The House of the Seven Gables |
Other editions - View all
The House of the Seven Gables Nathaniel Hawthorne,Josiah Hamilton Castleman No preview available - 2018 |
Common terms and phrases
Absalom and Achitophel Alice Pyncheon arched window artist beautiful breath cent-shop chair character cheon child Clif Clifford Colonel Pyncheon Cousin Hepzibah cried daguerreotype daguerreotypist dark dead dear death door dream evil eyes face fancied father feel figure FLOWER OF EDEN garden gaze gentle girl give guests happy harpsichord heart Hepzi Holgrave human Jaffrey Jim Crow Judge Pyn Judge Pyncheon judge's kind lady lived look Luigi Galvani maiden man's Matthew Maule Maule's Mediterranean Sea mind Miss Hepzibah Mistress Alice morning nature never old gentleman old house old Pyncheon once parlor passed perhaps Periwigged Phoebe Phoebe's picture possessed Puritan Pyncheon elm Pyncheon house Pyncheon street riga scowl secret seemed Seven Gables shadow shop-door smile spirit story strange sunshine thing thought tion Tophet turned Uncle Venner visage Waldo County wave his hand whole wizard word young youth
Popular passages
Page 14 - T is as if a rough oak that for ages had stood, With his gnarled bony branches like ribs of the wood, Should bloom, after cycles of struggle and scathe, With a single anemone trembly and rathe...
Page 21 - 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.
Page 14 - When Nature was shaping him, clay was not granted For making so full-sized a man as she wanted, So, to fill out her model, a little she spared From some finer-grained stuff for a woman prepared, And she could not have hit a more excellent plan For making him fully and perfectly man.
Page 17 - As Americans, we feel proud of the book. Mr. Hawthorne's distinctive trait is invention, creation, imagination, originality — a trait which, in the literature of fiction, is positively worth all the rest.
Page 29 - 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.
Page 150 - A daguerreotype likeness, do you mean?" asked Phoebe, with less reserve; for, in spite of prejudice, her own youthfulness sprang forward to meet his. ' ' I don 't much like pictures of that sort, — they are so hard and stern ; besides dodging away from the eye, and trying to escape altogether. They are conscious of looking very unamiable, I suppose, and therefore hate to be seen.
Page 29 - 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.
Page 255 - Now, see : under those seven gables, at which we now look up, — and which old Colonel Pyncheon meant to be the house of his descendants, in prosperity and happiness, down to an epoch far beyond the present, — under that roof, through a portion of three centuries, there has been perpetual remorse of conscience, a constantly defeated hope, strife amongst kindred, various misery, a strange form of death, dark suspicion, unspeakable disgrace, — all, or most of which calamity I have the means of...
Page 35 - 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.
Page 377 - Well, Dixey," said one of them, "what do you think of this? My wife kept a cent-shop, three months, and lost five dollars on her outlay. Old Maid Pyncheon has been in trade just about as long, and rides off in her carriage with a couple of hundred thousand— reckoning her share, and Clifford's, and Phoebe's— and some say twice as much! If you choose to call it luck, it is all very well; but if we are to take it as the will of Providence, why, I can't exactly fathom it!