["[Event happened on 2024-01-01 The user is reading a book]\n<User> HALFWAY down a by-street of one of our New England towns stands a rusty\nwooden house, with seven acutely peaked gables, facing towards various\npoints of the compass, and a huge, clustered chimney in the midst. The\nstreet is Pyncheon Street; the house is the old Pyncheon House; and an\nelm-tree, of wide circumference, rooted before the door, is familiar to\nevery town-born child by the title of the Pyncheon Elm. On my\noccasional visits to the town aforesaid, I seldom failed to turn down\nPyncheon Street, for the sake of passing through the shadow of these\ntwo antiquities,--the great elm-tree and the weather-beaten edifice. The aspect of the venerable mansion has always affected me like a human\ncountenance, bearing the traces not merely of outward storm and\nsunshine, but expressive also, of the long lapse of mortal life, and\naccompanying vicissitudes that have passed within. Were these to be\nworthily recounted, they would form a narrative of no small interest\nand instruction, and possessing, moreover, a certain remarkable unity,\n    which might almost seem the result of artistic arrangement. But the\n    story would include a chain of events extending over the better part of\n    two centuries, and, written out with reasonable amplitude, would fill a\n    bigger folio volume, or a longer series of duodecimos, than could\n    prudently be appropriated to the annals of all New England during a\n    similar period. It consequently becomes imperative to make short work\n    with most of the traditionary lore of which the old Pyncheon House,\n    otherwise known as the House of the Seven Gables, has been the theme. With a brief sketch, therefore, of the circumstances amid which the\n    foundation of the house was laid, and a rapid glimpse at its quaint\n    exterior, as it grew black in the prevalent east wind,--pointing, too,\n    here and there, at some spot of more verdant mossiness on its roof and\n    walls,--we shall commence the real action of our tale at an epoch not\n    very remote from the present day. Still, there will be a connection\n    with the long past--a reference to forgotten events and personages, and\n    to manners, feelings, and opinions, almost or wholly obsolete--which,\n    if adequately translated to the reader, would serve to illustrate how\n    much of old material goes to make up the freshest novelty of human\n    life. Hence, too, might be drawn a weighty lesson from the\n    little-regarded truth, that the act of the passing generation is the\n    germ which may and must produce good or evil fruit in a far-distant\n    time; that, together with the seed of the merely temporary crop, which\n    mortals term expediency, they inevitably sow the acorns of a more\n    enduring growth, which may darkly overshadow their posterity. The House of the Seven Gables, antique as it now looks, was not the\n    first habitation erected by civilized man on precisely the same spot of\n    ground. Pyncheon Street formerly bore the humbler appellation of\n    Maule's Lane, from the name of the original occupant of the soil,\n    before whose cottage-door it was a cow-path. A natural spring of soft\n    and pleasant water--a rare treasure on the sea-girt peninsula where the\n    Puritan settlement was made--had early induced Matthew Maule to build a\n    hut, shaggy with thatch, at this point, although somewhat too remote\n    from what was then the centre of the village. In the growth of the\n    town, however, after some thirty or forty years, the site covered by\n    this rude hovel had become exceedingly desirable in the eyes of a\n    prominent and powerful personage, who asserted plausible claims to the\n    proprietorship of this and a large adjacent tract of land, on the\n    strength of a grant from the legislature. Colonel Pyncheon, the\n    claimant, as we gather from whatever traits of him are preserved, was\n    characterized by an iron energy of purpose. Matthew Maule, on the\n    other hand, though an obscure man, was stubborn in the defence of what\n    he considered his right; and, for several years, he succeeded in\n    protecting the acre or two of earth which, with his own toil, he had\n    hewn out of the primeval forest, to be his garden ground and homestead. No written record of this dispute is known to be in existence. Our\n    acquaintance with the whole subject is derived chiefly from tradition. It would be bold, therefore, and possibly unjust, to venture a decisive\n    opinion as to its merits; although it appears to have been at least a\n    matter of doubt, whether Colonel Pyncheon's claim were not unduly\n    stretched, in order to make it cover the small metes and bounds of\n    Matthew Maule. What greatly strengthens such a suspicion is the fact\n    that this controversy between two ill-matched antagonists--at a period,\n    moreover, laud it as we may, when personal influence had far more\n    weight than now--remained for years undecided, and came to a close only\n    with the death of the party occupying the disputed soil. The mode of\n    his death, too, affects the mind differently, in our day, from what it\n    did a century and a half ago. It was a death that blasted with strange\n    horror the humble name of the dweller in the cottage, and made it seem\n    almost a religious act to drive the plough over the little area of his\n    habitation, and obliterate his place and memory from among men. Old Matthew Maule, in a word, was executed for the crime of witchcraft. He was one of the martyrs to that terrible delusion, which should teach\n    us, among its other morals, that the influential classes, and those who\n    take upon themselves to be leaders of the people, are fully liable to\n    all the passionate error that has ever characterized the maddest mob. Clergymen, judges, statesmen,--the wisest, calmest, holiest persons of\n    their day stood in the inner circle round about the gallows, loudest to\n    applaud the work of blood, latest to confess themselves miserably\n    deceived. If any one part of their proceedings can be said to deserve\n    less blame than another, it was the singular indiscrimination with\n    which they persecuted, not merely the poor and aged, as in former\n    judicial massacres, but people of all ranks; their own equals,\n    brethren, and wives. Amid the disorder of such various ruin, it is not\n    strange that a man of inconsiderable note, like Maule, should have\n    trodden the martyr's path to the hill of execution almost unremarked in\n    the throng of his fellow sufferers. But, in after days, when the\n    frenzy of that hideous epoch had subsided, it was remembered how loudly\n    Colonel Pyncheon had joined in the general cry, to purge the land from\n    witchcraft; nor did it fail to be whispered, that there was an\n    invidious acrimony in the zeal with which he had sought the\n    condemnation of Matthew Maule. It was well known that the victim had\n    recognized the bitterness of personal enmity in his persecutor's\n    conduct towards him, and that he declared himself hunted to death for\n    his spoil. At the moment of execution--with the halter about his neck,\n    and while Colonel Pyncheon sat on horseback, grimly gazing at the scene\n    Maule had addressed him from the scaffold, and uttered a prophecy, of\n    which history, as well as fireside tradition, has preserved the very\n    words. \"God,\" said the dying man, pointing his finger, with a ghastly\n    look, at the undismayed countenance of his enemy,--\"God will give him\n    blood to drink!