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THE SCARLET LETTER.................................................................................................................................1

Nathaniel Hawthorne...............................................................................................................................1

It is a little remarkable, thatthough disinclined to talk overmuch of myself and my affairs at the fireside,

and to my personal friendsan autobiographical impulse should twice in my life have taken possession of

me, in addressing the public. The first time was three or four years since, when I favoured the

readerinexcusably, and for no earthly reason that either the indulgent reader or the intrusive author could

imaginewith a description of my way of life in the deep quietude of an Old Manse. And nowbecause,

beyond my deserts, I was happy enough to find a listener or two on the former occasionI again seize the

public by the button, and talk of my three years' experience in a CustomHouse. The example of the famous

"P. P. , Clerk of this Parish," was never more faithfully followed. The truth seems to be, however, that when

he casts his leaves forth upon the wind, the author addresses, not the many who will fling aside his volume,

or never take it up, but the few who will understand him better than most of his schoolmates or lifemates.

Some authors, indeed, do far more than this, and indulge themselves in such confidential depths of revelation

as could fittingly be addressed only and exclusively to the one heart and mind of perfect sympathy; as if the

printed book, thrown at large on the wide world, were certain to find out the divided segment of the writer's

own nature, and complete his circle of existence by bringing him into communion with it. It is scarcely

decorous, however, to speak all, even where we speak impersonally. But, as thoughts are frozen and utterance

benumbed, unless the speaker stand in some true relation with his audience, it may be pardonable to imagine

that a friend, a kind and apprehensive, though not the closest friend, is listening to our talk; and then, a native

reserve being thawed by this genial consciousness, we may prate of the circumstances that lie around us, and

even of ourself, but still keep the inmost Me behind its veil. To this extent, and within these limits, an author,

methinks, may be autobiographical, without violating either the reader's rights or his own.

It will be seen, likewise, that this CustomHouse sketch has a certain propriety, of a kind always recognised

in literature, as explaining how a large portion of the following pages came into my possession, and as

offering proofs of the authenticity of a narrative therein contained. This, in facta desire to put myself in my

true position as editor, or very little more, of the most prolix among the tales that make up my volumethis,

and no other, is my true reason for assuming a personal relation with the public. In accomplishing the main

purpose, it has appeared allowable, by a few extra touches, to give a faint representation of a mode of life not

heretofore described, together with some of the characters that move in it, among whom the author happened

In my native town of Salem, at the head of what, half a century ago, in the days of old King Derby, was a

bustling wharfbut which is now burdened with decayed wooden warehouses, and exhibits few or no

symptoms of commercial life; except, perhaps, a bark or brig, halfway down its melancholy length,

discharging hides; or, nearer at hand, a Nova Scotia schooner, pitching out her cargo of firewoodat the

head, I say, of this dilapidated wharf, which the tide often overflows, and along which, at the base and in the

rear of the row of buildings, the track of many languid years is seen in a border of unthrifty grasshere, with

a view from its front windows adown this not very enlivening prospect, and thence across the harbour, stands

a spacious edifice of brick. From the loftiest point of its roof, during precisely three and a half hours of each

forenoon, floats or droops, in breeze or calm, the banner of the republic; but with the thirteen stripes turned

vertically, instead of horizontally, and thus indicating that a civil, and not a military, post of Uncle Sam's

government is here established. Its front is ornamented with a portico of halfadozen wooden pillars,

supporting a balcony, beneath which a flight of wide granite steps descends towards the street Over the

entrance hovers an enormous specimen of the American eagle, with outspread wings, a shield before her

breast, and, if I recollect aright, a bunch of intermingled thunder bolts and barbed arrows in each claw. With

the customary infirmity of temper that characterizes this unhappy fowl, she appears by the fierceness of her

beak and eye, and the general truculency of her attitude, to threaten mischief to the inoffensive community;

and especially to warn all citizens careful of their safety against intruding on the premises which she

overshadows with her wings. Nevertheless, vixenly as she looks, many people are seeking at this very

moment to shelter themselves under the wing of the federal eagle; imagining, I presume, that her bosom has

all the softness and snugness of an eiderdown pillow. But she has no great tenderness even in her best of

moods, and, sooner or lateroftener soon than lateis apt to fling off her nestlings with a scratch of her

The pavement round about the abovedescribed edificewhich we may as well name at once as the

CustomHouse of the porthas grass enough growing in its chinks to show that it has not, of late days, been

worn by any multitudinous resort of business. In some months of the year, however, there often chances a

forenoon when affairs move onward with a livelier tread. Such occasions might remind the elderly citizen of

that period, before the last war with England, when Salem was a port by itself; not scorned, as she is now, by

her own merchants and shipowners, who permit her wharves to crumble to ruin while their ventures go to

swell, needlessly and imperceptibly, the mighty flood of commerce at New York or Boston. On some such

morning, when three or four vessels happen to have arrived at once usually from Africa or South

Americaor to be on the verge of their departure thitherward, there is a sound of frequent feet passing

briskly up and down the granite steps. Here, before his own wife has greeted him, you may greet the

seaflushed shipmaster, just in port, with his vessel's papers under his arm in a

tarnished tin box. Here, too, comes his owner, cheerful, sombre, gracious or in the sulks, accordingly as his

scheme of the now accomplished voyage has been realized in merchandise that will readily be turned to gold,

or has buried him under a bulk of incommodities such as nobody will care to rid him of. Here, likewisethe

germ of the wrinklebrowed, grizzlybearded, careworn merchantwe have the smart young clerk, who

gets the taste of traffic as a wolfcub does of blood, and already sends adventures in his master's ships, when

he had better be sailing mimic boats upon a millpond. Another figure in the scene is the outwardbound

sailor, in quest of a protection; or the recently arrived one, pale and feeble, seeking a passport to the hospital.

Nor must we forget the captains of the rusty little schooners that bring firewood from the British provinces; a

roughlooking set of tarpaulins, without the alertness of the Yankee aspect, but contributing an item of no

Cluster all these individuals together, as they sometimes were, with other miscellaneous ones to diversify the

group, and, for the time being, it made the CustomHouse a stirring scene. More frequently, however, on

ascending the steps, you would discern in the entry if it were summer time, or in their appropriate rooms if

wintry or inclement weathers row of venerable figures, sitting in oldfashioned chairs, which were tipped on

their hind legs back against the wall. Oftentimes they were asleep, but occasionally might be heard talking

together, ill voices between a speech and a snore, and with that lack of energy that distinguishes the

occupants of almshouses, and all other human beings who depend for subsistence on charity, on

monopolized labour, or anything else but their own independent exertions. These old gentlemenseated, like

Matthew at the receipt of custom, but not very liable to be summoned thence, like him, for apostolic

Furthermore, on the left hand as you enter the front door, is a certain room or office, about fifteen feet square,

and of a lofty height, with two of its arched windows commanding a view of the aforesaid dilapidated wharf,

and the third looking across a narrow lane, and along a portion of Derby Street. All three give glimpses of the

shops of grocers, blockmakers, slopsellers, and shipchandlers, around the doors of which are generally to

be seen, laughing and gossiping, clusters of old salts, and such other wharfrats as haunt the Wapping of a

seaport. The room itself is cobwebbed, and dingy with old paint; its floor is strewn with grey sand, in a

fashion that has elsewhere fallen into long disuse; and it is easy to conclude, from the general slovenliness of

the place, that this is a sanctuary into which womankind, with her tools of magic, the broom and mop, has

very infrequent access. In the way of furniture, there is a stove with a voluminous funnel; an old pine desk

with a threelegged stool beside it; two or three woodenbottom chairs, exceedingly decrepit and infirm;

andnot to forget the libraryon some shelves, a score or two of volumes of the Acts of Congress, and a

tin pipe ascends through the ceiling, and forms a medium of vocal communication with other parts of be

edifice. And here, some six months agopacing from corner to corner, or lounging on the longlegged tool,

with his elbow on the desk, and his eyes wandering up and down the columns of the morning

newspaperyou might have recognised, honoured reader, the same individual who welcomed you into his

cheery little study, where the sunshine glimmered so pleasantly through the willow branches on the western

side of the Old Manse. But now, should you go thither to seek him, you would inquire in vain for the

Locofoco Surveyor. The besom of reform hath swept him out of office, and a worthier successor wears his

This old town of Salemmy native place, though I have dwelt much away from it both in boyhood and

maturer yearspossesses, or did possess, a hold on my affection, the force of which I have never realized

during my seasons of actual residence here. Indeed, so far as its physical aspect is concerned, with its flat,

unvaried surface, covered chiefly with wooden houses, few or none of which pretend to architectural

beautyits irregularity, which is neither picturesque nor quaint, but only tameits long and lazy street,

lounging wearisomely through the whole extent of be peninsula, with Gallows Hill and New Guinea at one

end, and a view of the almshouse at the othersuch being the features of my native town, it would be quite

as reasonable to form a sentimental attachment to a disarranged checkerboard. And yet, though invariably

happiest elsewhere, there is within me a feeling for Old Salem, which, in lack of a better phrase, I must be

content to call affection. The sentiment is probably assignable to the deep and aged roots which my family

has stuck into the soil. It is now nearly two centuries and a quarter since the original Briton, the earliest

emigrant of my name, made his appearance in the wild and forestbordered settlement which has since

become a city. And here his descendants have been born and died, and have mingled their earthly substance

with the soil, until no small portion of it must necessarily be akin to the mortal frame wherewith, for a little

while, I walk the streets. In part, therefore, the attachment which I speak of is the mere sensuous sympathy of

dust for dust. Few of my countrymen can know what it is; nor, as frequent transplantation is perhaps better

But the sentiment has likewise its moral quality. The figure of that first ancestor, invested by family tradition

with a dim and dusky grandeur, was present to my boyish imagination as far back as I can remember. It still

haunts me, and induces a sort of homefeeling with the past, which I scarcely claim in reference to the

present phase of the town. I seem to have a stronger claim to a residence here on account of this grave,

bearded, sablecloaked, and steeplecrowned progenitorwho came so early, with his Bible and his sword,

and trode the unworn street with such a stately port, and made so large a figure, as a man of war and

peacea stronger claim than for myself, whose name is seldom heard and my face hardly known. He was a

soldier, legislator, judge; he was a ruler in the Church; he had all the Puritanic traits, both good and evil. He

was likewise a bitter persecutor; as witness the Quakers, who have remembered him in their histories, and

relate an incident of his hard severity towards a woman of their sect, which will last longer, it is to be feared,

than any record of his better deeds, although these were many. His son, too, inherited the persecuting spirit,

and made himself so conspicuous in the martyrdom of the witches, that their blood may fairly be said to have

left a stain upon him. So deep a stain, indeed, that his dry old bones, in the Charterstreet burialground,

must still retain it, if they have not crumbled utterly to dust I know not whether these ancestors of mine

bethought themselves to repent, and ask pardon of Heaven for their cruelties; or whether they are now

groaning under the heavy consequences of them in another state of being. At all events, I, the present writer,

as their representative, hereby take shame upon myself for their sakes, and pray that any curse incurred by

themas I have heard, and as the dreary and unprosperous condition of the race, for many a long year back,

Doubtless, however, either of these stern and blackbrowed Puritans would have thought it quite a sufficient

retribution for his sins that, after so long a lapse of years, the old trunk of the family tree, with so much

venerable moss upon it, should have borne, as its topmost bough, an idler like myself. No aim that I have ever

cherished would they recognise as laudable; no success of mineif my life, beyond its domestic scope, had

ever been brightened by successwould they deem otherwise than worthless, if not positively disgraceful.

"What is he?" murmurs one grey shadow of my forefathers to the other. "A writer of story books! What kind

of business in lifewhat mode of glorifying God, or being serviceable to mankind in his day and

generationmay that be? Why, the degenerate fellow might as well have been a fiddler!" Such are the

compliments bandied between my great grandsires and myself, across the gulf of time And yet, let them scorn

me as they will, strong traits of their nature have intertwined themselves with mine.

Planted deep, in the town's earliest infancy and childhood, by these two earnest and energetic men, the race

has ever since subsisted here; always, too, in respectability; never, so far as I have known, disgraced by a

single unworthy member; but seldom or never, on the other hand, after the first two generations, performing

any memorable deed, or so much as putting forward a claim to public notice. Gradually, they have sunk

almost out of sight; as old houses, here and there about the streets, get covered halfway to the eaves by the

accumulation of new soil. From father to son, for above a hundred years, they followed the sea; a

greyheaded shipmaster, in each generation, retiring from the quarterdeck to the homestead, while a boy of

fourteen took the hereditary place before the mast, confronting the salt spray and the gale which had blustered

against his sire and grandsire. The boy, also in due time, passed from the forecastle to the cabin, spent a

tempestuous manhood, and returned from his worldwanderings, to grow old, and die, and mingle his dust

with the natal earth. This long connexion of a family with one spot, as its place of birth and burial, creates a

kindred between the human being and the locality, quite independent of any charm in the scenery or moral

circumstances that surround him. It is not love but instinct. The new inhabitantwho came himself from a

foreign land, or whose father or grandfather camehas little claim to be called a Salemite; he has no

conception of the oysterlike tenacity with which an old settler, over whom his third century is creeping,

clings to the spot where his successive generations have been embedded. It is no matter that the place is

joyless for him; that he is weary of the old wooden houses, the mud and dust, the dead level of site and

sentiment, the chill east wind, and the chillest of social atmospheres;all these, and whatever faults besides

he may see or imagine, are nothing to the purpose. The spell survives, and just as powerfully as if the natal

spot were an earthly paradise. So has it been in my case. I felt it almost as a destiny to make Salem my home;

so that the mould of features and cast of character which had all along been familiar hereever, as one

representative of the race lay down in the grave, another assuming, as it were, his sentrymarch along the

main streetmight still in my little day be seen and recognised in the old town. Nevertheless, this very

sentiment is an evidence that the connexion, which has become an unhealthy one, should at least be severed.

Human nature will not flourish, any more than a potato, if it be planted and replanted, for too long a series

of generations, in the same wornout soil. My children have had other birthplaces, and, so far as their

fortunes may be within my control, shall strike their roots into accustomed earth.

On emerging from the Old Manse, it was chiefly this strange, indolent, unjoyous attachment for my native

town that brought me to fill a place in Uncle Sam's brick edifice, when I might as well, or better, have gone

somewhere else. My doom was on me, It was not the first time, nor the second, that I had gone awayas it

seemed, permanentlybut yet returned, like the bad halfpenny, or as if Salem were for me the inevitable

centre of the universe. So, one fine morning I ascended the flight of granite steps, with the President's

commission in my pocket, and was introduced to the corps of gentlemen who were to aid me in my weighty

I doubt greatlyor, rather, I do not doubt at allwhether any public functionary of the United States, either

in the civil or military line, has ever had such a patriarchal body of veterans under his orders as myself. The

whereabouts of the Oldest Inhabitant was at once settled when I looked at them. For upwards of twenty years

before this epoch, the independent position of the Collector had kept the Salem CustomHouse out of the

whirlpool of political vicissitude, which makes the tenure of office generally so fragile. A soldierNew

England's most distinguished soldierhe stood firmly on the pedestal of his gallant services; and, himself

secure in the wise liberality of the successive administrations through which he had held office, he had been

the safety of his subordinates in many an hour of danger and heartquake General Miller was radically

conservative; a man over whose kindly nature habit had no slight influence; attaching himself strongly to

familiar faces, and with difficulty moved to change, even when change might have brought unquestionable

improvement. Thus, on taking charge off my department, I found few but aged men. They were ancient

seacaptains, for the most part, who, after being tossed on every sea, and standing up sturdily against life's

tempestuous blast, had finally drifted into this quiet nook, where, with little to disturb them, except the

periodical terrors of a Presidential election, they one and all acquired a new lease of existence. Though by no

means less liable than their fellowmen to age and infirmity, they had evidently some talisman or other that

kept death at bay. Two or three of their number, as I was assured, being gouty and rheumatic, or perhaps

bedridden, never dreamed of making their appearance at the CustomHouse during a large part of the year;

but, after a torpid winter, would creep out into the warm sunshine of May or June, go lazily about what they

termed duty, and, at their own leisure and convenience, betake themselves to bed again. I must plead guilty to

the charge of abbreviating the official breath of more than one of these venerable servants of the republic.

They were allowed, on my representation, to rest from their arduous labours, and soon afterwardsas if their

sole principle of life had been zeal for their country's serviceas I verily believe it waswithdrew to a

better world. It is a pious consolation to me that, through my interference, a sufficient space was allowed

them for repentance of the evil and corrupt practices into which, as a matter of course, every CustomHouse

officer must be supposed to fall. Neither the front nor the back entrance of the CustomHouse opens on the

The greater part of my officers were Whigs. It was well for their venerable brotherhood that the new

Surveyor was not a politician, and though a faithful Democrat in principle, neither received nor held his

office with any reference to political services. Had it been otherwisehad an active politician been put into

this influential post, to assume the easy task of making head against a Whig Collector, whose infirmities

withheld him from the personal administration of his officehardly a man of the old corps would have

drawn the breath of official life within a month after the exterminating angel had come up the CustomHouse

steps. According to the received code in such matters, it would have been nothing short of duty, in a

politician, to bring every one of those white heads under the axe of the guillotine. It was plain enough to

discern that the old fellows dreaded some such discourtesy at my hands. It pained, and at the same time

amused me, to behold the terrors that attended my advent, to see a furrowed cheek, weatherbeaten by half a

century of storm, turn ashy pale at the glance of so harmless an individual as myself; to detect, as one or

another addressed me, the tremor of a voice which, in longpast days, had been wont to bellow through a

speakingtrumpet, hoarsely enough to frighten Boreas himself to silence. They knew, these excellent old

persons, that, by all established ruleand, as regarded some of them, weighed by their own lack of

efficiency for businessthey ought to have given place to younger men, more orthodox in politics, and

altogether fitter than themselves to serve our common Uncle. I knew it, too, but could never quite find in my

heart to act upon the knowledge. Much and deservedly to my own discredit, therefore, and considerably to

the detriment of my official conscience, they continued, during my incumbency, to creep about the wharves,

and loiter up and down the CustomHouse steps. They spent a good deal of time, also, asleep in their

accustomed corners, with their chairs tilted back against the walls; awaking, however, once or twice in the

forenoon, to bore one another with the several thousandth repetition of old seastories and mouldy jokes, that

The discovery was soon made, I imagine, that the new Surveyor had no great harm in him. So, with

lightsome hearts and the happy consciousness of being usefully employedin their own behalf at least, if not

for our beloved countrythese good old gentlemen went through the various formalities of office.

Sagaciously under their spectacles, did they peep into the holds of vessels Mighty was their fuss about little

matters, and marvellous, sometimes, the obtuseness that allowed greater ones to slip between their fingers

Whenever such a mischance occurredwhen a waggonload of valuable merchandise had been smuggled

ashore, at noonday, perhaps, and directly beneath their unsuspicious nosesnothing could exceed the

vigilance and alacrity with which they proceeded to lock, and doublelock, and secure with tape and

sealingwax, all the avenues of the delinquent vessel. Instead of a reprimand for their previous negligence,

the case seemed rather to require an eulogium on their praiseworthy caution after the mischief had happened;

a grateful recognition of the promptitude of their zeal the moment that there was no longer any remedy.

Unless people are more than commonly disagreeable, it is my foolish habit to contract a kindness for them.

The better part of my companion's character, if it have a better part, is that which usually comes uppermost in

my regard, and forms the type whereby I recognise the man. As most of these old CustomHouse officers

had good traits, and as my position in reference to them, being paternal and protective, was favourable to the

growth of friendly sentiments, I soon grew to like them all. It was pleasant in the summer forenoonswhen

the fervent heat, that almost liquefied the rest of the human family, merely communicated a genial warmth to

their half torpid systemsit was pleasant to hear them chatting in the back entry, a row of them all tipped

against the wall, as usual; while the frozen witticisms of past generations were thawed out, and came

bubbling with laughter from their lips. Externally, the jollity of aged men has much in common with the

mirth of children; the intellect, any more than a deep sense of humour, has little to do with the matter; it is,

with both, a gleam that plays upon the surface, and imparts a sunny and cheery aspect alike to the green

branch and grey, mouldering trunk. In one case, however, it is real sunshine; in the other, it more resembles

It would be sad injustice, the reader must understand, to represent all my excellent old friends as in their

dotage. In the first place, my coadjutors were not invariably old; there were men among them in their strength

and prime, of marked ability and energy, and altogether superior to the sluggish and dependent mode of life

on which their evil stars had cast them. Then, moreover, the white locks of age were sometimes found to be

the thatch of an intellectual tenement in good repair. But, as respects the majority of my corps of veterans,

there will be no wrong done if I characterize them generally as a set of wearisome old souls, who had

gathered nothing worth preservation from their varied experience of life. They seemed to have flung away all

the golden grain of practical wisdom, which they had enjoyed so many opportunities of harvesting, and most

carefully to have stored their memory with the husks. They spoke with far more interest and unction of their

morning's breakfast, or yesterday's, today's, or tomorrow's dinner, than of the shipwreck of forty or fifty

years ago, and all the world's wonders which they had witnessed with their youthful eyes.

The father of the CustomHousethe patriarch, not only of this little squad of officials, but, I am bold to

say, of the respectable body of tidewaiters all over the United Stateswas a certain permanent Inspector.

He might truly be termed a legitimate son of the revenue system, dyed in the wool, or rather born in the

purple; since his sire, a Revolutionary colonel, and formerly collector of the port, had created an office for

him, and appointed him to fill it, at a period of the early ages which few living men can now remember. This

Inspector, when I first knew him, was a man of fourscore years, or thereabouts, and certainly one of the most

wonderful specimens of wintergreen that you would be likely to discover in a lifetime's search. With his

florid cheek, his compact figure smartly arrayed in a brightbuttoned blue coat, his brisk and vigorous step,

and his hale and hearty aspect, altogether he seemednot young, indeedbut a kind of new contrivance of

Mother Nature in the shape of man, whom age and infirmity had no business to touch. His voice and laugh,

which perpetually reechoed through the CustomHouse, had nothing of the tremulous quaver and cackle of

an old man's utterance; they came strutting out of his lungs, like the crow of a cock, or the blast of a clarion.

Looking at him merely as an animaland there was very little else to look athe was a most satisfactory

object, from the thorough healthfulness and wholesomeness of his system, and his capacity, at that extreme

age, to enjoy all, or nearly all, the delights which he had ever aimed at or conceived of. The careless security

of his life in the CustomHouse, on a regular income, and with but slight and infrequent apprehensions of

removal, had no doubt contributed to make time pass lightly over him. The original and more potent causes,

however, lay in the rare perfection of his animal nature, the moderate proportion of intellect, and the very

trifling admixture of moral and spiritual ingredients; these latter qualities, indeed, being in barely enough

measure to keep the old gentleman from walking on allfours. He possessed no power of thought no depth of

feeling, no troublesome sensibilities: nothing, in short, but a few commonplace instincts, which, aided by the

cheerful temper which grew inevitably out of his physical wellbeing, did duty very respectably, and to

general acceptance, in lieu of a heart. He had been the husband of three wives, all long since dead; the father

of twenty children, most of whom, at every age of childhood or maturity, had likewise returned to dust. Here,

one would suppose, might have been sorrow enough to imbue the sunniest disposition through and through

with a sable tinge. Not so with our old Inspector One brief sigh sufficed to carry off the entire burden of these

dismal reminiscences. The next moment he was as ready for sport as any unbreeched infant: far readier than

the Collector's junior clerk, who at nineteen years was much the elder and graver man of the two.

