["[Event happened on 2024-01-01 The user is reading a book]\n<User> IT still lacked half an hour of sunrise, when Miss Hepzibah\nPyncheon--we will not say awoke, it being doubtful whether the poor\nlady had so much as closed her eyes during the brief night of\nmidsummer--but, at all events, arose from her solitary pillow, and\nbegan what it would be mockery to term the adornment of her person. Far from us be the indecorum of assisting, even in imagination, at a\nmaiden lady's toilet! Our story must therefore await Miss Hepzibah at\nthe threshold of her chamber; only presuming, meanwhile, to note some\nof the heavy sighs that labored from her bosom, with little restraint\nas to their lugubrious depth and volume of sound, inasmuch as they\ncould be audible to nobody save a disembodied listener like ourself. The Old Maid was alone in the old house. Alone, except for a certain\nrespectable and orderly young man, an artist in the daguerreotype line,\n            who, for about three months back, had been a lodger in a remote\n            gable,--quite a house by itself, indeed,--with locks, bolts, and oaken\n            bars on all the intervening doors. Inaudible, consequently, were poor\n            Miss Hepzibah's gusty sighs. Inaudible the creaking joints of her\n            stiffened knees, as she knelt down by the bedside. And inaudible, too,\n            by mortal ear, but heard with all-comprehending love and pity in the\n            farthest heaven, that almost agony of prayer--now whispered, now a\n            groan, now a struggling silence--wherewith she besought the Divine\n            assistance through the day! Evidently, this is to be a day of more than\n            ordinary trial to Miss Hepzibah, who, for above a quarter of a century\n            gone by, has dwelt in strict seclusion, taking no part in the business\n            of life, and just as little in its intercourse and pleasures. Not with\n            such fervor prays the torpid recluse, looking forward to the cold,\n            sunless, stagnant calm of a day that is to be like innumerable\n            yesterdays. The maiden lady's devotions are concluded. Will she now issue forth\n            over the threshold of our story? Not yet, by many moments. First,\n            every drawer in the tall, old-fashioned bureau is to be opened, with\n            difficulty, and with a succession of spasmodic jerks then, all must\n            close again, with the same fidgety reluctance. There is a rustling of\n            stiff silks; a tread of backward and forward footsteps to and fro\n            across the chamber. We suspect Miss Hepzibah, moreover, of taking a\n            step upward into a chair, in order to give heedful regard to her\n            appearance on all sides, and at full length, in the oval, dingy-framed\n            toilet-glass, that hangs above her table. Truly! well, indeed! who\n            would have thought it! Is all this precious time to be lavished on the\n            matutinal repair and beautifying of an elderly person, who never goes\n            abroad, whom nobody ever visits, and from whom, when she shall have\n            done her utmost, it were the best charity to turn one's eyes another\n            way? Now she is almost ready. Let us pardon her one other pause; for it is\n            given to the sole sentiment, or, we might better say,--heightened and\n            rendered intense, as it has been, by sorrow and seclusion,--to the\n            strong passion of her life. We heard the turning of a key in a small\n            lock; she has opened a secret drawer of an escritoire, and is probably\n            looking at a certain miniature, done in Malbone's most perfect style,\n            and representing a face worthy of no less delicate a pencil. It was\n            once our good fortune to see this picture. It is a likeness of a young\n            man, in a silken dressing-gown of an old fashion, the soft richness of\n            which is well adapted to the countenance of reverie, with its full,\n            tender lips, and beautiful eyes, that seem to indicate not so much\n            capacity of thought, as gentle and voluptuous emotion. Of the\n            possessor of such features we shall have a right to ask nothing, except\n            that he would take the rude world easily, and make himself happy in it. Can it have been an early lover of Miss Hepzibah? No; she never had a\n            lover--poor thing, how could she?--nor ever knew, by her own\n            experience, what love technically means. And yet, her undying faith\n            and trust, her fresh remembrance, and continual devotedness towards the\n            original of that miniature, have been the only substance for her heart\n            to feed upon. She seems to have put aside the miniature, and is standing again before\n            the toilet-glass. There are tears to be wiped off. A few more\n            footsteps to and fro; and here, at last,--with another pitiful sigh,\n            like a gust of chill, damp wind out of a long-closed vault, the door of\n            which has accidentally been set, ajar--here comes Miss Hepzibah\n            Pyncheon! Forth she steps into the dusky, time-darkened passage; a tall\n            figure, clad in black silk, with a long and shrunken waist, feeling her\n            way towards the stairs like a near-sighted person, as in truth she is. The sun, meanwhile, if not already above the horizon, was ascending\n            nearer and nearer to its verge. A few clouds, floating high upward,\n            caught some of the earliest light, and threw down its golden gleam on\n            the windows of all the houses in the street, not forgetting the House\n            of the Seven Gables, which--many such sunrises as it had\n            witnessed--looked cheerfully at the present one. The reflected\n            radiance served to show, pretty distinctly, the aspect and arrangement\n            of the room which Hepzibah entered, after descending the stairs. It\n            was a low-studded room, with a beam across the ceiling, panelled with\n            dark wood, and having a large chimney-piece, set round with pictured\n            tiles, but now closed by an iron fire-board, through which ran the\n            funnel of a modern stove. There was a carpet on the floor, originally\n            of rich texture, but so worn and faded in these latter years that its\n            once brilliant figure had quite vanished into one indistinguishable\n            hue. In the way of furniture, there were two tables:  one, constructed\n            with perplexing intricacy and exhibiting as many feet as a centipede;\n            the other, most delicately wrought, with four long and slender legs, so\n            apparently frail that it was almost incredible what a length of time\n            the ancient tea-table had stood upon them. Half a dozen chairs stood\n            about the room, straight and stiff, and so ingeniously contrived for\n            the discomfort of the human person that they were irksome even to\n            sight, and conveyed the ugliest possible idea of the state of society\n            to which they could have been adapted. One exception there was,\n            however, in a very antique elbow-chair, with a high back, carved\n            elaborately in oak, and a roomy depth within its arms, that made up, by\n            its spacious comprehensiveness, for the lack of any of those artistic\n            curves which abound in a modern chair. As for ornamental articles of furniture, we recollect but two, if such\n            they may be called. One was a map of the Pyncheon territory at the\n            eastward, not engraved, but the handiwork of some skilful old\n            draughtsman, and grotesquely illuminated with pictures of Indians and\n            wild beasts, among which was seen a lion; the natural history of the\n            region being as little known as its geography, which was put down most\n            fantastically awry. The other adornment was the portrait of old\n            Colonel Pyncheon, at two thirds length, representing the stern features\n            of a Puritanic-looking personage, in a skull-cap, with a laced band and\n            a grizzly beard; holding a Bible with one hand, and in the other\n            uplifting an iron sword-hilt. The latter object, being more\n            successfully depicted by the artist, stood out in far greater\n            prominence than the sacred volume. Face to face with this picture, on\n            entering the apartment, Miss Hepzibah Pyncheon came to a pause;\n            regarding it with a singular scowl, a strange contortion of the brow,\n            which, by people who did not know her, would probably have been\n            interpreted as an expression of bitter anger and ill-will. But it was\n            no such thing.\n\n<System> Please remember what the user reads on 2024-01-01, save the details within the book, and retain a summary of the book the user has read so far.", "[Event happened on 2024-01-03 The user is reading a book]\n<User> She, in fact, felt a reverence for the pictured visage,\n            of which only a far-descended and time-stricken virgin could be\n            susceptible; and this forbidding scowl was the innocent result of her\n            near-sightedness, and an effort so to concentrate her powers of vision\n            as to substitute a firm outline of the object instead of a vague one. We must linger a moment on this unfortunate expression of poor\n            Hepzibah's brow. Her scowl,--as the world, or such part of it as\n            sometimes caught a transitory glimpse of her at the window, wickedly\n            persisted in calling it,--her scowl had done Miss Hepzibah a very ill\n            office, in establishing her character as an ill-tempered old maid; nor\n            does it appear improbable that, by often gazing at herself in a dim\n            looking-glass, and perpetually encountering her own frown with its\n            ghostly sphere, she had been led to interpret the expression almost as\n            unjustly as the world did. \"How miserably cross I look!