SALEM: ITS HOUSES, ITS STREETS AND ITS
GARDENS RICH WITH THE ATMOSPHERE
OF ROMANCE AND TRADITION


RCHITECTS, sooner or later, seek in Massachusetts
the streets of Salem. Indeed this renowned old town
is not imbued with the idea of change, and Chestnut
Street is still acknowledged to be the finest example,
architecturally, of early American conception. His-
torians and romanticists as well delight in the place;
the former regarding it as the seat of witchcraft and


fanaticism, the latter as the environment of the "House of the Seven
Gables."
   Once the now out-of-the-way situation of this many gabled mansion
is reached, romance in its quintessence enfolds the visitor, encircling
him in the aroma of its past sentiment. Here, on this very spot, is
accentuated the old saw: "the pen is mightier than the sword";
for
had the ground on which stands the House of the Seven Gables been a
battle-field, it would hardly be more generally visited or afford a
more widespread interest than it does today. By the pen of Hawthorne
this gray visaged old house has been made of abiding interest in Salem,
as if it were a unique human being. Its personality is deeply marked,
its atmosphere so individual that instead of succumbing to modern
thought, it draws its visitors into the gulf of its own time and stand-
ards.
   Hawthorne himself declared that the scene of his romance was in
one of the old projecting storied houses familiar to his eye in Salem;
also that it had been an object of curiosity with him from boyhood,
both as a specimen of the best and stateliest architecture of a long past
epoch and as the scene of events more full of human interest, perhaps,
than those of a gray feudal castle.
   Probably the House of the Seven Gables as embodied in his story
was the composite of several of the old mansions identified with
Salem; for at the time that Hawthorne knew it well it had, so it is re-
ported, but three gables, the others being added later. Most earnestly
also did Hawthorne insist that his story should be regarded as a ro-
mance; that the characters he drew were of his "own mixing." More-
over he insisted that the aspect of the House of the Seven Gables
affected him like a human countenance, and in so saying he voiced the
sentiment of many who today pay it a visit. It is a building given over
now to the memory of Hawthorne, its owner endeavoring to identify
it with the author's work and life as closely as possible, crying out for
the realism of characters which he himself deemed but romantic.
Each room remains as he saw it and as it became crystallized at the
point of his pen. The front entrance of the house is still through a


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