of a somewhat ancient date this same shop door had been a subject of no slight mortification to the present occupant of the August pension house as well as to some of her predecessors the matter is disagreeably delicate to handle but since the reader must needs be let into the secret he will please to understand that about a century ago the head of the pensions found himself involved in serious financial difficulties the fellow gentleman as he styled himself can hardly have been other than a spurious interloper for instead of seeking office from the king or the royal governor or urging his hereditary claim to eastern lands he rethought himself of no better avenue to wealth than by cutting a shop door for residents it was the custom of the time indeed for merchants to store their goods and transact business in their own dwellings but there was something pitifully small in this old pensions mode of setting about his commercial operations it was whispered that with his own hands all be ruffled as they were he used to give change for a shilling and would turn a half penny twice over to make sure that it was a good one beyond all question he had the blood of a petty huckster in his veins through whatever channel it may have found its way there immediately on his death the shop door had been locked bolted and barred and down to the period of our story had probably never once been opened the old counter shelves and other fixtures of the little shop remained just as he had left them it used to be affirmed that the dead shopkeeper in a white wig, a faded velvet coat an apron at his waist his ruffles carefully turned back from his wrists might be seen through the chinks of the shutters any night of the year ransacking his till or pouring over the dingy pages of his daybook from the look of an utterable woe upon his face it appeared to be his doom to spend eternity in a vain effort to make his accounts balanced and now in a very humble way as will be seen we proceed to open our narrative end of chapter one the house of the seven gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne read by Nicodemus chapter two this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org chapter two of the house of the seven gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne read by Nicodemus the little shop window it still lacked half an hour of sunrise when mishaps of a pension we will not say awoke it being doubtful whether the poor lady had so much as closed her eyes during the brief night of midsummer but at all events arose from her solitary pillow and began what it would be mockery to term the adornment of her person far from us be the endicorum of assisting even in imagination at a maiden lady's toilet the story must therefore await mishaps of a at the threshold of her chamber only presuming meanwhile to note some of the heavy size that labored from her bosom with little restraint as to their legubrious depth and volume of sound and as much as they could be audible to nobody save a disembodied listener like ourself the old maid was alone in the old house alone except for a certain respectable and orderly young man the artist in the daguerreotype line who for about three months back had been a lodger in a remote gable quite a house by itself indeed with locks, bolts and oaken bars and all the intervening doors inaudible consequently were poor mishaps of the gusty size inaudible the creaking joints of her stiffened knees as she knelt down by the bedside and inaudible too by mortal ear but heard with all comprehending love and pity in the farthest heaven that almost agony of prayer now whispered now aggrown now a struggling silence wherewith she besought the divine assistance through the day evidently this is to be a day of more than ordinary trial to Miss Hepsiba who far above a quarter of a century gone by has dwelt in strict seclusion taking no part in the business of life and just as little in its intercourse and pleasures not with such fervor praise the torpid recluse looking forward to the cold sunless stagnant calm of a day that is to be like innumerable yesterdays the maiden ladies devotions are concluded will she now issue forth over the threshold of our story not yet by many moments first every drawer in the tall old-fashioned bureau is to be opened with difficulty and with the succession of spasmodic jerks then almost close again with the same fidgety reluctance there is a rustling of stiff silks a tread of backward and forward footsteps to and fro across the chamber we suspect Miss Hepsiba moreover of taking a step upward into a chair in order to give heedful regard to her appearance on all sides and at full length in the oval dingy-framed toilet glass that hangs above her table truly well indeed who would have thought it is all this precious time to be lavished on the matutinal repair and beautifying of an elderly person who never goes abroad whom nobody ever visits and from whom, when she shall have done her utmost it were the best charity to turn one's eyes another way now she is almost ready let us pardon her one other pause for it is given to the soul sentiment or we might better say heightened and rendered intense as it has been by sorrow and seclusion to the strong passion of her life we heard the turning of a key in a small lock she has opened a secret drawer of an escritoir and is probably looking at a certain miniature done in Malbone's most perfect style in representing a face worthy of no less delicate a pencil it was once our good fortune to see this picture it is a likeness of a young man in a silken dressing gown of an old fashion the soft richness of which is well adapted to the countenance of reverie with its full tender lips and beautiful eyes that seem to indicate not so much capacity of thought as gentle and voluptuous emotion of the possessor of such features we shall have a right to ask nothing except that he would take the rude world easily and make himself happy in it can it have been an early lover of Miss Hepsiba? no, she never had a lover-poor thing how could she? nor ever knew by her own experience what love technically means and yet her undying faith and trust her fresh remembrance and continual devotedness towards the original of that miniature have been the only substance for her heart to feed upon she seems to