the house was soon
opened by a decent-looking serving woman, to whom we communicated our
desire to see the hall.

We were shown into a large dining hall with a stone floor, wainscoted
with carved oak, almost as black as ebony. There were some pious
sentences and moral reflections inscribed in old English text, carved
over the doors, and like a cornice round the ceiling, which was also of
carved oak. Their general drift was, to say that life is short, and to
call for watchfulness and prayer. The fireplace of the hall yawned like
a great cavern, and nothing else, one would think, than a cart load of
western sycamores could have supplied an appropriate fire. A great
two-handed sword of some ancestor hung over the fireplace. On taking it
down it reached to C----'s shoulder, who, you know, is six feet high.

We went into a sort of sitting room, and looked out through a window,
latticed with little diamond panes, upon a garden wildly beautiful. The
lattice was all wreathed round with jessamines. The furniture of this
room was modern, and it seemed the more unique from its contrast with
the old architecture.

We went up stairs to see the chambers, and passed through a long,
narrow, black oak corridor, whose slippery boards had the authentic
ghostly squeak to them. There was a chamber, hung with old, faded
tapestry of Scripture subjects. In this chamber there was behind the
tapestry a door, which, being opened, displayed a staircase, that led
delightfully off to nobody knows where. The furniture was black oak,
carved, in the most elaborate manner, with cherubs' heads and other good
and solemn subjects, calculated to produce a ghostly state of mind. And,
to crown all, we heard that there was a haunted chamber, which was not
to be opened, where a white lady appeared and walked at all approved
hours.

Now, only think what a foundation for a story is here. If our Hawthorne
could conjure up such a thing as the Seven Gables in one of our prosaic
country towns, what would he have done if he had lived here? Now he is
obliged to get his ghostly images by looking through smoked glass at our
square, cold realities; but one such old place as this is a standing
romance. Perhaps it may add to the effect to say, that the owner of the
house is a bachelor, who lives there very retired, and employs himself
much in reading.

The housekeeper, who showed us about, indulged us with a view of the
kitchen, whose snowy, sanded floor and resplend