\" she must\n            often have whispered to herself; and ultimately have fancied herself\n            so, by a sense of inevitable doom. But her heart never frowned. It\n            was naturally tender, sensitive, and full of little tremors and\n            palpitations; all of which weaknesses it retained, while her visage was\n            growing so perversely stern, and even fierce. Nor had Hepzibah ever\n            any hardihood, except what came from the very warmest nook in her\n            affections. All this time, however, we are loitering faintheartedly on the\n            threshold of our story. In very truth, we have an invincible\n            reluctance to disclose what Miss Hepzibah Pyncheon was about to do. It has already been observed, that, in the basement story of the gable\n            fronting on the street, an unworthy ancestor, nearly a century ago, had\n            fitted up a shop. Ever since the old gentleman retired from trade, and\n            fell asleep under his coffin-lid, not only the shop-door, but the inner\n            arrangements, had been suffered to remain unchanged; while the dust of\n            ages gathered inch-deep over the shelves and counter, and partly filled\n            an old pair of scales, as if it were of value enough to be weighed. It\n            treasured itself up, too, in the half-open till, where there still\n            lingered a base sixpence, worth neither more nor less than the\n            hereditary pride which had here been put to shame. Such had been the\n            state and condition of the little shop in old Hepzibah's childhood,\n            when she and her brother used to play at hide-and-seek in its forsaken\n            precincts. So it had remained, until within a few days past. But now, though the shop-window was still closely curtained from the\n            public gaze, a remarkable change had taken place in its interior. The\n            rich and heavy festoons of cobweb, which it had cost a long ancestral\n            succession of spiders their life's labor to spin and weave, had been\n            carefully brushed away from the ceiling. The counter, shelves, and\n            floor had all been scoured, and the latter was overstrewn with fresh\n            blue sand. The brown scales, too, had evidently undergone rigid\n            discipline, in an unavailing effort to rub off the rust, which, alas! had eaten through and through their substance. Neither was the little\n            old shop any longer empty of merchantable goods. A curious eye,\n            privileged to take an account of stock and investigate behind the\n            counter, would have discovered a barrel, yea, two or three barrels and\n            half ditto,--one containing flour, another apples, and a third,\n            perhaps, Indian meal. There was likewise a square box of pine-wood,\n            full of soap in bars; also, another of the same size, in which were\n            tallow candles, ten to the pound. A small stock of brown sugar, some\n            white beans and split peas, and a few other commodities of low price,\n            and such as are constantly in demand, made up the bulkier portion of\n            the merchandise. It might have been taken for a ghostly or\n            phantasmagoric reflection of the old shop-keeper Pyncheon's shabbily\n            provided shelves, save that some of the articles were of a description\n            and outward form which could hardly have been known in his day. For\n            instance, there was a glass pickle-jar, filled with fragments of\n            Gibraltar rock; not, indeed, splinters of the veritable stone\n            foundation of the famous fortress, but bits of delectable candy, neatly\n            done up in white paper. Jim Crow, moreover, was seen executing his\n            world-renowned dance, in gingerbread. A party of leaden dragoons were\n            galloping along one of the shelves, in equipments and uniform of modern\n            cut; and there were some sugar figures, with no strong resemblance to\n            the humanity of any epoch, but less unsatisfactorily representing our\n            own fashions than those of a hundred years ago. Another phenomenon,\n            still more strikingly modern, was a package of lucifer matches, which,\n            in old times, would have been thought actually to borrow their\n            instantaneous flame from the nether fires of Tophet. In short, to bring the matter at once to a point, it was\n            incontrovertibly evident that somebody had taken the shop and fixtures\n            of the long-retired and forgotten Mr. Pyncheon, and was about to renew\n            the enterprise of that departed worthy, with a different set of\n            customers. Who could this bold adventurer be? And, of all places in\n            the world, why had he chosen the House of the Seven Gables as the scene\n            of his commercial speculations? We return to the elderly maiden. She at length withdrew her eyes from\n            the dark countenance of the Colonel's portrait, heaved a sigh,--indeed,\n            her breast was a very cave of Aolus that morning,--and stept across the\n            room on tiptoe, as is the customary gait of elderly women. Passing\n            through an intervening passage, she opened a door that communicated\n            with the shop, just now so elaborately described. Owing to the\n            projection of the upper story--and still more to the thick shadow of\n            the Pyncheon Elm, which stood almost directly in front of the\n            gable--the twilight, here, was still as much akin to night as morning. Another heavy sigh from Miss Hepzibah! After a moment's pause on the\n            threshold, peering towards the window with her near-sighted scowl, as\n            if frowning down some bitter enemy, she suddenly projected herself into\n            the shop. The haste, and, as it were, the galvanic impulse of the\n            movement, were really quite startling. Nervously--in a sort of frenzy, we might almost say--she began to busy\n            herself in arranging some children's playthings, and other little\n            wares, on the shelves and at the shop-window. In the aspect of this\n            dark-arrayed, pale-faced, ladylike old figure there was a deeply tragic\n            character that contrasted irreconcilably with the ludicrous pettiness\n            of her employment. It seemed a queer anomaly, that so gaunt and dismal\n            a personage should take a toy in hand; a miracle, that the toy did not\n            vanish in her grasp; a miserably absurd idea, that she should go on\n            perplexing her stiff and sombre intellect with the question how to\n            tempt little boys into her premises! Yet such is undoubtedly her\n            object. Now she places a gingerbread elephant against the window, but\n            with so tremulous a touch that it tumbles upon the floor, with the\n            dismemberment of three legs and its trunk; it has ceased to be an\n            elephant, and has become a few bits of musty gingerbread. There,\n            again, she has upset a tumbler of marbles, all of which roll different\n            ways, and each individual marble, devil-directed, into the most\n            difficult obscurity that it can find. Heaven help our poor old\n            Hepzibah, and forgive us for taking a ludicrous view of her position! As her rigid and rusty frame goes down upon its hands and knees, in\n            quest of the absconding marbles, we positively feel so much the more\n            inclined to shed tears of sympathy, from the very fact that we must\n            needs turn aside and laugh at her. For here,--and if we fail to\n            impress it suitably upon the reader, it is our own fault, not that of\n            the theme, here is one of the truest points of melancholy interest that\n            occur in ordinary life. It was the final throe of what called itself\n            old gentility.\n\n<System> Please remember what the user reads on 2024-01-03, save the details within the book, and retain a summary of the book the user has read so far.", "[Event happened on 2024-01-06 The user is reading a book]\n<User> A lady--who had fed herself from childhood with the\n            shadowy food of aristocratic reminiscences, and whose religion it was\n            that a lady's hand soils itself irremediably by doing aught for\n            bread,--this born lady, after sixty years of narrowing means, is fain\n            to step down from her pedestal of imaginary rank. Poverty, treading\n            closely at her heels for a lifetime, has come up with her at last. She\n            must earn her own food, or starve! And we have stolen upon Miss\n            Hepzibah Pyncheon, too irreverently, at the instant of time when the\n            patrician lady is to be transformed into the plebeian woman. In this republican country, amid the fluctuating waves of our social\n            life, somebody is always at the drowning-point. The tragedy is enacted\n            with as continual a repetition as that of a popular drama on a holiday,\n            and, nevertheless, is felt as deeply, perhaps, as when an hereditary\n            noble sinks below his order. More deeply; since, with us, rank is the\n            grosser substance of wealth and a splendid establishment, and has no\n            spiritual existence after the death of these, but dies hopelessly along\n            with them. And, therefore, since we have been unfortunate enough to\n            introduce our heroine at so inauspicious a juncture, we would entreat\n            for a mood of due solemnity in the spectators of her fate. Let us\n            behold, in poor Hepzibah, the immemorial, lady--two hundred years old,\n            on this side of the water, and thrice as many on the other,--with her\n            antique portraits, pedigrees, coats of arms, records and traditions,\n            and her claim, as joint heiress, to that princely territory at the\n            eastward, no longer a wilderness, but a populous fertility,--born, too,\n            in Pyncheon Street, under the Pyncheon Elm, and in the Pyncheon House,\n            where she has spent all her days,--reduced. Now, in that very house,\n            to be the hucksteress of a cent-shop. This business of setting up a petty shop is almost the only resource of\n            women, in circumstances at all similar to those of our unfortunate\n            recluse. With her near-sightedness, and those tremulous fingers of\n            hers, at once inflexible and delicate, she could not be a seamstress;\n            although her sampler, of fifty years gone by, exhibited some of the\n            most recondite specimens of ornamental needlework. A school for little\n            children had been often in her thoughts; and, at one time, she had\n            begun a review of her early studies in the New England Primer, with a\n            view to prepare herself for the office of instructress. But the love\n            of children had never been quickened in Hepzibah's heart, and was now\n            torpid, if not extinct; she watched the little people of the\n            neighborhood from her chamber-window, and doubted whether she could\n            tolerate a more intimate acquaintance with them. Besides, in our day,\n            the very ABC has become a science greatly too