I used to watch and study this patriarchal personage with, I think, livelier curiosity than any other form of

humanity there presented to my notice. He was, in truth, a rare phenomenon; so perfect, in one point of view;

so shallow, so delusive, so impalpable such an absolute nonentity, in every other. My conclusion was that he

had no soul, no heart, no mind; nothing, as I have already said, but instincts; and yet, withal, so cunningly had

the few materials of his character been put together that there was no painful perception of deficiency, but, on

my part, an entire contentment with what I found in him. It might be difficultand it was soto conceive

how he should exist hereafter, so earthly and sensuous did he seem; but surely his existence here, admitting

that it was to terminate with his last breath, had been not unkindly given; with no higher moral

responsibilities than the beasts of the field, but with a larger scope of enjoyment than theirs, and with all their

One point in which he had vastly the advantage over his fourfooted brethren was his ability to recollect the

good dinners which it had made no small portion of the happiness of his life to eat. His gourmandism was a

highly agreeable trait; and to hear him talk of roast meat was as appetizing as a pickle or an oyster. As he

possessed no higher attribute, and neither sacrificed nor vitiated any spiritual endowment by devoting all his

energies and ingenuities to subserve the delight and profit of his maw, it always pleased and satisfied me to

hear him expatiate on fish, poultry, and butcher's meat, and the most eligible methods of preparing them for

the table. His reminiscences of good cheer, however ancient the date of the actual banquet, seemed to bring

the savour of pig or turkey under one's very nostrils. There were flavours on his palate that had lingered there

not less than sixty or seventy years, and were still apparently as fresh as that of the mutton chop which he had

just devoured for his breakfast. I have heard him smack his lips over dinners, every guest at which, except

himself, had long been food for worms. It was marvellous to observe how the ghosts of bygone meals were

continually rising up before himnot in anger or retribution, but as if grateful for his former appreciation,

and seeking to repudiate an endless series of enjoyment. at once shadowy and sensual, A tender loin of beef,

a hindquarter of veal, a sparerib of pork, a particular chicken, or a remarkably praiseworthy turkey, which

had perhaps adorned his board in the days of the elder Adams, would be remembered; while all the

subsequent experience of our race, and all the events that brightened or darkened his individual career, had

gone over him with as little permanent effect as the passing breeze. The chief tragic event of the old man's

life, so far as I could judge, was his mishap with a certain goose, which lived and died some twenty or forty

years ago: a goose of most promising figure, but which, at table, proved so inveterately tough, that the

carvingknife would make no impression on its carcase, and it could only be divided with an axe and

But it is time to quit this sketch; on which, however, I should be glad to dwell at considerably more length,

because of all men whom I have ever known, this individual was fittest to be a CustomHouse officer. Most

persons, owing to causes which I may not have space to hint at, suffer moral detriment from this peculiar

mode of life. The old Inspector was incapable of it; and, were he to continue in office to tile end of time,

would be just as good as he was then, and sit down to dinner with just as good an appetite.

There is one likeness, without which my gallery of CustomHouse portraits would be strangely incomplete,

but which my comparatively few opportunities for observation enable me to sketch only in the merest outline.

It is that of the Collector, our gallant old General, who, after his brilliant military service, subsequently to

which he had ruled over a wild Western territory, had come hither, twenty years before, to spend the decline

The brave soldier had already numbered, nearly or quite, his threescore years and ten, and was pursuing the

remainder of his earthly march, burdened with infirmities which even the martial music of his own

spiritstirring recollections could do little towards lightening. The step was palsied now, that had been

foremost in the charge. It was only with the assistance of a servant, and by leaning his hand heavily on the

iron balustrade, that he could slowly and painfully ascend the CustomHouse steps, and, with a toilsome

progress across the floor, attain his customary chair beside the fireplace. There he used to sit, gazing with a

somewhat dim serenity of aspect at the figures that came and went, amid the rustle of papers, the

administering of oaths, the discussion of business, and the casual talk of the office; all which sounds and

circumstances seemed but indistinctly to impress his senses, and hardly to make their way into his inner

sphere of contemplation. His countenance, in this repose, was mild and kindly. If his notice was sought, an

expression of courtesy and interest gleamed out upon his features, proving that there was light within him,

and that it was only the outward medium of the intellectual lamp that obstructed the rays in their passage. The

closer you penetrated to the substance of his mind, the sounder it appeared. When no longer called upon to

speak or listeneither of which operations cost him an evident efforthis face would briefly subside into

its former not uncheerful quietude. It was not painful to behold this look; for, though dim, it had not the

imbecility of decaying age. The framework of his nature, originally strong and massive, was not yet crumpled

To observe and define his character, however, under such disadvantages, was as difficult a task as to trace out

and build up anew, in imagination, an old fortress, like Ticonderoga, from a view of its grey and broken

ruins. Here and there, perchance, the walls may remain almost complete; but elsewhere may be only a

shapeless mound, cumbrous with its very strength, and overgrown, through long years of peace and neglect,

Nevertheless, looking at the old warrior with affectionfor, slight as was the communication between us,

my feeling towards him, like that of all bipeds and quadrupeds who knew him, might not improperly be

termed so,I could discern the main points of his portrait. It was marked with the noble and heroic qualities

which showed it to be not a mere accident, but of good right, that he had won a distinguished name. His spirit

could never, I conceive, have been characterized by an uneasy activity; it must, at any period of his life, have

required an impulse to set him in motion; but once stirred up, with obstacles to overcome, and an adequate

object to be attained, it was not in the man to give out or fail. The heat that had formerly pervaded his nature,

and which was not yet extinct, was never of the kind that flashes and flickers in a blaze; but rather a deep red

glow, as of iron in a furnace. Weight, solidity, firmnessthis was the expression of his repose, even in such

decay as had crept untimely over him at the period of which I speak. But I could imagine, even then, that,

under some excitement which should go deeply into his consciousnessroused by a trumpets real, loud

enough to awaken all of his energies that were not dead, but only slumberinghe was yet capable of flinging

off his infirmities like a sick man's gown, dropping the staff of age to seize a battlesword, and starting up

once more a warrior. And, in so intense a moment his demeanour would have still been calm. Such an

exhibition, however, was but to be pictured in fancy; not to be anticipated, nor desired. What I saw in

himas evidently as the indestructible ramparts of Old Ticonderoga, already cited as the most appropriate

similewas the features of stubborn and ponderous endurance, which might well have amounted to

obstinacy in his earlier days; of integrity, that, like most of his other endowments, lay in a somewhat heavy

mass, and was just as unmalleable or unmanageable as a ton of iron ore; and of benevolence which, fiercely

as he led the bayonets on at Chippewa or Fort Erie, I take to be of quite as genuine a stamp as what actuates

any or all the polemical philanthropists of the age. He had slain men with his own hand, for aught I

knowcertainly, they had fallen like blades of grass at the sweep of the scythe before the charge to which

his spirit imparted its triumphant energybut, be that as it might, there was never in his heart so much

cruelty as would have brushed the down off a butterfly's wing. I have not known the man to whose innate

Many characteristicsand those, too, which contribute not the least forcibly to impart resemblance in a

sketchmust have vanished, or been obscured, before I met the General. All merely graceful attributes are

usually the most evanescent; nor does nature adorn the human ruin with blossoms of new beauty, that have

their roots and proper nutriment only in the chinks and crevices of decay, as she sows wallflowers over the

ruined fortress of Ticonderoga. Still, even in respect of grace and beauty, there were points well worth noting.

A ray of humour, now and then, would make its way through the veil of dim obstruction, and glimmer

pleasantly upon our faces. A trait of native elegance, seldom seen in the masculine character after childhood

or early youth, was shown in the General's fondness for the sight and fragrance of flowers. An old soldier

might be supposed to prize only the bloody laurel on his brow; but here was one who seemed to have a young

There, beside the fireplace, the brave old General used to sit; while the Surveyorthough seldom, when it

could be avoided, taking upon himself the difficult task of engaging him in conversationwas fond of

standing at a distance, and watching his quiet and almost slumberous countenance. He seemed away from us,

although we saw him but a few yards off; remote, though we passed close beside his chair; unattainable,

though we might have stretched forth our hands and touched his own. It might be that he lived a more real

life within his thoughts than amid the unappropriate environment of the Collector's office. The evolutions of

the parade; the tumult of the battle; the flourish of old heroic music, heard thirty years beforesuch scenes

and sounds, perhaps, were all alive before his intellectual sense. Meanwhile, the merchants and shipmasters,

the spruce clerks and uncouth sailors, entered and departed; the bustle of his commercial and CustomHouse

life kept up its little murmur round about him; and neither with the men nor their affairs did the General

appear to sustain the most distant relation. He was as much out of place as an old swordnow rusty, but

which had flashed once in the battle's front, and showed still a bright gleam along its bladewould have

been among the inkstands, paperfolders, and mahogany rulers on the Deputy Collector's desk.

There was one thing that much aided me in renewing and recreating the stalwart soldier of the Niagara

frontierthe man of true and simple energy. It was the recollection of those memorable words of his"I'll

try, Sir"spoken on the very verge of a desperate and heroic enterprise, and breathing the soul and spirit of

New England hardihood, comprehending all perils, and encountering all. If, in our country, valour were

rewarded by heraldic honour, this phrasewhich it seems so easy to speak, but which only he, with such a

task of danger and glory before him, has ever spokenwould be the best and fittest of all mottoes for the

General's shield of arms. It contributes greatly towards a man's moral and intellectual health to be brought

into habits of companionship with individuals unlike himself, who care little for his pursuits, and whose

sphere and abilities he must go out of himself to appreciate. The accidents of my life have often afforded me

this advantage, but never with more fulness and variety than during my continuance in office. There was one

man, especially, the observation of whose character gave me a new idea of talent. His gifts were emphatically

those of a man of business; prompt, acute, clearminded; with an eye that saw through all perplexities, and a

faculty of arrangement that made them vanish as by the waving of an enchanter's wand. Bred up from

boyhood in the CustomHouse, it was his proper field of activity; and the many intricacies of business, so

harassing to the interloper, presented themselves before him with the regularity of a perfectly comprehended

system. In my contemplation, he stood as the ideal of his class. He was, indeed, the CustomHouse in

himself; or, at all events, the mainspring that kept its variously revolving wheels in motion; for, in an

institution like this, where its officers are appointed to subserve their own profit and convenience, and seldom

with a leading reference to their fitness for the duty to be performed, they must perforce seek elsewhere the

dexterity which is not in them. Thus, by an inevitable necessity, as a magnet attracts steelfilings, so did our

man of business draw to himself the difficulties which everybody met with. With an easy condescension, and

kind forbearance towards our stupiditywhich, to his order of mind, must have seemed little short of

crimewould he forthwith, by the merest touch of his finger, make the incomprehensible as clear as

daylight. The merchants valued him not less than we, his esoteric friends. His integrity was perfect; it was a

law of nature with him, rather than a choice or a principle; nor can it be otherwise than the main condition of

an intellect so remarkably clear and accurate as his to be honest and regular in the administration of affairs. A

stain on his conscience, as to anything that came within the range of his vocation, would trouble such a man

very much in the same way, though to a far greater degree, than an error in the balance of an account, or an

inkblot on the fair page of a book of record. Here, in a wordand it is a rare instance in my lifeI had met

Such were some of the people with whom I now found myself connected. I took it in good part, at the hands

of Providence, that I was thrown into a position so little akin to my past habits; and set myself seriously to

gather from it whatever profit was to be had. After my fellowship of toil and impracticable schemes with the

dreamy brethren of Brook Farm; after living for three years within the subtle influence of an intellect like

Emerson's; after those wild, free days on the Assabeth, indulging fantastic speculations, beside our fire of

fallen boughs, with Ellery Channing; after talking with Thoreau about pinetrees and Indian relics in his

hermitage at Walden; after growing fastidious by sympathy with the classic refinement of Hillard's culture;

after becoming imbued with poetic sentiment at Longfellow's hearthstoneit was time, at length, that I

should exercise other faculties of my nature, and nourish myself with food for which I had hitherto had little

appetite. Even the old Inspector was desirable, as a change of diet, to a man who had known Alcott. I looked

upon it as an evidence, in some measure, of a system naturally well balanced, and lacking no essential part of

a thorough organization, that, with such associates to remember, I could mingle at once with men of

Literature, its exertions and objects, were now of little moment in my regard. I cared not at this period for

books; they were apart from me. Natureexcept it were human naturethe nature that is developed in earth

and sky, was, in one sense, hidden from me; and all the imaginative delight wherewith it had been

spiritualized passed away out of my mind. A gift, a faculty, if it had not been departed, was suspended and

inanimate within me. There would have been something sad, unutterably dreary, in all this, had I not been

conscious that it lay at my own option to recall whatever was valuable in the past. It might be true, indeed,

that this was a life which could not, with impunity, be lived too long; else, it might make me permanently

other than I had been, without transforming me into any shape which it would be worth my while to take. But

I never considered it as other than a transitory life. There was always a prophetic instinct, a low whisper in

my ear, that within no long period, and whenever a new change of custom should be essential to my good,

Meanwhile, there I was, a Surveyor of the Revenue and, so far as I have been able to understand, as good a

Surveyor as need be. A man of thought, fancy, and sensibility (had he ten times the Surveyor's proportion of

those qualities), may, at any time, be a man of affairs, if he will only choose to give himself the trouble. My

fellowofficers, and the merchants and seacaptains with whom my official duties brought me into any

manner of connection, viewed me in no other light, and probably knew me in no other character. None of

them, I presume, had ever read a page of my inditing, or would have cared a fig the more for me if they had

read them all; nor would it have mended the matter, in the least, had those same unprofitable pages been

written with a pen like that of Burns or of Chaucer, each of whom was a CustomHouse officer in his day, as

well as I. It is a good lessonthough it may often be a hard onefor a man who has dreamed of literary

fame, and of making for himself a rank among the world's dignitaries by such means, to step aside out of the

narrow circle in which his claims are recognized and to find how utterly devoid of significance, beyond that

circle, is all that he achieves, and all he aims at. I know not that I especially needed the lesson, either in the

way of warning or rebuke; but at any rate, I learned it thoroughly: nor, it gives me pleasure to reflect, did the

truth, as it came home to my perception, ever cost me a pang, or require to be thrown off in a sigh. In the way

of literary talk, it is true, the Naval Officeran excellent fellow, who came into the office with me, and went

out only a little laterwould often engage me in a discussion about one or the other of his favourite topics,

Napoleon or Shakespeare. The Collector's junior clerk, too a young gentleman who, it was whispered

occasionally covered a sheet of Uncle Sam's letter paper with what (at the distance of a few yards) looked

very much like poetryused now and then to speak to me of books, as matters with which I might possibly

be conversant. This was my all of lettered intercourse; and it was quite sufficient for my necessities.

No longer seeking or caring that my name should be blasoned abroad on titlepages, I smiled to think that it

had now another kind of vogue. The CustomHouse marker imprinted it, with a stencil and black paint, on

pepperbags, and baskets of anatto, and cigarboxes, and bales of all kinds of dutiable merchandise, in

testimony that these commodities had paid the impost, and gone regularly through the office. Borne on such

queer vehicle of fame, a knowledge of my existence, so far as a name conveys it, was carried where it had

But the past was not dead. Once in a great while, the thoughts that had seemed so vital and so active, yet had

been put to rest so quietly, revived again. One of the most remarkable occasions, when the habit of bygone

days awoke in me, was that which brings it within the law of literary propriety to offer the public the sketch

In the second storey of the CustomHouse there is a large room, in which the brickwork and naked rafters

have never been covered with panelling and plaster. The edificeoriginally projected on a scale adapted to

the old commercial enterprise of the port, and with an idea of subsequent prosperity destined never to be

realizedcontains far more space than its occupants know what to do with. This airy hall, therefore, over the

Collector's apartments, remains unfinished to this day, and, in spite of the aged cobwebs that festoon its

dusky beams, appears still to await the labour of the carpenter and mason. At one end of the room, in a recess,

were a number of barrels piled one upon another, containing bundles of official documents. Large quantities

of similar rubbish lay lumbering the floor. It was sorrowful to think how many days, and weeks, and months,

and years of toil had been wasted on these musty papers, which were now only an encumbrance on earth, and

were hidden away in this forgotten corner, never more to be glanced at by human eyes. But then, what reams

of other manuscriptsfilled, not with the dulness of official formalities, but with the thought of inventive

brains and the rich effusion of deep heartshad gone equally to oblivion; and that, moreover, without

serving a purpose in their day, as these heapedup papers had, andsaddest of allwithout purchasing for

their writers the comfortable livelihood which the clerks of the CustomHouse had gained by these worthless

scratchings of the pen. Yet not altogether worthless, perhaps, as materials of local history. Here, no doubt,

statistics of the former commerce of Salem might be discovered, and memorials of her princely

merchantsold King Derbyold Billy Grayold Simon Forresterand many another magnate in his day,

whose powdered head, however, was scarcely in the tomb before his mountain pile of wealth began to

dwindle. The founders of the greater part of the families which now compose the aristocracy of Salem might

here be traced, from the petty and obscure beginnings of their traffic, at periods generally much posterior to

the Revolution, upward to what their children look upon as longestablished rank,

Prior to the Revolution there is a dearth of records; the earlier documents and archives of the CustomHouse

having, probably, been carried off to Halifax, when all the king's officials accompanied the British army in its

flight from Boston. It has often been a matter of regret with me; for, going back, perhaps, to the days of the

Protectorate, those papers must have contained many references to forgotten or remembered men, and to

antique customs, which would have affected me with the same pleasure as when I used to pick up Indian

But, one idle and rainy day, it was my fortune to make a discovery of some little interest. Poking and

burrowing into the heapedup rubbish in the corner, unfolding one and another document, and reading the

names of vessels that had long ago foundered at sea or rotted at the wharves, and those of merchants never

heard of now on 'Change, nor very readily decipherable on their mossy tombstones; glancing at such matters

with the saddened, weary, halfreluctant interest which we bestow on the corpse of dead activityand

exerting my fancy, sluggish with little use, to raise up from these dry bones an image of the old towns

brighter aspect, when India was a new region, and only Salem knew the way thitherI chanced to lay my

hand on a small package, carefully done up in a piece of ancient yellow parchment. This envelope had the air

of an official record of some period long past, when clerks engrossed their stiff and formal chirography on

more substantial materials than at present. There was something about it that quickened an instinctive

curiosity, and made me undo the faded red tape that tied up the package, with the sense that a treasure would

here be brought to light. Unbending the rigid folds of the parchment cover, I found it to be a commission,

under the hand and seal of Governor Shirley, in favour of one Jonathan Pine, as Surveyor of His Majesty's

Customs for the Port of Salem, in the Province of Massachusetts Bay. I remembered to have read (probably

in Felt's "Annals") a notice of the decease of Mr. Surveyor Pue, about fourscore years ago; and likewise, in a

newspaper of recent times, an account of the digging up of his remains in the little graveyard of St. Peter's

Church, during the renewal of that edifice. Nothing, if I rightly call to mind, was left of my respected

predecessor, save an imperfect skeleton, and some fragments of apparel, and a wig of majestic frizzle, which,

unlike the head that it once adorned, was in very satisfactory preservation. But, on examining the papers

which the parchment commission served to envelop, I found more traces of Mr. Pue's mental part, and the

internal operations of his head, than the frizzled wig had contained of the venerable skull itself.

They were documents, in short, not official, but of a private nature, or, at least, written in his private capacity,

and apparently with his own hand. I could account for their being included in the heap of CustomHouse

lumber only by the fact that Mr. Pine's death had happened suddenly, and that these papers, which he

probably kept in his official desk, had never come to the knowledge of his heirs, or were supposed to relate to

the business of the revenue. On the transfer of the archives to Halifax, this package, proving to be of no

The ancient Surveyorbeing little molested, suppose, at that early day with business pertaining to his

officeseems to have devoted some of his many leisure hours to researches as a local antiquarian, and other

inquisitions of a similar nature. These supplied material for petty activity to a mind that would otherwise have

A portion of his facts, bytheby, did me good service in the preparation of the article entitled "MAIN

STREET," included in the present volume. The remainder may perhaps be applied to purposes equally

valuable hereafter, or not impossibly may be worked up, so far as they go, into a regular history of Salem,

should my veneration for the natal soil ever impel me to so pious a task. Meanwhile, they shall be at the

command of any gentleman, inclined and competent, to take the unprofitable labour off my hands. As a final

disposition I contemplate depositing them with the Essex Historical Society. But the object that most drew

my attention to the mysterious package was a certain affair of fine red cloth, much worn and faded, There

were traces about it of gold embroidery, which, however, was greatly frayed and defaced, so that none, or

very little, of the glitter was left. It had been wrought, as was easy to perceive, with wonderful skill of

needlework; and the stitch (as I am assured by ladies conversant with such mysteries) gives evidence of a

now forgotten art, not to be discovered even by the process of picking out the threads. This rag of scarlet

clothfor time, and wear, and a sacrilegious moth had reduced it to little other than a ragon careful

It was the capital letter A. By an accurate measurement, each limb proved to be precisely three inches and a

quarter in length. It had been intended, there could be no doubt, as an ornamental article of dress; but how it

was to be worn, or what rank, honour, and dignity, in bypast times, were signified by it, was a riddle which

(so evanescent are the fashions of the world in these particulars) I saw little hope of solving. And yet it

strangely interested me. My eyes fastened themselves upon the old scarlet letter, and would not be turned

aside. Certainly there was some deep meaning in it most worthy of interpretation, and which, as it were,

streamed forth from the mystic symbol, subtly communicating itself to my sensibilities, but evading the

When thus perplexedand cogitating, among other hypotheses, whether the letter might not have been one

of those decorations which the white men used to contrive in order to take the eyes of IndiansI happened to

place it on my breast. It seemed to methe reader may smile, but must not doubt my wordit seemed to

me, then, that I experienced a sensation not altogether physical, yet almost so, as of burning heat, and as if the

letter were not of red cloth, but redhot iron. I shuddered, and involuntarily let it fall upon the floor.

In the absorbing contemplation of the scarlet letter, I had hitherto neglected to examine a small roll of dingy

paper, around which it had been twisted. This I now opened, and had the satisfaction to find recorded by the

old Surveyor's pen, a reasonably complete explanation of the whole affair. There were several foolscap

sheets, containing many particulars respecting the life and conversation of one Hester Prynne, who appeared

to have been rather a noteworthy personage in the view of our ancestors. She had flourished during the period

between the early days of Massachusetts and the close of the seventeenth century. Aged persons, alive in the

time of Mr. Surveyor Pue, and from whose oral testimony he had made up his narrative, remembered her, in

their youth, as a very old, but not decrepit woman, of a stately and solemn aspect. It had been her habit, from

an almost immemorial date, to go about the country as a kind of voluntary nurse, and doing whatever

miscellaneous good she might; taking upon herself, likewise, to give advice in all matters, especially those of

the heart, by which meansas a person of such propensities inevitably mustshe gained from many people

the reverence due to an angel, but, I should imagine, was looked upon by others as an intruder and a nuisance.

Prying further into the manuscript, I found the record of other doings and sufferings of this singular woman,

for most of which the reader is referred to the story entitled "THE SCARLET LETTER"; and it should be

borne carefully in mind that the main facts of that story are authorized and authenticated by the document of

Mr. Surveyor Pue. The original papers, together with the scarlet letter itselfa most curious relicare still

in my possession, and shall be freely exhibited to whomsoever, induced by the great interest of the narrative,

may desire a sight of them I must not be understood affirming that, in the dressing up of the tale, and

and modes of passion that influenced the characters who figure in it, I have invariably confined myself within

the limits of the old Surveyor's halfadozen sheets of foolscap. On the contrary, I have allowed myself, as to

such points, nearly, or altogether, as much license as if the facts had been entirely of my own invention. What

This incident recalled my mind, in some degree, to its old track. There seemed to be here the groundwork of a

tale. It impressed me as if the ancient Surveyor, in his garb of a hundred years gone by, and wearing his

immortal wigwhich was buried with him, but did not perish in the gravehad bet me in the deserted

chamber of the CustomHouse. In his port was the dignity of one who had borne His Majesty's commission,

and who was therefore illuminated by a ray of the splendour that shone so dazzlingly about the throne. How

unlike alas the hangdog look of a republican official, who, as the servant of the people, feels himself less than

the least, and below the lowest of his masters. With his own ghostly hand, the obscurely seen, but majestic,

figure had imparted to me the scarlet symbol and the little roll of explanatory manuscript. With his own

ghostly voice he had exhorted me, on the sacred consideration of my filial duty and reverence towards

himwho might reasonably regard himself as my official ancestorto bring his mouldy and motheaten

lucubrations before the public. "Do this," said the ghost of Mr. Surveyor Pue, emphatically nodding the head

that looked so imposing within its memorable wig; "do this, and the profit shall be all your own. You will

shortly need it; for it is not in your days as it was in mine, when a man's office was a lifelease, and

oftentimes an heirloom. But I charge you, in this matter of old Mistress Prynne, give to your predecessor's

memory the credit which will be rightfully due" And I said to the ghost of Mr. Surveyor Pue"I will".

