Uncle Venner, trundling a wheelbarrow, was the earliest person stirring
in the neighborhood the day after the storm.
Pyncheon Street, in front of the House of the Seven Gables, was a far
pleasanter scene than a by-lane, confined by shabby fences, and
bordered with wooden dwellings of the meaner class, could reasonably be
expected to present. Nature made sweet amends, that morning, for the
five unkindly days which had preceded it. It would have been enough to
live for, merely to look up at the wide benediction of the sky, or as
much of it as was visible between the houses, genial once more with
sunshine. Every object was agreeable, whether to be gazed at in the
breadth, or examined more minutely. Such, for example, were the
well-washed pebbles and gravel of the sidewalk; even the sky-reflecting
pools in the centre of the street; and the grass, now freshly verdant,
that crept along the base of the fences, on the other side of which, if
one peeped over, was seen the multifarious growth of gardens.
Vegetable productions, of whatever kind, seemed more than negatively
happy, in the juicy warmth and abundance of their life. The Pyncheon
Elm, throughout its great circumference, was all alive, and full of the
morning sun and a sweet-tempered little breeze, which lingered within
this verdant sphere, and set a thousand leafy tongues a-whispering all
at once. This aged tree appeared to have suffered nothing from the
gale. It had kept its boughs unshattered, and its full complement of
leaves; and the whole in perfect verdure, except a single branch, that,
by the earlier change with which the elm-tree sometimes prophesies the
autumn, had been transmuted to bright gold. It was like the golden
branch that gained Aeneas and the Sibyl admittance into Hades.
This one mystic branch hung down before the main entrance of the Seven
Gables, so nigh the ground that any passer-by might have stood on
tiptoe and plucked it off. Presented at the door, it would have been a
symbol of his right to enter, and be made acquainted with all the
secrets of the house. So little faith is due to external appearance,
that there was really an inviting aspect over the venerable edifice,
conveying an idea that its history must be a decorous and happy one,
and such as would be delightful for a fireside tale. Its windows
gleamed cheerfully in the slanting sunlight. The lines and tufts of
green moss, here and there, seemed pledges of familiarity and
sisterhood with Nature; as if this human dwelling-place, being of such
old date, had established its prescriptive title among primeval oaks
and whatever other objects, by virtue of their long continuance, have
acquired a gracious right to be. A person of imaginative temperament,
while passing by the house, would turn, once and again, and peruse it
well: its many peaks, consenting together in the clustered chimney;
the deep projection over its basement-story; the arched window,
imparting a look, if not of grandeur, yet of antique gentility, to the
broken portal over which it opened; the luxuriance of gigantic
burdocks, near the threshold; he would note all these characteristics,
and be conscious of something deeper than he saw. He would conceive
the mansion to have been the residence of the stubborn old Puritan,
Integrity, who, dying in some forgotten generation, had left a blessing
in all its rooms and chambers, the efficacy of which was to be seen in
the religion, honesty, moderate competence, or upright poverty and
solid happiness, of his descendants, to this day.