\" After the reputed wizard's death, his humble\n    homestead had fallen an easy spoil into Colonel Pyncheon's grasp. When\n    it was understood, however, that the Colonel intended to erect a family\n    mansion-spacious, ponderously framed of oaken timber, and calculated to\n    endure for many generations of his posterity over the spot first\n    covered by the log-built hut of Matthew Maule, there was much shaking\n    of the head among the village gossips. Without absolutely expressing a\n    doubt whether the stalwart Puritan had acted as a man of conscience and\n    integrity throughout the proceedings which have been sketched, they,\n    nevertheless, hinted that he was about to build his house over an\n    unquiet grave. His home would include the home of the dead and buried\n    wizard, and would thus afford the ghost of the latter a kind of\n    privilege to haunt its new apartments, and the chambers into which\n    future bridegrooms were to lead their brides, and where children of the\n    Pyncheon blood were to be born. The terror and ugliness of Maule's\n    crime, and the wretchedness of his punishment, would darken the freshly\n    plastered walls, and infect them early with the scent of an old and\n    melancholy house.\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> Why, then,--while so much of the soil around him was\n    bestrewn with the virgin forest leaves,--why should Colonel Pyncheon\n    prefer a site that had already been accurst? But the Puritan soldier and magistrate was not a man to be turned aside\n    from his well-considered scheme, either by dread of the wizard's ghost,\n    or by flimsy sentimentalities of any kind, however specious. Had he\n    been told of a bad air, it might have moved him somewhat; but he was\n    ready to encounter an evil spirit on his own ground. Endowed with\n    commonsense, as massive and hard as blocks of granite, fastened\n    together by stern rigidity of purpose, as with iron clamps, he followed\n    out his original design, probably without so much as imagining an\n    objection to it. On the score of delicacy, or any scrupulousness which\n    a finer sensibility might have taught him, the Colonel, like most of\n    his breed and generation, was impenetrable. He therefore dug his\n    cellar, and laid the deep foundations of his mansion, on the square of\n    earth whence Matthew Maule, forty years before, had first swept away\n    the fallen leaves. It was a curious, and, as some people thought, an\n    ominous fact, that, very soon after the workmen began their operations,\n    the spring of water, above mentioned, entirely lost the deliciousness\n    of its pristine quality. Whether its sources were disturbed by the\n    depth of the new cellar, or whatever subtler cause might lurk at the\n    bottom, it is certain that the water of Maule's Well, as it continued\n    to be called, grew hard and brackish. Even such we find it now; and\n    any old woman of the neighborhood will certify that it is productive of\n    intestinal mischief to those who quench their thirst there. The reader may deem it singular that the head carpenter of the new\n    edifice was no other than the son of the very man from whose dead gripe\n    the property of the soil had been wrested. Not improbably he was the\n    best workman of his time; or, perhaps, the Colonel thought it\n    expedient, or was impelled by some better feeling, thus openly to cast\n    aside all animosity against the race of his fallen antagonist. Nor was\n    it out of keeping with the general coarseness and matter-of-fact\n    character of the age, that the son should be willing to earn an honest\n    penny, or, rather, a weighty amount of sterling pounds, from the purse\n    of his father's deadly enemy. At all events, Thomas Maule became the\n    architect of the House of the Seven Gables, and performed his duty so\n    faithfully that the timber framework fastened by his hands still holds\n    together. Thus the great house was built. Familiar as it stands in the writer's\n    recollection,--for it has been an object of curiosity with him from\n    boyhood, both as a specimen of the best and stateliest architecture of\n    a longpast epoch, and as the scene of events more full of human\n    interest, perhaps, than those of a gray feudal castle,--familiar as it\n    stands, in its rusty old age, it is therefore only the more difficult\n    to imagine the bright novelty with which it first caught the sunshine. The impression of its actual state, at this distance of a hundred and\n    sixty years, darkens inevitably through the picture which we would fain\n    give of its appearance on the morning when the Puritan magnate bade all\n    the town to be his guests. A ceremony of consecration, festive as well\n    as religious, was now to be performed. A prayer and discourse from the\n    Rev. Mr. Higginson, and the outpouring of a psalm from the general\n    throat of the community, was to be made acceptable to the grosser sense\n    by ale, cider, wine, and brandy, in copious effusion, and, as some\n    authorities aver, by an ox, roasted whole, or at least, by the weight\n    and substance of an ox, in more manageable joints and sirloins. The\n    carcass of a deer, shot within twenty miles, had supplied material for\n    the vast circumference of a pasty. A codfish of sixty pounds, caught\n    in the bay, had been dissolved into the rich liquid of a chowder. The\n    chimney of the new house, in short, belching forth its kitchen smoke,\n    impregnated the whole air with the scent of meats, fowls, and fishes,\n    spicily concocted with odoriferous herbs, and onions in abundance. The\n    mere smell of such festivity, making its way to everybody's nostrils,\n    was at once an invitation and an appetite. Maule's Lane, or Pyncheon Street, as it were now more decorous to call\n    it, was thronged, at the appointed hour, as with a congregation on its\n    way to church. All, as they