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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from House of Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne: projecting-storied edifices, such as you occasionally see in our
older towns,--a rusty, crazy, creaky, dry-rotted, dingy, dark, and
miserable old dungeon, with an arched window over the porch, and a
little shop-door on one side, and a great, melancholy elm before it!
Now, sir, whenever my thoughts recur to this seven-gabled mansion
(the fact is so very curious that I must needs mention it),
immediately I have a vision or image of an elderly man, of remarkably
stern countenance, sitting in an oaken elbow-chair, dead, stone-dead,
with an ugly flow of blood upon his shirt-bosom! Dead, but with
open eyes! He taints the whole house, as I remember it. I could
never flourish there, nor be happy, nor do nor enjoy what God
House of Seven Gables |