On Hester Prynne's story, therefore, I bestowed much thought. It was the subject of my meditations for many

an hour, while pacing to and fro across my room, or traversing, with a hundredfold repetition, the long extent

from the front door of the CustomHouse to the side entrance, and back again. Great were the weariness and

annoyance of the old Inspector and the Weighers and Gaugers, whose slumbers were disturbed by the

unmercifully lengthened tramp of my passing and returning footsteps. Remembering their own former habits,

they used to say that the Surveyor was walking the quarterdeck. They probably fancied that my sole

objectand, indeed, the sole object for which a sane man could ever put himself into voluntary

motionwas to get an appetite for dinner. And, to say the truth, an appetite, sharpened by the east wind that

generally blew along the passage, was the only valuable result of so much indefatigable exercise. So little

adapted is the atmosphere of a Customhouse to the delicate harvest of fancy and sensibility, that, had I

remained there through ten Presidencies yet to come, I doubt whether the tale of "The Scarlet Letter" would

ever have been brought before the public eye. My imagination was a tarnished mirror. It would not reflect, or

dimness, the figures with which I did my best to people it. The characters of the narrative would not be

warmed and rendered malleable by any heat that I could kindle at my intellectual forge. They would take

neither the glow of passion nor the tenderness of sentiment, but retained all the rigidity of dead corpses, and

stared me in the face with a fixed and ghastly grin of contemptuous defiance. "What have you to do with us?"

that expression seemed to say. "The little power you might have once possessed over the tribe of unrealities is

gone You have bartered it for a pittance of the public gold. Go then, and earn your wages" In short, the

almost torpid creatures of my own fancy twitted me with imbecility, and not without fair occasion.

It was not merely during the three hours and a half which Uncle Sam claimed as his share of my daily life

that this wretched numbness held possession of me. It went with me on my seashore walks and rambles into

the country, wheneverwhich was seldom and reluctantlyI bestirred myself to seek that invigorating

charm of Nature which used to give me such freshness and activity of thought, the moment that I stepped

across the threshold of the Old Manse. The same torpor, as regarded the capacity for intellectual effort,

accompanied me home, and weighed upon me in the chamber which I most absurdly termed my study. Nor

did it quit me when, late at night, I sat in the deserted parlour, lighted only by the glimmering coalfire and

the moon, striving to picture forth imaginary scenes, which, the next day, might flow out on the brightening

If the imaginative faculty refused to act at such an hour, it might well be deemed a hopeless case. Moonlight,

in a familiar room, falling so white upon the carpet, and showing all its figures so distinctlymaking every

object so minutely visible, yet so unlike a morning or noontide visibilityis a medium the most suitable for

a romancewriter to get acquainted with his illusive guests. There is the little domestic scenery of the

wellknown apartment; the chairs, with each its separate individuality; the centretable, sustaining a

workbasket, a volume or two, and an extinguished lamp; the sofa; the bookcase; the picture on the

wallall these details, so completely seen, are so spiritualised by the unusual light, that they seem to lose

their actual substance, and become things of intellect. Nothing is too small or too trifling to undergo this

change, and acquire dignity thereby. A child's shoe; the doll, seated in her little wicker carriage; the

hobbyhorsewhatever, in a word, has been used or played with during the day is now invested with a

quality of strangeness and remoteness, though still almost as vividly present as by daylight. Thus, therefore,

the floor of our familiar room has become a neutral territory, somewhere between the real world and

fairyland, where the Actual and the Imaginary may meet, and each imbue itself with the nature of the other.

Ghosts might enter here without affrighting us. It would be too much in keeping with the scene to excite

surprise, were we to look about us and discover a form, beloved, but gone hence, now sitting quietly in a

streak of this magic moonshine, with an aspect that would make us doubt whether it had returned from afar,

The somewhat dim coal fire has an essential Influence in producing the effect which I would describe. It

throws its unobtrusive tinge throughout the room, with a faint ruddiness upon the walls and ceiling, and a

reflected gleam upon the polish of the furniture. This warmer light mingles itself with the cold spirituality of

the moonbeams, and communicates, as it were, a heart and sensibilities of human tenderness to the forms

which fancy summons tip. It converts them from snowimages into men and women. Glancing at the

lookingglass, we beholddeep within its haunted vergethe smouldering glow of the halfextinguished

anthracite, the white moonbeams on the floor, and a repetition of all the gleam and shadow of the picture,

with one remove further from the actual, and nearer to the imaginative. Then, at such an hour, and with this

scene before him, if a man, sitting all alone, cannot dream strange things, and make them look like truth, he

But, for myself, during the whole of my CustomHouse experience, moonlight and sunshine, and the glow of

firelight, were just alike in my regard; and neither of them was of one whit more avail than the twinkle of a

tallowcandle. An entire class of susceptibilities, and a gift connected with themof no great richness or

It is my belief, however, that had I attempted a different order of composition, my faculties would not have

been found so pointless and inefficacious. I might, for instance, have contented myself with writing out the

narratives of a veteran shipmaster, one of the Inspectors, whom I should be most ungrateful not to mention,

since scarcely a day passed that he did not stir me to laughter and admiration by his marvel loins gifts as a

storyteller. Could I have preserved the picturesque force of his style, and the humourous colouring which

nature taught him how to throw over his descriptions, the result, I honestly believe, would have been

something new in literature. Or I might readily have found a more serious task. It was a folly, with the

materiality of this daily life pressing so intrusively upon me, to attempt to fling myself back into another age,

or to insist on creating the semblance of a world out of airy matter, when, at every moment, the impalpable

beauty of my soapbubble was broken by the rude contact of some actual circumstance. The wiser effort

would have been to diffuse thought and imagination through the opaque substance of today, and thus to

make it a bright transparency; to spiritualise the burden that began to weigh so heavily; to seek, resolutely,

the true and indestructible value that lay hidden in the petty and wearisome incidents, and ordinary characters

with which I was now conversant. The fault was mine. The page of life that was spread out before me seemed

dull and commonplace only because I had not fathomed its deeper import. A better book than I shall ever

write was there; leaf after leaf presenting itself to me, just as it was written out by the reality of the flitting

hour, and vanishing as fast as written, only because my brain wanted the insight, and my hand the cunning, to

transcribe it. At some future day, it may be, I shall remember a few scattered fragments and broken

paragraphs, and write them down, and find the letters turn to gold upon the page.

These perceptions had come too late. At the Instant, I was only conscious that what would have been a

pleasure once was now a hopeless toil. There was no occasion to make much moan about this state of affairs.

I had ceased to be a writer of tolerably poor tales and essays, and had become a tolerably good Surveyor of

the Customs. That was all. But, nevertheless, it is anything but agreeable to be haunted by a suspicion that

one's intellect is dwindling away, or exhaling, without your consciousness, like ether out of a phial; so that, at

every glance, you find a smaller and less volatile residuum. Of the fact there could be no doubt and,

examining myself and others, I was led to conclusions, in reference to the effect of public office on the

character, not very favourable to the mode of life in question. In some other form, perhaps, I may hereafter

develop these effects. Suffice it here to say that a CustomHouse officer of long continuance can hardly be a

very praiseworthy or respectable personage, for many reasons; one of them, the tenure by which he holds his

situation, and another, the very nature of his business, whichthough, I trust, an honest oneis of such a

An effectwhich I believe to be observable, more or less, in every individual who has occupied the

positionis, that while he leans on the mighty arm of the Republic, his own proper strength, departs from

him. He loses, in an extent proportioned to the weakness or force of his original nature, the capability of

selfsupport. If he possesses an unusual share of native energy, or the enervating magic of place do not

operate too long upon him, his forfeited powers may be redeemable. The ejected officerfortunate in the

unkindly shove that sends him forth betimes, to struggle amid a struggling worldmay return to himself, and

become all that he has ever been. But this seldom happens. He usually keeps his ground just long enough for

his own ruin, and is then thrust out, with sinews all unstrung, to totter along the difficult footpath of life as he

best may. Conscious of his own infirmitythat his tempered steel and elasticity are losthe for ever

afterwards looks wistfully about him in quest of support external to himself. His pervading and continual

hopea hallucination, which, in the face of all discouragement, and making light of impossibilities, haunts

him while he lives, and, I fancy, like the convulsive throes of the cholera, torments him for a brief space after

deathis, that finally, and in no long time, by some happy coincidence of circumstances, he shall be restored

to office. This faith, more than anything else, steals the pith and availability out of whatever enterprise he

may dream of undertaking. Why should he toil and moil, and be at so much trouble to pick himself up out of

the mud, when, in a little while hence, the strong arm of his Uncle will raise and support him? Why should he

work for his living here, or go to dig gold in California, when he is so soon to be made happy, at monthly

intervals, with a little pile of glittering coin out of his Uncle's pocket? It is sadly curious to observe how slight

a taste of office suffices to infect a poor fellow with this singular disease. Uncle Sam's goldmeaning no

disrespect to the worthy old gentlemanhas, in this respect, a quality of enchantment like that of the devil's

wages. Whoever touches it should look well to himself, or he may find the bargain to go hard against him,

involving, if not his soul, yet many of its better attributes; its sturdy force, its courage and constancy, its truth,

Here was a fine prospect in the distance. Not that the Surveyor brought the lesson home to himself, or

admitted that he could be so utterly undone, either by continuance in office or ejectment. Yet my reflections

were not the most comfortable. I began to grow melancholy and restless; continually prying into my mind, to

discover which of its poor properties were gone, and what degree of detriment had already accrued to the

remainder. I endeavoured to calculate how much longer I could stay in the CustomHouse, and yet go forth a

man. To confess the truth, it was my greatest apprehensionas it would never be a measure of policy to turn

out so quiet an individual as myself; and it being hardly in the nature of a public officer to resignit was my

chief trouble, therefore, that I was likely to grow grey and decrepit in the Surveyorship, and become much

such another animal as the old Inspector. Might it not, in the tedious lapse of official life that lay before me,

finally be with me as it was with this venerable friendto make the dinnerhour the nucleus of the day, and

to spend the rest of it, as an old dog spends it, asleep in the sunshine or in the shade? A dreary lookforward,

this, for a man who felt it to be the best definition of happiness to live throughout the whole range of his

faculties and sensibilities But, all this while, I was giving myself very unnecessary alarm. Providence had

A remarkable event of the third year of my Surveyorshipto adopt the tone of "P. P. "was the election of

General Taylor to the Presidency. It is essential, in order to a complete estimate of the advantages of official

life, to view the incumbent at the incoming of a hostile administration. His position is then one of the most

singularly irksome, and, in every contingency, disagreeable, that a wretched mortal can possibly occupy; with

seldom an alternative of good on either hand, although what presents itself to him as the worst event may

very probably be the best. But it is a strange experience, to a man of pride and sensibility, to know that his

interests are within the control of individuals who neither love nor understand him, and by whom, since one

or the other must needs happen, he would rather be injured than obliged. Strange, too, for one who has kept

his calmness throughout the contest, to observe the bloodthirstiness that is developed in the hour of triumph,

and to be conscious that he is himself among its objects! There are few uglier traits of human nature than this

tendencywhich I now witnessed in men no worse than their neighboursto grow cruel, merely because

they possessed the power of inflicting harm. If the guillotine, as applied to officeholders, were a literal fact,

instead of one of the most apt of metaphors, it is my sincere belief that the active members of the victorious

party were sufficiently excited to have chopped off all our heads, and have thanked Heaven for the

opportunity! It appears to mewho have been a calm and curious observer, as well in victory as

defeatthat this fierce and bitter spirit of malice and revenge has never distinguished the many triumphs of

my own party as it now did that of the Whigs. The Democrats take the offices, as a general rule, because they

need them, and because the practice of many years has made it the law of political warfare, which unless a

different system be proclaimed, it was weakness and cowardice to murmur at. But the long habit of victory

has made them generous. They know how to spare when they see occasion; and when they strike, the axe

may be sharp indeed, but its edge is seldom poisoned with illwill; nor is it their custom ignominiously to

In short, unpleasant as was my predicament, at best, I saw much reason to congratulate myself that I was on

the losing side rather than the triumphant one. If, heretofore, l had been none of the warmest of partisans I

began now, at this season of peril and adversity, to be pretty acutely sensible with which party my

predilections lay; nor was it without something like regret and shame that, according to a reasonable

calculation of chances, I saw my own prospect of retaining office to be better than those of my democratic

brethren. But who can see an inch into futurity beyond his nose? My own head was the first that fell

The moment when a man's head drops off is seldom or never, I am inclined to think, precisely the most

agreeable of his life. Nevertheless, like the greater part of our misfortunes, even so serious a contingency

brings its remedy and consolation with it, if the sufferer will but make the best rather than the worst, of the

accident which has befallen him. In my particular case the consolatory topics were close at hand, and, indeed,

had suggested themselves to my meditations a considerable time before it was requisite to use them. In view

of my previous weariness of office, and vague thoughts of resignation, my fortune somewhat resembled that

of a person who should entertain an idea of committing suicide, and although beyond his hopes, meet with

the good hap to be murdered. In the CustomHouse, as before in the Old Manse, I had spent three yearsa

term long enough to rest a weary brain: long enough to break off old intellectual habits, and make room for

new ones: long enough, and too long, to have lived in an unnatural state, doing what was really of no

advantage nor delight to any human being, and withholding myself from toil that would, at least, have stilled

an unquiet impulse in me. Then, moreover, as regarded his unceremonious ejectment, the late Surveyor was

not altogether illpleased to be recognised by the Whigs as an enemy; since his inactivity in political

affairshis tendency to roam, at will, in that broad and quiet field where all mankind may meet, rather than

confine himself to those narrow paths where brethren of the same household must diverge from one

anotherhad sometimes made it questionable with his brother Democrats whether he was a friend. Now,

after he had won the crown of martyrdom (though with no longer a head to wear it on), the point might be

looked upon as settled. Finally, little heroic as he was, it seemed more decorous to be overthrown in the

downfall of the party with which he had been content to stand than to remain a forlorn survivor, when so

many worthier men were falling: and at last, after subsisting for four years on the mercy of a hostile

administration, to be compelled then to define his position anew, and claim the yet more humiliating mercy

Meanwhile, the press had taken up my affair, and kept me for a week or two careering through the public

prints, in my decapitated state, like Irving's Headless Horseman, ghastly and grim, and longing to be buried,

as a political dead man ought. So much for my figurative self. The real human being all this time, with his

head safely on his shoulders, had brought himself to the comfortable conclusion that everything was for the

best; and making an investment in ink, paper, and steel pens, had opened his longdisused writing desk, and

Now it was that the lucubrations of my ancient predecessor, Mr. Surveyor Pue, came into play. Rusty through

long idleness, some little space was requisite before my intellectual machinery could be brought to work upon

the tale with an effect in any degree satisfactory. Even yet, though my thoughts were ultimately much

absorbed in the task, it wears, to my eye, a stern and sombre aspect: too much ungladdened by genial

sunshine; too little relieved by the tender and familiar influences which soften almost every scene of nature

and real life, and undoubtedly should soften every picture of them. This uncaptivating effect is perhaps due to

the period of hardly accomplished revolution, and still seething turmoil, in which the story shaped itself. It is

no indication, however, of a lack of cheerfulness in the writer's mind: for he was happier while straying

through the gloom of these sunless fantasies than at any time since he had quitted the Old Manse. Some of

the briefer articles, which contribute to make up the volume, have likewise been written since my involuntary

withdrawal from the toils and honours of public life, and the remainder are gleaned from annuals and

magazines, of such antique date, that they have gone round the circle, and come back to novelty again.

Keeping up the metaphor of the political guillotine, the whole may be considered as the POSTHUMOUS

PAPERS OF A DECAPITATED SURVEYOR: and the sketch which I am now bringing to a close, if too

autobiographical for a modest person to publish in his lifetime, will readily be excused in a gentleman who

writes from beyond the grave. Peace be with all the world My blessing on my friends My forgiveness to my

The life of the CustomHouse lies like a dream behind me. The old Inspectorwho, bythebye, l regret

to say, was overthrown and killed by a horse some time ago, else he would certainly have lived for everhe,

and all those other venerable personages who sat with him at the receipt of custom, are but shadows in my

view: whiteheaded and wrinkled images, which my fancy used to sport with, and has now flung aside for

ever. The merchants Pingree, Phillips, Shepard, Upton, Kimball, Bertram, Huntthese and many other

names, which had such classic familiarity for my ear six months ago,these men of traffic, who seemed to

occupy so important a position in the worldhow little time has it required to disconnect me from them all,

I recall the figures and appellations of these few. Soon, likewise, my old native town will loom upon me

through the haze of memory, a mist brooding over and around it; as if it were no portion of the real earth, but

an overgrown village in cloudland, with only imaginary inhabitants to people its wooden houses and walk

its homely lanes, and the unpicturesque prolixity of its main street. Henceforth it ceases to be a reality of my

life; I am a citizen of somewhere else. My good townspeople will not much regret me, forthough it has

been as dear an object as any, in my literary efforts, to be of some importance in their eyes, and to win myself

a pleasant memory in this abode and burialplace of so many of my forefathersthere has never been, for

me, the genial atmosphere which a literary man requires in order to ripen the best harvest of his mind. I shall

do better amongst other faces; and these familiar ones, it need hardly be said, will do just as well without me.

It may be, howeveroh, transporting and triumphant thought Ithat the greatgrandchildren of the present

race may sometimes think kindly of the scribbler of bygone days, when the antiquary of days to come, among

the sites memorable in the town's history, shall point out the locality of THE TOWN PUMP.

A throng of bearded men, in sadcoloured garments and grey steeplecrowned hats, intermixed with

women, some wearing hoods, and others bareheaded, was assembled in front of a wooden edifice, the door of

The founders of a new colony, whatever Utopia of human virtue and happiness they might originally project,

have invariably recognised it among their earliest practical necessities to allot a portion of the virgin soil as a

cemetery, and another portion as the site of a prison. In accordance with this rule it may safely be assumed

that the forefathers of Boston had built the first prisonhouse somewhere in the Vicinity of Cornhill, almost

as seasonably as they marked out the first burialground, on Isaac Johnson's lot, and round about his grave,

which subsequently became the nucleus of all the congregated sepulchres in the old churchyard of King's

Chapel. Certain it is that, some fifteen or twenty years after the settlement of the town, the wooden jail was

already marked with weatherstains and other indications of age, which gave a yet darker aspect to its

beetlebrowed and gloomy front. The rust on the ponderous ironwork of its oaken door looked more

antique than anything else in the New World. Like all that pertains to crime, it seemed never to have known a

youthful era. Before this ugly edifice, and between it and the wheeltrack of the street, was a grassplot,

much overgrown with burdock, pigweed, applepern, and such unsightly vegetation, which evidently found

something congenial in the soil that had so early borne the black flower of civilised society, a prison. But on

one side of the portal, and rooted almost at the threshold, was a wild rosehush, covered, in this month of

June, with its delicate gems, which might be imagined to offer their fragrance and fragile beauty to the

prisoner as he went in, and to the condemned criminal as he came forth to his doom, in token that the deep

This rosebush, by a strange chance, has been kept alive in history; but whether it had merely survived out of

the stern old wilderness, so long after the fall of the gigantic pines and oaks that originally overshadowed it,

or whether, as there is far authority for believing, it had sprung up under the footsteps of the sainted Ann

Hutchinson as she entered the prisondoor, we shall not take upon us to determine. Finding it so directly on

the threshold of our narrative, which is now about to issue from that inauspicious portal, we could hardly do

otherwise than pluck one of its flowers, and present it to the reader. It may serve, let us hope, to symbolise

some sweet moral blossom that may be found along the track, or relieve the darkening close of a tale of

The grassplot before the jail, in Prison Lane, on a certain summer morning, not less than two centuries ago,

was occupied by a pretty large number of the inhabitants of Boston, all with their eyes intently fastened on

the ironclamped oaken door. Amongst any other population, or at a later period in the history of New

England, the grim rigidity that petrified the bearded physiognomies of these good people would have augured

some awful business in hand. It could have betokened nothing short of the anticipated execution of some

rioted culprit, on whom the sentence of a legal tribunal had but confirmed the verdict of public sentiment.

But, in that early severity of the Puritan character, an inference of this kind could not so indubitably be

drawn. It might be that a sluggish bondservant, or an undutiful child, whom his parents had given over to

the civil authority, was to be corrected at the whippingpost. It might be that an Antinomian, a Quaker, or

other heterodox religionist, was to be scourged out of the town, or an idle or vagrant Indian, whom the white

man's firewater had made riotous about the streets, was to be driven with stripes into the shadow of the forest.

It might be, too, that a witch, like old Mistress Hibbins, the bittertempered widow of the magistrate, was to

die upon the gallows. In either case, there was very much the same solemnity of demeanour on the part of the

spectators, as befitted a people among whom religion and law were almost identical, and in whose character

both were so thoroughly interfused, that the mildest and severest acts of public discipline were alike made

venerable and awful. Meagre, indeed, and cold, was the sympathy that a transgressor might look for, from

such bystanders, at the scaffold. On the other hand, a penalty which, in our days, would infer a degree of

mocking infamy and ridicule, might then be invested with almost as stern a dignity as the punishment of

It was a circumstance to he noted on the summer morning when our story begins its course, that the women,

of whom there were several in the crowd, appeared to take a peculiar interest in whatever penal infliction

might be expected to ensue. The age had not so much refinement, that any sense of impropriety restrained the

wearers of petticoat and farthingale from stepping forth into the public ways, and wedging their not

unsubstantial persons, if occasion were, into the throng nearest to the scaffold at an execution. Morally, as

well as materially, there was a coarser fibre in those wives and maidens of old English birth and breeding

than in their fair descendants, separated from them by a series of six or seven generations; for, throughout

that chain of ancestry, every successive mother had transmitted to her child a fainter bloom, a more delicate

character of less force and solidity than her own. The women who were now standing about the prisondoor

stood within less than half a century of the period when the manlike Elizabeth had been the not altogether

unsuitable representative of the sex. They were her countrywomen: and the beef and ale of their native land,

with a moral diet not a whit more refined, entered largely into their composition. The bright morning sun,

therefore, shone on broad shoulders and welldeveloped busts, and on round and ruddy cheeks, that had

ripened in the faroff island, and had hardly yet grown paler or thinner in the atmosphere of New England.

There was, moreover, a boldness and rotundity of speech among these matrons, as most of them seemed to

be, that would startle us at the present day, whether in respect to its purport or its volume of tone.

"Goodwives," said a hardfeatured dame of fifty, "I'll tell ye a piece of my mind. It would be greatly for the

public behoof if we women, being of mature age and churchmembers in good repute, should have the

handling of such malefactresses as this Hester Prynne. What think ye, gossips? If the hussy stood up for

judgment before us five, that are now here in a knot together, would she come off with such a sentence as the

"People say," said another, "that the Reverend Master Dimmesdale, her godly pastor, takes it very grievously

"The magistrates are Godfearing gentlemen, but merciful overmuchthat is a truth," added a third

autumnal matron. "At the very least, they should have put the brand of a hot iron on Hester Prynne's

forehead. Madame Hester would have winced at that, I warrant me. But shethe naughty baggage little

will she care what they put upon the bodice of her gown Why, look you, she may cover it with a brooch, or

"Ah, but," interposed, more softly, a young wife, holding a child by the hand, "let her cover the mark as she

"What do we talk of marks and brands, whether on the bodice of her gown or the flesh of her forehead?"

cried another female, the ugliest as well as the most pitiless of these selfconstituted judges. "This woman

has brought shame upon us all, and ought to die; Is there not law for it? Truly there is, both in the Scripture

and the statutebook. Then let the magistrates, who have made it of no effect, thank themselves if their own

"Mercy on us, goodwife" exclaimed a man in the crowd, "is there no virtue in woman, save what springs

from a wholesome fear of the gallows? That is the hardest word yet Hush now, gossips for the lock is turning

The door of the jail being flung open from within there appeared, in the first place, like a black shadow

emerging into sunshine, the grim and gristly presence of the townbeadle, with a sword by his side, and his

represented in his aspect the whole dismal severity of the Puritanic code of law, which it was his business to

administer in its final and closest application to the offender. Stretching forth the official staff in his left hand,

he laid his right upon the shoulder of a young woman, whom he thus drew forward, until, on the threshold of

the prisondoor, she repelled him, by an action marked with natural dignity and force of character, and

stepped into the open air as if by her own free will. She bore in her arms a child, a baby of some three months

old, who winked and turned aside its little face from the too vivid light of day; because its existence,

heretofore, had brought it acquaintance only with the grey twilight of a dungeon, or other darksome

When the young womanthe mother of this childstood fully revealed before the crowd, it seemed to be

her first impulse to clasp the infant closely to her bosom; not so much by an impulse of motherly affection, as

that she might thereby conceal a certain token, which was wrought or fastened into her dress. In a moment,

however, wisely judging that one token of her shame would but poorly serve to hide another, she took the

baby on her arm, and with a burning blush, and yet a haughty smile, and a glance that would not be abashed,

looked around at her townspeople and neighbours. On the breast of her gown, in fine red cloth, surrounded

with an elaborate embroidery and fantastic flourishes of gold thread, appeared the letter A. It was so

artistically done, and with so much fertility and gorgeous luxuriance of fancy, that it had all the effect of a

last and fitting decoration to the apparel which she wore, and which was of a splendour in accordance with

the taste of the age, but greatly beyond what was allowed by the sumptuary regulations of the colony.