approached, looked upward at the imposing\n    edifice, which was henceforth to assume its rank among the habitations\n    of mankind. There it rose, a little withdrawn from the line of the\n    street, but in pride, not modesty. Its whole visible exterior was\n    ornamented with quaint figures, conceived in the grotesqueness of a\n    Gothic fancy, and drawn or stamped in the glittering plaster, composed\n    of lime, pebbles, and bits of glass, with which the woodwork of the\n    walls was overspread. On every side the seven gables pointed sharply\n    towards the sky, and presented the aspect of a whole sisterhood of\n    edifices, breathing through the spiracles of one great chimney. The\n    many lattices, with their small, diamond-shaped panes, admitted the\n    sunlight into hall and chamber, while, nevertheless, the second story,\n    projecting far over the base, and itself retiring beneath the third,\n    threw a shadowy and thoughtful gloom into the lower rooms. Carved\n    globes of wood were affixed under the jutting stories. Little spiral\n    rods of iron beautified each of the seven peaks. On the triangular\n    portion of the gable, that fronted next the street, was a dial, put up\n    that very morning, and on which the sun was still marking the passage\n    of the first bright hour in a history that was not destined to be all\n    so bright. All around were scattered shavings, chips, shingles, and\n    broken halves of bricks; these, together with the lately turned earth,\n    on which the grass had not begun to grow, contributed to the impression\n    of strangeness and novelty proper to a house that had yet its place to\n    make among men's daily interests. The principal entrance, which had almost the breadth of a church-door,\n    was in the angle between the two front gables, and was covered by an\n    open porch, with benches beneath its shelter. Under this arched\n    doorway, scraping their feet on the unworn threshold, now trod the\n    clergymen, the elders, the magistrates, the deacons, and whatever of\n    aristocracy there was in town or county. Thither, too, thronged the\n    plebeian classes as freely as their betters, and in larger number. Just within the entrance, however, stood two serving-men, pointing some\n    of the guests to the neighborhood of the kitchen and ushering others\n    into the statelier rooms,--hospitable alike to all, but still with a\n    scrutinizing regard to the high or low degree of each. Velvet garments\n    sombre but rich, stiffly plaited ruffs and bands, embroidered gloves,\n    venerable beards, the mien and countenance of authority, made it easy\n    to distinguish the gentleman of worship, at that period, from the\n    tradesman, with his plodding air, or the laborer, in his leathern\n    jerkin, stealing awe-stricken into the house which he had perhaps\n    helped to build. One inauspicious circumstance there was, which awakened a hardly\n    concealed displeasure in the breasts of a few of the more punctilious\n    visitors. The founder of this stately mansion--a gentleman noted for\n    the square and ponderous courtesy of his demeanor, ought surely to have\n    stood in his own hall, and to have offered the first welcome to so many\n    eminent personages as here presented themselves in honor of his solemn\n    festival. He was as yet invisible; the most favored of the guests had\n    not beheld him. This sluggishness on Colonel Pyncheon's part became\n    still more unaccountable, when the second dignitary of the province\n    made his appearance, and found no more ceremonious a reception. The\n    lieutenant-governor, although his visit was one of the anticipated\n    glories of the day, had alighted from his horse, and assisted his lady\n    from her side-saddle, and crossed the Colonel's threshold, without\n    other greeting than that of the principal domestic.\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 2024-01-05 The user is reading a book]\n<User> This person--a gray-headed man, of quiet and most respectful\n    deportment--found it necessary to explain that his master still\n    remained in his study, or private apartment; on entering which, an hour\n    before, he had expressed a wish on no account to be disturbed. \"Do not you see, fellow,\" said the high-sheriff of the county, taking\n    the servant aside, \"that this is no less a man than the\n    lieutenant-governor? Summon Colonel Pyncheon at once! I know that he\n    received letters from England this morning; and, in the perusal and\n    consideration of them, an hour may have passed away without his\n    noticing it. But he will be ill-pleased, I judge, if you suffer him to\n    neglect the courtesy due to one of our chief rulers, and who may be\n    said to represent King William, in the absence of the governor himself. Call your master instantly.\" \"Nay, please your worship,\" answered the man, in much perplexity, but\n    with a backwardness that strikingly indicated the hard and severe\n    character of Colonel Pyncheon's domestic rule; \"my master's orders were\n    exceeding strict; and, as your worship knows, he permits of no\n    discretion in the obedience of those who owe him service. Let who list\n    open yonder door; I dare not, though the governor's own voice should\n    bid me do it!\" \"Pooh, pooh, master high sheriff!\" cried the lieutenant-governor, who\n    had overheard the foregoing discussion, and felt himself high enough in\n    station to play a little with his dignity. \"I will take the matter\n    into my own hands. It is time that the good Colonel came forth to\n    greet his friends; else we shall be apt to suspect that he has taken a\n    sip too much of his Canary wine, in his extreme deliberation which cask\n    it were best to broach in honor of the day! But since he is so much\n    behindhand, I will give him a remembrancer myself!\" Accordingly, with such a tramp of his ponderous riding-boots as might\n    of itself have been audible in the remotest of the seven gables, he\n    advanced to the door, which the servant pointed out, and made its new\n    panels reecho with a loud, free knock. Then, looking round, with a\n    smile, to the spectators, he awaited a response. As none came,\n    however, he knocked again, but with the same unsatisfactory result as\n    at first. And now, being a trifle choleric in his temperament, the\n    lieutenant-governor uplifted the heavy hilt of his sword, wherewith he\n    so beat and banged upon the door, that, as some of the bystanders\n    whispered, the racket might have disturbed the dead. Be that as it\n    might, it seemed to produce no awakening effect on Colonel Pyncheon. When the sound subsided, the silence through the house was deep,\n    dreary, and oppressive, notwithstanding that the tongues of many of the\n    guests had already been loosened by a surreptitious cup or two of wine\n    or spirits. \"Strange, forsooth!