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Updated: July 22, 2025
He put into her hand a daguerreotype; the same that he had shown her at their first interview in the garden, and which so strikingly brought out the hard and relentless traits of the original. "What has this to do with Hepzibah and Clifford?" asked Phoebe, with impatient surprise that Holgrave should so trifle with her at such a moment. "It is Judge Pyncheon! You have shown it to me before!"
But those old matters are so dim with me, nowadays! What could this dream have been?" "Perhaps I can recall it," answered Holgrave. "See! There are a hundred chances to one that no person, unacquainted with the secret, would ever touch this spring." "A secret spring!" cried Clifford. "Ah, I remember now!
Then all at once it struck Phoebe that this very Judge Pyncheon was the original of a miniature which Mr. Holgrave who took portraits, and whose acquaintance she had made within a few hours of her arrival had shown her yesterday. There was the same hard, stern, relentless look on the face. In reality, the miniature was copied from an old portrait of Colonel Pyncheon which hung within the house.
I ought to have said, too, that we live in dead men's houses; as, for instance, in this of the Seven Gables!" This is in the form of dialogue; but Hawthorne's own attitude toward reform is clearly disclosed in the analytic passages in which he discusses Holgrave, though it is observable that he embodies no adverse criticism upon it in the character itself, as he was to do in his next novel.
"For example, then," continued Holgrave: "a dead man, if he happens to have made a will, disposes of wealth no longer his own; or, if he die intestate, it is distributed in accordance with the notions of men much longer dead than he. A dead man sits on all our judgment-seats; and living judges do but search out and repeat his decisions. We read in dead men's books!
Holgrave took his departure, leaving her, for the moment, with spirits not quite so much depressed. Soon, however, they had subsided nearly to their former dead level. With a beating heart, she listened to the footsteps of early passengers, which now began to be frequent along the street.
In some cases, the two states come almost simultaneously, and mingle the sadness and the rapture in one mysterious emotion." "I hardly think I understand you," said Phoebe. "No wonder," replied Holgrave, smiling; "for I have told you a secret which I hardly began to know before I found myself giving it utterance.
"The House of the Seven Gables" might be symbolized by two paintings, in the first of which Hepzibah Pyncheon stands as the central figure, her face turned upward in a silent prayer for justice, her brother Clifford, with his head bowed helplessly, at one side, and the judge, with his chronic smile of satisfaction, behind Clifford; on the other side the keen-eyed Holgrave would appear, sympathetically watching the progress of events, with Phoebe Pyncheon at his left hand.
At such a crisis, there is no death; for immortality is revealed anew, and embraces everything in its hallowed atmosphere. But how soon the heavy earth-dream settled down again! "Hark!" whispered Phoebe. "Somebody is at the street door!" "Now let us meet the world!" said Holgrave.
Older, and, I hope, wiser, and, not exactly sadder, but, certainly, with not half so much lightness in my spirits! I have given them my sunshine, and have been glad to give it; but, of course, I cannot both give and keep it. They are welcome, notwithstanding!" "You have lost nothing, Phoebe, worth keeping, nor which it was possible to keep," said Holgrave after a pause.
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