have put aside the miniature and is standing again before the toilet glass there are tears to be wiped off a few more footsteps to and fro and here at last with another pitiful sigh like a gust of chilled damp wind out of a long closed vault the door of which has accidentally been set ajar here comes Miss Hepsiba Pension forth she steps into the dusky time-darkened passage a tall figure clad in black silk with a long and shrunken waist feeling her way towards the stairs like a nearsighted person as in truth she is the sun meanwhile if not already above the horizon was ascending nearer and nearer to its verge a few clouds floating high upward caught some of the earliest light and threw down its golden gleam on the windows of all the houses in the street not forgetting the house of the seven gables which many such sunrises as it had witnessed looked cheerfully at the present one the reflected radiance served to show pretty distinctly the aspect and arrangement of the room which Hepsiba entered after descending the stairs it was a low studded room with a beam across the ceiling paneled with dark wood and having a large chimney piece set round with pictured tiles but now closed by an iron fire-board through which ran the funnel of a modern stove there was a carpet on the floor originally of rich texture but so worn and faded in these latter years that its once brilliant figure had quite vanished into one indistinguishable hue in the way of furniture there were two tables one constructed with perplexing intricacy and exhibiting as many feet as a centipede the other most delicately wrought with four long and slender legs so apparently frail that it was almost incredible what a length of time the ancient tea table had stood upon them half a dozen chairs stood about the room straight and stiff and so ingeniously contrived for the discomfort of the human person that they were irksome even to sight and conveyed the ugliest possible idea of the state of society to which they could have been adapted one exception there was however in a very antique elbow chair with a high back carved elaborately in oak and a roomy depth within its arms that made up by its spacious comprehensiveness for the lack of any of those artistic curves which abound in a modern chair as for ornamental articles of furniture we recollect but two if such they may be called one was a map of the pension territory at the eastward not engraved but the handiwork of some skillful old draftsman were testically illuminated with pictures of Indians and wild beasts among which was seen a lion the natural history of the region being as little known as its geography which was put down most fantastically awry the other adornment was the portrait of old colonel pension at two-thirds length representing the stern features of a puritanic looking personage in a skullcap with the laced band and grizzly beard holding a bible with one hand and the other uplifting an iron sword hilt the latter object being more successfully depicted by the artist stood out in far greater prominence than the sacred volume face to face with this picture on entering the apartment Ms. Hepsiva pension came to a pause regarding it with a singular scowl a strange contortion of the brow which by people who did not know her would probably have been interpreted as an expression of bitter anger but it was no such thing she in fact felt a reverence for the pictured visage of which only a far descended and time-stricken virgin could be susceptible and this forbidding scowl was the innocent result of her nearsightedness and an effort so to concentrate her powers of vision as to substitute a firm outline of the object instead of a vague one we must linger a moment on this unfortunate expression of poor Hepsiva's brow her scowl as the world or such part of it as sometimes caught a transitory glimpse of her at the window wickedly persisted in calling it her scowl had done Ms. Hepsiva a very ill office in establishing her character as an ill-tempered old maid nor does it appear improbable that by often gazing at herself in a dim-looking glass and perpetually encountering her own frown with its ghostly sphere she had been led to interpret the expression almost as unjustly as the world did how miserably cross I look she must often have whispered to herself and ultimately have fancied herself so by a sense of inevitable doom but her heart never frowned it was naturally tender sensitive and full of little trimmers and palpitations all of which weaknesses it retained while her visage was growing so perversely stern and even fierce nor had Hepsiva ever any hardyhood except what came from the very warmest nook in her affections all this time however we are loitering faint heartedly on the threshold of our story in very truth we have an invincible reluctance to disclose what Ms. Hepsiva pension was about to do it has already been observed that in the basement story of the gable fronting on the street an unworthy ancestor nearly a century ago had fitted up a shop ever since the old gentleman retired from trade and fell asleep under his coffin lid not only the shop door but the inner arrangements had been suffered to remain unchanged while the dust of ages gathered inch deep over the shelves and counter and partly filled an old pair of scales as if it were of value enough to be weighed it treasured itself up too in the half open till where there still lingered a base six pence worth neither more nor less than the hereditary pride which had here been put to shame such had been the state and condition of the little shop in Hepsiva's childhood when she and her brother used to play at hide and seek in its forsaken precincts so it had remained until within a few days past but now though the shop window was still closely curtained from the public gaze a remarkable change had taken place in its interior the rich and heavy festoons of cobweb that had cost a long ancestral secession of spiders their life's labor to spin and weave had been carefully brushed away from the ceiling the counter, shelves and floor had all been scoured and the latter was over strewn with fresh blue sand the brown scales too had evidently undergone rigid discipline in an unavailing effort to rub off the rust which alas had eaten through and through their substance neither was