The House of The Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne Chapter 10 Page 13

to assure himself, by that quality which he best knew to be real, that the garden, and the seven weather-beaten gables, and Hepzibah’s scowl, and Phoebe’s smile, were real likewise.

Without this signet in his flesh, he could have attributed no more substance to them than to the empty confusion of imaginary scenes with which he had fed his spirit, until even that poor sustenance was exhausted.

The author needs great faith in his reader’s sympathy; else he must hesitate to give details so minute, and incidents apparently so trifling, as are essential to make up the idea of this garden-life. It was the Eden of a thunder-smitten Adam, who had fled for refuge thither out of the same dreary and perilous wilderness into which the original Adam was expelled.