The young woman was tall, with a figure of perfect elegance on a large scale. She had dark and abundant

hair, so glossy that it threw off the sunshine with a gleam; and a face which, besides being beautiful from

regularity of feature and richness of complexion, had the impressiveness belonging to a marked brow and

deep black eyes. She was ladylike, too, after the manner of the feminine gentility of those days; characterised

by a certain state and dignity, rather than by the delicate, evanescent, and indescribable grace which is now

recognised as its indication. And never had Hester Prynne appeared more ladylike, in the antique

interpretation of the term, than as she issued from the prison. Those who had before known her, and had

expected to behold her dimmed and obscured by a disastrous cloud, were astonished, and even startled, to

perceive how her beauty shone out, and made a halo of the misfortune and ignominy in which she was

enveloped. It may be true that, to a sensitive observer, there was some thing exquisitely painful in it. Her

attire, which indeed, she had wrought for the occasion in prison, and had modelled much after her own fancy,

seemed to express the attitude of her spirit, the desperate recklessness of her mood, by its wild and

picturesque peculiarity. But the point which drew all eyes, and, as it were, transfigured the wearerso that

both men and women who had been familiarly acquainted with Hester Prynne were now impressed as if they

beheld her for the first timewas that SCARLET LETTER, so fantastically embroidered and illuminated

upon her bosom. It had the effect of a spell, taking her out of the ordinary relations with humanity, and

"She hath good skill at her needle, that's certain," remarked one of her female spectators; "but did ever a

woman, before this brazen hussy, contrive such a way of showing it? Why, gossips, what is it but to laugh in

the faces of our godly magistrates, and make a pride out of what they, worthy gentlemen, meant for a

"It were well," muttered the most ironvisaged of the old dames, "if we stripped Madame Hester's rich gown

off her dainty shoulders; and as for the red letter which she hath stitched so curiously, I'll bestow a rag of

"Oh, peace, neighbourspeace!" whispered their youngest companion; "do not let her hear you! Not a stitch

The grim beadle now made a gesture with his staff. "Make way, good peoplemake way, in the King's

name!" cried he. "Open a passage; and I promise ye, Mistress Prynne shall be set where man, woman, and

child may have a fair sight of her brave apparel from this time till an hour past meridian. A blessing on the

righteous colony of the Massachusetts, where iniquity is dragged out into the sunshine! Come along, Madame

A lane was forthwith opened through the crowd of spectators. Preceded by the beadle, and attended by an

irregular procession of sternbrowed men and unkindly visaged women, Hester Prynne set forth towards the

place appointed for her punishment. A crowd of eager and curious schoolboys, understanding little of the

matter in hand, except that it gave them a halfholiday, ran before her progress, turning their heads

continually to stare into her face and at the winking baby in her arms, and at the ignominious letter on her

breast. It was no great distance, in those days, from the prison door to the marketplace. Measured by the

prisoner's experience, however, it might be reckoned a journey of some length; for haughty as her demeanour

was, she perchance underwent an agony from every footstep of those that thronged to see her, as if her heart

had been flung into the street for them all to spurn and trample upon. In our nature, however, there is a

provision, alike marvellous and merciful, that the sufferer should never know the intensity of what he endures

by its present torture, but chiefly by the pang that rankles after it. With almost a serene deportment, therefore,

Hester Prynne passed through this portion of her ordeal, and came to a sort of scaffold, at the western

extremity of the marketplace. It stood nearly beneath the eaves of Boston's earliest church, and appeared to

In fact, this scaffold constituted a portion of a penal machine, which now, for two or three generations past,

has been merely historical and traditionary among us, but was held, in the old time, to be as effectual an

agent, in the promotion of good citizenship, as ever was the guillotine among the terrorists of France. It was,

in short, the platform of the pillory; and above it rose the framework of that instrument of discipline, so

fashioned as to confine the human head in its tight grasp, and thus hold it up to the public gaze. The very

ideal of ignominy was embodied and made manifest in this contrivance of wood and iron. There can be no

outrage, methinks, against our common naturewhatever be the delinquencies of the individualno

outrage more flagrant than to forbid the culprit to hide his face for shame; as it was the essence of this

punishment to do. In Hester Prynne's instance, however, as not unfrequently in other cases, her sentence bore

that she should stand a certain time upon the platform, but without undergoing that gripe about the neck and

confinement of the head, the proneness to which was the most devilish characteristic of this ugly engine.

Knowing well her part, she ascended a flight of wooden steps, and was thus displayed to the surrounding

Had there been a Papist among the crowd of Puritans, he might have seen in this beautiful woman, so

picturesque in her attire and mien, and with the infant at her bosom, an object to remind him of the image of

Divine Maternity, which so many illustrious painters have vied with one another to represent; something

which should remind him, indeed, but only by contrast, of that sacred image of sinless motherhood, whose

infant was to redeem the world. Here, there was the taint of deepest sin in the most sacred quality of human

life, working such effect, that the world was only the darker for this woman's beauty, and the more lost for

The scene was not without a mixture of awe, such as must always invest the spectacle of guilt and shame in a

fellowcreature, before society shall have grown corrupt enough to smile, instead of shuddering at it. The

witnesses of Hester Prynne's disgrace had not yet passed beyond their simplicity. They were stern enough to

look upon her death, had that been the sentence, without a murmur at its severity, but had none of the

heartlessness of another social state, which would find only a theme for jest in an exhibition like the present.

Even had there been a disposition to turn the matter into ridicule, it must have been repressed and

overpowered by the solemn presence of men no less dignified than the governor, and several of his

counsellors, a judge, a general, and the ministers of the town, all of whom sat or stood in a balcony of the

meetinghouse, looking down upon the platform. When such personages could constitute a part of the

spectacle, without risking the majesty, or reverence of rank and office, it was safely to be inferred that the

infliction of a legal sentence would have an earnest and effectual meaning. Accordingly, the crowd was

sombre and grave. The unhappy culprit sustained herself as best a woman might, under the heavy weight of a

thousand unrelenting eyes, all fastened upon her, and concentrated at her bosom. It was almost intolerable to

be borne. Of an impulsive and passionate nature, she had fortified herself to encounter the stings and

venomous stabs of public contumely, wreaking itself in every variety of insult; but there was a quality so

much more terrible in the solemn mood of the popular mind, that she longed rather to behold all those rigid

countenances contorted with scornful merriment, and herself the object. Had a roar of laughter burst from the

multitudeeach man, each woman, each little shrillvoiced child, contributing their individual

partsHester Prynne might have repaid them all with a bitter and disdainful smile. But, under the leaden

infliction which it was her doom to endure, she felt, at moments, as if she must needs shriek out with the full

power of her lungs, and cast herself from the scaffold down upon the ground, or else go mad at once.

Yet there were intervals when the whole scene, in which she was the most conspicuous object, seemed to

vanish from her eyes, or, at least, glimmered indistinctly before them, like a mass of imperfectly shaped and

spectral images. Her mind, and especially her memory, was preternaturally active, and kept bringing up other

scenes than this roughly hewn street of a little town, on the edge of the western wilderness: other faces than

were lowering upon her from beneath the brims of those steeplecrowned hats. Reminiscences, the most

trifling and immaterial, passages of infancy and schooldays, sports, childish quarrels, and the little domestic

traits of her maiden years, came swarming back upon her, intermingled with recollections of whatever was

gravest in her subsequent life; one picture precisely as vivid as another; as if all were of similar importance,

or all alike a play. Possibly, it was an instinctive device of her spirit to relieve itself by the exhibition of these

Be that as it might, the scaffold of the pillory was a point of view that revealed to Hester Prynne the entire

track along which she had been treading, since her happy infancy. Standing on that miserable eminence, she

saw again her native village, in Old England, and her paternal home: a decayed house of grey stone, with a

povertystricken aspect, but retaining a half obliterated shield of arms over the portal, in token of antique

gentility. She saw her father's face, with its bold brow, and reverend white beard that flowed over the

oldfashioned Elizabethan ruff; her mother's, too, with the look of heedful and anxious love which it always

wore in her remembrance, and which, even since her death, had so often laid the impediment of a gentle

remonstrance in her daughter's pathway. She saw her own face, glowing with girlish beauty, and illuminating

all the interior of the dusky mirror in which she had been wont to gaze at it. There she beheld another

countenance, of a man well stricken in years, a pale, thin, scholarlike visage, with eyes dim and bleared by

the lamplight that had served them to pore over many ponderous books. Yet those same bleared optics had a

strange, penetrating power, when it was their owner's purpose to read the human soul. This figure of tile

study and the cloister, as Hester Prynne's womanly fancy failed not to recall, was slightly deformed, with the

left shoulder a trifle higher than the right. Next rose before her in memory's picturegallery, the intricate and

narrow thoroughfares, the tall, grey houses, the huge cathedrals, and the public edifices, ancient in date and

quaint in architecture, of a continental city; where new life had awaited her, still in connexion with the

misshapen scholar: a new life, but feeding itself on timeworn materials, like a tuft of green moss on a

wall. Lastly, in lieu of these shifting scenes, came back the rude marketplace of the Puritan, settlement, with

all the townspeople assembled, and levelling their stern regards at Hester Prynneyes, at herselfwho

stood on the scaffold of the pillory, an infant on her arm, and the letter A, in scarlet, fantastically embroidered

Could it be true? She clutched the child so fiercely to her breast that it sent forth a cry; she turned her eyes

downward at the scarlet letter, and even touched it with her finger, to assure herself that the infant and the

From this intense consciousness of being the object of severe and universal observation, the wearer of the

scarlet letter was at length relieved, by discerning, on the outskirts of the crowd, a figure which irresistibly

took possession of her thoughts. An Indian in his native garb was standing there; but the red men were not so

infrequent visitors of the English settlements that one of them would have attracted any notice from Hester

Prynne at such a time; much less would he have excluded all other objects and ideas from her mind. By the

Indian's side, and evidently sustaining a companionship with him, stood a white man, clad in a strange

He was small in stature, with a furrowed visage, which as yet could hardly be termed aged. There was a

remarkable intelligence in his features, as of a person who had so cultivated his mental part that it could not

fail to mould the physical to itself and become manifest by unmistakable tokens. Although, by a seemingly

careless arrangement of his heterogeneous garb, he had endeavoured to conceal or abate the peculiarity, it

was sufficiently evident to Hester Prynne that one of this man's shoulders rose higher than the other. Again, at

the first instant of perceiving that thin visage, and the slight deformity of the figure, she pressed her infant to

her bosom with so convulsive a force that the poor babe uttered another cry of pain. But the mother did not

At his arrival in the marketplace, and some time before she saw him, the stranger had bent his eyes on

Hester Prynne. It was carelessly at first, like a man chiefly accustomed to look inward, and to whom external

matters are of little value and import, unless they bear relation to something within his mind. Very soon,

however, his look became keen and penetrative. A writhing horror twisted itself across his features, like a

snake gliding swiftly over them, and making one little pause, with all its wreathed intervolutions in open

sight. His face darkened with some powerful emotion, which, nevertheless, he so instantaneously controlled

by an effort of his will, that, save at a single moment, its expression might have passed for calmness. After a

brief space, the convulsion grew almost imperceptible, and finally subsided into the depths of his nature.

When he found the eyes of Hester Prynne fastened on his own, and saw that she appeared to recognize him,

he slowly and calmly raised his finger, made a gesture with it in the air, and laid it on his lips.

Then touching the shoulder of a townsman who stood near to him, he addressed him in a formal and

"I pray you, good Sir," said he, "who is this woman? and wherefore is she here set up to public shame?"

"You must needs be a stranger in this region, friend," answered the townsman, looking curiously at the

questioner and his savage companion, "else you would surely have heard of Mistress Hester Prynne and her

evil doings. She hath raised a great scandal, I promise you, in godly Master Dimmesdale's church. "

"You say truly," replied the other; "I am a stranger, and have been a wanderer, sorely against my will. I have

met with grievous mishaps by sea and land, and have been long held in bonds among the heathenfolk to the

southward; and am now brought hither by this Indian to be redeemed out of my captivity. Will it please you,

therefore, to tell me of Hester Prynne'shave I her name rightly? of this woman's offences, and what has

"Truly, friend; and methinks it must gladden your heart, after your troubles and sojourn in the wilderness,"

said the townsman, "to find yourself at length in a land where iniquity is searched out and punished in the

sight of rulers and people, as here in our godly New England. Yonder woman, Sir, you must know, was the

wife of a certain learned man, English by birth, but who had long ago dwelt in Amsterdam, whence some

good time agone he was minded to cross over and cast in his lot with us of the Massachusetts. To this purpose

he sent his wife before him, remaining himself to look after some necessary affairs. Marry, good Sir, in some

two years, or less, that the woman has been a dweller here in Boston, no tidings have come of this learned

gentleman, Master Prynne; and his young wife, look you, being left to her own misguidance"

"Ah!aha!I conceive you," said the stranger with a bitter smile. "So learned a man as you speak of should

have learned this too in his books. And who, by your favour, Sir, may be the father of yonder babeit is

some three or four months old, I should judgewhich Mistress Prynne is holding in her arms?"

"Of a truth, friend, that matter remaineth a riddle; and the Daniel who shall expound it is yet awanting,"

answered the townsman. "Madame Hester absolutely refuseth to speak, and the magistrates have laid their

heads together in vain. Peradventure the guilty one stands looking on at this sad spectacle, unknown of man,

"The learned man," observed the stranger with another smile, "should come himself to look into the mystery.

"It behoves him well if he be still in life," responded the townsman. "Now, good Sir, our Massachusetts

magistracy, bethinking themselves that this woman is youthful and fair, and doubtless was strongly tempted

to her fall, and that, moreover, as is most likely, her husband may be at the bottom of the sea, they have not

been bold to put in force the extremity of our righteous law against her. The penalty thereof is death. But in

their great mercy and tenderness of heart they have doomed Mistress Prynne to stand only a space of three

hours on the platform of the pillory, and then and thereafter, for the remainder of her natural life to wear a

"A wise sentence," remarked the stranger, gravely, bowing his head. "Thus she will be a living sermon

against sin, until the ignominious letter be engraved upon her tombstone. It irks me, nevertheless, that the

partner of her iniquity should not at least, stand on the scaffold by her side. But he will be knownhe will be

He bowed courteously to the communicative townsman, and whispering a few words to his Indian attendant,

While this passed, Hester Prynne had been standing on her pedestal, still with a fixed gaze towards the

strangerso fixed a gaze that, at moments of intense absorption, all other objects in the visible world seemed

to vanish, leaving only him and her. Such an interview, perhaps, would have been more terrible than even to

meet him as she now did, with the hot midday sun burning down upon her face, and lighting up its shame;

with the scarlet token of infamy on her breast; with the sinborn infant in her arms; with a whole people,

drawn forth as to a festival, staring at the features that should have been seen only in the quiet gleam of the

fireside, in the happy shadow of a home, or beneath a matronly veil at church. Dreadful as it was, she was

conscious of a shelter in the presence of these thousand witnesses. It was better to stand thus, with so many

betwixt him and her, than to greet him face to facethey two alone. She fled for refuge, as it were, to the

public exposure, and dreaded the moment when its protection should be withdrawn from her. Involved in

these thoughts, she scarcely heard a voice behind her until it had repeated her name more than once, in a loud

It has already been noticed that directly over the platform on which Hester Prynne stood was a kind of

balcony, or open gallery, appended to the meetinghouse. It was the place whence proclamations were wont

to be made, amidst an assemblage of the magistracy, with all the ceremonial that attended such public

observances in those days. Here, to witness the scene which we are describing, sat Governor Bellingham

himself with four sergeants about his chair, bearing halberds, as a guard of honour. He wore a dark feather in

his hat, a border of embroidery on his cloak, and a black velvet tunic beneatha gentleman advanced in

years, with a hard experience written in his wrinkles. He was not illfitted to be the head and representative

of a community which owed its origin and progress, and its present state of development, not to the impulses

of youth, but to the stern and tempered energies of manhood and the sombre sagacity of age; accomplishing

so much, precisely because it imagined and hoped so little. The other eminent characters by whom the chief

ruler was surrounded were distinguished by a dignity of mien, belonging to a period when the forms of

authority were felt to possess the sacredness of Divine institutions. They were, doubtless, good men, just and

sage. But, out of the whole human family, it would not have been easy to select the same number of wise and

virtuous persons, who should he less capable of sitting in judgment on an erring woman's heart, and

disentangling its mesh of good and evil, than the sages of rigid aspect towards whom Hester Prynne now

turned her face. She seemed conscious, indeed, that whatever sympathy she might expect lay in the larger and

warmer heart of the multitude; for, as she lifted her eyes towards the balcony, the unhappy woman grew pale,

The voice which had called her attention was that of the reverend and famous John Wilson, the eldest

clergyman of Boston, a great scholar, like most of his contemporaries in the profession, and withal a man of

kind and genial spirit. This last attribute, however, had been less carefully developed than his intellectual

gifts, and was, in truth, rather a matter of shame than selfcongratulation with him. There he stood, with a

border of grizzled locks beneath his skullcap, while his grey eyes, accustomed to the shaded light of his

study, were winking, like those of Hester's infant, in the unadulterated sunshine. He looked like the darkly

engraved portraits which we see prefixed to old volumes of sermons, and had no more right than one of those

portraits would have to step forth, as he now did, and meddle with a question of human guilt, passion, and

"Hester Prynne," said the clergyman, "I have striven with my young brother here, under whose preaching of

the Word you have been privileged to sit"here Mr. Wilson laid his hand on the shoulder of a pale young

man beside him"I have sought, I say, to persuade this godly youth, that he should deal with you, here in

the face of Heaven, and before these wise and upright rulers, and in hearing of all the people, as touching the

vileness and blackness of your sin. Knowing your natural temper better than I, he could the better judge what

arguments to use, whether of tenderness or terror, such as might prevail over your hardness and obstinacy,

insomuch that you should no longer hide the name of him who tempted you to this grievous fall. But he

opposes to mewith a young man's oversoftness, albeit wise beyond his yearsthat it were wronging the

very nature of woman to force her to lay open her heart's secrets in such broad daylight, and in presence of so

great a multitude. Truly, as I sought to convince him, the shame lay in the commission of the sin, and not in

the showing of it forth. What say you to it, once again, brother Dimmesdale? Must it be thou, or I, that shall

There was a murmur among the dignified and reverend occupants of the balcony; and Governor Bellingham

gave expression to its purport, speaking in an authoritative voice, although tempered with respect towards the

"Good Master Dimmesdale," said he, "the responsibility of this woman's soul lies greatly with you. It

behoves you; therefore, to exhort her to repentance and to confession, as a proof and consequence thereof. "

The directness of this appeal drew the eyes of the whole crowd upon the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdaleyoung

clergyman, who had come from one of the great English universities, bringing all the learning of the age into

our wild forest land. His eloquence and religious fervour had already given the earnest of high eminence in

his profession. He was a person of very striking aspect, with a white, lofty, and impending brow; large,

brown, melancholy eyes, and a mouth which, unless when he forcibly compressed it, was apt to be tremulous,

expressing both nervous sensibility and a vast power of self restraint. Notwithstanding his high native gifts

and scholarlike attainments, there was an air about this young ministeran apprehensive, a startled, a

halffrightened lookas of a being who felt himself quite astray, and at a loss in the pathway of human

existence, and could only be at ease in some seclusion of his own. Therefore, so far as his duties would

permit, he trod in the shadowy bypaths, and thus kept himself simple and childlike, coming forth, when

occasion was, with a freshness, and fragrance, and dewy purity of thought, which, as many people said,

Such was the young man whom the Reverend Mr. Wilson and the Governor had introduced so openly to the

public notice, bidding him speak, in the hearing of all men, to that mystery of a woman's soul, so sacred even

in its pollution. The trying nature of his position drove the blood from his cheek, and made his lips tremulous.

"Speak to the woman, my brother," said Mr. Wilson. "It is of moment to her soul, and, therefore, as the

worshipful Governor says, momentous to thine own, ill whose charge hers is. Exhort her to confess the

The Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale bent his head, silent prayer, as it seemed, and then came forward.

"Hester Prynne," said he, leaning over the balcony and looking down steadfastly into her eyes, "thou hearest

what this good man says, and seest the accountability under which I labour. If thou feelest it to be for thy

soul's peace, and that thy earthly punishment will thereby be made more effectual to salvation, I charge thee

to speak out the name of thy fellowsinner and fellowsufferer! Be not silent from any mistaken pity and

tenderness for him; for, believe me, Hester, though he were to step down from a high place, and stand there

beside thee, on thy pedestal of shame, yet better were it so than to hide a guilty heart through life. What can

thy silence do for him, except it tempt himyea, compel him, as it wereto add hypocrisy to sin? Heaven

hath granted thee an open ignominy, that thereby thou mayest work out an open triumph over the evil within

thee and the sorrow without. Take heed how thou deniest to himwho, perchance, hath not the courage to

grasp it for himselfthe bitter, but wholesome, cup that is now presented to thy lips!"

The young pastor's voice was tremulously sweet, rich, deep, and broken. The feeling that it so evidently

manifested, rather than the direct purport of the words, caused it to vibrate within all hearts, and brought the

listeners into one accord of sympathy. Even the poor baby at Hester's bosom was affected by the same

influence, for it directed its hitherto vacant gaze towards Mr. Dimmesdale, and held up its little arms with a

halfpleased, halfplaintive murmur. So powerful seemed the minister's appeal that the people could not

believe but that Hester Prynne would speak out the guilty name, or else that the guilty one himself in

whatever high or lowly place he stood, would be drawn forth by an inward and inevitable necessity, and

"Woman, transgress not beyond the limits of Heaven's mercy!" cried the Reverend Mr. Wilson, more harshly

than before. "That little babe hath been gifted with a voice, to second and confirm the counsel which thou

hast heard. Speak out the name! That, and thy repentance, may avail to take the scarlet letter off thy breast. "

"Never," replied Hester Prynne, looking, not at Mr. Wilson, but into the deep and troubled eyes of the

younger clergyman. "It is too deeply branded. Ye cannot take it off. And would that I might endure his agony

"Speak, woman!" said another voice, coldly and sternly, proceeding from the crowd about the scaffold,

"I will not speak!" answered Hester, turning pale as death, but responding to this voice, which she too surely

recognised. "And my child must seek a heavenly father; she shall never know an earthly one!"

"She will not speak!" murmured Mr. Dimmesdale, who, leaning over the balcony, with his hand upon his

heart, had awaited the result of his appeal. He now drew back with a long respiration. "Wondrous strength

Discerning the impracticable state of the poor culprit's mind, the elder clergyman, who had carefully prepared

himself for the occasion, addressed to the multitude a discourse on sin, in all its branches, but with continual

reference to the ignominious letter. So forcibly did he dwell upon this symbol, for the hour or more during

which is periods were rolling over the people's heads, that it assumed new terrors in their imagination, and

seemed to derive its scarlet hue from the flames of the infernal pit. Hester Prynne, meanwhile, kept her place

upon the pedestal of shame, with glazed eyes, and an air of weary indifference. She had borne that morning

all that nature could endure; and as her temperament was not of the order that escapes from too intense

suffering by a swoon, her spirit could only shelter itself beneath a stony crust of insensibility, while the

faculties of animal life remained entire. In this state, the voice of the preacher thundered remorselessly, but

unavailingly, upon her ears. The infant, during the latter portion of her ordeal, pierced the air with its wailings

and screams; she strove to hush it mechanically, but seemed scarcely to sympathise with its trouble. With the

same hard demeanour, she was led back to prison, and vanished from the public gaze within its ironclamped

portal. It was whispered by those who peered after her that the scarlet letter threw a lurid gleam along the

After her return to the prison, Hester Prynne was found to be in a state of nervous excitement, that demanded

constant watchfulness, lest she should perpetrate violence on herself, or do some halffrenzied mischief to

the poor babe. As night approached, it proving impossible to quell her insubordination by rebuke or threats of

punishment, Master Brackett, the jailer, thought fit to introduce a physician. He described him as a man of

skill in all Christian modes of physical science, and likewise familiar with whatever the savage people could

teach in respect to medicinal herbs and roots that grew in the forest. To say the truth, there was much need of

professional assistance, not merely for Hester herself, but still more urgently for the childwho, drawing its

sustenance from the maternal bosom, seemed to have drank in with it all the turmoil, the anguish and despair,

which pervaded the mother's system. It now writhed in convulsions of pain, and was a forcible type, in its

little frame, of the moral agony which Hester Prynne had borne throughout the day.