the little old shop any longer empty of merchantable goods a curious eye, privileged to take an account of stock and investigate behind the counter would have discovered a barrel yay two or three barrels and half ditto one containing flour another apples and a third perhaps Indian meal there was likewise a square box of pine wood full of soap and bars also another of the same size in which there were tallow candles 10 to the pound a small stock of brown sugar some white beans and split peas and a few other commodities of low price and such as are constantly in demand made up the bulkier portion of the merchandise it might have been taken for a ghostly or phantasmagoric reflection of the old shopkeeper pensions shabbily provided shelves save that some of the articles were of a description and outward form which could hardly have been known in his day for instance, there was a glass pickle jar filled with fragments of Gibraltar rock not indeed splinters of the veritable stone foundation of the famous fortress but bits of delectable candy neatly done up in white paper Jim Crow more over was seen executing his world-renowned dance in gingerbread a party of leaden dragoons were galloping along one of the shelves in equipments and uniform of modern cut and there were some sugar figures with no strong resemblance to the humanity of any epoch but less unsatisfactorily representing our own fashions than those of a hundred years ago another phenomenon still more strikingly modern was a package of Lucifer matches which in old times would have been thought actually to borrow their instantaneous flame from the nether fires of Tofet in short, to bring the matter at once to a point it was incontrovertibly evident that somebody had taken the shop and fixtures of the long-retired and forgotten Mr. Pension and was about to renew the enterprise of that departed worthy with a different set of customers who could this bold adventurer be? and of all places in the world why had he chosen the House of the Seven Gables as the scene of his commercial speculations? we returned to the elderly maiden she at length withdrew her eyes from the dark countenance of the Colonel's portrait heaved a sigh indeed her breast was a very cave of Aolus that morning and stepped across the room on tiptoe as is the customary gate of elderly women passing through an intervening passage she opened a door that communicated with the shop just now so elaborately described owing to the projection of the upper story and still more to the thick shadow of the pension elm which stood almost directly in front of the gable the twilight here was still as much akin to night as morning another heavy sigh from Ms. Hepsipa after a moment's pause on the threshold peering towards the window with her nearsighted scow as if frowning down some bitter enemy she suddenly projected herself into the shop the haste and as it were the galvanic impulse of the movement were really quite startling nervously in a sort of frenzy we might almost say she began to busy herself in arranging some children's play things and other little wares on the shelves and at the shop window in the aspect of this dark arrayed pale faced lady like old figure there was a deeply tragic character that contrasted irreconcilably with the ludicrous pettiness of her employment it seemed a queer anomaly that so gaunt and dismal a personage should take a toy in hand a miracle that the toy did not vanish in her grasp a miserably absurd idea that she should go on perplexing her stiff and somber intellect with the question how to tempt little boys into her premises yet such is undoubtedly her object now she places a gingerbread elephant against the window but with so tremulous a touch that it tumbles upon the floor with the dismemberment of three legs in its trunk it has ceased to be an elephant and has become a few bits of musty gingerbread there again she has upset a tumbler of marbles all of which roll different ways and each individual marble devil directed into the most difficult obscurity that it can find heaven help our poor old Hepsaba and forgive us for taking a ludicrous view of her position as her rigid and rusty frame goes down upon its hands and knees in quest of the absconding marbles we positively feel so much the more inclined to shed tears of sympathy from the very fact that we must need to turn aside and laugh at her for here and if we fail to impress it suitably upon the reader it is our own fault not that of the theme here is one of the truest points of melancholy interest that occur in everyday life it was the final throw of what called itself old gentility a lady who had fed herself from childhood with the shadowy food of aristocratic reminiscences and whose religion it was that a lady's hand soils itself irremediably by doing ought for bread this born lady after sixty years of narrowing means is feigned to step down from her pedestal of imaginary rank poverty treading closely at her heels for a lifetime has come up with her at last she must earn her own food or starve and we have stolen upon Miss Hepsaba pension too irreverently at the instant of time when the patrician lady is to be transformed into the plebeian woman in this republican country amid the fluctuating waves of our social life somebody is always at the drowning point the tragedy is enacted with as continual a repetition is that of a popular drama on a holiday and nevertheless is felt as deeply perhaps as when an hereditary noble sinks below his order more deeply since with us rank is the grosser substance of wealth and a splendid establishment and has no spiritual existence after the death of these but dies hopelessly along with them and therefore since we have been unfortunate enough to introduce our heroine at so inauspicious a juncture we would entreat for a mood of due solemnity in the spectators of her fate let us behold in poor Hepsaba the immemorial lady two hundred years old on this side of the water and thrices many on the other with her antique portraits pedigrees coats of arms records and traditions and her claim as joint heiress to that princely territory at the eastward no longer a wilderness but a populous fertility born too in pension street under the pension elm and in the pension house where she has spent all her days reduced now in that very