--very strange!\" cried the lieutenant-governor,\n    whose smile was changed to a frown. \"But seeing that our host sets us\n    the good example of forgetting ceremony, I shall likewise throw it\n    aside, and make free to intrude on his privacy.\" He tried the door, which yielded to his hand, and was flung wide open\n    by a sudden gust of wind that passed, as with a loud sigh, from the\n    outermost portal through all the passages and apartments of the new\n    house. It rustled the silken garments of the ladies, and waved the\n    long curls of the gentlemen's wigs, and shook the window-hangings and\n    the curtains of the bedchambers; causing everywhere a singular stir,\n    which yet was more like a hush. A shadow of awe and half-fearful\n    anticipation--nobody knew wherefore, nor of what--had all at once\n    fallen over the company. They thronged, however, to the now open door, pressing the\n    lieutenant-governor, in the eagerness of their curiosity, into the room\n    in advance of them. At the first glimpse they beheld nothing\n    extraordinary:  a handsomely furnished room, of moderate size, somewhat\n    darkened by curtains; books arranged on shelves; a large map on the\n    wall, and likewise a portrait of Colonel Pyncheon, beneath which sat\n    the original Colonel himself, in an oaken elbow-chair, with a pen in\n    his hand. Letters, parchments, and blank sheets of paper were on the\n    table before him. He appeared to gaze at the curious crowd, in front\n    of which stood the lieutenant-governor; and there was a frown on his\n    dark and massive countenance, as if sternly resentful of the boldness\n    that had impelled them into his private retirement. A little boy--the Colonel's grandchild, and the only human being that\n    ever dared to be familiar with him--now made his way among the guests,\n    and ran towards the seated figure; then pausing halfway, he began to\n    shriek with terror. The company, tremulous as the leaves of a tree,\n    when all are shaking together, drew nearer, and perceived that there\n    was an unnatural distortion in the fixedness of Colonel Pyncheon's\n    stare; that there was blood on his ruff, and that his hoary beard was\n    saturated with it. It was too late to give assistance. The\n    iron-hearted Puritan, the relentless persecutor, the grasping and\n    strong-willed man was dead! Dead, in his new house! There is a\n    tradition, only worth alluding to as lending a tinge of superstitious\n    awe to a scene perhaps gloomy enough without it, that a voice spoke\n    loudly among the guests, the tones of which were like those of old\n    Matthew Maule, the executed wizard,--\"God hath given him blood to\n    drink!\" Thus early had that one guest,--the only guest who is certain, at one\n    time or another, to find his way into every human dwelling,--thus early\n    had Death stepped across the threshold of the House of the Seven Gables! Colonel Pyncheon's sudden and mysterious end made a vast deal of noise\n    in its day. There were many rumors, some of which have vaguely drifted\n    down to the present time, how that appearances indicated violence; that\n    there were the marks of fingers on his throat, and the print of a\n    bloody hand on his plaited ruff; and that his peaked beard was\n    dishevelled, as if it had been fiercely clutched and pulled. It was\n    averred, likewise, that the lattice window, near the Colonel's chair,\n    was open; and that, only a few minutes before the fatal occurrence, the\n    figure of a man had been seen clambering over the garden fence, in the\n    rear of the house. But it were folly to lay any stress on stories of\n    this kind, which are sure to spring up around such an event as that now\n    related, and which, as in the present case, sometimes prolong\n    themselves for ages afterwards, like the toadstools that indicate where\n    the fallen and buried trunk of a tree has long since mouldered into the\n    earth. For our own part, we allow them just as little credence as to\n    that other fable of the skeleton hand which the lieutenant-governor was\n    said to have seen at the Colonel's throat, but which vanished away, as\n    he advanced farther into the room. Certain it is, however, that there\n    was a great consultation and dispute of doctors over the dead body. One,--John Swinnerton by name,--who appears to have been a man of\n    eminence, upheld it, if we have rightly understood his terms of art, to\n    be a case of apoplexy. His professional brethren, each for himself,\n    adopted various hypotheses, more or less plausible, but all dressed out\n    in a perplexing mystery of phrase, which, if it do not show a\n    bewilderment of mind in these erudite physicians, certainly causes it\n    in the unlearned peruser of their opinions. The coroner's jury sat\n    upon the corpse, and, like sensible men, returned an unassailable\n    verdict of \"Sudden Death!\" It is indeed difficult to imagine that there could have been a serious\n    suspicion of murder, or the slightest grounds for implicating any\n    particular individual as the perpetrator. The rank, wealth, and\n    eminent character of the deceased must have insured the strictest\n    scrutiny into every ambiguous circumstance. As none such is on record,\n    it is safe to assume that none existed.\n\n<System> Please remember what the user reads on 2024-01-05, save the details within the book, and retain a summary of the book the user has read so far.", "[Event happened on 2024-01-08 The user is reading a book]\n<User> Tradition,--which sometimes\n    brings down truth that history has let slip, but is oftener the wild\n    babble of the time, such as was formerly spoken at the fireside and now\n    congeals in newspapers,--tradition is responsible for all contrary\n    averments. In Colonel Pyncheon's funeral sermon, which was printed,\n    and is still extant, the Rev. Mr. Higginson enumerates, among the many\n    felicities of his distinguished parishioner's earthly career, the happy\n    seasonableness of his death. His duties all performed,--the highest\n    prosperity attained,--his race and future generations fixed on a stable\n    basis, and with a stately roof to shelter them for centuries to\n    come,--what other upward step remained for this good man to take, save\n    the final step from earth to the golden gate of heaven! The pious\n    clergyman surely would not have uttered words like these had he in the\n    least suspected that the Colonel had been thrust into the other world\n    with the clutch of violence upon his throat. The family of Colonel Pyncheon, at the epoch of his