The House of the Seven Gables

age of hope itself seems ponderously moulded of lead, on the eve of an enterprise at once doubtful and momentous. She was suddenly startled by the tinkling alarum - high, sharp, and

nner 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 Hepzibah's periwigged

r than to stand 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 Hepzibah's poor old hear

gor. These qualities were not only perceptible, physically, in his make and motions, but made themselves felt almost immediately 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 ornamen

ut apparent alarm, as having heretofor

seven-gabled mansion -"I am glad to see that you have not shrunk from your good purpose. I merely

whereas they give way at once before the simplest expression of what they perceive to be genuine sympathy. So it proved with poor Hepzibah; for, when she saw th

d, and in the old family tomb, with all my forefathers! With my father, and my mother, and my sister. Yes, and with my brother,

this moment, standing, as you do, on the outer verge of your long seclusion, and peopling the world with ugly shapes, which you will soon find to be as unreal as the giants and ogres of a chi

piteously. "I was going to say, a

as one of the fortunate days of your life. It ends an 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 ki

slightly offended dignity. "You are a man, a young man, and brought up, I suppose, as almost everybody is nowadays, with a view

his 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 confer

tlewoman, shaking her head. "I shall neve

a lady. Do you really think, Miss Hepzibah, that any lady of your family has ever done a more heroic thing, since this house was built, than you are performing in it to-day? Never;

Maule's ghost, or a descendant of his, could see me behind the counter to-day. he would call it the fulfillment of

hore, before going to my rooms, where I misuse Heaven's blessed sunshine by tracing out human features through its agency

ly smile lent a kind of grace. She put the biscuits into his hand, but rejected the compensation. "A Pyncheon

e display of toys and petty commodities in Hepzibah's shop-window. She was doubly tortured; in part, with a 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 skilfully, nor nearly to so much advantage, as it might have been. It seemed as if t

ir rough voices denoted them to be. After some slight talk about their own affairs, o

u think of this? Trade seems to b

In the old Pyncheon House, and underneath the Pyncheon Elm! Who w

his friend. "I don't call it a very good stand

, 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

hat they are about. But, as you say, I don't think she'll do much. This business of keeping cent-shops is overdone, like all other kinds o

ey, in a tone as if he were sh

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

le 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 bazaar, with a multitude of perfumed and glossy salesmen, 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 Hepzibah herself, in a gown of rusty black sil

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. Hepzi

groaned mentally. "N

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

sight of a personage so little formidable

cent, and pointing to the gingerbread figure that had attracted his noti

d, taking the effigy from the shop-win

aciously squeamish at sight of the copper coin, and, besides, it seemed such pitiful meanness to take the child'

been careful to shut the door, Hepzibah 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 tin

maiden lady rather impatiently; "

to the figure that had just been p

pertinacious customer would not quit her On any other terms, so long as she had a ginge

as 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 Hepzibah turn the ol

was the invigorating breath of a 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 Hepzibah 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 lustreless though it was, with the small services which it had been doing here a

es to keep them at a reasonably full exertion of their powers. In the case of our old gentlewoman, after the excitement of new effort had subsided, the despondency of her whole life threatened, ever and anon, to return. It was like the heavy mass of cl

t haggard, and already with streaks of gray among her hair, like silver ribbons; one of those women, naturally delicate, whom you at once recognize as 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 gentlewoman 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

en, and the other two pulled it so spitefully in going out that the little bell played the very deuce with Hepzibah's nerves. A round, bustling, fire-ruddy housewife of the neighborhood burst breathless into the shop, fiercely

ho ever heard of such a thing? Your loaf will never rise, no m

h, heaving a deep si

er 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 little short of acrimonious; and, we regret to say, Hepzibah was thrown into a positively unchristian state of mind by the suspicion that one of her customers was drawn to the shop, not by any real n

he incident to one of her acquaintances. "She's a real old vixen, take my word of

ainst a bitter emotion of a directly opposite kind: a sentiment of virulence, we mean, towards the idle aristocracy to which it 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 gown, and, altogether, an ethereal lightness that made you look at her beautifully slippered feet, t

ent of the poor in presence of the rich -"for what good end, in the wisdom of Providence, does that

nd penitent, sh

orgive me!

y into consideration, Hepzibah began to fear that the shop would prove her ruin in a moral and