house to be the hucksteress of a cent shop this business of setting up a petty shop is almost the only resource of women in circumstances at all similar to those of our unfortunate recluse with her nearsightedness and those tremulous fingers of hers at once inflexible and delicate she could not be a seamstress although her sampler of fifty years gone by exhibited some of the most recondite specimens of ornamental needlework a school for little children had been often in her thoughts and at one time she had begun a review of her early studies in the new england primer with a view to prepare herself for the office of instructress but the love of children had never been quickened in hepsiba's heart and was now torpid if not extinct she watched the little people of the neighbourhood from her chamber window and doubted whether she could tolerate a more intimate acquaintance with them besides in our day the very ABC has become a science greatly too abstruse to be any longer taught by pointing a pin from letter to letter a modern child could teach old hepsiba more than old hepsiba could teach the child so with many a cold, deep heart quake at the idea of at last coming into sorted contact with the world from which she had so long kept aloof while every added day of seclusion had rolled another stone against the cavern door of her hermitage the thing be thought herself of the ancient shop window the rusty scales and dusty till she might have held back a little longer but another circumstance, not yet hinted at had somewhat hastened her decision her humble preparations therefore were duly made and the enterprise was now to be commenced nor was she entitled to complain of any remarkable singularity in her fate for in the town of her nativity we might point to several little shops of a similar description some of them in houses as ancient as that of the Seven Gables and one or two it may be where a decayed gentlewoman stands behind the counter as grim an image of family pride as Miss Hepsiba pension herself it was overpoweringly ridiculous we must honestly confess it the deportment of the maiden lady while setting her shop in order for the public eye she stole on tiptoe to the window as cautiously as if she conceived some bloody-minded villain to be watching behind the elm tree with intent to take her life stretching out her long, length arm she put a paper of pearl buttons a jewels harp or whatever the small article might be in its destined place and straight away vanished back into the dusk as if the world need never hope for another glimpse of her it might have been fancied indeed that she expected to minister to the wants of the community unseen like a disembodied divinity or enchantress holding forth her bargains to the reverential and awe-stricken purchaser in an invisible hand but Hepsiba had no such flattering dream she was well aware that she must ultimately come forward and stand revealed in her proper individuality but like other sensitive persons she could not bear to be observed in the gradual process and chose rather to flash forth on the world's astonished gaze at once the inevitable moment was not much longer to be delayed the sunshine might now be seen stealing down the front of the opposite house from the windows of which came a reflected gleam struggling through the boughs of the elm tree and enlightening the interior of the shop more distinctly than here to fore the town appeared to be waking up a baker's cart had already rattled through the street chasing away the latest vestige of night's sanctity with the jingle-jangle of its dissonant bells a milkman was distributing the contents of his cans from door to door and the harsh peel of a fisherman's conch shell was heard far off around the corner none of these tokens escaped Hepsiba's notice the moment had arrived to delay longer would be only to lengthen out her misery nothing remained except to take down the bar from the shop door leaving the entrance free welcome as if all were household friends to every passerby whose eyes might be attracted by the commodities at the window this last act Hepsiba now performed letting the bar fall with what smote upon her excited nerves as a most astounding clatter then as if the only barrier betwixt herself and the world had been thrown down and a flood of evil consequences would come tumbling through the gap she fled into the inner parlor threw herself into the ancestral elbow chair and wept our miserable old Hepsiba it is a heavy annoyance to a writer who endeavors to represent nature its various attitudes and circumstances in a reasonably correct outline and true coloring that so much of the mean and ludicrous should be hopelessly mixed up with the purest pathos which life anywhere supplies to him what tragic dignity, for example can be wrought into a scene like this how can we elevate our history of retribution for the sin of long ago when as one of our most prominent figures we are compelled to introduce not a young and lovely woman nor even the stately remains of beauty storm-shattered by affliction but a gaunt, sallow, rusty-jointed maiden in a long-waisted silk gown and with the strange horror of a turban on her head her visage is not even ugly it is redeemed from insignificance only by the contraction of her eyebrows into a nearsighted scowl and finally her great life trial seems to be that after sixty years of idleness she finds it convenient to earn comfortable bread by setting up a shop in a small way nevertheless if we look through all the heroic fortunes of mankind we shall find this same entanglement of something mean and trivial with whatever is noblest and joy or sorrow life is made up of marble and mud and without all the deeper trust and a comprehensive sympathy above us we might hence be led to suspect the insult of a sneer as well as an immitigable frown on the iron countenance of fate what is called poetic insight is the gift of discerning in this sphere of strangely mingled elements the beauty and the majesty which are compelled to assume a garb so sordid end of chapter 2 of the house of the seven gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne read by Nicodemus chapter 3 this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org chapter 3 of the house of the seven gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne