Which three parts of this excerpt from nathaniel hawthorne’s novel the house of seven gables provide direct characterization?
had he been told of a bad air, it might have moved him somewhat; -a- but he was ready to encounter an evil- spirit on his own ground. -b- endowed with commonsense, as massive and hard as blocks of granite-, -c- fastened together by stern rigidity of purpose, - as with iron clamps, he followed out his original design, probably without so much as imagining an objection to it. -d- on the score of delicacy, or any scrupulousness which a finer sensibility might have taught him, the colonel, like most of his breed and generation, was impenetrable.- -e- he therefore dug his cellar, and laid the deep foundations of his mansion,- on the square of earth -f- whence matthew maule, forty years before, had first swept away the fallen leaves.- it was a curious, and, as some people thought, an ominous fact, that, very soon after the workmen began their operations, the spring of water, above mentioned, entirely lost the deliciousness of its pristine quality.