abstruse to be any longer\n            taught by pointing a pin from letter to letter. A modern child could\n            teach old Hepzibah more than old Hepzibah could teach the child. So--with many a cold, deep heart-quake at the idea of at last coming\n            into sordid contact with the world, from which she had so long kept\n            aloof, while every added day of seclusion had rolled another stone\n            against the cavern door of her hermitage--the poor thing bethought\n            herself of the ancient shop-window, the rusty scales, and dusty till. She might have held back a little longer; but another circumstance, not\n            yet hinted at, had somewhat hastened her decision. Her humble\n            preparations, therefore, were duly made, and the enterprise was now to\n            be commenced. Nor was she entitled to complain of any remarkable\n            singularity in her fate; for, in the town of her nativity, we might\n            point to several little shops of a similar description, some of them in\n            houses as ancient as that of the Seven Gables; and one or two, it may\n            be, where a decayed gentlewoman stands behind the counter, as grim an\n            image of family pride as Miss Hepzibah Pyncheon herself. It was overpoweringly ridiculous,--we must honestly confess it,--the\n            deportment of the maiden lady while setting her shop in order for the\n            public eye. She stole on tiptoe to the window, as cautiously as if she\n            conceived some bloody-minded villain to be watching behind the\n            elm-tree, with intent to take her life. Stretching out her long, lank\n            arm, she put a paper of pearl-buttons, a jew's-harp, or whatever the\n            small article might be, in its destined place, and straightway vanished\n            back into the dusk, as if the world need never hope for another glimpse\n            of her. It might have been fancied, indeed, that she expected to\n            minister to the wants of the community unseen, like a disembodied\n            divinity or enchantress, holding forth her bargains to the reverential\n            and awe-stricken purchaser in an invisible hand. But Hepzibah had no\n            such flattering dream. She was well aware that she must ultimately come\n            forward, and stand revealed in her proper individuality; but, like\n            other sensitive persons, she could not bear to be observed in the\n            gradual process, and chose rather to flash forth on the world's\n            astonished gaze at once. The inevitable moment was not much longer to be delayed. The sunshine\n            might now be seen stealing down the front of the opposite house, from\n            the windows of which came a reflected gleam, struggling through the\n            boughs of the elm-tree, and enlightening the interior of the shop more\n            distinctly than heretofore. The town appeared to be waking up. A\n            baker's cart had already rattled through the street, chasing away the\n            latest vestige of night's sanctity with the jingle-jangle of its\n            dissonant bells. A milkman was distributing the contents of his cans\n            from door to door; and the harsh peal of a fisherman's conch shell was\n            heard far off, around the corner. None of these tokens escaped\n            Hepzibah's notice. The moment had arrived. To delay longer would be\n            only to lengthen out her misery. Nothing remained, except to take down\n            the bar from the shop-door, leaving the entrance free--more than\n            free--welcome, as if all were household friends--to every passer-by,\n            whose eyes might be attracted by the commodities at the window. This\n            last act Hepzibah now performed, letting the bar fall with what smote\n            upon her excited nerves as a most astounding clatter. Then--as if the\n            only barrier betwixt herself and the world had been thrown down, and a\n            flood of evil consequences would come tumbling through the gap--she\n            fled into the inner parlor, threw herself into the ancestral\n            elbow-chair, and wept. Our miserable old Hepzibah! It is a heavy annoyance to a writer, who\n            endeavors to represent nature, its various attitudes and circumstances,\n            in a reasonably correct outline and true coloring, that so much of the\n            mean and ludicrous should be hopelessly mixed up with the purest pathos\n            which life anywhere supplies to him. What tragic dignity, for example,\n            can be wrought into a scene like this! How can we elevate our history\n            of retribution for the sin of long ago, when, as one of our most\n            prominent figures, we are compelled to introduce--not a young and\n            lovely woman, nor even the stately remains of beauty, storm-shattered\n            by affliction--but a gaunt, sallow, rusty-jointed maiden, in a\n            long-waisted silk gown, and with the strange horror of a turban on her\n            head! Her visage is not even ugly. It is redeemed from insignificance\n            only by the contraction of her eyebrows into a near-sighted scowl. And, finally, her great life-trial seems to be, that, after sixty years\n            of idleness, she finds it convenient to earn comfortable bread by\n            setting up a shop in a small way. Nevertheless, if we look through all\n            the heroic fortunes of mankind, we shall find this same entanglement of\n            something mean and trivial with whatever is noblest in joy or sorrow. Life is made up of marble and mud. And, without all the deeper trust\n            in a comprehensive sympathy above us, we might hence be led to suspect\n            the insult of a sneer, as well as an immitigable frown, on the iron\n            countenance of fate. What is called poetic insight is the gift of\n            discerning, in this sphere of strangely mingled elements, the beauty\n            and the majesty which are compelled to assume a garb so sordid.\n\n<System> Please remember what the user reads on 2024-01-06, save the details within the book, and retain a summary of the book the user has read so far.", "[Event happened on 2024-01-09 The user is reading a book]\n<User> MISS HEPZIBAH PYNCHEON sat in the oaken elbow-chair, with her hands\nover her face, giving way to that heavy down-sinking of the heart which\nmost persons have experienced, when the image of hope itself seems\nponderously moulded of lead, on the eve of an enterprise at once\ndoubtful and momentous. She was suddenly startled by the tinkling\nalarum--high, sharp, and irregular--of a little bell. The maiden lady\narose upon her feet, as pale as a ghost at cock-crow; for she was an\nenslaved spirit, and this the talisman to which she owed obedience. This little bell,--to speak in plainer terms,--being fastened over the\nshop-door, was so contrived as to vibrate by means of a steel spring,\n    and thus convey notice to the inner regions of the house when any\n    customer should cross the threshold. Its ugly and spiteful little din\n    (heard now for the first time, perhaps, since Hepzibah's periwigged\n     predecessor had retired from trade) at once set every nerve of her body\n    in responsive and tumultuous vibration. The crisis was upon her! Her\n    first customer was at the door! Without giving herself time for a second thought, she rushed into the\n    shop, pale, wild, desperate in gesture and expression, scowling\n    portentously, and looking far better qualified to do fierce battle with\n    a housebreaker than to stand smiling behind the counter, bartering\n    small wares for a copper recompense. Any ordinary customer, indeed,\n    would have turned his back and fled. And yet there was nothing fierce\n    in Hepzibah's poor old heart; nor had she, at the moment, a single\n    bitter thought against the world at large, or one individual man or\n    woman. She wished them all well, but wished, too, that she herself\n    were done with them, and in her quiet grave. The applicant, by this time, stood within the doorway. Coming freshly,\n    as he did, out of the morning light, he appeared to have brought some\n    of its cheery influences into the shop along with him. It was a\n    slender young man, not more than one or two and twenty years old, with\n    rather a grave and thoughtful expression for his years, but likewise a\n    springy alacrity and vigor. These qualities were not only perceptible,\n    physically, in his make and motions, but made themselves felt almost\n    immediately in his character. A brown beard, not too silken in its\n    texture, fringed his chin, but as yet without completely hiding it; he\n    wore a short mustache, too, and his dark, high-featured countenance\n    looked all the better for these natural ornaments. As for his dress,\n    it was of the simplest kind; a summer sack of cheap and ordinary\n    material, thin checkered pantaloons, and a straw hat, by no means of\n    the finest braid. Oak Hall might have supplied his entire equipment. He was chiefly marked as a gentleman--if such, indeed, he made any\n    claim to be--by the rather remarkable whiteness and nicety of his clean\n    linen. He met the scowl of old Hepzibah without apparent alarm, as having\n    heretofore encountered it and found it harmless. \"So, my dear Miss Pyncheon,\" said the daguerreotypist,--for it was that\n    sole other occupant of the seven-gabled mansion,--\"I am glad to see\n    that you have not shrunk from your good purpose. I merely look in to\n    offer my best wishes, and to ask if I can assist you any further in\n    your preparations.\" People in difficulty and distress, or in any manner at odds with the\n    world, can endure a vast amount of harsh treatment, and perhaps be only\n    the stronger for it; whereas they give way at once before the simplest\n    expression of what they perceive to be genuine sympathy. So it proved\n    with poor Hepzibah; for, when she saw the young man's smile,--looking\n    so much the brighter on a thoughtful face,--and heard his kindly tone,\n    she broke first into a hysteric giggle and then began to sob. \"Ah, Mr. Holgrave,\" cried she, as soon as she could speak, \"I never can\n    go through with it! Never, never, never! I wish I were dead, and in the\n    old family tomb, with all my forefathers! With my father, and my\n    mother, and my sister! Yes, and with my brother, who had far better\n    find me there than here! The world is too chill and hard,--and I am too\n    old, and too feeble, and too hopeless!