read by Nicodemus the first customer Miss Hepsiba Pension sat in the oaken elbow chair with their hands over her face giving way to that heavy down-sinking of the heart which most persons have experienced when the image of hope itself seems ponderously molded of lead on the eve of an enterprise at once doubtful and momentous she was suddenly startled by the tinkling alarm high sharp and irregular of a little bell the maiden lady arose upon her feet as pale as a ghost at cock crow for she was an enslaved spirit and this the talisman to which she owed obedience this little bell to speak in plainer terms being fastened over the shop door was so contrived as to vibrate by means of a steel spring and thus convey notice to the inner regions of the house when any customer should cross the threshold its ugly and spiteful little din heard now for the first time perhaps since Hepsiba's periwig predecessor had retired from trade at once set every nerve of her body in responsive and tumultuous vibration the crisis was upon her her first customer was at the door without giving herself time for a second thought she rushed into the shop pale, wild, desperate in gesture and expression scowling portentiously and looking far better qualified to do fierce battle with the house breaker she stands smiling behind the counter bartering small wares for a copper recompense any ordinary customer indeed would have turned his back and fled and yet there was nothing fierce in Hepsiba's poor old heart nor had she at the moment a single bitter thought against the world at large or one individual man or woman she wished them all well but wished too that she herself were done with them and in her quiet grave the applicant by this time stood within the doorway coming freshly as he did out of the morning light he appeared to have brought some of its cheery influences into the shop along with him it was a slender young man not more than one or two and twenty years old with rather a grave and thoughtful expression for his years but likewise a springy alacrity and vigor these qualities were not only perceptible physically in his make and motions but made themselves felt almost in his character a brown beard not too silken in its texture fringed his chin but as yet without completely hiding it he wore a short mustache too and his dark high featured countenance looked all the better for these natural ornaments as for his dress it was of the simplest kind a summer sack of cheap and ordinary material thin checkered pantaloons and a straw hat by no means of the finest braid Oak Hall might have supplied his entire equipment he was chiefly marked as a gentleman if such indeed he made any claim to be by the rather remarkable whiteness and nicety of his clean linen he met the scowl of old Hepsiba without apparent alarm as having heretofore encountered it and found it harmless so my dear Miss Pension said the daguerreotypist for it was that sole other occupant of the seven gabled mansion I am glad to see that you have not shrunk from your good purpose I merely look in to offer my best wishes and to ask if I can assist you any further in your preparations people in difficulty and distress or in any manner at odds with the world can endure a vast amount of harsh treatment and perhaps be only the stronger for it whereas they give way at once before the simplest expression and sympathy so it proved with poor Hepsiba for when she saw the young man smile looking so much the brighter on a thoughtful face and heard his kindly tone she broke first into a hysteric giggle and then began to sob ah, Mr. Hall Grave cried she as soon as she could speak I never can go through with it never, never, never I wish I were dead in the old family tomb with all my forefathers my sister, yes, and with my brother who had far better find me there than here the world is too chill and hard and I am too old and too feeble and too hopeless oh, believe me, Ms. Hepsiba said the young man quietly these feelings will not trouble you any longer after you are once fairly in the midst of your enterprise they are unavoidable at this moment standing as you do on the outer verge of your long seclusion and peepling the world with ugly shapes you will soon find to be as unreal as the giants and ogres of a child's storybook I find nothing so singular in life as that everything appears to lose its substance the instant one actually grapples with it so it will be with what you think so terrible but I am a woman, said Hepsiba, piteously I was going to say a lady but I consider that as past well, no matter if it be past answered the artist a strange gleam of half-hidden sarcasm flashing through the kindness of his manner let it go you are better without it I speak frankly, my dear Miss Pension for are we not friends I look upon this as one of the fortunate days of your life it ends in Epoch and begins one hitherto the life-blood has been gradually chilling in your veins as you sat aloof within your circle of gentility while the rest of the world was fighting out its battle with one kind of necessity or another henceforth you will at least have the sense of healthy and natural effort for a purpose and of lending your strength be it great or small to the united struggle of mankind this is success all the success that anybody meets with it is natural enough, Mr. Holgrave that you should have ideas like these rejoined Hepsiba drawing up her gaunt figure with slightly offended dignity you're a man, a young man and brought up I suppose almost everybody is nowadays with the view to seeking your fortune but I was born a lady and have always lived one no matter in what narrowness of means always a lady but I was not born a gentleman neither have I lived like one said Holgrave, slightly smiling so my dear madam, you will hardly expect me to sympathize with sensibilities of this kind though unless I deceive myself I have some imperfect comprehension of them these names of gentleman and lady had a meaning in the past history of the world and conferred privileges desirable or otherwise on those entitled to bear them in the present and still more in the future condition of society they imply not privilege but restriction these are new notions said the old gentle woman shaking her head I shall never understand them neither do I wish it we