was occasionally entertained in the house by Susannah but, by Hawthorne's time, the house had only three gables after a renovation to match more current architectural trends. His cousin told him the house's history, and showed him beams and mortises in the attic indicating locations of former gables. Hawthorne was more inspired by the way "seven gables" sounded than what the house looked like. As he wrote in a letter, "The expression was new and struck me forcibly... I think I shall make something of it." The idea inspired Hawthorne's novel The House of the Seven Gables. Hawthorne wrote of the house as if it were a living thing. It is described as such in the novel: "The aspect of the venerable mansion has always affected me like a human countenance... It was itself like a great human heart, with a life of its own, and full of rich and sombre reminisces. The deep projection of the section story gave the house a meditative look, that you could not pass it without the idea that it had secret to keep." In writing the book, Hawthorne compared the process to constructing an actual house. In January 1851, he wrote to his publisher James T. Fields that the book was nearly finished, "only I am hammering away a little on the roof, and doing a few odd jobs that were left incomplete." He sent the finished manuscript to Fields by the end of the month. The House of the Seven Gables was published in April 1851. Horace Ingersoll, Susanna's adopted son, told Hawthorne a story of Acadian lovers that later inspired Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's 1847 poem Evangeline. Museum In 1908, the house was purchased by Caroline O. Emmerton, founder of the House of Seven Gables Settlement Association, and she restored it from 1908 to 1910 as a museum whose admission fees would support the association. Boston architect Joseph Everett Chandler supervised the restoration, which among other alterations reconstructed missing gables. In some cases historical authenticity was sacrificed in the interest of appealing to visitors, who expected the house to match the one Hawthorne described in his romantic novel. Thus, for example, Emmerton added a "cent-shop" resembling that operated by the author's fictional character Hepzibah Pyncheon. A representation of "Maule's Well" was added to the garden. She also added what looks like a wood closet but has a false back. When opened, the