\" \"Oh, believe me, Miss Hepzibah,\" said the young man quietly, \"these\n    feelings will not trouble you any longer, after you are once fairly in\n    the midst of your enterprise. They are unavoidable at this moment,\n    standing, as you do, on the outer verge of your long seclusion, and\n    peopling the world with ugly shapes, which you will soon find to be as\n    unreal as the giants and ogres of a child's story-book. I find nothing\n    so singular in life, as that everything appears to lose its substance\n    the instant one actually grapples with it. So it will be with what you\n    think so terrible.\" \"But I am a woman!\" said Hepzibah piteously. \"I was going to say, a\n    lady,--but I consider that as past.\" \"Well; no matter if it be past!\" answered the artist, a strange gleam\n    of half-hidden sarcasm flashing through the kindliness of his manner. \"Let it go! You are the better without it. I speak frankly, my dear\n    Miss Pyncheon!--for are we not friends? I look upon this as one of the\n    fortunate days of your life. It ends an epoch and begins one. Hitherto, the life-blood has been gradually chilling in your veins as\n    you sat aloof, within your circle of gentility, while the rest of the\n    world was fighting out its battle with one kind of necessity or\n    another. Henceforth, you will at least have the sense of healthy and\n    natural effort for a purpose, and of lending your strength be it great\n    or small--to the united struggle of mankind. This is success,--all the\n    success that anybody meets with!\" \"It is natural enough, Mr. Holgrave, that you should have ideas like\n    these,\" rejoined Hepzibah, drawing up her gaunt figure with slightly\n    offended dignity. \"You are a man, a young man, and brought up, I\n    suppose, as almost everybody is nowadays, with a view to seeking your\n    fortune. But I was born a lady, and have always lived one; no matter\n    in what narrowness of means, always a lady.\" \"But I was not born a gentleman; neither have I lived like one,\" said\n    Holgrave, slightly smiling; \"so, my dear madam, you will hardly expect\n    me to sympathize with sensibilities of this kind; though, unless I\n    deceive myself, I have some imperfect comprehension of them. These\n    names of gentleman and lady had a meaning, in the past history of the\n    world, and conferred privileges, desirable or otherwise, on those\n    entitled to bear them. In the present--and still more in the future\n    condition of society-they imply, not privilege, but restriction!\" \"These are new notions,\" said the old gentlewoman, shaking her head. \"I shall never understand them; neither do I wish it.\" \"We will cease to speak of them, then,\" replied the artist, with a\n    friendlier smile than his last one, \"and I will leave you to feel\n    whether it is not better to be a true woman than a lady. Do you really\n    think, Miss Hepzibah, that any lady of your family has ever done a more\n    heroic thing, since this house was built, than you are performing in it\n    to-day? Never; and if the Pyncheons had always acted so nobly, I doubt\n    whether an old wizard Maule's anathema, of which you told me once,\n    would have had much weight with Providence against them.\" \"Ah!--no, no!\" said Hepzibah, not displeased at this allusion to the\n    sombre dignity of an inherited curse. \"If old Maule's ghost, or a\n    descendant of his, could see me behind the counter to-day, he would\n    call it the fulfillment of his worst wishes. But I thank you for your\n    kindness, Mr. Holgrave, and will do my utmost to be a good shop-keeper.\" \"Pray do\" said Holgrave, \"and let me have the pleasure of being your\n    first customer. I am about taking a walk to the seashore, before going\n    to my rooms, where I misuse Heaven's blessed sunshine by tracing out\n    human features through its agency.\n\n<System> Please remember what the user reads on 2024-01-09, save the details within the book, and retain a summary of the book the user has read so far.", "[Event happened on 2024-01-11 The user is reading a book]\n<User> A few of those biscuits, dipt in\n    sea-water, will be just what I need for breakfast. What is the price\n    of half a dozen?\" \"Let me be a lady a moment longer,\" replied Hepzibah, with a manner of\n    antique stateliness to which a melancholy smile lent a kind of grace. She put the biscuits into his hand, but rejected the compensation. \"A\n    Pyncheon must not, at all events under her forefathers' roof, receive\n    money for a morsel of bread from her only friend!\" Holgrave took his departure, leaving her, for the moment, with spirits\n    not quite so much depressed. Soon, however, they had subsided nearly\n    to their former dead level. With a beating heart, she listened to the\n    footsteps of early passengers, which now began to be frequent along the\n    street. Once or twice they seemed to linger; these strangers, or\n    neighbors, as the case might be, were looking at the display of toys\n    and petty commodities in Hepzibah's shop-window. She was doubly\n    tortured; in part, with a sense of overwhelming shame that strange and\n    unloving eyes should have the privilege of gazing, and partly because\n    the idea occurred to her, with ridiculous importunity, that the window\n    was not arranged so skilfully, nor nearly to so much advantage, as it\n    might have been. It seemed as if the whole fortune or failure of her\n    shop might depend on the display of a different set of articles, or\n    substituting a fairer apple for one which appeared to be specked. So\n    she made the change, and straightway fancied that everything was\n    spoiled by it; not recognizing that it was the nervousness of the\n    juncture, and her own native squeamishness as an old maid, that wrought\n    all the seeming mischief. Anon, there was an encounter, just at the door-step, betwixt two\n    laboring men, as their rough voices denoted them to be. After some\n    slight talk about their own affairs, one of them chanced to notice the\n    shop-window, and directed the other's attention to it. \"See here!\" cried he; \"what do you think of this? Trade seems to be\n    looking up in Pyncheon Street!\" \"Well, well, this is a sight, to be sure!\" exclaimed the other. \"In\n    the old Pyncheon House, and underneath the Pyncheon Elm! Who would have\n    thought it? Old Maid Pyncheon is setting up a cent-shop!\" \"Will she make it go, think you, Dixey?\" said his friend. \"I don't\n    call it a very good stand. There's another shop just round the corner.\" \"Make it go!\" cried Dixey, with a most contemptuous expression, as if\n    the very idea were impossible to be conceived. \"Not a bit of it! Why,\n    her face--I've seen it, for I dug her garden for her one year--her face\n    is enough to frighten the Old Nick himself, if he had ever so great a\n    mind to trade with her. People can't stand it, I tell you! She scowls\n    dreadfully, reason or none, out of pure ugliness of temper.\" \"Well, that's not so much matter,\" remarked the other man. \"These\n    sour-tempered folks are mostly handy at business, and know pretty well\n    what they are about. But, as you say, I don't think she'll do much. This business of keeping cent-shops is overdone, like all other kinds\n    of trade, handicraft, and bodily labor. I know it, to my cost! My wife\n    kept a cent-shop three months, and lost five dollars on her outlay.\" \"Poor business!\" responded Dixey, in a tone as if he were shaking his\n    head,--\"poor business.\" For some reason or other, not very easy to analyze, there had hardly\n    been so bitter a pang in all her previous misery about the matter as\n    what thrilled Hepzibah's heart on overhearing the above conversation. The testimony in regard to her scowl was frightfully important; it\n    seemed to hold up her image wholly relieved from the false light of her\n    self-partialities, and so hideous that she dared not look at it. She\n    was absurdly hurt, moreover, by the slight and idle effect that her\n    setting up shop--an event of such breathless interest to\n    herself--appeared to have upon the public, of which these two men were\n    the nearest representatives. A glance; a passing word or two; a coarse\n    laugh; and she was doubtless forgotten before they turned the corner. They cared nothing for her dignity, and just as little for her\n    degradation. Then, also, the augury of ill-success, uttered from the\n    sure wisdom of experience, fell upon her half-dead hope like a clod\n    into a grave. The man's wife had already tried the same experiment,\n    and failed! How could the born lady--the recluse of half a lifetime,\n    utterly unpractised in the world, at sixty years of age,--how could she\n    ever dream of succeeding, when the hard, vulgar, keen, busy, hackneyed\n    New England woman had lost five dollars on her little outlay! Success\n    presented itself as an impossibility, and the hope of it as a wild\n    hallucination. Some malevolent spirit, doing his utmost to drive Hepzibah mad,\n    unrolled before her imagination a kind of panorama, representing the\n    great thoroughfare of a city all astir with customers. So many and so\n    magnificent shops as there were! Groceries, toy-shops, drygoods stores,\n    with their immense panes of plate-glass, their gorgeous fixtures, their\n    vast and complete assortments of merchandise, in which fortunes had\n    been invested; and those noble mirrors at the farther end of each\n    establishment, doubling all this wealth by a brightly burnished vista\n    of unrealities! On one side of the street this splendid bazaar, with a\n    multitude of perfumed and glossy salesmen, smirking, smiling, bowing,\n    and measuring out the goods. On the other, the dusky old House of the\n    Seven Gables, with the antiquated shop-window under its projecting\n    story, and Hepzibah herself, in a gown of rusty black silk, behind the\n    counter, scowling at the world as it went by! This mighty contrast\n    thrust itself forward as a fair expression of the odds against which\n    she was to begin her struggle for a subsistence. Success? Preposterous! She would never think of it again! The house might just\n    as well be buried in an eternal fog while all other houses had the\n    sunshine on them; for not a foot would ever cross the threshold, nor a\n    hand so much as try the door! But, at this instant, the shop-bell, right over her head, tinkled as if\n    it were bewitched. The old gentlewoman's heart seemed to be attached\n    to the same steel spring, for it went through a series of sharp jerks,\n    in unison with the sound. The door was thrust open, although no human\n    form was perceptible on the other side of the half-window. Hepzibah,\n    nevertheless, stood at a gaze, with her hands clasped, looking very\n    much as if she had summoned up an evil spirit, and were afraid, yet\n    resolved, to hazard the encounter. \"Heaven help me!\" she groaned mentally. \"Now is my hour of need!