Closely following the jailer into the dismal apartment, appeared that individual, of singular aspect whose

presence in the crowd had been of such deep interest to the wearer of the scarlet letter. He was lodged in the

prison, not as suspected of any offence, but as the most convenient and suitable mode of disposing of him,

until the magistrates should have conferred with the Indian sagamores respecting his ransom. His name was

announced as Roger Chillingworth. The jailer, after ushering him into the room, remained a moment,

marvelling at the comparative quiet that followed his entrance; for Hester Prynne had immediately become as

"Prithee, friend, leave me alone with my patient," said the practitioner. "Trust me, good jailer, you shall

briefly have peace in your house; and, I promise you, Mistress Prynne shall hereafter be more amenable to

"Nay, if your worship can accomplish that," answered Master Brackett, "I shall own you for a man of skill,

indeed! Verily, the woman hath been like a possessed one; and there lacks little that I should take in hand, to

The stranger had entered the room with the characteristic quietude of the profession to which he announced

himself as belonging. Nor did his demeanour change when the withdrawal of the prison keeper left him face

to face with the woman, whose absorbed notice of him, in the crowd, had intimated so close a relation

between himself and her. His first care was given to the child, whose cries, indeed, as she lay writhing on the

trundlebed, made it of peremptory necessity to postpone all other business to the task of soothing her. He

examined the infant carefully, and then proceeded to unclasp a leathern case, which he took from beneath his

dress. It appeared to contain medical preparations, one of which he mingled with a cup of water.

"My old studies in alchemy," observed he, "and my sojourn, for above a year past, among a people well

versed in the kindly properties of simples, have made a better physician of me than many that claim the

medical degree. Here, woman! The child is yoursshe is none of mineneither will she recognise my voice

or aspect as a father's. Administer this draught, therefore, with thine own hand."

Hester repelled the offered medicine, at the same time gazing with strongly marked apprehension into his

"Foolish woman!" responded the physician, half coldly, half soothingly. "What should ail me to harm this

misbegotten and miserable babe? The medicine is potent for good, and were it my childyea, mine own, as

As she still hesitated, being, in fact, in no reasonable state of mind, he took the infant in his arms, and himself

administered the draught. It soon proved its efficacy, and redeemed the leech's pledge. The moans of the little

patient subsided; its convulsive tossings gradually ceased; and in a few moments, as is the custom of young

children after relief from pain, it sank into a profound and dewy slumber. The physician, as he had a fair right

to be termed, next bestowed his attention on the mother. With calm and intent scrutiny, he felt her pulse,

looked into her eyesa gaze that made her heart shrink and shudder, because so familiar, and yet so strange

and coldand, finally, satisfied with his investigation, proceeded to mingle another draught.

"I know not Lethe nor Nepenthe," remarked he; "but I have learned many new secrets in the wilderness, and

here is one of thema recipe that an Indian taught me, in requital of some lessons of my own, that were as

old as Paracelsus. Drink it! It may be less soothing than a sinless conscience. That I cannot give thee. But it

will calm the swell and heaving of thy passion, like oil thrown on the waves of a tempestuous sea."

He presented the cup to Hester, who received it with a slow, earnest look into his face; not precisely a look of

fear, yet full of doubt and questioning as to what his purposes might be. She looked also at her slumbering

"I have thought of death," said she"have wished for itwould even have prayed for it, were it fit that such

as I should pray for anything. Yet, if death be in this cup, I bid thee think again, ere thou beholdest me quaff

"Drink, then," replied he, still with the same cold composure. "Dost thou know me so little, Hester Prynne?

Are my purposes wont to be so shallow? Even if I imagine a scheme of vengeance, what could I do better for

my object than to let thee livethan to give thee medicines against all harm and peril of lifeso that this

burning shame may still blaze upon thy bosom?" As he spoke, he laid his long forefinger on the scarlet

letter, which forthwith seemed to scorch into Hester's breast, as if it ad been red hot. He noticed her

involuntary gesture, and smiled. "Live, therefore, and bear about thy doom with thee, in the eyes of men and

womenin the eyes of him whom thou didst call thy husbandin the eyes of yonder child! And, that thou

Without further expostulation or delay, Hester Prynne drained the cup, and, at the motion of the man of skill,

seated herself on the bed, where the child was sleeping; while he drew the only chair which the room

afforded, and took his own seat beside her. She could not but tremble at these preparations; for she felt

thathaving now done all that humanity, or principle, or, if so it were, a refined cruelty, impelled him to do

for the relief of physical sufferinghe was next to treat with her as the man whom she had most deeply and

"Hester," said he, "I ask not wherefore, nor how thou hast fallen into the pit, or say, rather, thou hast ascended

to the pedestal of infamy on which I found thee. The reason is not far to seek. It was my folly, and thy

weakness. Ia man of thoughtthe bookworm of great librariesa man already in decay, having given

my best years to feed the hungry dream of knowledgewhat had I to do with youth and beauty like thine

own? Misshapen from my birthhour, how could I delude myself with the idea that intellectual gifts might

veil physical deformity in a young girl's fantasy? Men call me wise. If sages were ever wise in their own

behoof, I might have foreseen all this. I might have known that, as I came out of the vast and dismal forest,

and entered this settlement of Christian men, the very first object to meet my eyes would be thyself, Hester

Prynne, standing up, a statue of ignominy, before the people. Nay, from the moment when we came down the

old churchsteps together, a married pair, I might have beheld the balefire of that scarlet letter blazing at the

"Thou knowest," said Hesterfor, depressed as she was, she could not endure this last quiet stab at the token

of her shame"thou knowest that I was frank with thee. I felt no love, nor feigned any."

"True," replied he. "It was my folly! I have said it. But, up to that epoch of my life, I had lived in vain. The

world had been so cheerless! My heart was a habitation large enough for many guests, but lonely and chill,

and without a household fire. I longed to kindle one! It seemed not so wild a dreamold as I was, and

sombre as I was, and misshapen as I wasthat the simple bliss, which is scattered far and wide, for all

mankind to gather up, might yet be mine. And so, Hester, I drew thee into my heart, into its innermost

"We have wronged each other," answered he. "Mine was the first wrong, when I betrayed thy budding youth

into a false and unnatural relation with my decay. Therefore, as a man who has not thought and philosophised

in vain, I seek no vengeance, plot no evil against thee. Between thee and me, the scale hangs fairly balanced.

"Ask me not?" replied Hester Prynne, looking firmly into his face. "That thou shalt never know!"

"Never, sayest thou?" rejoined he, with a smile of dark and selfrelying intelligence. "Never know him!

Believe me, Hester, there are few things whether in the outward world, or, to a certain depth, in the invisible

sphere of thoughtfew things hidden from the man who devotes himself earnestly and unreservedly to the

solution of a mystery. Thou mayest cover up thy secret from the prying multitude. Thou mayest conceal it,

too, from the ministers and magistrates, even as thou didst this day, when they sought to wrench the name out

of thy heart, and give thee a partner on thy pedestal. But, as for me, I come to the inquest with other senses

than they possess. I shall seek this man, as I have sought truth in books: as I have sought gold in alchemy.

There is a sympathy that will make me conscious of him. I shall see him tremble. I shall feel myself shudder,

The eyes of the wrinkled scholar glowed so intensely upon her, that Hester Prynne clasped her hand over her

"Thou wilt not reveal his name? Not the less he is mine," resumed he, with a look of confidence, as if destiny

were at one with him. "He bears no letter of infamy wrought into his garment, as thou dost, but I shall read it

on his heart . Yet fear not for him! Think not that I shall interfere with Heaven's own method of retribution,

or, to my own loss, betray him to the gripe of human law. Neither do thou imagine that I shall contrive aught

against his life; no, nor against his fame, if as I judge, he be a man of fair repute. Let him live! Let him hide

"Thy acts are like mercy," said Hester, bewildered and appalled; "but thy words interpret thee as a terror!"

"One thing, thou that wast my wife, I would enjoin upon thee," continued the scholar. "Thou hast kept the

secret of thy paramour. Keep, likewise, mine! There are none in this land that know me. Breathe not to any

human soul that thou didst ever call me husband! Here, on this wild outskirt of the earth, I shall pitch my tent;

for, elsewhere a wanderer, and isolated from human interests, I find here a woman, a man, a child, amongst

whom and myself there exist the closest ligaments. No matter whether of love or hate: no matter whether of

right or wrong! Thou and thine, Hester Prynne, belong to me. My home is where thou art and where he is.

"Wherefore dost thou desire it?" inquired Hester, shrinking, she hardly knew why, from this secret bond.

"It may be," he replied, "because I will not encounter the dishonour that besmirches the husband of a faithless

woman. It may be for other reasons. Enough, it is my purpose to live and die unknown. Let, therefore, thy

husband be to the world as one already dead, and of whom no tidings shall ever come. Recognise me not, by

word, by sign, by look! Breathe not the secret, above all, to the man thou wottest of. Shouldst thou fail me in

"And now, Mistress Prynne," said old Roger Chillingworth, as he was hereafter to be named, "I leave thee

alone: alone with thy infant and the scarlet letter! How is it, Hester? Doth thy sentence bind thee to wear the

"Why dost thou smile so at me?" inquired Hester, troubled at the expression of his eyes. "Art thou like the

Black Man that haunts the forest round about us? Hast thou enticed me into a bond that will prove the ruin of

Hester Prynne's term of confinement was now at an end. Her prisondoor was thrown open, and she came

forth into the sunshine, which, falling on all alike, seemed, to her sick and morbid heart, as if meant for no

other purpose than to reveal the scarlet letter on her breast. Perhaps there was a more real torture in her first

unattended footsteps from the threshold of the prison than even in the procession and spectacle that have been

described, where she was made the common infamy, at which all mankind was summoned to point its finger.

Then, she was supported by an unnatural tension of the nerves, and by all the combative energy of her

character, which enabled her to convert the scene into a kind of lurid triumph. It was, moreover, a separate

and insulated event, to occur but once in her lifetime, and to meet which, therefore, reckless of economy, she

might call up the vital strength that would have sufficed for many quiet years. The very law that condemned

hera giant of stem featured but with vigour to support, as well as to annihilate, in his iron armhad held

her up through the terrible ordeal of her ignominy. But now, with this unattended walk from her prison door,

began the daily custom; and she must either sustain and carry it forward by the ordinary resources of her

nature, or sink beneath it. She could no longer borrow from the future to help her through the present grief.

Tomorrow would bring its own trial with it; so would the next day, and so would the next: each its own trial,

and yet the very same that was now so unutterably grievous to be borne. The days of the faroff future would

toil onward, still with the same burden for her to take up, and bear along with her, but never to fling down;

for the accumulating days and added years would pile up their misery upon the heap of shame. Throughout

them all, giving up her individuality, she would become the general symbol at which the preacher and

moralist might point, and in which they might vivify and embody their images of woman's frailty and sinful

passion. Thus the young and pure would be taught to look at her, with the scarlet letter flaming on her

breastat her, the child of honourable parentsat her, the mother of a babe that would hereafter be a

womanat her, who had once been innocentas the figure, the body, the reality of sin. And over her grave,

It may seem marvellous that, with the world before herkept by no restrictive clause of her condemnation

within the limits of the Puritan settlement, so remote and so obscurefree to return to her birthplace, or to

any other European land, and there hide her character and identity under a new exterior, as completely as if

emerging into another state of beingand having also the passes of the dark, inscrutable forest open to her,

where the wildness of her nature might assimilate itself with a people whose customs and life were alien from

the law that had condemned herit may seem marvellous that this woman should still call that place her

home, where, and where only, she must needs be the type of shame. But there is a fatality, a feeling so

irresistible and inevitable that it has the force of doom, which almost invariably compels human beings to

linger around and haunt, ghostlike, the spot where some great and marked event has given the colour to their

lifetime; and, still the more irresistibly, the darker the tinge that saddens it. Her sin, her ignominy, were the

roots which she had struck into the soil. It was as if a new birth, with stronger assimilations than the first, had

converted the forestland, still so uncongenial to every other pilgrim and wanderer, into Hester Prynne's wild

and dreary, but lifelong home. All other scenes of eartheven that village of rural England, where happy

infancy and stainless maidenhood seemed yet to be in her mother's keeping, like garments put off long

agowere foreign to her, in comparison. The chain that bound her here was of iron links, and galling to her

It might be, toodoubtless it was so, although she hid the secret from herself, and grew pale whenever it

struggled out of her heart, like a serpent from its holeit might be that another feeling kept her within the

scene and pathway that had been so fatal. There dwelt, there trode, the feet of one with whom she deemed

herself connected in a union that, unrecognised on earth, would bring them together before the bar of final

judgment, and make that their marriagealtar, for a joint futurity of endless retribution. Over and over again,

the tempter of souls had thrust this idea upon Hester's contemplation, and laughed at the passionate an

desperate joy with which she seized, and then strove to cast it from her. She barely looked the idea in the

face, and hastened to bar it in its dungeon. What she compelled herself to believewhat, finally, she

reasoned upon as her motive for continuing a resident of New Englandwas half a truth, and half a

selfdelusion. Here, she said to herself had been the scene of her guilt, and here should be the scene of her

earthly punishment; and so, perchance, the torture of her daily shame would at length purge her soul, and

work out another purity than that which she had lost: more saintlike, because the result of martyrdom.

Hester Prynne, therefore, did not flee. On the outskirts of the town, within the verge of the peninsula, but not

in close vicinity to any other habitation, there was a small thatched cottage. It had been built by an earlier

settler, and abandoned, because the soil about it was too sterile for cultivation, while its comparative

remoteness put it out of the sphere of that social activity which already marked the habits of the emigrants. It

stood on the shore, looking across a basin of the sea at the forestcovered hills, towards the west. A clump of

scrubby trees, such as alone grew on the peninsula, did not so much conceal the cottage from view, as seem

to denote that here was some object which would fain have been, or at least ought to be, concealed. In this

little lonesome dwelling, with some slender means that she possessed, and by the licence of the magistrates,

who still kept an inquisitorial watch over her, Hester established herself, with her infant child. A mystic

shadow of suspicion immediately attached itself to the spot. Children, too young to comprehend wherefore

this woman should be shut out from the sphere of human charities, would creep nigh enough to behold her

plying her needle at the cottagewindow, or standing in the doorway, or labouring in her little garden, or

coming forth along the pathway that led townward, and, discerning the scarlet letter on her breast, would

Lonely as was Hester's situation, and without a friend on earth who dared to show himself, she, however,

incurred no risk of want. She possessed an art that sufficed, even in a land that afforded comparatively little

scope for its exercise, to supply food for her thriving infant and herself. It was the art, then, as now, almost

the only one within a woman's graspof needlework. She bore on her breast, in the curiously embroidered

letter, a specimen of her delicate and imaginative skill, of which the dames of a court might gladly have

availed themselves, to add the richer and more spiritual adornment of human ingenuity to their fabrics of silk

and gold. Here, indeed, in the sable simplicity that generally characterised the Puritanic modes of dress, there

might be an infrequent call for the finer productions of her handiwork. Yet the taste of the age, demanding

whatever was elaborate in compositions of this kind, did not fail to extend its influence over our stern

progenitors, who had cast behind them so many fashions which it might seem harder to dispense with.

Public ceremonies, such as ordinations, the installation of magistrates, and all that could give majesty to the

forms in which a new government manifested itself to the people, were, as a matter of policy, marked by a

stately and wellconducted ceremonial, and a sombre, but yet a studied magnificence. Deep ruffs, painfully

wrought bands, and gorgeously embroidered gloves, were all deemed necessary to the official state of men

assuming the reins of power, and were readily allowed to individuals dignified by rank or wealth, even while

sumptuary laws forbade these and similar extravagances to the plebeian order. In the array of funerals,

toowhether for the apparel of the dead body, or to typify, by manifold emblematic devices of sable cloth

and snowy lawn, the sorrow of the survivorsthere was a frequent and characteristic demand for such labour

as Hester Prynne could supply. Babylinenfor babies then wore robes of stateafforded still another

By degrees, not very slowly, her handiwork became what would now be termed the fashion. Whether from

commiseration for a woman of so miserable a destiny; or from the morbid curiosity that gives a fictitious

value even to common or worthless things; or by whatever other intangible circumstance was then, as now,

sufficient to bestow, on some persons, what others might seek in vain; or because Hester really filled a gap

which must otherwise have remained vacant; it is certain that she had ready and fairly equited employment

for as many hours as she saw fit to occupy with her needle. Vanity, it may be, chose to mortify itself, by

putting on, for ceremonials of pomp and state, the garments that had been wrought by her sinful hands. Her

needlework was seen on the ruff of the Governor; military men wore it on their scarfs, and the minister on

his band; it decked the baby's little cap; it was shut up, to be mildewed and moulder away, in the coffins of

the dead. But it is not recorded that, in a single instance, her skill was called in to embroider the white veil

which was to cover the pure blushes of a bride. The exception indicated the ever relentless vigour with which

Hester sought not to acquire anything beyond a subsistence, of the plainest and most ascetic description, for

herself, and a simple abundance for her child. Her own dress was of the coarsest materials and the most

sombre hue, with only that one ornamentthe scarlet letterwhich it was her doom to wear. The child's

attire, on the other hand, was distinguished by a fanciful, or, we may rather say, a fantastic ingenuity, which

served, indeed, to heighten the airy charm that early began to develop itself in the little girl, but which

appeared to have also a deeper meaning. We may speak further of it hereafter. Except for that small

expenditure in the decoration of her infant, Hester bestowed all her superfluous means in charity, on wretches

less miserable than herself, and who not unfrequently insulted the hand that fed them. Much of the time,

which she might readily have applied to the better efforts of her art, she employed in making coarse garments

for the poor. It is probable that there was an idea of penance in this mode of occupation, and that she offered

up a real sacrifice of enjoyment in devoting so many hours to such rude handiwork. She had in her nature a

rich, voluptuous, Oriental characteristica taste for the gorgeously beautiful, which, save in the exquisite

productions of her needle, found nothing else, in all the possibilities of her life, to exercise itself upon.

Women derive a pleasure, incomprehensible to the other sex, from the delicate toil of the needle. To Hester

Prynne it might have been a mode of expressing, and therefore soothing, the passion of her life. Like all other

joys, she rejected it as sin. This morbid meddling of conscience with an immaterial matter betokened, it is to

be feared, no genuine and steadfast penitence, but something doubtful, something that might be deeply wrong

In this matter, Hester Prynne came to have a part to perform in the world. With her native energy of character

and rare capacity, it could not entirely cast her off, although it had set a mark upon her, more intolerable to a

woman's heart than that which branded the brow of Cain. In all her intercourse with society, however, there

was nothing that made her feel as if she belonged to it. Every gesture, every word, and even the silence of

those with whom she came in contact, implied, and often expressed, that she was banished, and as much

alone as if she inhabited another sphere, or communicated with the common nature by other organs and

senses than the rest of human kind. She stood apart from moral interests, yet close beside them, like a ghost

that revisits the familiar fireside, and can no longer make itself seen or felt; no more smile with the household

succeed in manifesting its forbidden sympathy, awakening only terror and horrible repugnance. These

emotions, in fact, and its bitterest scorn besides, seemed to be the sole portion that she retained in the

universal heart. It was not an age of delicacy; and her position, although she understood it well, and was in

little danger of forgetting it, was often brought before her vivid selfperception, like a new anguish, by the

rudest touch upon the tenderest spot. The poor, as we have already said, whom she sought out to be the

objects of her bounty, often reviled the hand that was stretched forth to succour them. Dames of elevated

rank, likewise, whose doors she entered in the way of her occupation, were accustomed to distil drops of

bitterness into her heart; sometimes through that alchemy of quiet malice, by which women can concoct a

subtle poison from ordinary trifles; and sometimes, also, by a coarser expression, that fell upon the sufferer's

defenceless breast like a rough blow upon an ulcerated wound. Hester had schooled herself long and well;

and she never responded to these attacks, save by a flush of crimson that rose irrepressibly over her pale

cheek, and again subsided into the depths of her bosom. She was patienta martyr, indeed but she forebore

to pray for enemies, lest, in spite of her forgiving aspirations, the words of the blessing should stubbornly

Continually, and in a thousand other ways, did she feel the innumerable throbs of anguish that had been so

cunningly contrived for her by the undying, the everactive sentence of the Puritan tribunal. Clergymen

paused in the streets, to address words of exhortation, that brought a crowd, with its mingled grin and frown,

poor, sinful woman. If she entered a church, trusting to share the Sabbath smile of the Universal Father, it

was often her mishap to find herself the text of the discourse. She grew to have a dread of children; for they

had imbibed from their parents a vague idea of something horrible in this dreary woman gliding silently

through the town, with never any companion but one only child. Therefore, first allowing her to pass, they

pursued her at a distance with shrill cries, and the utterances of a word that had no distinct purport to their

own minds, but was none the less terrible to her, as proceeding from lips that babbled it unconsciously. It

seemed to argue so wide a diffusion of her shame, that all nature knew of it; it could have caused her no

deeper pang had the leaves of the trees whispered the dark story among themselveshad the summer breeze

murmured about ithad the wintry blast shrieked it aloud! Another peculiar torture was felt in the gaze of a

new eye. When strangers looked curiously at the scarlet letter and none ever failed to do sothey branded it

afresh in Hester's soul; so that, oftentimes, she could scarcely refrain, yet always did refrain, from covering

the symbol with her hand. But then, again, an accustomed eye had likewise its own anguish to inflict. Its cool

stare of familiarity was intolerable. From first to last, in short, Hester Prynne had always this dreadful agony

in feeling a human eye upon the token; the spot never grew callous; it seemed, on the contrary, to grow more

But sometimes, once in many days, or perchance in many months, she felt an eyea human eyeupon the

ignominious brand, that seemed to give a momentary relief, as if half of her agony were shared. The next

instant, back it all rushed again, with still a deeper throb of pain; for, in that brief interval, she had sinned

Her imagination was somewhat affected, and, had she been of a softer moral and intellectual fibre would have

been still more so, by the strange and solitary anguish of her life. Walking to and fro, with those lonely

footsteps, in the little world with which she was outwardly connected, it now and then appeared to Hesterif

altogether fancy, it was nevertheless too potent to be resistedshe felt or fancied, then, that the scarlet letter

had endowed her with a new sense. She shuddered to believe, yet could not help believing, that it gave her a

sympathetic knowledge of the hidden sin in other hearts. She was terrorstricken by the revelations that were

thus made. What were they? Could they be other than the insidious whispers of the bad angel, who would

fain have persuaded the struggling woman, as yet only half his victim, that the outward guise of purity was

but a lie, and that, if truth were everywhere to be shown, a scarlet letter would blaze forth on many a bosom

besides Hester Prynne's? Or, must she receive those intimationsso obscure, yet so distinctas truth? In all

her miserable experience, there was nothing else so awful and so loathsome as this sense. It perplexed, as

well as shocked her, by the irreverent inopportuneness of the occasions that brought it into vivid action.

Sometimes the red infamy upon her breast would give a sympathetic throb, as she passed near a venerable

minister or magistrate, the model of piety and justice, to whom that age of antique reverence looked up, as to

a mortal man in fellowship with angels. "What evil thing is at hand?" would Hester say to herself. Lifting her

reluctant eyes, there would be nothing human within the scope of view, save the form of this earthly saint!

Again a mystic sisterhood would contumaciously assert itself, as she met the sanctified frown of some

matron, who, according to the rumour of all tongues, had kept cold snow within her bosom throughout life.