will cease to speak of them then replied the artist with a friendlier smile than his last one and I will leave you to feel whether it is not better to be a true woman than a lady do you really think Ms. Hepsiba that any lady of your family has ever done a more heroic thing since this house was built than you are performing in it today never and if the pensions had always acted so nobly I doubt whether an old wizard Maul's anathema of which you told me once would have had much weight and providence against them ah no no said Hepsiba not displeased at the illusion to the sombre dignity of an inherited curse if old Maul's ghost or a descendant of his could see me behind the counter today he would call it the fulfillment of his worst wishes but I thank you for your kindness Mr. Holgrave and will do my utmost to be a good shopkeeper pray do said Holgrave and let me have the pleasure of being your first customer taking a walk to the seashore before going to my rooms where I misuse Heaven's blessed sunshine by tracing out human features through its agency a few of those biscuits dipped in seawater will be just what I need for breakfast what is the price of half a dozen let me be a lady a moment longer replied Hepsiba with a manner of antique stateliness to which a melancholy smile meant a kind of grace she put the biscuits into his hand and wasted the compensation a pension must not at all events under her forefather's roof receive money for a morsel of bread from her only friend Holgrave took his departure leaving her for the moment with spirits not quite so much depressed soon however they had subsided nearly to their former dead level with a beating heart she listened to the footsteps of early passengers which now began to be frequent along the street twice they seemed to linger these strangers or neighbors as the case might be were looking at the display of toys and petty commodities in Hepsiba's shop window she was doubly tortured in part with the sense of overwhelming shame that strange and unloving eyes should have the privilege of gazing and partly because the idea occurred to her with ridiculous importunity that the window was not arranged so skillfully nor nearly to so much advantage as it might have been it seemed as if the whole fortune or failure of her shop might depend on the display of a different set of articles or substituting a fairer apple for one which appeared to be specked so she made the change and straightway fancy that everything was spoiled by it not recognizing that it was the nervousness of the juncture and her own native squeamishness as an old maid that brought all the seeming mischief Anon there was an encounter just at the doorstep of a man as their rough voices denoted them to be after some slight talk about their own affairs one of them chanced to notice the shop window and directed the other's attention to it see here cried he what do you think of this trade seems to be looking up in pension street well well this is a sight to be sure exclaimed the other in the old pension house and underneath the pension elm who would have thought it old maid pension is setting up a scent shop will she make it go thank you said his friend I don't call it a very good stand there's another shop just around the corner make it go cried Dixie with a most contemptuous expression as if the very idea were impossible to be conceived not a bit of it why her face I've seen it for I dug her garden for her one year her face is enough to frighten the old Nick himself if he had ever so great a mind to trade with her people can't stand it I tell you she scowls dreadfully reason or none out of pure ugliness of temper well that's not so much matter remarked the other man these sour tempered folks are mostly handy at business and know pretty well what they are about but as you say I don't think she'll do much this business of keeping scent shops is overdone like all other kinds of trade handicraft and bodily labor but to my cost my wife kept a sense shop three months and lost five dollars on her outlay poor business responded Dixie in a tone as if he were shaking his head poor business for some reason or other not very easy to analyze there had hardly been so bitter of paying in all her previous misery about the matter as what thrilled Hepsiba's heart on overhearing the above conversation the testimony in regard to her scowl it seemed to hold up her image wholly relieved from the false light of herself partialities and so hideous that she dared not look at it she was absurdly hurt more over by the slight and idle effect that her setting up shop an event of such breathless interest to herself appeared to have upon the public of which these two men were the nearest representatives a glance a passing word or two a coarse laugh and she was doubtless forgotten before they turned the corner they cared nothing for her dignity and just as little for her degradation then also the augury of ill success uttered from the sure wisdom of experience fell upon her half dead hope like a clawed into a grave the man's wife had already tried the same experiment and failed how could the born lady the recluse of half a lifetime utterly unpracticed in the world years of age how could she ever dream of succeeding when the hard vulgar keen busy hackneyed new england woman had lost five dollars on her little outlay success presented itself as an impossibility and the hope of it as a wild hallucination some malevolent spirit doing his utmost to drive heps of a mad unrolled before her imagination a kind of panorama representing the great thoroughfare of a city all a stir with customers so many and so magnificent shops as there were groceries toy shops dry good stores with their immense pains of plate glass their gorgeous fixtures the vast and complete assortments of merchandise in which fortunes had been invested and those noble mirrors at the farther end of each establishment doubling all this wealth by a brightly burnished vista of unrealities on one side of the street this splendid bizarre with a multitude of perfumed glossy salesman smirking smiling bowing and measuring out the goods on the other the dusky old house of the seven gables with the antiquated shop window under its projecting story and Hepsaba herself in a gown of rusty black silk behind the counter scowling