\" The door, which moved with difficulty on its creaking and rusty hinges,\n    being forced quite open, a square and sturdy little urchin became\n    apparent, with cheeks as red as an apple. He was clad rather shabbily\n    (but, as it seemed, more owing to his mother's carelessness than his\n     father's poverty), in a blue apron, very wide and short trousers, shoes\n    somewhat out at the toes, and a chip hat, with the frizzles of his\n    curly hair sticking through its crevices. A book and a small slate,\n    under his arm, indicated that he was on his way to school. He stared\n    at Hepzibah a moment, as an elder customer than himself would have been\n    likely enough to do, not knowing what to make of the tragic attitude\n    and queer scowl wherewith she regarded him. \"Well, child,\" said she, taking heart at sight of a personage so little\n    formidable,--\"well, my child, what did you wish for?\" \"That Jim Crow there in the window,\" answered the urchin, holding out a\n    cent, and pointing to the gingerbread figure that had attracted his\n    notice, as he loitered along to school; \"the one that has not a broken\n    foot.\" So Hepzibah put forth her lank arm, and, taking the effigy from the\n    shop-window, delivered it to her first customer.\n\n<System> Please remember what the user reads on 2024-01-11, save the details within the book, and retain a summary of the book the user has read so far.", "[Event happened on 2024-01-12 The user is reading a book]\n<User> \"No matter for the money,\" said she, giving him a little push towards\n    the door; for her old gentility was contumaciously squeamish at sight\n    of the copper coin, and, besides, it seemed such pitiful meanness to\n    take the child's pocket-money in exchange for a bit of stale\n    gingerbread. \"No matter for the cent. You are welcome to Jim Crow.\" The child, staring with round eyes at this instance of liberality,\n    wholly unprecedented in his large experience of cent-shops, took the\n    man of gingerbread, and quitted the premises. No sooner had he reached\n    the sidewalk (little cannibal that he was!) than Jim Crow's head was in\n    his mouth. As he had not been careful to shut the door, Hepzibah was\n    at the pains of closing it after him, with a pettish ejaculation or two\n    about the troublesomeness of young people, and particularly of small\n    boys. She had just placed another representative of the renowned Jim\n    Crow at the window, when again the shop-bell tinkled clamorously, and\n    again the door being thrust open, with its characteristic jerk and jar,\n    disclosed the same sturdy little urchin who, precisely two minutes ago,\n    had made his exit. The crumbs and discoloration of the cannibal feast,\n    as yet hardly consummated, were exceedingly visible about his mouth. \"What is it now, child?\" asked the maiden lady rather impatiently; \"did\n    you come back to shut the door?\" \"No,\" answered the urchin, pointing to the figure that had just been\n    put up; \"I want that other Jim Crow.\" \"Well, here it is for you,\" said Hepzibah, reaching it down; but\n    recognizing that this pertinacious customer would not quit her on any\n    other terms, so long as she had a gingerbread figure in her shop, she\n    partly drew back her extended hand, \"Where is the cent?\" The little boy had the cent ready, but, like a true-born Yankee, would\n    have preferred the better bargain to the worse. Looking somewhat\n    chagrined, he put the coin into Hepzibah's hand, and departed, sending\n    the second Jim Crow in quest of the former one. The new shop-keeper\n    dropped the first solid result of her commercial enterprise into the\n    till. It was done! The sordid stain of that copper coin could never be\n    washed away from her palm. The little schoolboy, aided by the impish\n    figure of the negro dancer, had wrought an irreparable ruin. The\n    structure of ancient aristocracy had been demolished by him, even as if\n    his childish gripe had torn down the seven-gabled mansion. Now let\n    Hepzibah turn the old Pyncheon portraits with their faces to the wall,\n    and take the map of her Eastern territory to kindle the kitchen fire,\n    and blow up the flame with the empty breath of her ancestral\n    traditions! What had she to do with ancestry? Nothing; no more than\n    with posterity! No lady, now, but simply Hepzibah Pyncheon, a forlorn\n    old maid, and keeper of a cent-shop! Nevertheless, even while she paraded these ideas somewhat\n    ostentatiously through her mind, it is altogether surprising what a\n    calmness had come over her. The anxiety and misgivings which had\n    tormented her, whether asleep or in melancholy day-dreams, ever since\n    her project began to take an aspect of solidity, had now vanished quite\n    away. She felt the novelty of her position, indeed, but no longer with\n    disturbance or affright. Now and then, there came a thrill of almost\n    youthful enjoyment. It was the invigorating breath of a fresh outward\n    atmosphere, after the long torpor and monotonous seclusion of her life. So wholesome is effort! So miraculous the strength that we do not know\n    of! The healthiest glow that Hepzibah had known for years had come now\n    in the dreaded crisis, when, for the first time, she had put forth her\n    hand to help herself. The little circlet of the schoolboy's copper\n    coin--dim and lustreless though it was, with the small services which\n    it had been doing here and there about the world--had proved a\n    talisman, fragrant with good, and deserving to be set in gold and worn\n    next her heart. It was as potent, and perhaps endowed with the same\n    kind of efficacy, as a galvanic ring! Hepzibah, at all events, was\n    indebted to its subtile operation both in body and spirit; so much the\n    more, as it inspired her with energy to get some breakfast, at which,\n    still the better to keep up her courage, she allowed herself an extra\n    spoonful in her infusion of black tea. Her introductory day of shop-keeping did not run on, however, without\n    many and serious interruptions of this mood of cheerful vigor. As a\n    general rule, Providence seldom vouchsafes to mortals any more than\n    just that degree of encouragement which suffices to keep them at a\n    reasonably full exertion of their powers. In the case of our old\n    gentlewoman, after the excitement of new effort had subsided, the\n    despondency of her whole life threatened, ever and anon, to return. It\n    was like the heavy mass of clouds which we may often see obscuring the\n    sky, and making a gray twilight everywhere, until, towards nightfall,\n    it yields temporarily to a glimpse of sunshine. But, always, the\n    envious cloud strives to gather again across the streak of celestial\n    azure. Customers came in, as the forenoon advanced, but rather slowly; in some\n    cases, too, it must be owned, with little satisfaction either to\n    themselves or Miss Hepzibah; nor, on the whole, with an aggregate of\n    very rich emolument to the till. A little girl, sent by her mother to\n    match a skein of cotton thread, of a peculiar hue, took one that the\n    near-sighted old lady pronounced extremely like, but soon came running\n    back, with a blunt and cross message, that it would not do, and,\n    besides, was very rotten! Then, there was a pale, care-wrinkled woman,\n    not old but haggard, and already with streaks of gray among her hair,\n    like silver ribbons; one of those women, naturally delicate, whom you\n    at once recognize as worn to death by a brute--probably a drunken\n    brute--of a husband, and at least nine children. She wanted a few\n    pounds of flour, and offered the money, which the decayed gentlewoman\n    silently rejected, and gave the poor soul better measure than if she\n    had taken it. Shortly afterwards, a man in a blue cotton frock, much\n    soiled, came in and bought a pipe, filling the whole shop, meanwhile,\n    with the hot odor of strong drink, not only exhaled in the torrid\n    atmosphere of his breath, but oozing out of his entire system, like an\n    inflammable gas. It was impressed on Hepzibah's mind that this was the\n    husband of the care-wrinkled woman. He asked for a paper of tobacco;\n    and as she had neglected to provide herself with the article, her\n    brutal customer dashed down his newly-bought pipe and left the shop,\n    muttering some unintelligible words, which had the tone and bitterness\n    of a curse. Hereupon Hepzibah threw up her eyes, unintentionally\n    scowling in the face of Providence! No less than five persons, during the forenoon, inquired for\n    ginger-beer, or root-beer, or any drink of a similar brewage, and,\n    obtaining nothing of the kind, went off in an exceedingly bad humor. Three of them left the door open, and the other two pulled it so\n    spitefully in going out that the little bell played the very deuce with\n    Hepzibah's nerves. A round, bustling, fire-ruddy housewife of the\n    neighborhood burst breathless into the shop, fiercely demanding yeast;\n    and when the poor gentlewoman, with her cold shyness of manner, gave\n    her hot customer to understand that she did not keep the article, this\n    very capable housewife took upon herself to administer a regular rebuke. \"A cent-shop, and no yeast!\" quoth she; \"That will never do! Who ever\n    heard of such a thing? Your loaf will never rise, no more than mine\n    will to-day. You had better shut up shop at once.\" \"Well,\" said Hepzibah, heaving a deep sigh, \"perhaps I had!\" Several times, moreover, besides the above instance, her lady-like\n    sensibilities were seriously infringed upon by the familiar, if not\n    rude, tone with which people addressed her. They evidently considered\n    themselves not merely her equals, but her patrons and superiors.\n\n<System> Please remember what the user reads on 2024-01-12, save the details within the book, and retain a summary of the book the user has read so far.", "[Event happened on 2024-01-13 The user is reading a book]\n<User> Now,\n    Hepzibah had unconsciously flattered herself with the idea that there\n    would be a gleam or halo, of some kind or other, about her person,\n    which would insure an obeisance to her sterling gentility, or, at\n    least, a tacit recognition of it. On the other hand, nothing tortured\n    her more intolerably than when this recognition was too prominently\n    expressed. To one or two rather officious offers of sympathy, her\n    responses were little short of acrimonious; and, we regret to say,\n    Hepzibah was thrown into a positively unchristian state of mind by the\n    suspicion that one of her customers was drawn to the shop, not by any\n    real need of the article which she pretended to seek, but by a wicked\n    wish to stare at her. The vulgar creature was determined to see for\n    herself what sort of a figure a mildewed piece of aristocracy, after\n    wasting all the bloom and much of the decline of her life apart from\n    the world, would cut behind a counter. In this particular case,\n    however mechanical and innocuous it might be at other times, Hepzibah's\n    contortion of brow served her in good stead. \"I never was so frightened in my life!