The House of the Seven Gables
Chapter One: The Old Pyncheon Family
Halfway down a bystreet of one of our New England towns stands a rusty wooden house, with seven acutely peaked gables,1 facing towards various points of the compass, and a huge, clustered chimney in the midst. The street is Pyncheon Street; the house is the old Pyncheon House; and an elm tree, of wide circumference, rooted before the door, is familiar to every town-born child by the title of the Pyncheon Elm. On my occasional visits to the town aforesaid, I seldom failed to turn down Pyncheon 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 e ... read full excerpt from Enriched Classics: The House of the Seven Gables ebook