That unsunned snow in the matron's bosom, and the burning shame on Hester Prynne'swhat had the two in

common? Or, once more, the electric thrill would give her warning"Behold Hester, here is a companion!"

and, looking up, she would detect the eyes of a young maiden glancing at the scarlet letter, shyly and aside,

and quickly averted, with a faint, chill crimson in her cheeks as if her purity were somewhat sullied by that

momentary glance. O Fiend, whose talisman was that fatal symbol, wouldst thou leave nothing, whether in

youth or age, for this poor sinner to revere?such loss of faith is ever one of the saddest results of sin. Be it

accepted as a proof that all was not corrupt in this poor victim of her own frailty, and man's hard law, that

Hester Prynne yet struggled to believe that no fellowmortal was guilty like herself.

The vulgar, who, in those dreary old times, were always contributing a grotesque horror to what interested

their imaginations, had a story about the scarlet letter which we might readily work up into a terrific legend.

They averred that the symbol was not mere scarlet cloth, tinged in an earthly dyepot, but was redhot with

infernal fire, and could be seen glowing all alight whenever Hester Prynne walked abroad in the nighttime.

And we must needs say it seared Hester's bosom so deeply, that perhaps there was more truth in the rumour

We have as yet hardly spoken of the infant that little creature, whose innocent life had sprung, by the

inscrutable decree of Providence, a lovely and immortal flower, out of the rank luxuriance of a guilty passion.

How strange it seemed to the sad woman, as she watched the growth, and the beauty that became every day

more brilliant, and the intelligence that threw its quivering sunshine over the tiny features of this child! Her

Pearlfor so had Hester called her; not as a name expressive of her aspect, which had nothing of the calm,

white, unimpassioned lustre that would be indicated by the comparison. But she named the infant "Pearl," as

being of great pricepurchased with all she hadher mother's only treasure! How strange, indeed! Man had

marked this woman's sin by a scarlet letter, which had such potent and disastrous efficacy that no human

sympathy could reach her, save it were sinful like herself. God, as a direct consequence of the sin which man

thus punished, had given her a lovely child, whose place was on that same dishonoured bosom, to connect her

parent for ever with the race and descent of mortals, and to be finally a blessed soul in heaven! Yet these

thoughts affected Hester Prynne less with hope than apprehension. She knew that her deed had been evil; she

could have no faith, therefore, that its result would be good. Day after day she looked fearfully into the child's

expanding nature, ever dreading to detect some dark and wild peculiarity that should correspond with the

Certainly there was no physical defect. By its perfect shape, its vigour, and its natural dexterity in the use of

all its untried limbs, the infant was worthy to have been brought forth in Eden: worthy to have been left there

to be the plaything of the angels after the world's first parents were driven out. The child had a native grace

which does not invariably coexist with faultless beauty; its attire, however simple, always impressed the

beholder as if it were the very garb that precisely became it best. But little Pearl was not clad in rustic weeds.

Her mother, with a morbid purpose that may be better understood hereafter, had bought the richest tissues

that could be procured, and allowed her imaginative faculty its full play in the arrangement and decoration of

the dresses which the child wore before the public eye. So magnificent was the small figure when thus

arrayed, and such was the splendour of Pearl's own proper beauty, shining through the gorgeous robes which

might have extinguished a paler loveliness, that there was an absolute circle of radiance around her on the

darksome cottage floor. And yet a russet gown, torn and soiled with the child's rude play, made a picture of

her just as perfect. Pearl's aspect was imbued with a spell of infinite variety; in this one child there were many

children, comprehending the full scope between the wildflower prettiness of a peasantbaby, and the pomp,

in little, of an infant princess. Throughout all, however, there was a trait of passion, a certain depth of hue,

which she never lost; and if in any of her changes, she had grown fainter or paler, she would have ceased to

This outward mutability indicated, and did not more than fairly express, the various properties of her inner

life. Her nature appeared to possess depth, too, as well as variety; butor else Hester's fears deceived

herit lacked reference and adaptation to the world into which she was born. The child could not be made

amenable to rules. In giving her existence a great law had been broken; and the result was a being whose

elements were perhaps beautiful and brilliant, but all in disorder, or with an order peculiar to themselves,

amidst which the point of variety and arrangement was difficult or impossible to be discovered. Hester could

only account for the child's characterand even then most vaguely and imperfectlyby recalling what she

herself had been during that momentous period while Pearl was imbibing her soul from the spiritual world,

and her bodily frame from its material of earth. The mother's impassioned state had been the medium through

which were transmitted to the unborn infant the rays of its moral life; and, however white and clear

originally, they had taken the deep stains of crimson and gold, the fiery lustre, the black shadow, and the

untempered light of the intervening substance. Above all, the warfare of Hester's spirit at that epoch was

perpetuated in Pearl. She could recognize her wild, desperate, defiant mood, the flightiness of her temper, and

even some of the very cloudshapes of gloom and despondency that had brooded in her heart. They were

now illuminated by the morning radiance of a young child's disposition, but, later in the day of earthly

The discipline of the family in those days was of a far more rigid kind than now. The frown, the harsh rebuke,

the frequent application of the rod, enjoined by Scriptural authority, were used, not merely in the way of

punishment for actual offences, but as a wholesome regimen for the growth and promotion of all childish

virtues. Hester Prynne, nevertheless, the loving mother of this one child, ran little risk of erring on the side of

undue severity. Mindful, however, of her own errors and misfortunes, she early sought to impose a tender but

strict control over the infant immortality that was committed to her charge. But the task was beyond her skill.

after testing both smiles and frowns, and proving that neither mode of treatment possessed any calculable

influence, Hester was ultimately compelled to stand aside and permit the child to be swayed by her own

impulses. Physical compulsion or restraint was effectual, of course, while it lasted. As to any other kind of

discipline, whether addressed to her mind or heart, little Pearl might or might not be within its reach, in

accordance with the caprice that ruled the moment. Her mother, while Pearl was yet an infant, grew

acquainted with a certain peculiar look, that warned her when it would be labour thrown away to insist,

It was a look so intelligent, yet inexplicable, perverse, sometimes so malicious, but generally accompanied by

a wild flow of spirits, that Hester could not help questioning at such moments whether Pearl was a human

child. She seemed rather an airy sprite, which, after playing its fantastic sports for a little while upon the

cottage floor, would flit away with a mocking smile. Whenever that look appeared in her wild, bright, deeply

black eyes, it invested her with a strange remoteness and intangibility: it was as if she were hovering in the

air, and might vanish, like a glimmering light that comes we know not whence and goes we know not

whither. Beholding it, Hester was constrained to rush towards the childto pursue the little elf in the flight

which she invariably beganto snatch her to her bosom with a close pressure and earnest kissesnot so

much from overflowing love as to assure herself that Pearl was flesh and blood, and not utterly delusive. But

Pearl's laugh, when she was caught, though full of merriment and music, made her mother more doubtful than

Heartsmitten at this bewildering and baffling spell, that so often came between herself and her sole treasure,

whom she had bought so dear, and who was all her world, Hester sometimes burst into passionate tears.

Then, perhapsfor there was no foreseeing how it might affect herPearl would frown, and clench her

little fist, and harden her small features into a stern, unsympathising look of discontent. Not seldom she

would laugh anew, and louder than before, like a thing incapable and unintelligent of human sorrow. Orbut

this more rarely happenedshe would be convulsed with rage of grief and sob out her love for her mother in

broken words, and seem intent on proving that she had a heart by breaking it. Yet Hester was hardly safe in

confiding herself to that gusty tenderness: it passed as suddenly as it came. Brooding over all these matters,

the mother felt like one who has evoked a spirit, but, by some irregularity in the process of conjuration, has

failed to win the masterword that should control this new and incomprehensible intelligence. Her only real

comfort was when the child lay in the placidity of sleep. Then she was sure of her, and tasted hours of quiet,

sad, delicious happiness; untilperhaps with that perverse expression glimmering from beneath her opening

How soonwith what strange rapidity, indeed did Pearl arrive at an age that was capable of social

intercourse beyond the mother's everready smile and nonsensewords! And then what a happiness would it

have been could Hester Prynne have heard her clear, birdlike voice mingling with the uproar of other

childish voices, and have distinguished and unravelled her own darling's tones, amid all the entangled outcry

of a group of sportive children. But this could never be. Pearl was a born outcast of the infantile world. An

imp of evil, emblem and product of sin, she had no right among christened infants. Nothing was more

remarkable than the instinct, as it seemed, with which the child comprehended her loneliness: the destiny that

had drawn an inviolable circle round about her: the whole peculiarity, in short, of her position in respect to

other children. Never since her release from prison had Hester met the public gaze without her. In all her

walks about the town, Pearl, too, was there: first as the babe in arms, and afterwards as the little girl, small

companion of her mother, holding a forefinger with her whole grasp, and tripping along at the rate of three or

four footsteps to one of Hester's. She saw the children of the settlement on the grassy margin of the street, or

at the domestic thresholds, disporting themselves in such grim fashions as the Puritanic nurture would permit!

playing at going to church, perchance, or at scourging Quakers, or taking scalps in a sham fight with the

Indians, or scaring one another with freaks of imitative witchcraft. Pearl saw, and gazed intently, but never

sought to make acquaintance. If spoken to, she would not speak again. If the children gathered about her, as

they sometimes did, Pearl would grow positively terrible in her puny wrath, snatching up stones to fling at

them, with shrill, incoherent exclamations, that made her mother tremble, because they had so much the

The truth was, that the little Puritans, being of the most intolerant brood that ever lived, had got a vague idea

of something outlandish, unearthly, or at variance with ordinary fashions, in the mother and child, and

therefore scorned them in their hearts, and not unfrequently reviled them with their tongues. Pearl felt the

sentiment, and requited it with the bitterest hatred that can be supposed to rankle in a childish bosom. These

outbreaks of a fierce temper had a kind of value, and even comfort for the mother; because there was at least

an intelligible earnestness in the mood, instead of the fitful caprice that so often thwarted her in the child's

manifestations. It appalled her, nevertheless, to discern here, again, a shadowy reflection of the evil that had

existed in herself. All this enmity and passion had Pearl inherited, by inalienable right, out of Hester's heart.

Mother and daughter stood together in the same circle of seclusion from human society; and in the nature of

the child seemed to be perpetuated those unquiet elements that had distracted Hester Prynne before Pearl's

birth, but had since begun to be soothed away by the softening influences of maternity.

At home, within and around her mother's cottage, Pearl wanted not a wide and various circle of acquaintance.

The spell of life went forth from her evercreative spirit, and communicated itself to a thousand objects, as a

torch kindles a flame wherever it may be applied. The unlikeliest materialsa stick, a bunch of rags, a

flowerwere the puppets of Pearl's witchcraft, and, without undergoing any outward change, became

spiritually adapted to whatever drama occupied the stage of her inner world. Her one babyvoice served a

multitude of imaginary personages, old and young, to talk withal. The pinetrees, aged, black, and solemn,

and flinging groans and other melancholy utterances on the breeze, needed little transformation to figure as

Puritan elders the ugliest weeds of the garden were their children, whom Pearl smote down and uprooted

most unmercifully. It was wonderful, the vast variety of forms into which she threw her intellect, with no

continuity, indeed, but darting up and dancing, always in a state of preternatural activitysoon sinking

down, as if exhausted by so rapid and feverish a tide of lifeand succeeded by other shapes of a similar wild

energy. It was like nothing so much as the phantasmagoric play of the northern lights. In the mere exercise of

the fancy, however, and the sportiveness of a growing mind, there might be a little more than was observable

in other children of bright faculties; except as Pearl, in the dearth of human playmates, was thrown more

upon the visionary throng which she created. The singularity lay in the hostile feelings with which the child

regarded all these offsprings of her own heart and mind. She never created a friend, but seemed always to be

sowing broadcast the dragon's teeth, whence sprung a harvest of armed enemies, against whom she rushed to

battle. It was inexpressibly sadthen what depth of sorrow to a mother, who felt in her own heart the

causeto observe, in one so young, this constant recognition of an adverse world, and so fierce a training of

Gazing at Pearl, Hester Prynne often dropped her work upon her knees, and cried out with an agony which

she would fain have hidden, but which made utterance for itself betwixt speech and a groan"O Father in

Heavenif Thou art still my Fatherwhat is this being which I have brought into the world?" And Pearl,

overhearing the ejaculation, or aware through some more subtile channel, of those throbs of anguish, would

turn her vivid and beautiful little face upon her mother, smile with spritelike intelligence, and resume her

One peculiarity of the child's deportment remains yet to be told. The very first thing which she had noticed in

her life, waswhat?not the mother's smile, responding to it, as other babies do, by that faint, embryo

smile of the little mouth, remembered so doubtfully afterwards, and with such fond discussion whether it

were indeed a smile. By no means! But that first object of which Pearl seemed to become aware wasshall

we say it?the scarlet letter on Hester's bosom! One day, as her mother stooped over the cradle, the infant's

eyes had been caught by the glimmering of the gold embroidery about the letter; and putting up her little hand

she grasped at it, smiling, not doubtfully, but with a decided gleam, that gave her face the look of a much

older child. Then, gasping for breath, did Hester Prynne clutch the fatal token, instinctively endeavouring to

tear it away, so infinite was the torture inflicted by the intelligent touch of Pearl's babyhand. Again, as if her

mother's agonised gesture were meant only to make sport for her, did little Pearl look into her eyes, and

smile. From that epoch, except when the child was asleep, Hester had never felt a moment's safety: not a

moment's calm enjoyment of her. Weeks, it is true, would sometimes elapse, during which Pearl's gaze might

never once be fixed upon the scarlet letter; but then, again, it would come at unawares, like the stroke of

sudden death, and always with that peculiar smile and odd expression of the eyes.

Once this freakish, elvish cast came into the child's eyes while Hester was looking at her own image in them,

as mothers are fond of doing; and suddenly for women in solitude, and with troubled hearts, are pestered with

unaccountable delusions she fancied that she beheld, not her own miniature portrait, but another face in the

small black mirror of Pearl's eye. It was a face, fiendlike, full of smiling malice, yet bearing the semblance

of features that she had known full well, though seldom with a smile, and never with malice in them. It was

as if an evil spirit possessed the child, and had just then peeped forth in mockery. Many a time afterwards had

In the afternoon of a certain summer's day, after Pearl grew big enough to run about, she amused herself with

gathering handfuls of wild flowers, and flinging them, one by one, at her mother's bosom; dancing up and

down like a little elf whenever she hit the scarlet letter. Hester's first motion had been to cover her bosom

with her clasped hands. But whether from pride or resignation, or a feeling that her penance might best be

wrought out by this unutterable pain, she resisted the impulse, and sat erect, pale as death, looking sadly into

little Pearl's wild eyes. Still came the battery of flowers, almost invariably hitting the mark, and covering the

mother's breast with hurts for which she could find no balm in this world, nor knew how to seek it in another.

At last, her shot being all expended, the child stood still and gazed at Hester, with that little laughing image

of a fiend peeping outor, whether it peeped or no, her mother so imagined itfrom the unsearchable abyss

But while she said it, Pearl laughed, and began to dance up and down with the humoursome gesticulation of a

Nor did she put the question altogether idly, but, for the moment, with a portion of genuine earnestness; for,

such was Pearl's wonderful intelligence, that her mother half doubted whether she were not acquainted with

"Thou art not my child! Thou art no Pearl of mine!" said the mother half playfully; for it was often the case

that a sportive impulse came over her in the midst of her deepest suffering. "Tell me, then, what thou art, and

"Tell me, mother!" said the child, seriously, coming up to Hester, and pressing herself close to her knees. "Do

But she said it with a hesitation that did not escape the acuteness of the child. Whether moved only by her

ordinary freakishness, or because an evil spirit prompted her, she put up her small forefinger and touched the

"Hush, Pearl, hush! Thou must not talk so!" answered the mother. suppressing a groan. "He sent us all into

the world. He sent even me, thy mother. Then, much more thee! Or, if not, thou strange and elfish child,

"Tell me! Tell me!" repeated Pearl, no longer seriously, but laughing and capering about the floor. "It is thou

But Hester could not resolve the query, using herself in a dismal labyrinth of doubt. She

rememberedbetwixt a smile and a shudderthe talk of the neighbouring townspeople, who, seeking

vainly elsewhere for the child's paternity, and observing some of her odd attributes, had given out that poor

little Pearl was a demon offspring: such as, ever since old Catholic times, had occasionally been seen on

earth, through the agency of their mother's sin, and to promote some foul and wicked purpose. Luther,

according to the scandal of his monkish enemies, was a brat of that hellish breed; nor was Pearl the only child

Hester Prynne went one day to the mansion of Governor Bellingham, with a pair of gloves which she had

fringed and embroidered to his order, and which were to be worn on some great occasion of state; for, though

the chances of a popular election had caused this former ruler to descend a step or two from the highest rank,

he still held an honourable and influential place among the colonial magistracy.

Another and far more important reason than the delivery of a pair of embroidered gloves, impelled Hester, at

this time, to seek an interview with a personage of so much power and activity in the affairs of the settlement.

It had reached her ears that there was a design on the part of some of the leading inhabitants, cherishing the

more rigid order of principles in religion and government, to deprive her of her child. On the supposition that

Pearl, as already hinted, was of demon origin, these good people not unreasonably argued that a Christian

interest in the mother's soul required them to remove such a stumblingblock from her path. If the child, on

the other hand, were really capable of moral and religious growth, and possessed the elements of ultimate

salvation, then, surely, it would enjoy all the fairer prospect of these advantages by being transferred to wiser

and better guardianship than Hester Prynne's. Among those who promoted the design, Governor Bellingham

was said to be one of the most busy. It may appear singular, and, indeed, not a little ludicrous, that an affair of

this kind, which in later days would have been referred to no higher jurisdiction than that of the select men of

the town, should then have been a question publicly discussed, and on which statesmen of eminence took

sides. At that epoch of pristine simplicity, however, matters of even slighter public interest, and of far less

intrinsic weight than the welfare of Hester and her child, were strangely mixed up with the deliberations of

legislators and acts of state. The period was hardly, if at all, earlier than that of our story, when a dispute

concerning the right of property in a pig not only caused a fierce and bitter contest in the legislative body of

the colony, but resulted in an important modification of the framework itself of the legislature.

Full of concern, thereforebut so conscious of her own right that it seemed scarcely an unequal match

between the public on the one side, and a lonely woman, backed by the sympathies of nature, on the

otherHester Prynne set forth from her solitary cottage. Little Pearl, of course, was her companion. She was

now of an age to run lightly along by her mother's side, and, constantly in motion from morn till sunset, could

have accomplished a much longer journey than that before her. Often, nevertheless, more from caprice than

necessity, she demanded to be taken up in arms; but was soon as imperious to be let down again, and frisked

onward before Hester on the grassy pathway, with many a harmless trip and tumble. We have spoken of

Pearl's rich and luxuriant beautya beauty that shone with deep and vivid tints, a bright complexion, eyes

possessing intensity both of depth and glow, and hair already of a deep, glossy brown, and which, in after

years, would be nearly akin to black. There was fire in her and throughout her: she seemed the

unpremeditated offshoot of a passionate moment. Her mother, in contriving the child's garb, had allowed the

gorgeous tendencies of her imagination their full play, arraying her in a crimson velvet tunic of a peculiar cut,

abundantly embroidered in fantasies and flourishes of gold thread. So much strength of colouring, which

must have given a wan and pallid aspect to cheeks of a fainter bloom, was admirably adapted to Pearl's

beauty, and made her the very brightest little jet of flame that ever danced upon the earth.

But it was a remarkable attribute of this garb, and indeed, of the child's whole appearance, that it irresistibly

and inevitably reminded the beholder of the token which Hester Prynne was doomed to wear upon her

bosom. It was the scarlet letter in another form: the scarlet letter endowed with life! The mother herselfas

if the red ignominy were so deeply scorched into her brain that all her conceptions assumed its formhad

carefully wrought out the similitude, lavishing many hours of morbid ingenuity to create an analogy between

the object of her affection and the emblem of her guilt and torture. But, in truth, Pearl was the one as well as

the other; and only in consequence of that identity had Hester contrived so perfectly to represent the scarlet

As the two wayfarers came within the precincts of the town, the children of the Puritans looked up from their

player what passed for play with those sombre little urchinsand spoke gravely one to another

"Behold, verily, there is the woman of the scarlet letter: and of a truth, moreover, there is the likeness of the

scarlet letter running along by her side! Come, therefore, and let us fling mud at them!"

But Pearl, who was a dauntless child, after frowning, stamping her foot, and shaking her little hand with a

variety of threatening gestures, suddenly made a rush at the knot of her enemies, and put them all to flight.

She resembled, in her fierce pursuit of them, an infant pestilencethe scarlet fever, or some such

halffledged angel of judgmentwhose mission was to punish the sins of the rising generation. She

screamed and shouted, too, with a terrific volume of sound, which, doubtless, caused the hearts of the

fugitives to quake within them. The victory accomplished, Pearl returned quietly to her mother, and looked

up, smiling, into her face. Without further adventure, they reached the dwelling of Governor Bellingham.

This was a large wooden house, built in a fashion of which there are specimens still extant in the streets of

our older towns now mossgrown, crumbling to decay, and melancholy at heart with the many sorrowful or

joyful occurrences, remembered or forgotten, that have happened and passed away within their dusky

chambers. Then, however, there was the freshness of the passing year on its exterior, and the cheerfulness,

gleaming forth from the sunny windows, of a human habitation, into which death had never entered. It had,

indeed, a very cheery aspect, the walls being overspread with a kind of stucco, in which fragments of broken

glass were plentifully intermixed; so that, when the sunshine fell aslantwise over the front of the edifice, it

glittered and sparkled as if diamonds had been flung against it by the double handful. The brilliancy might

have be fitted Aladdin's palace rather than the mansion of a grave old Puritan ruler. It was further decorated

with strange and seemingly cabalistic figures and diagrams, suitable to the quaint taste of the age which had

been drawn in the stucco, when newly laid on, and had now grown hard and durable, for the admiration of

Pearl, looking at this bright wonder of a house began to caper and dance, and imperatively required that the

whole breadth of sunshine should be stripped off its front, and given her to play with.

"No, my little Pearl!" said her mother; "thou must gather thine own sunshine. I have none to give thee!"

They approached the door, which was of an arched form, and flanked on each side by a narrow tower or

projection of the edifice, in both of which were latticewindows, the wooden shutters to close over them at

need. Lifting the iron hammer that hung at the portal, Hester Prynne gave a summons, which was answered

by one of the Governor's bond servanta freeborn Englishman, but now a seven years' slave. During that

term he was to be the property of his master, and as much a commodity of bargain and sale as an ox, or a

jointstool. The serf wore the customary garb of servingmen at that period, and long before, in the old

"Yea, forsooth," replied the bondservant, staring with wideopen eyes at the scarlet letter, which, being a

newcomer in the country, he had never before seen. "Yea, his honourable worship is within. But he hath a

godly minister or two with him, and likewise a leech. Ye may not see his worship now."

"Nevertheless, I will enter," answered Hester Prynne; and the bondservant, perhaps judging from the

decision of her air, and the glittering symbol in her bosom, that she was a great lady in the land, offered no

So the mother and little Pearl were admitted into the hall of entrance. With many variations, suggested by the

nature of his building materials, diversity of climate, and a different mode of social life, Governor

Bellingham had planned his new habitation after the residences of gentlemen of fair estate in his native land.

Here, then, was a wide and reasonably lofty hall, extending through the whole depth of the house, and

forming a medium of general communication, more or less directly, with all the other apartments. At one

extremity, this spacious room was lighted by the windows of the two towers, which formed a small recess on

either side of the portal. At the other end, though partly muffled by a curtain, it was more powerfully

illuminated by one of those embowed hall windows which we read of in old books, and which was provided

with a deep and cushion seat. Here, on the cushion, lay a folio tome, probably of the Chronicles of England,

or other such substantial literature; even as, in our own days, we scatter gilded volumes on the centre table, to

be turned over by the casual guest. The furniture of the hall consisted of some ponderous chairs, the backs of

which were elaborately carved with wreaths of oaken flowers; and likewise a table in the same taste, the

whole being of the Elizabethan age, or perhaps earlier, and heirlooms, transferred hither from the Governor's

paternal home. On the tablein token that the sentiment of old English hospitality had not been left

behindstood a large pewter tankard, at the bottom of which, had Hester or Pearl peeped into it, they might

On the wall hung a row of portraits, representing the forefathers of the Bellingham lineage, some with armour

on their breasts, and others with stately ruffs and robes of peace. All were characterised by the sternness and

severity which old portraits so invariably put on, as if they were the ghosts, rather than the pictures, of

departed worthies, and were gazing with harsh and intolerant criticism at the pursuits and enjoyments of

At about the centre of the oaken panels that lined the hall was suspended a suit of mail, not, like the pictures,

an ancestral relic, but of the most modern date; for it had been manufactured by a skilful armourer in London,

the same year in which Governor Bellingham came over to New England. There was a steel headpiece, a

cuirass, a gorget and greaves, with a pair of gauntlets and a sword hanging beneath; all, and especially the

helmet and breastplate, so highly burnished as to glow with white radiance, and scatter an illumination

everywhere about upon the floor. This bright panoply was not meant for mere idle show, but had been worn

by the Governor on many a solemn muster and draining field, and had glittered, moreover, at the head of a

regiment in the Pequod war. For, though bred a lawyer, and accustomed to speak of Bacon, Coke, Noye, and

Finch, as his professional associates, the exigenties of this new country had transformed Governor

Little Pearl, who was as greatly pleased with the gleaming armour as she had been with the glittering

frontispiece of the house, spent some time looking into the polished mirror of the breastplate.