at the world as it went by this mighty contrast thrust itself forward as a fair expression of the odds against which she was to begin her struggle for a subsistence success preposterous she would never think of it again the house might just as well be buried in an eternal fog while all other houses had the sunshine on them for not a foot would ever cross the threshold nor a hand so much as try the door but at this instant the shop bell right over her head tinkled as if it were bewitched the old gentle woman's heart seemed to be attached to the same steel spring for it went through a series of sharp jerks in unison with the sound the door was thrust open although no human form was perceptible on the other side of the half window Hepsaba nevertheless stood at a gaze with her hands clasped looking very much as if she had summoned up an evil spirit and were afraid yet resolved to hazard the encounter heaven helped me she groaned mentally now is my hour of need the door which moved with difficulty on its creaking and rusty hinges being forced quite open a square and sturdy little urchin became apparent with cheeks as red as an apple he was clad rather shabbily but as it seemed more owing to his mother's carelessness than his father's poverty in a blue apron very wide and short trousers shoes somewhat out at the toes and a chip hat with the frizzles of his curly hair sticking through its crevices a book and a small slate under his arm indicated that he was on his way to school he stared at Hepsaba a moment as an elder customer than himself would have been likely enough to do not knowing what to make of the tragic attitude and queer scowl wherewith she regarded him well child said she taking heart at the sight of a personage so little formidable well my child what did you wish for that Jim Crow there in the window answered the urchin holding out a scent and pointing to the gingerbread figure that had attracted his notice as he loitered along to school the one that has not a broken foot so Hepsaba put forth her length arm and taking the effigy from the shop window delivered it to her first customer no matter for the money said she giving him a little push towards the door for her old gentility was consumatiously squeamish at sight of the copper coin and besides it seems such pitiful meanness to take the child's pocket money in exchange for a bit of stale gingerbread no matter for the scent you are welcome to Jim Crow the child staring with round eyes at this instance of liberality wholly unprecedented in his large experience of scent shops took the man of gingerbread and quitted the premises no sooner had he reached the sidewalk little cannibal that he was then Jim Crow's head was in his mouth as he had not been careful to shut the door Hepsaba was at the pains of closing it after him with a pettish ejaculation or two about the troublesomeness of young people and particularly of small boys she had just placed another representative of the renowned Jim Crow at the window when again the shop bell tinkled clamorously and again the door being thrust open with its characteristic jerk and jar disclosed the same sturdy little urchin who precisely two minutes ago in his exit the crumbs and discoloration of the cannibal feast as yet hardly consummated were exceedingly visible about his mouth what is it now child asked the maiden lady rather impatiently did you come back to shut the door no answered the urchin pointing to the figure that had just been put up I want that other Jim Crow well here it is for you said Hepsaba reaching it down but recognizing that this pertenacious worker would not quit her on any other terms so long as she had a gingerbread figure in her shop she partly drew back her extended hand where is the scent the little boy had the scent ready but like a true born Yankee would have preferred the better bargain to the worse looking somewhat chagrined he put the coin into Hepsaba's hand and departed sending the second Jim Crow in quest of the former one the new shopkeeper dropped the first bolt of her commercial enterprise into the till it was done the sordid stain of that copper coin could never be washed away from her palm the little schoolboy aided by the impish figure of the negro dancer had wrought an irreparable ruin the structure of ancient aristocracy had been demolished by him even as if his childish gripe had torn down the seven gabled mansion now let Hepsaba turn the old pension portraits with their faces to the wall and take the map of the eastern territory to kindle the kitchen fire and blow up the flame with the empty breath of her ancestral traditions what had she to do with ancestry nothing no more than with posterity no lady now but simply Hepsaba pension a forlorn old maid and keeper of a scent shop nevertheless even while she paraded these ideas somewhat ostentatiously through her mind it is altogether surprising what a calmness had come over her the anxiety and misgivings which had tormented her whether asleep or in melancholy daydreams ever since her project began to take an aspect of solidity had now vanished quite away she felt the novelty of her position indeed but no longer with disturbance or fright now and then there came a thrill of almost youthful enjoyment it was the invigorating breath fresh outward atmosphere after the long torpor and monotonous seclusion of her life so wholesome is effort so miraculous the strength that we do not know of the healthiest glow that Hepsaba had known for years had come now in the dreaded crisis when for the first time she had put forth her hand to help herself the little circlet of the schoolboy's copper coin dim and lusterless though it was with the small services which it had been doing there about the world had proved a talisman fragrant with good and deserving to be set in gold and worn next to her heart it was potent and perhaps endowed with the same kind of efficacy as a galvanic ring Hepsaba at all events was indebted to its subtle operation both in body and spirit so much the more as it inspired her with energy to get some breakfast at which still the better courage she allowed herself an extra spoonful in her infusion of black tea her introductory day of shopkeeping did not run on however without many and serious interruptions of this mood of cheerful vigor as a general