\" said the curious customer, in\n    describing the incident to one of her acquaintances. \"She's a real old\n    vixen, take my word of it! She says little, to be sure; but if you\n    could only see the mischief in her eye!\" On the whole, therefore, her new experience led our decayed gentlewoman\n    to very disagreeable conclusions as to the temper and manners of what\n    she termed the lower classes, whom heretofore she had looked down upon\n    with a gentle and pitying complaisance, as herself occupying a sphere\n    of unquestionable superiority. But, unfortunately, she had likewise to\n    struggle against a bitter emotion of a directly opposite kind:  a\n    sentiment of virulence, we mean, towards the idle aristocracy to which\n    it had so recently been her pride to belong. When a lady, in a\n    delicate and costly summer garb, with a floating veil and gracefully\n    swaying gown, and, altogether, an ethereal lightness that made you look\n    at her beautifully slippered feet, to see whether she trod on the dust\n    or floated in the air,--when such a vision happened to pass through\n    this retired street, leaving it tenderly and delusively fragrant with\n    her passage, as if a bouquet of tea-roses had been borne along,--then\n    again, it is to be feared, old Hepzibah's scowl could no longer\n    vindicate itself entirely on the plea of near-sightedness. \"For what end,\" thought she, giving vent to that feeling of hostility\n    which is the only real abasement of the poor in presence of the\n    rich,--\"for what good end, in the wisdom of Providence, does that woman\n    live? Must the whole world toil, that the palms of her hands may be\n    kept white and delicate?\" Then, ashamed and penitent, she hid her face. \"May God forgive me!\" said she. Doubtless, God did forgive her. But, taking the inward and outward\n    history of the first half-day into consideration, Hepzibah began to\n    fear that the shop would prove her ruin in a moral and religious point\n    of view, without contributing very essentially towards even her\n    temporal welfare. TOWARDS noon, Hepzibah saw an elderly gentleman, large and portly, and\nof remarkably dignified demeanor, passing slowly along on the opposite\nside of the white and dusty street. On coming within the shadow of the\nPyncheon Elm, he stopt, and (taking off his hat, meanwhile, to wipe the\n        perspiration from his brow) seemed to scrutinize, with especial\ninterest, the dilapidated and rusty-visaged House of the Seven Gables. He himself, in a very different style, was as well worth looking at as\nthe house. No better model need be sought, nor could have been found,\n    of a very high order of respectability, which, by some indescribable\n    magic, not merely expressed itself in his looks and gestures, but even\n    governed the fashion of his garments, and rendered them all proper and\n    essential to the man. Without appearing to differ, in any tangible\n    way, from other people's clothes, there was yet a wide and rich gravity\n    about them that must have been a characteristic of the wearer, since it\n    could not be defined as pertaining either to the cut or material. His\n    gold-headed cane, too,--a serviceable staff, of dark polished\n    wood,--had similar traits, and, had it chosen to take a walk by itself,\n    would have been recognized anywhere as a tolerably adequate\n    representative of its master. This character--which showed itself so\n    strikingly in everything about him, and the effect of which we seek to\n    convey to the reader--went no deeper than his station, habits of life,\n    and external circumstances. One perceived him to be a personage of\n    marked influence and authority; and, especially, you could feel just as\n    certain that he was opulent as if he had exhibited his bank account, or\n    as if you had seen him touching the twigs of the Pyncheon Elm, and,\n    Midas-like, transmuting them to gold. In his youth, he had probably been considered a handsome man; at his\n    present age, his brow was too heavy, his temples too bare, his\n    remaining hair too gray, his eye too cold, his lips too closely\n    compressed, to bear any relation to mere personal beauty. He would\n    have made a good and massive portrait; better now, perhaps, than at any\n    previous period of his life, although his look might grow positively\n    harsh in the process of being fixed upon the canvas. The artist would\n    have found it desirable to study his face, and prove its capacity for\n    varied expression; to darken it with a frown,--to kindle it up with a\n    smile. While the elderly gentleman stood looking at the Pyncheon House, both\n    the frown and the smile passed successively over his countenance. His\n    eye rested on the shop-window, and putting up a pair of gold-bowed\n    spectacles, which he held in his hand, he minutely surveyed Hepzibah's\n    little arrangement of toys and commodities. At first it seemed not to\n    please him,--nay, to cause him exceeding displeasure,--and yet, the\n    very next moment, he smiled. While the latter expression was yet on\n    his lips, he caught a glimpse of Hepzibah, who had involuntarily bent\n    forward to the window; and then the smile changed from acrid and\n    disagreeable to the sunniest complacency and benevolence. He bowed,\n    with a happy mixture of dignity and courteous kindliness, and pursued\n    his way. \"There he is!\" said Hepzibah to herself, gulping down a very bitter\n    emotion, and, since she could not rid herself of it, trying to drive it\n    back into her heart. \"What does he think of it, I wonder? Does it\n    please him? Ah! he is looking back!\" The gentleman had paused in the street, and turned himself half about,\n    still with his eyes fixed on the shop-window. In fact, he wheeled\n    wholly round, and commenced a step or two, as if designing to enter the\n    shop; but, as it chanced, his purpose was anticipated by Hepzibah's\n    first customer, the little cannibal of Jim Crow, who, staring up at the\n    window, was irresistibly attracted by an elephant of gingerbread. What\n    a grand appetite had this small urchin!--Two Jim Crows immediately\n    after breakfast!--and now an elephant, as a preliminary whet before\n    dinner. By the time this latter purchase was completed, the elderly\n    gentleman had resumed his way, and turned the street corner. \"Take it as you like, Cousin Jaffrey,\"  muttered the maiden lady, as\n    she drew back, after cautiously thrusting out her head, and looking up\n    and down the street,--\"Take it as you like! You have seen my little\n    shop-window. Well!--what have you to say?--is not the Pyncheon House\n    my own, while I'm alive?\" After this incident, Hepzibah retreated to the back parlor, where she\n    at first caught up a half-finished stocking, and began knitting at it\n    with nervous and irregular jerks; but quickly finding herself at odds\n    with the stitches, she threw it aside, and walked hurriedly about the\n    room. At length she paused before the portrait of the stern old\n    Puritan, her ancestor, and the founder of the house.\n\n<System> Please remember what the user reads on 2024-01-13, save the details within the book, and retain a summary of the book the user has read so far.", "[Event happened on 2024-01-16 The user is reading a book]\n<User> In one sense, this\n    picture had almost faded into the canvas, and hidden itself behind the\n    duskiness of age; in another, she could not but fancy that it had been\n    growing more prominent and strikingly expressive, ever since her\n    earliest familiarity with it as a child. For, while the physical\n    outline and substance were darkening away from the beholder's eye, the\n    bold, hard, and, at the same time, indirect character of the man seemed\n    to be brought out in a kind of spiritual relief. Such an effect may\n    occasionally be observed in pictures of antique date. They acquire a\n    look which an artist (if he have anything like the complacency of\n            artists nowadays) would never dream of presenting to a patron as his\n    own characteristic expression, but which, nevertheless, we at once\n    recognize as reflecting the unlovely truth of a human soul. In such\n    cases, the painter's deep conception of his subject's inward traits has\n    wrought itself into the essence of the picture, and is seen after the\n    superficial coloring has been rubbed off by time. While gazing at the portrait, Hepzibah trembled under its eye. Her\n    hereditary reverence made her afraid to judge the character of the\n    original so harshly as a perception of the truth compelled her to do. But still she gazed, because the face of the picture enabled her--at\n    least, she fancied so--to read more accurately, and to a greater depth,\n    the face which she had just seen in the street. \"This is the very man!\" murmured she to herself. \"Let Jaffrey Pyncheon\n    smile as he will, there is that look beneath! Put on him a skull-cap,\n    and a band, and a black cloak, and a Bible in one hand and a sword in\n    the other,--then let Jaffrey smile as he might,--nobody would doubt\n    that it was the old Pyncheon come again. He has proved himself the\n    very man to build up a new house! Perhaps, too, to draw down a new\n    curse!\" Thus did Hepzibah bewilder herself with these fantasies of the old\n    time. She had dwelt too much alone,--too long in the Pyncheon\n    House,--until her very brain was impregnated with the dry-rot of its\n    timbers. She needed a walk along the noonday street to keep her sane. By the spell of contrast, another portrait rose up before her, painted\n    with more daring flattery than any artist would have ventured upon, but\n    yet so delicately touched that the likeness remained perfect. Malbone's miniature, though from the same original, was far inferior to\n    Hepzibah's air-drawn picture, at which affection and sorrowful\n    remembrance wrought together. Soft, mildly, and cheerfully\n    contemplative, with full, red lips, just on the verge of a smile, which\n    the eyes seemed to herald by a gentle kindling-up of their orbs! Feminine traits, moulded inseparably with those of the other sex! The\n    miniature, likewise, had this last peculiarity; so that you inevitably\n    thought of the original as resembling his mother, and she a lovely and\n    lovable woman, with perhaps some beautiful infirmity of character, that\n    made it all the pleasanter to know and easier to love her. \"Yes,\" thought Hepzibah, with grief of which it was only the more\n    tolerable portion that welled up from her heart to her eyelids, \"they\n    persecuted his mother in him! He never was a Pyncheon!