death, seemed\n    destined to as fortunate a permanence as can anywise consist with the\n    inherent instability of human affairs. It might fairly be anticipated\n    that the progress of time would rather increase and ripen their\n    prosperity, than wear away and destroy it. For, not only had his son\n    and heir come into immediate enjoyment of a rich estate, but there was\n    a claim through an Indian deed, confirmed by a subsequent grant of the\n    General Court, to a vast and as yet unexplored and unmeasured tract of\n    Eastern lands. These possessions--for as such they might almost\n    certainly be reckoned--comprised the greater part of what is now known\n    as Waldo County, in the state of Maine, and were more extensive than\n    many a dukedom, or even a reigning prince's territory, on European\n    soil. When the pathless forest that still covered this wild\n    principality should give place--as it inevitably must, though perhaps\n    not till ages hence--to the golden fertility of human culture, it would\n    be the source of incalculable wealth to the Pyncheon blood. Had the\n    Colonel survived only a few weeks longer, it is probable that his great\n    political influence, and powerful connections at home and abroad, would\n    have consummated all that was necessary to render the claim available. But, in spite of good Mr. Higginson's congratulatory eloquence, this\n    appeared to be the one thing which Colonel Pyncheon, provident and\n    sagacious as he was, had allowed to go at loose ends. So far as the\n    prospective territory was concerned, he unquestionably died too soon. His son lacked not merely the father's eminent position, but the talent\n    and force of character to achieve it: he could, therefore, effect\n    nothing by dint of political interest; and the bare justice or legality\n    of the claim was not so apparent, after the Colonel's decease, as it\n    had been pronounced in his lifetime. Some connecting link had slipped\n    out of the evidence, and could not anywhere be found. Efforts, it is true, were made by the Pyncheons, not only then, but at\n    various periods for nearly a hundred years afterwards, to obtain what\n    they stubbornly persisted in deeming their right. But, in course of\n    time, the territory was partly regranted to more favored individuals,\n    and partly cleared and occupied by actual settlers. These last, if\n    they ever heard of the Pyncheon title, would have laughed at the idea\n    of any man's asserting a right--on the strength of mouldy parchments,\n    signed with the faded autographs of governors and legislators long dead\n    and forgotten--to the lands which they or their fathers had wrested\n    from the wild hand of nature by their own sturdy toil. This impalpable\n    claim, therefore, resulted in nothing more solid than to cherish, from\n    generation to generation, an absurd delusion of family importance,\n    which all along characterized the Pyncheons. It caused the poorest\n    member of the race to feel as if he inherited a kind of nobility, and\n    might yet come into the possession of princely wealth to support it. In the better specimens of the breed, this peculiarity threw an ideal\n    grace over the hard material of human life, without stealing away any\n    truly valuable quality. In the baser sort, its effect was to increase\n    the liability to sluggishness and dependence, and induce the victim of\n    a shadowy hope to remit all self-effort, while awaiting the realization\n    of his dreams. Years and years after their claim had passed out of the\n    public memory, the Pyncheons were accustomed to consult the Colonel's\n    ancient map, which had been projected while Waldo County was still an\n    unbroken wilderness. Where the old land surveyor had put down woods,\n    lakes, and rivers, they marked out the cleared spaces, and dotted the\n    villages and towns, and calculated the progressively increasing value\n    of the territory, as if there were yet a prospect of its ultimately\n    forming a princedom for themselves. In almost every generation, nevertheless, there happened to be some one\n    descendant of the family gifted with a portion of the hard, keen sense,\n    and practical energy, that had so remarkably distinguished the original\n    founder. His character, indeed, might be traced all the way down, as\n    distinctly as if the Colonel himself, a little diluted, had been gifted\n    with a sort of intermittent immortality on earth. At two or three\n    epochs, when the fortunes of the family were low, this representative\n    of hereditary qualities had made his appearance, and caused the\n    traditionary gossips of the town to whisper among themselves, \"Here is\n    the old Pyncheon come again! Now the Seven Gables will be\n    new-shingled!\" From father to son, they clung to the ancestral house\n    with singular tenacity of home attachment. For various reasons,\n    however, and from impressions often too vaguely founded to be put on\n    paper, the writer cherishes the belief that many, if not most, of the\n    successive proprietors of this estate were troubled with doubts as to\n    their moral right to hold it. Of their legal tenure there could be no\n    question; but old Matthew Maule, it is to be feared, trode downward\n    from his own age to a far later one, planting a heavy footstep, all the\n    way, on the conscience of a Pyncheon. If so, we are left to dispose of\n    the awful query, whether each inheritor of the property--conscious of\n    wrong, and failing to rectify it--did not commit anew the great guilt\n    of his ancestor, and incur all its original responsibilities. And\n    supposing such to be the case, would it not be a far truer mode of\n    expression to say of the Pyncheon family, that they inherited a great\n    misfortune, than the reverse? We have already hinted that it is not our purpose to trace down the\n    history of the Pyncheon family, in its unbroken connection with the\n    House of the Seven Gables; nor to show, as in a magic picture, how the\n    rustiness and infirmity of age gathered over the venerable house\n    itself. As regards its interior life, a large, dim looking-glass used\n    to hang in one of the rooms, and was fabled to contain within its\n    depths all the shapes that had ever been reflected there,--the old\n    Colonel himself, and his many descendants, some in the garb of antique\n    babyhood, and others in the bloom of feminine beauty or manly prime, or\n    saddened with the wrinkles of frosty age. Had we the secret of that\n    mirror, we would gladly sit down before it, and transfer its\n    revelations to our page. But there was a story, for which it is\n    difficult to conceive any foundation, that the posterity of Matthew\n    Maule had some connection with the mystery of the looking-glass, and\n    that, by what appears to have been a sort of mesmeric process, they\n    could make its inner region all alive with the departed Pyncheons; not\n    as they had shown themselves to the world, nor in their better and\n    happier hours, but as doing over again some deed of sin, or in the\n    crisis of life's bitterest sorrow. The popular imagination, indeed,\n    long kept itself busy with the affair of the old Puritan Pyncheon and\n    the wizard Maule; the curse which the latter flung from his scaffold\n    was remembered, with the very important addition, that it had become a\n    part of the Pyncheon inheritance. If one of the family did but gurgle\n    in his throat, a bystander would be likely enough to whisper, between\n    jest and earnest, \"He has Maule's blood to drink!