rule provenance seldom vouchsafes to mortals any more than just that degree of encouragement which suffices to keep them at a reasonably full exertion of their powers in the case of our old gentlewoman after the enlightenment of new effort had subsided the despondency of her whole life threatened ever and on to return it was like the heavy mass of clouds which we may often see obscuring the sky and making a great twilight everywhere until towards nightfall it yields temporarily to a glimpse of sunshine but always the envious cloud strives to gather again across the streak of celestial azure customers came in as the afternoon advanced but rather slowly in some cases too it must be owned with little satisfaction either to themselves or Miss Hepsaba nor on the whole with an aggregate of very rich emolument to the till a little girl sent by her mother to match a skein of cotton thread of a peculiar hue took one that the nearsighted old lady pronounced extremely like but soon came running back with a blunt and cross message that it would not do and besides was very rotten then there was a pale care wrinkled woman not old but haggard and already with streaks of gray among her hair like silver ribbons one of those women naturally delicate whom you at once recognize is worn to death by a brute probably a drunken brute of a husband and at least nine children she wanted a few pounds of flour and offered the money which the decayed gentle woman silently rejected and gave the poor soul better measure than if she had taken it shortly afterwards a man in a blue cotton frock much soiled came in and bought a pipe filling the whole shop meanwhile with the hot odor of strong drink not only exhaled in the torrid atmosphere of his breath but oozing out of his entire system like an inflammable gas it was impressed on Hepsaba's mind that this was the husband of the care wrinkled woman he asked for a paper of tobacco and as she had neglected to provide herself with the article her brutal customer dashed down his newly bought pipe and left the shop muttering some unintelligible words which had the tone and bitterness of a curse here upon Hepsaba threw up her eyes unintentionally scouting in the face of Providence no less than five persons during the four noon inquired for ginger beer or root beer or any drink of a similar and obtained nothing of the kind went off in an exceedingly bad humor three of them left the door open and the other two pulled it so spitefully and going out that the little bell played the very deuce with Hepsaba's nerves a round bustling fire-ready housewife of the neighborhood burst breathless into the shop fiercely demanding yeast and when the poor gentle woman with her cold shyness of manner gave her hot customer to understand that she did not keep the article her very capable housewife took upon herself to administer a regular rebuke a scent shop and no yeast quote she that will never do whoever heard of such a thing your loaf will never rise no more than mine will today you had better shut up shop at once well said Hepsaba heaving a deep sigh perhaps I had several times more over besides the above instance her ladylike sensibilities were seriously drawn by the familiar if not rude tone with which people addressed her they evidently considered themselves not merely her equals but her patrons and superiors now Hepsaba had unconsciously flattered herself with the idea that they would be a gleam or halo of some kind or other about her person which would ensure an obeisance to her sterling gentility or at least a tacit recognition of it on the other hand nothing tortured her more intolerably than when this recognition was too prominently expressed to one or two rather officious offers of sympathy her responses were a little short of acrimonious and we regret to say Hepsaba was thrown into a positively un-christian state of mind by the suspicion that one of her customers was drawn to the shop not by any real need of the article which she pretended to seek but by a wicked wish to stare at her the vulgar creature was determined to see for herself what sort of a figure a mildewed piece of aristocracy after wasting all the bloom and much of the decline of her life apart from the world would cut behind a counter in this particular case however mechanical and innocuous it might be at other times Hepsaba's contortion of brow served her in good stead I was never so frightened in my life said the curious customer in describing the incident to one of her acquaintances she's a real old vixen take my word of it she says little to be sure but if you could only see the mischief in her eye on the whole therefore her new experience led our decayed gentlewoman to very disagreeable conclusions as to the temper and manners of what she termed the lower classes whom here to four she had looked down upon with a gentle and pitying complacence as herself occupying a sphere of unquestionable superiority but unfortunately she had likewise to struggle against the bitter emotion of a directly opposite kind a sentiment of virulence we mean towards the idle aristocracy which had so recently been her pride to belong when a lady in a delicate and costly summer garb with a floating veil and gracefully swaying down and altogether an ethereal lightness that made you look at her beautifully slippered feet to see whether she trod on the dust or floated in the air when such a vision happened to pass through this retired street leaving it tenderly and delusively fragrant with her passage as if a bouquet of tea roses had been born along then again it is to be feared old Hepsiba's scowl could no longer vindicate itself entirely on the plea of nearsightedness for what end thought she giving vent to that feeling of hostility which is the only real abasement of the poor and presence of the rich for what good end and the wisdom of providence that woman live must the whole world toil that the palms of her hands may be kept white and delicate then ashamed and penitent she hid her face may God forgive me said she doubtless God did forgive her but taking the inward and outward history of the first half day into consideration Hepsiba began to fear that the shop would prove her ruin in a moral and religious point of view without contributing very essentially towards even her temporal welfare