The House of The Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne Chapter 11 Page 12

life into a dead torpor. Neither was the cobbler’s shoe finished, nor the blacksmith’s iron shaped out; nor was there a drop less of brandy in the toper’s bottle, nor a drop more of milk in the milkmaid’s pail, nor one additional coin in the miser’s strong-box, nor was the scholar a page deeper in his book.

All were precisely in the same condition as before they made themselves so ridiculous by their haste to toil, to enjoy, to accumulate gold, and to become wise. Saddest of all, moreover, the lover was none the happier for the maiden’s granted kiss! But, rather than swallow this last too acrid ingredient, we reject the whole moral of the show.

The monkey, meanwhile, with a thick tail curling out into preposterous prolixity from beneath his tartans, took his station at the Italian’s