\"\n\n<System> Please remember what the user reads on 2024-01-08, 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> The sudden death of\n    a Pyncheon, about a hundred years ago, with circumstances very similar\n    to what have been related of the Colonel's exit, was held as giving\n    additional probability to the received opinion on this topic. It was\n    considered, moreover, an ugly and ominous circumstance, that Colonel\n    Pyncheon's picture--in obedience, it was said, to a provision of his\n    will--remained affixed to the wall of the room in which he died. Those\n    stern, immitigable features seemed to symbolize an evil influence, and\n    so darkly to mingle the shadow of their presence with the sunshine of\n    the passing hour, that no good thoughts or purposes could ever spring\n    up and blossom there. To the thoughtful mind there will be no tinge of\n    superstition in what we figuratively express, by affirming that the\n    ghost of a dead progenitor--perhaps as a portion of his own\n    punishment--is often doomed to become the Evil Genius of his family. The Pyncheons, in brief, lived along, for the better part of two\n    centuries, with perhaps less of outward vicissitude than has attended\n    most other New England families during the same period of time. Possessing very distinctive traits of their own, they nevertheless took\n    the general characteristics of the little community in which they\n    dwelt; a town noted for its frugal, discreet, well-ordered, and\n    home-loving inhabitants, as well as for the somewhat confined scope of\n    its sympathies; but in which, be it said, there are odder individuals,\n    and, now and then, stranger occurrences, than one meets with almost\n    anywhere else. During the Revolution, the Pyncheon of that epoch,\n    adopting the royal side, became a refugee; but repented, and made his\n    reappearance, just at the point of time to preserve the House of the\n    Seven Gables from confiscation. For the last seventy years the most\n    noted event in the Pyncheon annals had been likewise the heaviest\n    calamity that ever befell the race; no less than the violent death--for\n    so it was adjudged--of one member of the family by the criminal act of\n    another. Certain circumstances attending this fatal occurrence had\n    brought the deed irresistibly home to a nephew of the deceased\n    Pyncheon. The young man was tried and convicted of the crime; but\n    either the circumstantial nature of the evidence, and possibly some\n    lurking doubts in the breast of the executive, or, lastly--an argument\n    of greater weight in a republic than it could have been under a\n    monarchy,--the high respectability and political influence of the\n    criminal's connections, had availed to mitigate his doom from death to\n    perpetual imprisonment. This sad affair had chanced about thirty years\n    before the action of our story commences. Latterly, there were rumors\n(which few believed, and only one or two felt greatly interested in)\n    that this long-buried man was likely, for some reason or other, to be\n    summoned forth from his living tomb. It is essential to say a few words respecting the victim of this now\n    almost forgotten murder. He was an old bachelor, and possessed of\n    great wealth, in addition to the house and real estate which\n    constituted what remained of the ancient Pyncheon property. Being of\n    an eccentric and melancholy turn of mind, and greatly given to\n    rummaging old records and hearkening to old traditions, he had brought\n    himself, it is averred, to the conclusion that Matthew Maule, the\n    wizard, had been foully wronged out of his homestead, if not out of his\n    life. Such being the case, and he, the old bachelor, in possession of\n    the ill-gotten spoil,--with the black stain of blood sunken deep into\n    it, and still to be scented by conscientious nostrils,--the question\n    occurred, whether it were not imperative upon him, even at this late\n    hour, to make restitution to Maule's posterity. To a man living so\n    much in the past, and so little in the present, as the secluded and\n    antiquarian old bachelor, a century and a half seemed not so vast a\n    period as to obviate the propriety of substituting right for wrong. It\n    was the belief of those who knew him best, that he would positively\n    have taken the very singular step of giving up the House of the Seven\n    Gables to the representative of Matthew Maule, but for the unspeakable\n    tumult which a suspicion of the old gentleman's project awakened among\n    his Pyncheon relatives. Their exertions had the effect of suspending\n    his purpose; but it was feared that he would perform, after death, by\n    the operation of his last will, what he had so hardly been prevented\n    from doing in his proper lifetime. But there is no one thing which men\n    so rarely do, whatever the provocation or inducement, as to bequeath\n    patrimonial property away from their own blood. They may love other\n    individuals far better than their relatives,--they may even cherish\n    dislike, or positive hatred, to the latter; but yet, in view of death,\n    the strong prejudice of propinquity revives, and impels the testator to\n    send down his estate in the line marked out by custom so immemorial\n    that it looks like nature. In all the Pyncheons, this feeling had the\n    energy of disease. It was too powerful for the conscientious scruples\n    of the old bachelor; at whose death, accordingly, the mansion-house,\n    together with most of his other riches, passed into the possession of\n    his next legal representative. This was a nephew, the cousin of the miserable young man who had been\n    convicted of the uncle's murder. The new heir, up to the period of his\n    accession, was reckoned rather a dissipated youth, but had at once\n    reformed, and made himself an