re about me,--multiplying and
brightening its hues; though they are likely to be sober and shabby
enough after all.

"I am beginning to puzzle myself about a title for the book. The
scene of it is in one of those old projecting-stoned houses,
familiar to my eye in Salem; and the story, horrible to say, is a
little less than two hundred years long; though all but thirty or
forty pages of it refer to the present time. I think of such titles
as 'The House of the Seven Gables,' there being that number of
gable-ends to the old shanty; or 'The Seven-Gabled House'; or simply
'The Seven Gables.' Tell me how these strike you. It appears to me
that the latter is rather the best, and has the great advantage that
it would puzzle the Devil to tell what it means."

A month afterwards he writes further with regard to "The House of the
Seven Gables," concerning the title to which he was still in a
quandary:--

"'The Old Pyncheon House: A Romance'; 'The Old Pyncheon Family; or
the House of the Seven Gables: A Romance';--choose between them. I
have rather a distaste to a double title? otherwise, I think I
should prefer the second. Is it any matter under which title it is
announced? If a better should occur hereafter, we can substitute. Of
these two, on the whole, I judge the first to be the better.

"I write diligently, but not so rapidly as I had hoped. I find the
book requires more care and thought than 'The Scarlet Letter'; also
I have to wait oftener for a mood. 'The Scarlet Letter' being all in
one tone, I had only to get my pitch, and could then go on
interminably. Many passages of this book ought to be finished with
the minuteness of a Dutch picture, in order to give them their
proper effect. Sometimes, when tired of it, it strikes me that the
whole is an absurdity, from beginning to end; but the fact is, in
writing a romance, a man is always, or always ought to be, careering
on the utmost verge of a precipitous absurdity, and the skill lies
in coming as close as possible, without actually tumbling over. My
prevailing idea is, that the book ought to succeed better than 'The
Scarlet Letter,' though I have no idea that it will."

On the 9th of December he was still at work on the new romance, and
writes:--

"My desire and prayer is to get through with the business in hand. I
have been in a Slough