of the romance. A paragraph in The opening chapter has perhaps
assisted this delusion that there must have been a single original
House of the Seven Gables, framed by flesh-and-blood carpenters;
for it runs thus:-

"Familiar as it stands in the writer's recollection--for it has
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 interest perhaps
than those of a gray feudal castle--familiar as it stands, in its
rusty old age, it is therefore only the more difficult to imagine
the bright novelty with which it first caught the sunshine."

Hundreds of pilgrims annually visit a house in Salem, belonging
to one branch of the Ingersoll family of that place, which is
stoutly maintained to have been The model for Hawthorne's
visionary dwelling. Others have supposed that the now vanished
house of The identical Philip English, whose blood, as we have
already noticed, became mingled with that of the Hawthornes,
supplied the pattern; and still a third building, known as the
Curwen mansion, has been declared the only genuine establishment.
Notwithstanding persistent popular belief, The authenticity of
all these must positively be denied; although it is possible that
isolated reminiscences of all three may have blended with the
ideal image in the mind of Hawthorne. He, it will be seen,
remarks in the Preface, alluding to himself in the third person,
that he trusts not to be condemned for "laying out a street that
infringes upon nobody's private rights... and building a house
of materials long in use for constructing castles in the air."
More than this, he stated to persons still living that the house of