exceedingly respectable member of\n    society. In fact, he showed more of the Pyncheon quality, and had won\n    higher eminence in the world, than any of his race since the time of\n    the original Puritan. Applying himself in earlier manhood to the study\n    of the law, and having a natural tendency towards office, he had\n    attained, many years ago, to a judicial situation in some inferior\n    court, which gave him for life the very desirable and imposing title of\n    judge. Later, he had engaged in politics, and served a part of two\n    terms in Congress, besides making a considerable figure in both\n    branches of the State legislature. Judge Pyncheon was unquestionably\n    an honor to his race. He had built himself a country-seat within a few\n    miles of his native town, and there spent such portions of his time as\n    could be spared from public service in the display of every grace and\n    virtue--as a newspaper phrased it, on the eve of an election--befitting\n    the Christian, the good citizen, the horticulturist, and the gentleman. There were few of the Pyncheons left to sun themselves in the glow of\n    the Judge's prosperity. In respect to natural increase, the breed had\n    not thriven; it appeared rather to be dying out. The only members of\n    the family known to be extant were, first, the Judge himself, and a\n    single surviving son, who was now travelling in Europe; next, the\n    thirty years' prisoner, already alluded to, and a sister of the latter,\n    who occupied, in an extremely retired manner, the House of the Seven\n    Gables, in which she had a life-estate by the will of the old bachelor. She was understood to be wretchedly poor, and seemed to make it her\n    choice to remain so; inasmuch as her affluent cousin, the Judge, had\n    repeatedly offered her all the comforts of life, either in the old\n    mansion or his own modern residence. The last and youngest Pyncheon\n    was a little country-girl of seventeen, the daughter of another of the\n    Judge's cousins, who had married a young woman of no family or\n    property, and died early and in poor circumstances. His widow had\n    recently taken another husband. As for Matthew Maule's posterity, it was supposed now to be extinct. For a very long period after the witchcraft delusion, however, the\n    Maules had continued to inhabit the town where their progenitor had\n    suffered so unjust a death. To all appearance, they were a quiet,\n    honest, well-meaning race of people, cherishing no malice against\n    individuals or the public for the wrong which had been done them; or\n    if, at their own fireside, they transmitted from father to child any\n    hostile recollection of the wizard's fate and their lost patrimony, it\n    was never acted upon, nor openly expressed. Nor would it have been\n    singular had they ceased to remember that the House of the Seven Gables\n    was resting its heavy framework on a foundation that was rightfully\n    their own.\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> There is something so massive, stable, and almost\n    irresistibly imposing in the exterior presentment of established rank\n    and great possessions, that their very existence seems to give them a\n    right to exist; at least, so excellent a counterfeit of right, that few\n    poor and humble men have moral force enough to question it, even in\n    their secret minds. Such is the case now, after so many ancient\n    prejudices have been overthrown; and it was far more so in\n    ante-Revolutionary days, when the aristocracy could venture to be\n    proud, and the low were content to be abased. Thus the Maules, at all\n    events, kept their resentments within their own breasts. They were\n    generally poverty-stricken; always plebeian and obscure; working with\n    unsuccessful diligence at handicrafts; laboring on the wharves, or\n    following the sea, as sailors before the mast; living here and there\n    about the town, in hired tenements, and coming finally to the almshouse\n    as the natural home of their old age. At last, after creeping, as it\n    were, for such a length of time along the utmost verge of the opaque\n    puddle of obscurity, they had taken that downright plunge which, sooner\n    or later, is the destiny of all families, whether princely or plebeian. For thirty years past, neither town-record, nor gravestone, nor the\n    directory, nor the knowledge or memory of man, bore any trace of\n    Matthew Maule's descendants. His blood might possibly exist elsewhere;\n    here, where its lowly current could be traced so far back, it had\n    ceased to keep an onward course. So long as any of the race were to be found, they had been marked out\n    from other men--not strikingly, nor as with a sharp line, but with an\n    effect that was felt rather than spoken of--by an hereditary character\n    of reserve. Their companions, or those who endeavored to become such,\n    grew conscious of a circle round about the Maules, within the sanctity\n    or the spell of which, in spite of an exterior of sufficient frankness\n    and good-fellowship, it was impossible for any man to step. It was\n    this indefinable peculiarity, perhaps, that, by insulating them from\n    human aid, kept them always so unfortunate in life. It certainly\n    operated to prolong in their case, and to confirm to them as their only\n    inheritance, those feelings of repugnance and superstitious terror with\n    which the people of the town, even after awakening from their frenzy,\n    continued to regard the memory of the reputed witches. The mantle, or\n    rather the ragged cloak, of old Matthew Maule had fallen upon his\n    children. They were half believed to inherit mysterious attributes;\n    the family eye was said to possess strange power. Among other\n    good-for-nothing properties and privileges, one was especially assigned\n    them,--that of exercising an influence over people's dreams. The\n    Pyncheons, if all stories were true, haughtily as they bore themselves\n    in the noonday streets of their native town, were no better than\n    bond-servants to these plebeian Maules, on entering the topsy-turvy\n    commonwealth of sleep. Modern psychology, it may be, will endeavor to\n    reduce these alleged necromancies within a system, instead of rejecting\n    them as altogether fabulous. A descriptive paragraph or two, treating of the seven-gabled mansion in\n    its more recent aspect, will bring this preliminary chapter to a close. The street in which it upreared its venerable peaks has long ceased to\n    be a fashionable quarter of the town; so that, though the old edifice\n    was surrounded by habitations of modern date, they were mostly small,\n    built entirely of wood, and typical of the most