Hester looked by way of humouring the child; and she saw that, owing to the peculiar effect of this convex

mirror, the scarlet letter was represented in exaggerated and gigantic proportions, so as to be greatly the most

prominent feature of her appearance. In truth, she seemed absolutely hidden behind it. Pearl pointed upwards

also, at a similar picture in the headpiece; smiling at her mother, with the elfish intelligence that was so

familiar an expression on her small physiognomy. That look of naughty merriment was likewise reflected in

the mirror, with so much breadth and intensity of effect, that it made Hester Prynne feel as if it could not be

the image of her own child, but of an imp who was seeking to mould itself into Pearl's shape.

"Come along, Pearl," said she, drawing her away, "Come and look into this fair garden. It may be we shall

Pearl accordingly ran to the bowwindow, at the further end of the hall, and looked along the vista of a

garden walk, carpeted with closelyshaven grass, and bordered with some rude and immature attempt at

shrubbery. But the proprietor appeared already to have relinquished as hopeless, the effort to perpetuate on

this side of the Atlantic, in a hard soil, and amid the close struggle for subsistence, the native English taste for

ornamental gardening. Cabbages grew in plain sight; and a pumpkinvine, rooted at some distance, had run

across the intervening space, and deposited one of its gigantic products directly beneath the hall window, as if

to warn the Governor that this great lump of vegetable gold was as rich an ornament as New England earth

would offer him. There were a few rosebushes, however, and a number of appletrees, probably the

descendants of those planted by the Reverend Mr. Blackstone, the first settler of the peninsula; that half

mythological personage who rides through our early annals, seated on the back of a bull.

Pearl, seeing the rosebushes, began to cry for a red rose, and would not be pacified.

"Hush, childhush!" said her mother, earnestly. "Do not cry, dear little Pearl! I hear voices in the garden.

In fact, adown the vista of the garden avenue, a number of persons were seen approaching towards the house.

Pearl, in utter scorn of her mother's attempt to quiet her, gave an eldritch scream, and then became silent, not

from any motion of obedience, but because the quick and mobile curiosity of her disposition was excited by

Governor Bellingham, in a loose gown and easy capsuch as elderly gentlemen loved to endue themselves

with, in their domestic privacywalked foremost, and appeared to be showing off his estate, and expatiating

on his projected improvements. The wide circumference of an elaborate ruff, beneath his grey beard, in the

antiquated fashion of King James's reign, caused his head to look not a little like that of John the Baptist in a

charger. The impression made by his aspect, so rigid and severe, and frostbitten with more than autumnal

age, was hardly in keeping with the appliances of worldly enjoyment wherewith he had evidently done his

utmost to surround himself. But it is an error to suppose that our great forefathersthough accustomed to

speak and think of human existence as a state merely of trial and warfare, and though unfeignedly prepared to

sacrifice goods and life at the behest of dutymade it a matter of conscience to reject such means of

comfort, or even luxury, as lay fairly within their grasp. This creed was never taught, for instance, by the

venerable pastor, John Wilson, whose beard, white as a snowdrift, was seen over Governor Bellingham's

shoulders, while its wearer suggested that pears and peaches might yet be naturalised in the New England

climate, and that purple grapes might possibly be compelled to flourish against the sunny gardenwall. The

old clergyman, nurtured at the rich bosom of the English Church, had a long established and legitimate taste

for all good and comfortable things, and however stern he might show himself in the pulpit, or in his public

reproof of such transgressions as that of Hester Prynne, still, the genial benevolence of his private life had

won him warmer affection than was accorded to any of his professional contemporaries.

Behind the Governor and Mr. Wilson came two other guestsone, the Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, whom

the reader may remember as having taken a brief and reluctant part in the scene of Hester Prynne's disgrace;

and, in close companionship with him, old Roger Chillingworth, a person of great skill in physic, who for two

or three years past had been settled in the town. It was understood that this learned man was the physician as

well as friend of the young minister, whose health had severely suffered of late by his too unreserved

The Governor, in advance of his visitors, ascended one or two steps, and, throwing open the leaves of the

great hall window, found himself close to little Pearl. The shadow of the curtain fell on Hester Prynne, and

"What have we here?" said Governor Bellingham, looking with surprise at the scarlet little figure before him.

"I profess, I have never seen the like since my days of vanity, in old King James's time, when I was wont to

esteem it a high favour to be admitted to a court mask! There used to be a swarm of these small apparitions in

holiday time, and we called them children of the Lord of Misrule. But how gat such a guest into my hall?"

"Ay, indeed!" cried good old Mr. Wilson. "What little bird of scarlet plumage may this be? Methinks I have

seen just such figures when the sun has been shining through a richly painted window, and tracing out the

golden and crimson images across the floor. But that was in the old land. Prithee, young one, who art thou,

and what has ailed thy mother to bedizen thee in this strange fashion? Art thou a Christian childha? Dost

know thy catechism? Or art thou one of those naughty elfs or fairies whom we thought to have left behind us,

"Pearl?Ruby, ratheror Coral!or Red Rose, at the very least, judging from thy hue!" responded the old

minister, putting forth his hand in a vain attempt to pat little Pearl on the cheek. "But where is this mother of

thine? Ah! I see," he added; and, turning to Governor Bellingham, whispered, "This is the selfsame child of

whom we have held speech together; and behold here the unhappy woman, Hester Prynne, her mother!"

"Sayest thou so?" cried the Governor. "Nay, we might have judged that such a child's mother must needs be a

scarlet woman, and a worthy type of her of Babylon! But she comes at a good time, and we will look into this

Governor Bellingham stepped through the window into the hall, followed by his three guests.

"Hester Prynne," said he, fixing his naturally stern regard on the wearer of the scarlet letter, "there hath been

much question concerning thee of late. The point hath been weightily discussed, whether we, that are of

authority and influence, do well discharge our consciences by trusting an immortal soul, such as there is in

yonder child, to the guidance of one who hath stumbled and fallen amid the pitfalls of this world. Speak thou,

the child's own mother! Were it not, thinkest thou, for thy little one's temporal and eternal welfare that she be

taken out of thy charge, and clad soberly, and disciplined strictly, and instructed in the truths of heaven and

"I can teach my little Pearl what I have learned from this!" answered Hester Prynne, laying her finger on the

"Woman, it is thy badge of shame!" replied the stern magistrate. "It is because of the stain which that letter

"Nevertheless," said the mother, calmly, though growing more pale, "this badge hath taught meit daily

teaches meit is teaching me at this momentlessons whereof my child may be the wiser and better, albeit

"We will judge warily," said Bellingham, "and look well what we are about to do. Good Master Wilson, I

pray you, examine this Pearlsince that is her nameand see whether she hath had such Christian nurture

The old minister seated himself in an armchair and made an effort to draw Pearl betwixt his knees. But the

child, unaccustomed to the touch or familiarity of any but her mother, escaped through the open window, and

stood on the upper step, looking like a wild tropical bird of rich plumage, ready to take flight into the upper

air. Mr. Wilson, not a little astonished at this outbreakfor he was a grandfatherly sort of personage, and

usually a vast favourite with childrenessayed, however, to proceed with the examination.

"Pearl," said he, with great solemnity, "thou must take heed to instruction, that so, in due season, thou mayest

wear in thy bosom the pearl of great price. Canst thou tell me, my child, who made thee?"

Now Pearl knew well enough who made her, for Hester Prynne, the daughter of a pious home, very soon after

her talk with the child about her Heavenly Father, had begun to inform her of those truths which the human

spirit, at whatever stage of immaturity, imbibes with such eager interest. Pearl, thereforeso large were the

attainments of her three years' lifetimecould have borne a fair examination in the New England Primer, or

the first column of the Westminster Catechisms, although unacquainted with the outward form of either of

those celebrated works. But that perversity, which all children have more or less of, and of which little Pearl

had a tenfold portion, now, at the most inopportune moment, took thorough possession of her, and closed her

lips, or impelled her to speak words amiss. After putting her finger in her mouth, with many ungracious

refusals to answer good Mr. Wilson's question, the child finally announced that she had not been made at all,

but had been plucked by her mother off the bush of wild roses that grew by the prisondoor.

This phantasy was probably suggested by the near proximity of the Governor's red roses, as Pearl stood

outside of the window, together with her recollection of the prison rosebush, which she had passed in

Old Roger Chillingworth, with a smile on his face, whispered something in the young clergyman's ear. Hester

Prynne looked at the man of skill, and even then, with her fate hanging in the balance, was startled to

perceive what a change had come over his featureshow much uglier they were, how his dark complexion

seemed to have grown duskier, and his figure more misshapensince the days when she had familiarly

known him. She met his eyes for an instant, but was immediately constrained to give all her attention to the

"This is awful!" cried the Governor, slowly recovering from the astonishment into which Pearl's response had

thrown him. "Here is a child of three years old, and she cannot tell who made her! Without question, she is

equally in the dark as to her soul, its present depravity, and future destiny! Methinks, gentlemen, we need

Hester caught hold of Pearl, and drew her forcibly into her arms, confronting the old Puritan magistrate with

almost a fierce expression. Alone in the world, cast off by it, and with this sole treasure to keep her heart

alive, she felt that she possessed indefeasible rights against the world, and was ready to defend them to the

"God gave me the child!" cried she. "He gave her in requital of all things else which ye had taken from me.

She is my happinessshe is my torture, none the less! Pearl keeps me here in life! Pearl punishes me, too!

See ye not, she is the scarlet letter, only capable of being loved, and so endowed with a millionfold the power

"My poor woman," said the not unkind old minister, "the child shall be well cared forfar better than thou

"God gave her into my keeping!" repeated Hester Prynne, raising her voice almost to a shriek. "I will not give

her up!" And here by a sudden impulse, she turned to the young clergyman, Mr. Dimmesdale, at whom, up to

this moment, she had seemed hardly so much as once to direct her eyes. "Speak thou for me!" cried she.

"Thou wast my pastor, and hadst charge of my soul, and knowest me better than these men can. I will not lose

the child! Speak for me! Thou knowestfor thou hast sympathies which these men lackthou knowest

what is in my heart, and what are a mother's rights, and how much the stronger they are when that mother has

but her child and the scarlet letter! Look thou to it! I will not lose the child! Look to it!"

At this wild and singular appeal, which indicated that Hester Prynne's situation had provoked her to little less

than madness, the young minister at once came forward, pale, and holding his hand over his heart, as was his

custom whenever his peculiarly nervous temperament was thrown into agitation. He looked now more

careworn and emaciated than as we described him at the scene of Hester's public ignominy; and whether it

were his failing health, or whatever the cause might be, his large dark eyes had a world of pain in their

"There is truth in what she says," began the minister, with a voice sweet, tremulous, but powerful, insomuch

that the hall reechoed and the hollow armour rang with it"truth in what Hester says, and in the feeling

which inspires her! God gave her the child, and gave her, too, an instinctive knowledge of its nature and

requirementsboth seemingly so peculiarwhich no other mortal being can possess. And, moreover, is

there not a quality of awful sacredness in the relation between this mother and this child?"

"Ayhow is that, good Master Dimmesdale?" interrupted the Governor. "Make that plain, I pray you!"

"It must be even so," resumed the minister. "For, if we deem it otherwise, do we not hereby say that the

Heavenly Father, the creator of all flesh, hath lightly recognised a deed of sin, and made of no account the

distinction between unhallowed lust and holy love? This child of its father's guilt and its mother's shame has

come from the hand of God, to work in many ways upon her heart, who pleads so earnestly and with such

bitterness of spirit the right to keep her. It was meant for a blessingfor the one blessing of her life! It was

meant, doubtless, the mother herself hath told us, for a retribution, too; a torture to be felt at many an

unthoughtof moment; a pang, a sting, an everrecurring agony, in the midst of a troubled joy! Hath she not

expressed this thought in the garb of the poor child, so forcibly reminding us of that red symbol which sears

"Well said again!" cried good Mr. Wilson. "I feared the woman had no better thought than to make a

"Oh, not so!not so!" continued Mr. Dimmesdale. "She recognises, believe me, the solemn miracle which

God hath wrought in the existence of that child. And may she feel, toowhat, methinks, is the very

truththat this boon was meant, above all things else, to keep the mother's soul alive, and to preserve her

from blacker depths of sin into which Satan might else have sought to plunge her! Therefore it is good for

this poor, sinful woman, that she hath an infant immortality, a being capable of eternal joy or sorrow,

confided to her careto be trained up by her to righteousness, to remind her, at every moment, of her fall,

but yet to teach her, as if it were by the Creator's sacred pledge, that, if she bring the child to heaven, the child

also will bring its parents thither! Herein is the sinful mother happier than the sinful father. For Hester

Prynne's sake, then, and no less for the poor child's sake, let us leave them as Providence hath seen fit to place

"You speak, my friend, with a strange earnestness," said old Roger Chillingworth, smiling at him.

"And there is a weighty import in what my young brother hath spoken," added the Rev. Mr. Wilson.

"What say you, worshipful Master Bellingham? Hath he not pleaded well for the poor woman?"

"Indeed hath he," answered the magistrate; "and hath adduced such arguments, that we will even leave the

matter as it now stands; so long, at least, as there shall be no further scandal in the woman. Care must be had

nevertheless, to put the child to due and stated examination in the catechism, at thy hands or Master

Dimmesdale's. Moreover, at a proper season, the tithingmen must take heed that she go both to school and

The young minister, on ceasing to speak had withdrawn a few steps from the group, and stood with his face

partially concealed in the heavy folds of the windowcurtain; while the shadow of his figure, which the

sunlight cast upon the floor, was tremulous with the vehemence of his appeal. Pearl, that wild and flighty

little elf stole softly towards him, and taking his hand in the grasp of both her own, laid her cheek against it; a

caress so tender, and withal so unobtrusive, that her mother, who was looking on, asked herself"Is that my

Pearl?" Yet she knew that there was love in the child's heart, although it mostly revealed itself in passion, and

hardly twice in her lifetime had been softened by such gentleness as now. The ministerfor, save the

longsought regards of woman, nothing is sweeter than these marks of childish preference, accorded

spontaneously by a spiritual instinct, and therefore seeming to imply in us something truly worthy to be

lovedthe minister looked round, laid his hand on the child's head, hesitated an instant, and then kissed her

brow. Little Pearl's unwonted mood of sentiment lasted no longer; she laughed, and went capering down the

hall so airily, that old Mr. Wilson raised a question whether even her tiptoes touched the floor.

"The little baggage hath witchcraft in her, I profess," said he to Mr. Dimmesdale. "She needs no old woman's

"A strange child!" remarked old Roger Chillingworth. "It is easy to see the mother's part in her. Would it be

beyond a philosopher's research, think ye, gentlemen, to analyse that child's nature, and, from it make a

"Nay; it would be sinful, in such a question, to follow the clue of profane philosophy," said Mr. Wilson.

"Better to fast and pray upon it; and still better, it may be, to leave the mystery as we find it, unless

Providence reveal it of its own accord Thereby, every good Christian man hath a title to show a father's

The affair being so satisfactorily concluded, Hester Prynne, with Pearl, departed from the house. As they

descended the steps, it is averred that the lattice of a chamberwindow was thrown open, and forth into the

sunny day was thrust the face of Mistress Hibbins, Governor Bellingham's bittertempered sister, and the

"Hist, hist!" said she, while her illomened physiognomy seemed to cast a shadow over the cheerful newness

of the house. "Wilt thou go with us tonight? There will be a merry company in the forest; and I wellnigh

"Make my excuse to him, so please you!" answered Hester, with a triumphant smile. "I must tarry at home,

and keep watch over my little Pearl. Had they taken her from me, I would willingly have gone with thee into

the forest, and signed my name in the Black Man's book too, and that with mine own blood!"

"We shall have thee there anon!" said the witchlady, frowning, as she drew back her head.

But hereif we suppose this interview betwixt Mistress Hibbins and Hester Prynne to be authentic, and not a

parablewas already an illustration of the young minister's argument against sundering the relation of a

fallen mother to the offspring of her frailty. Even thus early had the child saved her from Satan's snare.

Under the appellation of Roger Chillingworth, the reader will remember, was hidden another name, which its

former wearer had resolved should never more be spoken. It has been related, how, in the crowd that

witnessed Hester Prynne's ignominious exposure, stood a man, elderly, travelworn, who, just emerging from

the perilous wilderness, beheld the woman, in whom he hoped to find embodied the warmth and cheerfulness

of home, set up as a type of sin before the people. Her matronly fame was trodden under all men's feet.

Infamy was babbling around her in the public marketplace. For her kindred, should the tidings ever reach

them, and for the companions of her unspotted life, there remained nothing but the contagion of her

dishonour; which would not fail to be distributed in strict accordance arid proportion with the intimacy and

sacredness of their previous relationship. Then whysince the choice was with himselfshould the

individual, whose connexion with the fallen woman had been the most intimate and sacred of them all, come

forward to vindicate his claim to an inheritance so little desirable? He resolved not to be pilloried beside her

on her pedestal of shame. Unknown to all but Hester Prynne, and possessing the lock and key of her silence,

he chose to withdraw his name from the roll of mankind, and, as regarded his former ties and interest, to

vanish out of life as completely as if he indeed lay at the bottom of the ocean, whither rumour had long ago

consigned him. This purpose once effected, new interests would immediately spring up, and likewise a new

purpose; dark, it is true, if not guilty, but of force enough to engage the full strength of his faculties.

In pursuance of this resolve, he took up his residence in the Puritan town as Roger Chillingworth, without

other introduction than the learning and intelligence of which he possessed more than a common measure. As

his studies, at a previous period of his life, had made him extensively acquainted with the medical science of

the day, it was as a physician that he presented himself and as such was cordially received. Skilful men, of the

medical and chirurgical profession, were of rare occurrence in the colony. They seldom, it would appear,

partook of the religious zeal that brought other emigrants across the Atlantic. In their researches into the

human frame, it may be that the higher and more subtle faculties of such men were materialised, and that they

lost the spiritual view of existence amid the intricacies of that wondrous mechanism, which seemed to

involve art enough to comprise all of life within itself. At all events, the health of the good town of Boston, so

far as medicine had aught to do with it, had hitherto lain in the guardianship of an aged deacon and

apothecary, whose piety and godly deportment were stronger testimonials in his favour than any that he could

have produced in the shape of a diploma. The only surgeon was one who combined the occasional exercise of

that noble art with the daily and habitual flourish of a razor. To such a professional body Roger Chillingworth

was a brilliant acquisition. He soon manifested his familiarity with the ponderous and imposing machinery of

antique physic; in which every remedy contained a multitude of farfetched and heterogeneous ingredients,

as elaborately compounded as if the proposed result had been the Elixir of Life. In his Indian captivity,

moreover, he had gained much knowledge of the properties of native herbs and roots; nor did he conceal from

his patients that these simple medicines, Nature's boon to the untutored savage, had quite as large a share of

his own confidence as the European Pharmacopoeia, which so many learned doctors had spent centuries in

This learned stranger was exemplary as regarded at least the outward forms of a religious life; and early after

his arrival, had chosen for his spiritual guide the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale. The young divine, whose

scholarlike renown still lived in Oxford, was considered by his more fervent admirers as little less than a

heavenly ordained apostle, destined, should he live and labour for the ordinary term of life, to do as great

deeds, for the now feeble New England Church, as the early Fathers had achieved for the infancy of the

Christian faith. About this period, however, the health of Mr. Dimmesdale had evidently begun to fail. By

those best acquainted with his habits, the paleness of the young minister's cheek was accounted for by his too

earnest devotion to study, his scrupulous fulfilment of parochial duty, and more than all, to the fasts and

vigils of which he made a frequent practice, in order to keep the grossness of this earthly state from clogging

and obscuring his spiritual lamp. Some declared, that if Mr. Dimmesdale were really going to die, it was

cause enough that the world was not worthy to be any longer trodden by his feet. He himself, on the other

hand, with characteristic humility, avowed his belief that if Providence should see fit to remove him, it would

be because of his own unworthiness to perform its humblest mission here on earth. With all this difference of

opinion as to the cause of his decline, there could be no question of the fact. His form grew emaciated; his

voice, though still rich and sweet, had a certain melancholy prophecy of decay in it; he was often observed,

on any slight alarm or other sudden accident, to put his hand over his heart with first a flush and then a

Such was the young clergyman's condition, and so imminent the prospect that his dawning light would be

extinguished, all untimely, when Roger Chillingworth made his advent to the town. His first entry on the

scene, few people could tell whence, dropping down as it were out of the sky or starting from the nether

earth, had an aspect of mystery, which was easily heightened to the miraculous. He was now known to be a

man of skill; it was observed that he gathered herbs and the blossoms of wildflowers, and dug up roots and

plucked off twigs from the foresttrees like one acquainted with hidden virtues in what was valueless to

common eyes. He was heard to speak of Sir Kenelm Digby and other famous menwhose

scientific attainments were esteemed hardly less than supernaturalas having been his correspondents or

associates. Why, with such rank in the learned world, had he come hither? What, could he, whose sphere was

in great cities, be seeking in the wilderness? In answer to this query, a rumour gained groundand however

absurd, was entertained by some very sensible peoplethat Heaven had wrought an absolute miracle, by

transporting an eminent Doctor of Physic from a German university bodily through the air and setting him

down at the door of Mr. Dimmesdale's study! Individuals of wiser faith, indeed, who knew that Heaven

promotes its purposes without aiming at the stageeffect of what is called miraculous interposition, were

inclined to see a providential hand in Roger Chillingworth's so opportune arrival.

This idea was countenanced by the strong interest which the physician ever manifested in the young

clergyman; he attached himself to him as a parishioner, and sought to win a friendly regard and confidence

from his naturally reserved sensibility. He expressed great alarm at his pastor's state of health, but was

anxious to attempt the cure, and, if early undertaken, seemed not despondent of a favourable result. The

elders, the deacons, the motherly dames, and the young and fair maidens of Mr. Dimmesdale's flock, were

alike importunate that he should make trial of the physician's frankly offered skill. Mr. Dimmesdale gently

But how could the young minister say so, when, with every successive Sabbath, his cheek was paler and

thinner, and his voice more tremulous than beforewhen it had now become a constant habit, rather than a

casual gesture, to press his hand over his heart? Was he weary of his labours? Did he wish to die? These

questions were solemnly propounded to Mr. Dimmesdale by the elder ministers of Boston, and the deacons of

his church, who, to use their own phrase, "dealt with him," on the sin of rejecting the aid which Providence so

manifestly held out. He listened in silence, and finally promised to confer with the physician.

"Were it God's will," said the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale, when, in fulfilment of this pledge, he requested old

Roger Chillingworth's professional advice, "I could be well content that my labours, and my sorrows, and my

sins, and my pains, should shortly end with me, and what is earthly of them be buried in my grave, and the

spiritual go with me to my eternal state, rather than that you should put your skill to the proof in my behalf."

"Ah," replied Roger Chillingworth, with that quietness, which, whether imposed or natural, marked all his

deportment, "it is thus that a young clergyman is apt to speak. Youthful men, not having taken a deep root,

give up their hold of life so easily! And saintly men, who walk with God on earth, would fain be away, to

"Nay," rejoined the young minister, putting his hand to his heart, with a flush of pain flitting over his brow,

In this manner, the mysterious old Roger Chillingworth became the medical adviser of the Reverend Mr.

