The House of Seven Gables

Half-way down a by-street of one of our New England towns stands a rusty house, with seven acutely peaked gables, 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.

Nathaniel Hawthorne--The House of the Seven Gables.


Salem, MA. July 1,2006