plodding uniformity of\n    common life. Doubtless, however, the whole story of human existence\n    may be latent in each of them, but with no picturesqueness, externally,\n    that can attract the imagination or sympathy to seek it there. But as\n    for the old structure of our story, its white-oak frame, and its\n    boards, shingles, and crumbling plaster, and even the huge, clustered\n    chimney in the midst, seemed to constitute only the least and meanest\n    part of its reality. So much of mankind's varied experience had passed\n    there,--so much had been suffered, and something, too, enjoyed,--that\n    the very timbers were oozy, as with the moisture of a heart. It was\n    itself like a great human heart, with a life of its own, and full of\n    rich and sombre reminiscences. The deep projection of the second story gave the house such a\n    meditative look, that you could not pass it without the idea that it\n    had secrets to keep, and an eventful history to moralize upon. In\n    front, just on the edge of the unpaved sidewalk, grew the Pyncheon Elm,\n    which, in reference to such trees as one usually meets with, might well\n    be termed gigantic. It had been planted by a great-grandson of the\n    first Pyncheon, and, though now four-score years of age, or perhaps\n    nearer a hundred, was still in its strong and broad maturity, throwing\n    its shadow from side to side of the street, overtopping the seven\n    gables, and sweeping the whole black roof with its pendant foliage. It\n    gave beauty to the old edifice, and seemed to make it a part of nature. The street having been widened about forty years ago, the front gable\n    was now precisely on a line with it. On either side extended a ruinous\n    wooden fence of open lattice-work, through which could be seen a grassy\n    yard, and, especially in the angles of the building, an enormous\n    fertility of burdocks, with leaves, it is hardly an exaggeration to\n    say, two or three feet long. Behind the house there appeared to be a\n    garden, which undoubtedly had once been extensive, but was now\n    infringed upon by other enclosures, or shut in by habitations and\n    outbuildings that stood on another street. It would be an omission,\n    trifling, indeed, but unpardonable, were we to forget the green moss\n    that had long since gathered over the projections of the windows, and\n    on the slopes of the roof nor must we fail to direct the reader's eye\n    to a crop, not of weeds, but flower-shrubs, which were growing aloft in\n    the air, not a great way from the chimney, in the nook between two of\n    the gables. They were called Alice's Posies. The tradition was, that\n    a certain Alice Pyncheon had flung up the seeds, in sport, and that the\n    dust of the street and the decay of the roof gradually formed a kind of\n    soil for them, out of which they grew, when Alice had long been in her\n    grave. However the flowers might have come there, it was both sad and\n    sweet to observe how Nature adopted to herself this desolate, decaying,\n    gusty, rusty old house of the Pyncheon family; and how the\n    ever-returning Summer did her best to gladden it with tender beauty,\n    and grew melancholy in the effort. There is one other feature, very essential to be noticed, but which, we\n    greatly fear, may damage any picturesque and romantic impression which\n    we have been willing to throw over our sketch of this respectable\n    edifice. In the front gable, under the impending brow of the second\n    story, and contiguous to the street, was a shop-door, divided\n    horizontally in the midst, and with a window for its upper segment,\n    such as is often seen in dwellings of a somewhat ancient date. This\n    same shop-door had been a subject of no slight mortification to the\n    present occupant of the august Pyncheon House, as well as to some of\n    her predecessors. The matter is disagreeably delicate to handle; but,\n    since the reader must needs be let into the secret, he will please to\n    understand, that, about a century ago, the head of the Pyncheons found\n    himself involved in serious financial difficulties. The fellow\n    (gentleman, as he styled himself) can hardly have been other than a\n    spurious interloper; for, instead of seeking office from the king or\n    the royal governor, or urging his hereditary claim to Eastern lands, he\n    bethought himself of no better avenue to wealth than by cutting a\n    shop-door through the side of his ancestral residence. It was the\n    custom of the time, indeed, for merchants to store their goods and\n    transact business in their own dwellings.\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> But there was something\n    pitifully small in this old Pyncheon's mode of setting about his\n    commercial operations; it was whispered, that, with his own hands, all\n    beruffled as they were, he used to give change for a shilling, and\n    would turn a half-penny twice over, to make sure that it was a good\n    one. Beyond all question, he had the blood of a petty huckster in his\n    veins, through whatever channel it may have found its way there. Immediately on his death, the shop-door had been locked, bolted, and\n    barred, and, down to the period of our story, had probably never once\n    been opened. The old counter, shelves, and other fixtures of the\n    little shop remained just as he had left them. It used to be affirmed,\n    that the dead shop-keeper, in a white wig, a faded velvet coat, an\n    apron at his waist, and his ruffles carefully turned back from his\n    wrists, might be seen through the chinks of the shutters, any night of\n    the year, ransacking his till, or poring over the dingy pages of his\n    day-book. From the look of unutterable woe upon his face, it appeared\n    to be his doom to spend eternity in a vain effort to make his accounts\n    balance. And now--in a very humble way, as will be seen--we proceed to open our\n    narrative.\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."]
[{"question": "Summarize the content of the book I read from 2024-01-01 to 2024-01-12", "answer": "House of the Seven Gables, Pyncheon House, Pyncheon Street, Maule's Lane, Colonel Pyncheon, Matthew Maule, witchcraft trial, natural spring, polluted spring, execution, family mansion, bloody hand, lattice-window, lieutenant-governor, John Swinnerton, apoplexy, Reverend Higginson, Pyncheon family, family importance, family renaissance, murder conviction, restitution, Maule's posterity, old bachelor, judge, politician, Puritans, seventeen year old girl, convicted murderer, judge's son, Europe, Alice's Posies, shop door, small store, inheritance, family curse, wrongful ownership, high society, generational guilt, New England town"}]