\" But here the shop-bell rang; it was like a sound from a remote\n    distance,--so far had Hepzibah descended into the sepulchral depths of\n    her reminiscences. On entering the shop, she found an old man there, a\n    humble resident of Pyncheon Street, and whom, for a great many years\n    past, she had suffered to be a kind of familiar of the house. He was\n    an immemorial personage, who seemed always to have had a white head and\n    wrinkles, and never to have possessed but a single tooth, and that a\n    half-decayed one, in the front of the upper jaw. Well advanced as\n    Hepzibah was, she could not remember when Uncle Venner, as the\n    neighborhood called him, had not gone up and down the street, stooping\n    a little and drawing his feet heavily over the gravel or pavement. But\n    still there was something tough and vigorous about him, that not only\n    kept him in daily breath, but enabled him to fill a place which would\n    else have been vacant in the apparently crowded world. To go of\n    errands with his slow and shuffling gait, which made you doubt how he\n    ever was to arrive anywhere; to saw a small household's foot or two of\n    firewood, or knock to pieces an old barrel, or split up a pine board\n    for kindling-stuff; in summer, to dig the few yards of garden ground\n    appertaining to a low-rented tenement, and share the produce of his\n    labor at the halves; in winter, to shovel away the snow from the\n    sidewalk, or open paths to the woodshed, or along the clothes-line;\n    such were some of the essential offices which Uncle Venner performed\n    among at least a score of families. Within that circle, he claimed the\n    same sort of privilege, and probably felt as much warmth of interest,\n    as a clergyman does in the range of his parishioners. Not that he laid\n    claim to the tithe pig; but, as an analogous mode of reverence, he went\n    his rounds, every morning, to gather up the crumbs of the table and\n    overflowings of the dinner-pot, as food for a pig of his own. In his younger days--for, after all, there was a dim tradition that he\n    had been, not young, but younger--Uncle Venner was commonly regarded as\n    rather deficient, than otherwise, in his wits. In truth he had\n    virtually pleaded guilty to the charge, by scarcely aiming at such\n    success as other men seek, and by taking only that humble and modest\n    part in the intercourse of life which belongs to the alleged\n    deficiency. But now, in his extreme old age,--whether it were that his\n    long and hard experience had actually brightened him, or that his\n    decaying judgment rendered him less capable of fairly measuring\n    himself,--the venerable man made pretensions to no little wisdom, and\n    really enjoyed the credit of it. There was likewise, at times, a vein\n    of something like poetry in him; it was the moss or wall-flower of his\n    mind in its small dilapidation, and gave a charm to what might have\n    been vulgar and commonplace in his earlier and middle life. Hepzibah\n    had a regard for him, because his name was ancient in the town and had\n    formerly been respectable. It was a still better reason for awarding\n    him a species of familiar reverence that Uncle Venner was himself the\n    most ancient existence, whether of man or thing, in Pyncheon Street,\n    except the House of the Seven Gables, and perhaps the elm that\n    overshadowed it. This patriarch now presented himself before Hepzibah, clad in an old\n    blue coat, which had a fashionable air, and must have accrued to him\n    from the cast-off wardrobe of some dashing clerk. As for his trousers,\n    they were of tow-cloth, very short in the legs, and bagging down\n    strangely in the rear, but yet having a suitableness to his figure\n    which his other garment entirely lacked. His hat had relation to no\n    other part of his dress, and but very little to the head that wore it. Thus Uncle Venner was a miscellaneous old gentleman, partly himself,\n    but, in good measure, somebody else; patched together, too, of\n    different epochs; an epitome of times and fashions. \"So, you have really begun trade,\" said he,--\"really begun trade! Well, I'm glad to see it. Young people should never live idle in the\n    world, nor old ones neither, unless when the rheumatize gets hold of\n    them. It has given me warning already; and in two or three years\n    longer, I shall think of putting aside business and retiring to my\n    farm. That's yonder,--the great brick house, you know,--the workhouse,\n    most folks call it; but I mean to do my work first, and go there to be\n    idle and enjoy myself. And I'm glad to see you beginning to do your\n    work, Miss Hepzibah!\" \"Thank you, Uncle Venner\" said Hepzibah, smiling; for she always felt\n    kindly towards the simple and talkative old man. Had he been an old\n    woman, she might probably have repelled the freedom, which she now took\n    in good part. \"It is time for me to begin work, indeed!\n\n<System> Please remember what the user reads on 2024-01-16, save the details within the book, and retain a summary of the book the user has read so far.", "[Event happened on 2024-01-18 The user is reading a book]\n<User> Or, to speak\n    the truth, I have just begun when I ought to be giving it up.\" \"Oh, never say that, Miss Hepzibah!\" answered the old man. \"You are a\n    young woman yet. Why, I hardly thought myself younger than I am now,\n    it seems so little while ago since I used to see you playing about the\n    door of the old house, quite a small child! Oftener, though, you used\n    to be sitting at the threshold, and looking gravely into the street;\n    for you had always a grave kind of way with you,--a grown-up air, when\n    you were only the height of my knee. It seems as if I saw you now; and\n    your grandfather with his red cloak, and his white wig, and his cocked\n    hat, and his cane, coming out of the house, and stepping so grandly up\n    the street! Those old gentlemen that grew up before the Revolution used\n    to put on grand airs. In my young days, the great man of the town was\n    commonly called King; and his wife, not Queen to be sure, but Lady. Nowadays, a man would not dare to be called King; and if he feels\n    himself a little above common folks, he only stoops so much the lower\n    to them. I met your cousin, the Judge, ten minutes ago; and, in my old\n    tow-cloth trousers, as you see, the Judge raised his hat to me, I do\n    believe! At any rate, the Judge bowed and smiled!\" \"Yes,\" said Hepzibah, with something bitter stealing unawares into her\n    tone; \"my cousin Jaffrey is thought to have a very pleasant smile!\" \"And so he has\" replied Uncle Venner. \"And that's rather remarkable in\n    a Pyncheon; for, begging your pardon, Miss Hepzibah, they never had the\n    name of being an easy and agreeable set of folks. There was no getting\n    close to them. But Now, Miss Hepzibah, if an old man may be bold to\n    ask, why don't Judge Pyncheon, with his great means, step forward, and\n    tell his cousin to shut up her little shop at once? It's for your\n    credit to be doing something, but it's not for the Judge's credit to\n    let you!\" \"We won't talk of this, if you please, Uncle Venner,\" said Hepzibah\n    coldly. \"I ought to say, however, that, if I choose to earn bread for\n    myself, it is not Judge Pyncheon's fault. Neither will he deserve the\n    blame,\" added she more kindly, remembering Uncle Venner's privileges of\n    age and humble familiarity, \"if I should, by and by, find it convenient\n    to retire with you to your farm.\" \"And it's no bad place, either, that farm of mine!\" cried the old man\n    cheerily, as if there were something positively delightful in the\n    prospect. \"No bad place is the great brick farm-house, especially for\n    them that will find a good many old cronies there, as will be my case. I quite long to be among them, sometimes, of the winter evenings; for\n    it is but dull business for a lonesome elderly man, like me, to be\n    nodding, by the hour together, with no company but his air-tight stove. Summer or winter, there's a great deal to be said in favor of my farm! And, take it in the autumn, what can be pleasanter than to spend a\n    whole day on the sunny side of a barn or a wood-pile, chatting with\n    somebody as old as one's self; or, perhaps, idling away the time with a\n    natural-born simpleton, who knows how to be idle, because even our busy\n    Yankees never have found out how to put him to any use? Upon my word,\n    Miss Hepzibah, I doubt whether I've ever been so comfortable as I mean\n    to be at my farm, which most folks call the workhouse. But\n    you,--you're a young woman yet,--you never need go there! Something\n    still better will turn up for you. I'm sure of it!\" Hepzibah fancied that there was something peculiar in her venerable\n    friend's look and tone; insomuch, that she gazed into his face with\n    considerable earnestness, endeavoring to discover what secret meaning,\n    if any, might be lurking there. Individuals whose affairs have reached\n    an utterly desperate crisis almost invariably keep themselves alive\n    with hopes, so much the more airily magnificent as they have the less\n    of solid matter within their grasp whereof to mould any judicious and\n    moderate expectation of good. Thus, all the while Hepzibah was\n    perfecting the scheme of her little shop, she had cherished an\n    unacknowledged idea that some harlequin trick of fortune would\n    intervene in her favor. For example, an uncle--who had sailed for\n    India fifty years before, and never been heard of since--might yet\n    return, and adopt her to be the comfort of his very extreme and\n    decrepit age, and adorn her with pearls, diamonds, and Oriental shawls\n    and turbans, and make her the ultimate heiress of his unreckonable\n    riches. Or the member of Parliament, now at the head of the English\n    branch of the family,--with which the elder stock, on this side of the\n    Atlantic, had held little or no intercourse for the last two\n    centuries,--this eminent gentleman might invite Hepzibah to quit the\n    ruinous House of the Seven Gables, and come over to dwell with her\n    kindred at Pyncheon Hall. But, for reasons the most imperative, she\n    could not yield to his request. It was more probable, therefore, that\n    the descendants of a Pyncheon who had emigrated to Virginia, in some\n    past generation, and became a great planter there,--hearing of\n    Hepzibah's destitution, and impelled by the splendid generosity of\n    character with which their Virginian mixture must have enriched the New\n    England blood,--would send her a remittance of a thousand dollars, with\n    a hint of repeating the favor annually. Or,--and, surely, anything so\n    undeniably just could not be beyond the limits of reasonable\n    anticipation,--the great claim to the heritage of Waldo County might\n    finally be decided in favor of the Pyncheons; so that, instead of\n    keeping a cent-shop, Hepzibah would build a palace, and look down from\n    its highest tower on hill, dale, forest, field, and town, as her own\n    share of the ancestral territory. These were some of the fantasies which she had long dreamed about; and,\n    aided by these, Uncle Venner's casual attempt at encouragement kindled\n    a strange festal glory in the poor, bare, melancholy chambers of her\n    brain, as if that inner world were suddenly lighted up with gas. But\n    either he knew nothing of her castles in the air,--as how should\n    he?--or else her earnest scowl disturbed his recollection, as it might\n    a more courageous man's. Instead of pursuing any weightier topic,\n    Uncle Venner was pleased to favor Hepzibah with some sage counsel in\n    her shop-keeping capacity. \"Give no credit!\" --these were some of his golden maxims,--\"Never take\n    paper-money. Look well to your change! Ring the silver on the\n    four-pound weight! Shove back all English half-pence and base copper\n    tokens, such as are very plenty about town! At your leisure hours, knit\n    children's woollen socks and mittens! Brew your own yeast, and make\n    your own ginger-beer!\" And while Hepzibah was doing her utmost to digest the hard little\n    pellets of his already uttered wisdom, he gave vent to his final, and\n    what he declared to be his all-important advice, as follows:--\n\n    \"Put on a bright face for your customers, and smile pleasantly as you\n    hand them what they ask for! A stale article, if you dip it in a good,\n    warm, sunny smile, will go off better than a fresh one that you've\n    scowled upon.\" To this last apothegm poor Hepzibah responded with a sigh so deep and\n    heavy that it almost rustled Uncle Venner quite away, like a withered\n    leaf,--as he was,--before an autumnal gale. Recovering himself,\n    however, he bent forward, and, with a good deal of feeling in his\n    ancient visage, beckoned her nearer to him. \"When do you expect him home?\" whispered he. \"Whom do you mean?\" asked Hepzibah, turning pale. \"Ah!--You don't love to talk about it,\" said Uncle Venner. \"Well,\n    well! we'll say no more, though there's word of it all over town. I\n    remember him, Miss Hepzibah, before he could run alone!\"\n\n<System> Please remember what the user reads on 2024-01-18, save the details within the book, and retain a summary of the book the user has read so far.", "[Event happened on 2024-01-21 The user is reading a book]\n<User> During the remainder of the day, poor Hepzibah acquitted herself even\n    less creditably, as a shop-keeper, than in her earlier efforts. She\n    appeared to be walking in a dream; or, more truly, the vivid life and\n    reality assumed by her emotions made all outward occurrences\n    unsubstantial, like the teasing phantasms of a half-conscious slumber. She still responded, mechanically, to the frequent summons of the\n    shop-bell, and, at the demand of her customers, went prying with vague\n    eyes about the shop, proffering them one article after another, and\n    thrusting aside--perversely, as most of them supposed--the identical\n    thing they asked for. There is sad confusion, indeed, when the spirit\n    thus flits away into the past, or into the more awful future, or, in\n    any manner, steps across the spaceless boundary betwixt its own region\n    and the actual world; where the body remains to guide itself as best it\n    may, with little more than the mechanism of animal life. It is like\n    death, without death's quiet privilege,--its freedom from mortal care. Worst of all, when the actual duties are comprised in such petty\n    details as now vexed the brooding soul of the old gentlewoman. As the\n    animosity of fate would have it, there was a great influx of custom in\n    the course of the afternoon. Hepzibah blundered to and fro about her\n    small place of business, committing the most unheard-of errors:  now\n    stringing up twelve, and now seven, tallow-candles, instead of ten to\n    the pound; selling ginger for Scotch snuff, pins for needles, and\n    needles for pins; misreckoning her change, sometimes to the public\n    detriment, and much oftener to her own; and thus she went on, doing her\n    utmost to bring chaos back again, until, at the close of the day's\n    labor, to her inexplicable astonishment, she found the money-drawer\n    almost destitute of coin. After all her painful traffic, the whole\n    proceeds were perhaps half a dozen coppers, and a questionable\n    ninepence which ultimately proved to be copper likewise. At this price, or at whatever price, she rejoiced that the day had\n    reached its end. Never before had she had such a sense of the\n    intolerable length of time that creeps between dawn and sunset, and of\n    the miserable irksomeness of having aught to do, and of the better\n    wisdom that it would be to lie down at once, in sullen resignation, and\n    let life, and its toils and vexations, trample over one's prostrate\n    body as they may! Hepzibah's final operation was with the little\n    devourer of Jim Crow and the elephant, who now proposed to eat a camel. In her bewilderment, she offered him first a wooden dragoon, and next a\n    handful of marbles; neither of which being adapted to his else\n    omnivorous appetite, she hastily held out her whole remaining stock of\n    natural history in gingerbread, and huddled the small customer out of\n    the shop. She then muffled the bell in an unfinished stocking, and put\n    up the oaken bar across the door. During the latter process, an omnibus came to a stand-still under the\n    branches of the elm-tree. Hepzibah's heart was in her mouth. Remote\n    and dusky, and with no sunshine on all the intervening space, was that\n    region of the Past whence her only guest might be expected to arrive! Was she to meet him now? Somebody, at all events, was passing from the farthest interior of the\n    omnibus towards its entrance. A gentleman alighted; but it was only\n    to offer his hand to a young girl whose slender figure, nowise needing\n    such assistance, now lightly descended the steps, and made an airy\n    little jump from the final one to the sidewalk. She rewarded her\n    cavalier with a smile, the cheery glow of which was seen reflected on\n    his own face as he reentered the vehicle. The girl then turned towards\n    the House of the Seven Gables, to the door of which, meanwhile,--not\n    the shop-door, but the antique portal,--the omnibus-man had carried a\n    light trunk and a bandbox. First giving a sharp rap of the old iron\n    knocker, he left his passenger and her luggage at the door-step, and\n    departed. \"Who can it be?\" thought Hepzibah, who had been screwing her visual\n    organs into the acutest focus of which they were capable. \"The girl\n    must have mistaken the house.\" She stole softly into the hall, and,\n    herself invisible, gazed through the dusty side-lights of the portal at\n    the young, blooming, and very cheerful face which presented itself for\n    admittance into the gloomy old mansion. It was a face to which almost\n    any door would have opened of its own accord. The young girl, so fresh, so unconventional, and yet so orderly and\n    obedient to common rules, as you at once recognized her to be, was\n    widely in contrast, at that moment, with everything about her. The\n    sordid and ugly luxuriance of gigantic weeds that grew in the angle of\n    the house, and the heavy projection that overshadowed her, and the\n    time-worn framework of the door,--none of these things belonged to her\n    sphere. But, even as a ray of sunshine, fall into what dismal place it\n    may, instantaneously creates for itself a propriety in being there, so\n    did it seem altogether fit that the girl should be standing at the\n    threshold. It was no less evidently proper that the door should swing\n    open to admit her. The maiden lady herself, sternly inhospitable in\n    her first purposes, soon began to feel that the door ought to be shoved\n    back, and the rusty key be turned in the reluctant lock. \"Can it be Phoebe?\" questioned she within herself. \"It must be little\n    Phoebe; for it can be nobody else,--and there is a look of her father\n    about her, too! But what does she want here? And how like a country\n    cousin, to come down upon a poor body in this way, without so much as a\n    day's notice, or asking whether she would be welcome! Well; she must\n    have a night's lodging, I suppose; and to-morrow the child shall go\n    back to her mother.\" Phoebe, it must be understood, was that one little offshoot of the\n    Pyncheon race to whom we have already referred, as a native of a rural\n    part of New England, where the old fashions and feelings of\n    relationship are still partially kept up. In her own circle, it was\n    regarded as by no means improper for kinsfolk to visit one another\n    without invitation, or preliminary and ceremonious warning. Yet, in\n    consideration of Miss Hepzibah's recluse way of life, a letter had\n    actually been written and despatched, conveying information of Phoebe's\n    projected visit. This epistle, for three or four days past, had been\n    in the pocket of the penny-postman, who, happening to have no other\n    business in Pyncheon Street, had not yet made it convenient to call at\n    the House of the Seven Gables. \"No--she can stay only one night,\" said Hepzibah, unbolting the door. \"If Clifford were to find her here, it might disturb him!\"\n\n<System> Please remember what the user reads on 2024-01-21, save the details within the book, and retain a summary of the book the user has read so far."]
[{"question": "Summarize the content of the book I read from 2024-01-01 to 2024-01-21", "answer": "Hepzibah, Colonel Pyncheon, Holgrave, daguerreotypist, cent-shop, Judge Jaffrey Pyncheon, Clifford, Uncle Venner, Phoebe, Pyncheon house, miniature portrait, faded carpet, high-backed chair, Puritan ancestor, living room, Jim Crow cookie, Ned Higgins, biscuits, omnibus, trunk, country kinsperson, overlooked letter, first commercial day, tradeswoman, soft-hearted mother, workhouse, retirement, wrong change, pessimistic customers, rich woman, scowl, heroism, comfort, wisdom, sadness, joy, profit, arrival"}]