Dimmesdale. As not only the disease interested the physician, but he was strongly moved to look into the

character and qualities of the patient, these two men, so different in age, came gradually to spend much time

together. For the sake of the minister's health, and to enable the leech to gather plants with healing balm in

them, they took long walks on the seashore, or in the forest; mingling various walks with the splash and

murmur of the waves, and the solemn windanthem among the treetops. Often, likewise, one was the guest

of the other in his place of study and retirement There was a fascination for the minister in the company of

the man of science, in whom he recognised an intellectual cultivation of no moderate depth or scope; together

with a range and freedom of ideas, that he would have vainly looked for among the members of his own

profession. In truth, he was startled, if not shocked, to find this attribute in the physician. Mr. Dimmesdale

was a true priest, a true religionist, with the reverential sentiment largely developed, and an order of mind that

impelled itself powerfully along the track of a creed, and wore its passage continually deeper with the lapse

of time. In no state of society would he have been what is called a man of liberal views; it would always be

essential to his peace to feel the pressure of a faith about him, supporting, while it confined him within its

iron framework. Not the less, however, though with a tremulous enjoyment, did he feel the occasional relief

of looking at the universe through the medium of another kind of intellect than those with which he habitually

held converse. It was as if a window were thrown open, admitting a freer atmosphere into the close and

stifled study, where his life was wasting itself away, amid lamplight, or obstructed daybeams, and the

musty fragrance, be it sensual or moral, that exhales from books. But the air was too fresh and chill to be long

breathed with comfort. So the minister, and the physician with him, withdrew again within the limits of what

Thus Roger Chillingworth scrutinised his patient carefully, both as he saw him in his ordinary life, keeping

an accustomed pathway in the range of thoughts familiar to him, and as he appeared when thrown amidst

other moral scenery, the novelty of which might call out something new to the surface of his character. He

deemed it essential, it would seem, to know the man, before attempting to do him good. Wherever there is a

heart and an intellect, the diseases of the physical frame are tinged with the peculiarities of these. In Arthur

Dimmesdale, thought and imagination were so active, and sensibility so intense, that the bodily infirmity

would be likely to have its groundwork there. So Roger Chillingworththe man of skill, the kind and

friendly physicianstrove to go deep into his patient's bosom, delving among his principles, prying into his

recollections, and probing everything with a cautious touch, like a treasureseeker in a dark cavern. Few

secrets can escape an investigator, who has opportunity and licence to undertake such a quest, and skill to

follow it up. A man burdened with a secret should especially avoid the intimacy of his physician. If the latter

possess native sagacity, and a nameless something more let us call it intuition; if he show no intrusive

egotism, nor disagreeable prominent characteristics of his own; if he have the power, which must be born

with him, to bring his mind into such affinity with his patient's, that this last shall unawares have spoken what

he imagines himself only to have thought if such revelations be received without tumult, and acknowledged

not so often by an uttered sympathy as by silence, an inarticulate breath, and here and there a word to indicate

that all is understood; if to these qualifications of a confidant be joined the advantages afforded by his

recognised character as a physician;then, at some inevitable moment, will the soul of the sufferer be

dissolved, and flow forth in a dark but transparent stream, bringing all its mysteries into the daylight.

Roger Chillingworth possessed all, or most, of the attributes above enumerated. Nevertheless, time went on; a

kind of intimacy, as we have said, grew up between these two cultivated minds, which had as wide a field as

the whole sphere of human thought and study to meet upon; they discussed every topic of ethics and religion,

of public affairs, and private character; they talked much, on both sides, of matters that seemed personal to

themselves; and yet no secret, such as the physician fancied must exist there, ever stole out of the minister's

consciousness into his companion's ear. The latter had his suspicions, indeed, that even the nature of Mr.

Dimmesdale's bodily disease had never fairly been revealed to him. It was a strange reserve!

After a time, at a hint from Roger Chillingworth, the friends of Mr. Dimmesdale effected an arrangement by

which the two were lodged in the same house; so that every ebb and flow of the minister's lifetide might

pass under the eye of his anxious and attached physician. There was much joy throughout the town when this

greatly desirable object was attained. It was held to be the best possible measure for the young clergyman's

welfare; unless, indeed, as often urged by such as felt authorised to do so, he had selected some one of the

many blooming damsels, spiritually devoted to him, to become his devoted wife. This latter step, however,

there was no present prospect that Arthur Dimmesdale would be prevailed upon to take; he rejected all

suggestions of the kind, as if priestly celibacy were one of his articles of Church discipline. Doomed by his

own choice, therefore, as Mr. Dimmesdale so evidently was, to eat his unsavoury morsel always at another's

board, and endure the lifelong chill which must be his lot who seeks to warm himself only at another's

fireside, it truly seemed that this sagacious, experienced, benevolent old physician, with his concord of

paternal and reverential love for the young pastor, was the very man, of all mankind, to be constantly within

The new abode of the two friends was with a pious widow, of good social rank, who dwelt in a house

covering pretty nearly the site on which the venerable structure of King's Chapel has since been built. It had

the graveyard, originally Isaac Johnson's homefield, on one side, and so was well adapted to call up serious

reflections, suited to their respective employments, in both minister and man of physic. The motherly care of

the good widow assigned to Mr. Dimmesdale a front apartment, with a sunny exposure, and heavy

windowcurtains, to create a noontide shadow when desirable. The walls were hung round with tapestry, said

to be from the Gobelin looms, and, at all events, representing the Scriptural story of David and Bathsheba,

and Nathan the Prophet, in colours still unfaded, but which made the fair woman of the scene almost as

grimly picturesque as the woedenouncing seer. Here the pale clergyman piled up his library, rich with

parchmentbound folios of the Fathers, and the lore of Rabbis, and monkish erudition, of which the

Protestant divines, even while they vilified and decried that class of writers, were yet constrained often to

avail themselves. On the other side of the house, old Roger Chillingworth arranged his study and laboratory:

not such as a modern man of science would reckon even tolerably complete, but provided with a distilling

apparatus and the means of compounding drugs and chemicals, which the practised alchemist knew well how

to turn to purpose. With such commodiousness of situation, these two learned persons sat themselves down,

each in his own domain, yet familiarly passing from one apartment to the other, and bestowing a mutual and

And the Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale's best discerning friends, as we have intimated, very reasonably

for the purposebesought in so many public and domestic and secret prayersof restoring the young

minister to health. But, it must now be said, another portion of the community had latterly begun to take its

own view of the relation betwixt Mr. Dimmesdale and the mysterious old physician. When an uninstructed

multitude attempts to see with its eyes, it is exceedingly apt to be deceived. When, however, it forms its

judgment, as it usually does, on the intuitions of its great and warm heart, the conclusions thus attained are

often so profound and so unerring as to possess the character of truth supernaturally revealed. The people, in

the case of which we speak, could justify its prejudice against Roger Chillingworth by no fact or argument

worthy of serious refutation. There was an aged handicraftsman, it is true, who had been a citizen of London

at the period of Sir Thomas Overbury's murder, now some thirty years agone; he testified to having seen the

physician, under some other name, which the narrator of the story had now forgotten, in company with Dr.

Forman, the famous old conjurer, who was implicated in the affair of Overbury. Two or three individuals

hinted that the man of skill, during his Indian captivity, had enlarged his medical attainments by joining in the

incantations of the savage priests, who were universally acknowledged to be powerful enchanters, often

performing seemingly miraculous cures by their skill in the black art. A large numberand many of these

were persons of such sober sense and practical observation that their opinions would have been valuable in

other mattersaffirmed that Roger Chillingworth's aspect had undergone a remarkable change while he had

dwelt in town, and especially since his abode with Mr. Dimmesdale. At first, his expression had been calm,

meditative, scholarlike. Now there was something ugly and evil in his face, which they had not previously

noticed, and which grew still the more obvious to sight the oftener they looked upon him. According to the

vulgar idea, the fire in his laboratory had been brought from the lower regions, and was fed with infernal fuel;

To sum up the matter, it grew to be a widely diffused opinion that the Rev. Arthur Dimmesdale, like many

other personages of special sanctity, in all ages of the Christian world, was haunted either by Satan himself or

Satan's emissary, in the guise of old Roger Chillingworth. This diabolical agent had the Divine permission,

for a season, to burrow into the clergyman's intimacy, and plot against his soul. No sensible man, it was

confessed, could doubt on which side the victory would turn. The people looked, with an unshaken hope, to

see the minister come forth out of the conflict transfigured with the glory which he would unquestionably

win. Meanwhile, nevertheless, it was sad to think of the perchance mortal agony through which he must

Alas! to judge from the gloom and terror in the depth of the poor minister's eyes, the battle was a sore one,

Old Roger Chillingworth, throughout life, had been calm in temperament, kindly, though not of warm

affections, but ever, and in all his relations with the world, a pure and upright man. He had begun an

investigation, as he imagined, with the severe and equal integrity of a judge, desirous only of truth, even as if

the question involved no more than the airdrawn lines and figures of a geometrical problem, instead of

human passions, and wrongs inflicted on himself. But, as he proceeded, a terrible fascination, a kind of fierce,

though still calm, necessity, seized the old man within its gripe, and never set him free again until he had

done all its bidding. He now dug into the poor clergyman's heart, like a miner searching for gold; or, rather,

like a sexton delving into a grave, possibly in quest of a jewel that had been buried on the dead man's bosom,

but likely to find nothing save mortality and corruption. Alas, for his own soul, if these were what he sought!

Sometimes a light glimmered out of the physician's eyes, burning blue and ominous, like the reflection of a

furnace, or, let us say, like one of those gleams of ghastly fire that darted from Bunyan's awful doorway in

the hillside, and quivered on the pilgrim's face. The soil where this dark miner was working had perchance

"This man," said he, at one such moment, to himself, "pure as they deem himall spiritual as he

seemshath inherited a strong animal nature from his father or his mother. Let us dig a little further in the

Then after long search into the minister's dim interior, and turning over many precious materials, in the shape

of high aspirations for the welfare of his race, warm love of souls, pure sentiments, natural piety,

strengthened by thought and study, and illuminated by revelationall of which invaluable gold was perhaps

no better than rubbish to the seekerhe would turn back, discouraged, and begin his quest towards another

point. He groped along as stealthily, with as cautious a tread, and as wary an outlook, as a thief entering a

chamber where a man lies only half asleepor, it may be, broad awakewith purpose to steal the very

treasure which this man guards as the apple of his eye. In spite of his premeditated carefulness, the floor

would now and then creak; his garments would rustle; the shadow of his presence, in a forbidden proximity,

would be thrown across his victim. In other words, Mr. Dimmesdale, whose sensibility of nerve often

produced the effect of spiritual intuition, would become vaguely aware that something inimical to his peace

had thrust itself into relation with him. But Old Roger Chillingworth, too, had perceptions that were almost

intuitive; and when the minister threw his startled eyes towards him, there the physician sat; his kind,

Yet Mr. Dimmesdale would perhaps have seen this individual's character more perfectly, if a certain

morbidness, to which sick hearts are liable, had not rendered him suspicious of all mankind. Trusting no man

as his friend, he could not recognize his enemy when the latter actually appeared. He therefore still kept up a

familiar intercourse with him, daily receiving he old physician in his study, or visiting the laboratory, and, for

recreation's sake, watching the processes by which weeds were converted into drugs of potency.

One day, leaning his forehead on his hand, and his elbow on the sill of the open window, that looked towards

the graveyard, he talked with Roger Chillingworth, while the old man was examining a bundle of unsightly

"Where," asked he, with a look askance at themfor it was the clergyman's peculiarity that he seldom,

nowadays, looked straight forth at any object, whether human or inanimate, "where, my kind doctor, did

"Even in the graveyard here at hand," answered the physician, continuing his employment. "They are new to

me. I found them growing on a grave, which bore no tombstone, no other memorial of the dead man, save

these ugly weeds, that have taken upon themselves to keep him in remembrance. They grew out of his heart,

and typify, it may be, some hideous secret that was buried with him, and which he had done better to confess

"Wherefore not; since all the powers of nature call so earnestly for the confession of sin, that these black

weeds have sprung up out of a buried heart, to make manifest, an outspoken crime?"

"That, good sir, is but a phantasy of yours," replied the minister. "There can be, if I forbode aright, no power,

short of the Divine mercy, to disclose, whether by uttered words, or by type or emblem, the secrets that may

be buried in the human heart. The heart, making itself guilty of such secrets, must perforce hold them, until

the day when all hidden things shall be revealed. Nor have I so read or interpreted Holy Writ, as to

understand that the disclosure of human thoughts and deeds, then to be made, is intended as a part of the

retribution. That, surely, were a shallow view of it. No; these revelations, unless I greatly err, are meant

merely to promote the intellectual satisfaction of all intelligent beings, who will stand waiting, on that day, to

see the dark problem of this life made plain. A knowledge of men's hearts will be needful to the completest

solution of that problem. And, I conceive moreover, that the hearts holding such miserable secrets as you

speak of, will yield them up, at that last day, not with reluctance, but with a joy unutterable."

"Then why not reveal it here?" asked Roger Chillingworth, glancing quietly aside at the minister. "Why

"They mostly do," said the clergyman, griping hard at his breast, as if afflicted with an importunate throb of

pain. "Many, many a poor soul hath given its confidence to me, not only on the deathbed, but while strong

in life, and fair in reputation. And ever, after such an outpouring, oh, what a relief have I witnessed in those

sinful brethren! even as in one who at last draws free air, after a long stifling with his own polluted breath.

How can it be otherwise? Why should a wretched manguilty, we will say, of murderprefer to keep the

dead corpse buried in his own heart, rather than fling it forth at once, and let the universe take care of it!"

"True; there are such men," answered Mr. Dimmesdale. "But not to suggest more obvious reasons, it may be

that they are kept silent by the very constitution of their nature. Orcan we not suppose it?guilty as they

may be, retaining, nevertheless, a zeal for God's glory and man's welfare, they shrink from displaying

themselves black and filthy in the view of men; because, thenceforward, no good can be achieved by them;

no evil of the past be redeemed by better service. So, to their own unutterable torment, they go about among

their fellowcreatures, looking pure as newfallen snow, while their hearts are all speckled and spotted with

"These men deceive themselves," said Roger Chillingworth, with somewhat more emphasis than usual, and

making a slight gesture with his forefinger. "They fear to take up the shame that rightfully belongs to them.

Their love for man, their zeal for God's servicethese holy impulses may or may not coexist in their hearts

with the evil inmates to which their guilt has unbarred the door, and which must needs propagate a hellish

breed within them. But, if they seek to glorify God, let them not lift heavenward their unclean hands! If they

would serve their fellowmen, let them do it by making manifest the power and reality of conscience, in

constraining them to penitential selfabasement! Would thou have me to believe, O wise and pious friend,

that a false show can be bettercan be more for God's glory, or man' welfarethan God's own truth? Trust

"It may be so," said the young clergyman, indifferently, as waiving a discussion that he considered irrelevant

or unseasonable. He had a ready faculty, indeed, of escaping from any topic that agitated his too sensitive and

nervous temperament."But, now, I would ask of my wellskilled physician, whether, in good sooth, he

Before Roger Chillingworth could answer, they heard the clear, wild laughter of a young child's voice,

proceeding from the adjacent burialground. Looking instinctively from the open windowfor it was

summertimethe minister beheld Hester Prynne and little Pearl passing along the footpath that traversed

the enclosure. Pearl looked as beautiful as the day, but was in one of those moods of perverse merriment

which, whenever they occurred, seemed to remove her entirely out of the sphere of sympathy or human

contact. She now skipped irreverently from one grave to another; until coming to the broad, flat, armorial

tombstone of a departed worthyperhaps of Isaac Johnson himselfshe began to dance upon it. In reply to

her mother's command and entreaty that she would behave more decorously, little Pearl paused to gather the

prickly burrs from a tall burdock which grew beside the tomb. Taking a handful of these, she arranged them

along the lines of the scarlet letter that decorated the maternal bosom, to which the burrs, as their nature was,

Roger Chillingworth had by this time approached the window and smiled grimly down.

"There is no law, nor reverence for authority, no regard for human ordinances or opinions, right or wrong,

mixed up with that child's composition," remarked he, as much to himself as to his companion. "I saw her, the

other day, bespatter the Governor himself with water at the cattletrough in Spring Lane. What, in heaven's

name, is she? Is the imp altogether evil? Hath she affections? Hath she any discoverable principle of being?"

"None, save the freedom of a broken law," answered Mr. Dimmesdale, in a quiet way, as if he had been

The child probably overheard their voices, for, looking up to the window with a bright, but naughty smile of

mirth and intelligence, she threw one of the prickly burrs at the Rev. Mr. Dimmesdale. The sensitive

clergyman shrank, with nervous dread, from the light missile. Detecting his emotion, Pearl clapped her little

hands in the most extravagant ecstacy. Hester Prynne, likewise, had involuntarily looked up, and all these

four persons, old and young, regarded one another in silence, till the child laughed aloud, and

shouted"Come away, mother! Come away, or yonder old black man will catch you! He hath got hold of

the minister already. Come away, mother or he will catch you! But he cannot catch little Pearl!"

So she drew her mother away, skipping, dancing, and frisking fantastically among the hillocks of the dead

people, like a creature that had nothing in common with a bygone and buried generation, nor owned herself

akin to it. It was as if she had been made afresh out of new elements, and must perforce be permitted to live

her own life, and be a law unto herself without her eccentricities being reckoned to her for a crime.

"There goes a woman," resumed Roger Chillingworth, after a pause, "who, be her demerits what they may,

hath none of that mystery of hidden sinfulness which you deem so grievous to be borne. Is Hester Prynne the

"I do verily believe it," answered the clergyman. "Nevertheless, I cannot answer for her. There was a look of

pain in her face which I would gladly have been spared the sight of. But still, methinks, it must needs be

better for the sufferer to be free to show his pain, as this poor woman Hester is, than to cover it up in his

There was another pause, and the physician began anew to examine and arrange the plants which he had

"You inquired of me, a little time agone," said he, at length, "my judgment as touching your health."

"I did," answered the clergyman, "and would gladly learn it. Speak frankly, I pray you, be it for life or death."

"Freely then, and plainly," said the physician, still busy with his plants, but keeping a wary eye on Mr.

Dimmesdale, "the disorder is a strange one; not so much in itself nor as outwardly manifested,in so far, at

least as the symptoms have been laid open to my observation. Looking daily at you, my good sir, and

watching the tokens of your aspect now for months gone by, I should deem you a man sore sick, it may be,

yet not so sick but that an instructed and watchful physician might well hope to cure you. But I know not

"You speak in riddles, learned sir," said the pale minister, glancing aside out of the window.

"Then, to speak more plainly," continued the physician, "and I crave pardon, sir, should it seem to require

pardon, for this needful plainness of my speech. Let me ask as your friend, as one having charge, under

Providence, of your life and physical well being, hath all the operations of this disorder been fairly laid open

"How can you question it?" asked the minister. "Surely it were child's play to call in a physician and then

"You would tell me, then, that I know all?" said Roger Chillingworth, deliberately, and fixing an eye, bright

with intense and concentrated intelligence, on the minister's face. "Be it so! But again! He to whom only the

outward and physical evil is laid open, knoweth, oftentimes, but half the evil which he is called upon to cure.

A bodily disease, which we look upon as whole and entire within itself, may, after all, be but a symptom of

some ailment in the spiritual part. Your pardon once again, good sir, if my speech give the shadow of offence.

You, sir, of all men whom I have known, are he whose body is the closest conjoined, and imbued, and

"Then I need ask no further," said the clergyman, somewhat hastily rising from his chair. "You deal not, I

"Thus, a sickness," continued Roger Chillingworth, going on, in an unaltered tone, without heeding the

interruption, but standing up and confronting the emaciated and whitecheeked minister, with his low, dark,

and misshapen figure,"a sickness, a sore place, if we may so call it, in your spirit hath immediately its

appropriate manifestation in your bodily frame. Would you, therefore, that your physician heal the bodily

evil? How may this be unless you first lay open to him the wound or trouble in your soul?"

"No, not to thee! not to an earthly physician!" cried Mr. Dimmesdale, passionately, and turning his eyes, full

and bright, and with a kind of fierceness, on old Roger Chillingworth. "Not to thee! But, if it be the soul's

disease, then do I commit myself to the one Physician of the soul! He, if it stand with His good pleasure, can

cure, or he can kill. Let Him do with me as, in His justice and wisdom, He shall see good. But who art thou,

that meddlest in this matter? that dares thrust himself between the sufferer and his God?"

"It is as well to have made this step," said Roger Chillingworth to himself, looking after the minister, with a

grave smile. "There is nothing lost. We shall be friends again anon. But see, now, how passion takes hold

upon this man, and hurrieth him out of himself! As with one passion so with another. He hath done a wild

It proved not difficult to reestablish the intimacy of the two companions, on the same footing and in the

same degree as heretofore. The young clergyman, after a few hours of privacy, was sensible that the disorder

of his nerves had hurried him into an unseemly outbreak of temper, which there had been nothing in the

physician's words to excuse or palliate. He marvelled, indeed, at the violence with which he had thrust back

the kind old man, when merely proffering the advice which it was his duty to bestow, and which the minister

himself had expressly sought. With these remorseful feelings, he lost no time in making the amplest

apologies, and besought his friend still to continue the care which, if not successful in restoring him to health,

had, in all probability, been the means of prolonging his feeble existence to that hour. Roger Chillingworth

readily assented, and went on with his medical supervision of the minister; doing his best for him, in all good

faith, but always quitting the patient's apartment, at the close of the professional interview, with a mysterious

and puzzled smile upon his lips. This expression was invisible in Mr. Dimmesdale's presence, but grew

"A rare case," he muttered. "I must needs look deeper into it. A strange sympathy betwixt soul and body!

It came to pass, not long after the scene above recorded, that the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale, noonday, and

entirely unawares, fell into a deep, deep slumber, sitting in his chair, with a large blackletter volume open

before him on the table. It must have been a work of vast ability in the somniferous school of literature. The

profound depth of the minister's repose was the more remarkable, inasmuch as he was one of those persons

whose sleep ordinarily is as light as fitful, and as easily scared away, as a small bird hopping on a twig. To

such an unwonted remoteness, however, had his spirit now withdrawn into itself that he stirred not in his

chair when old Roger Chillingworth, without any extraordinary precaution, came into the room. The

physician advanced directly in front of his patient, laid his hand upon his bosom, and thrust aside the

But with what a wild look of wonder, joy, and honor! With what a ghastly rapture, as it were, too mighty to

be expressed only by the eye and features, and therefore bursting forth through the whole ugliness of his

figure, and making itself even riotously manifest by the extravagant gestures with which he threw up his arms

towards the ceiling, and stamped his foot upon the floor! Had a man seen old Roger Chillingworth, at that

moment of his ecstasy, he would have had no need to ask how Satan comports himself when a precious

But what distinguished the physician's ecstasy from Satan's was the trait of wonder in it!

After the incident last described, the intercourse between the clergyman and the physician, though externally

the same, was really of another character than it had previously been. The intellect of Roger Chillingworth

had now a sufficiently plain path before it. It was not, indeed, precisely that which he had laid out for himself

to tread. Calm, gentle, passionless, as he appeared, there was yet, we fear, a quiet depth of malice, hitherto

latent, but active now, in this unfortunate old man, which led him to imagine a more intimate revenge than

any mortal had ever wreaked upon an enemy. To make himself the one trusted friend, to whom should be

confided all the fear, the remorse, the agony, the ineffectual repentance, the backward rush of sinful thoughts,

expelled in vain! All that guilty sorrow, hidden from the world, whose great heart would have pitied and

forgiven, to be revealed to him, the Pitilessto him, the Unforgiving! All that dark treasure to be lavished on

the very man, to whom nothing else could so adequately pay the debt of vengeance!

The clergyman's shy and sensitive reserve had balked this scheme Roger Chillingworth, however, was

aspect of affairs, which Providenceusing the avenger and his victim for its own purposes, and, perchance,

pardoning, where it seemed most to punishhad substituted for his black devices A revelation, he could

almost say, had been granted to him. It mattered little for his object, whether celestial or from what other

region. By its aid, in all the subsequent relations betwixt him and Mr. Dimmesdale, not merely the external

presence, but the very inmost soul of the latter, seemed to be brought out before his eyes, so that he could see

and comprehend its every movement. He became, thenceforth, not a spectator only, but a chief actor in the

poor minister's interior world. He could play upon him as he chose. Would he arouse him with a throb of

agony? The victim was for ever on the rack; it needed only to know the spring that controlled the engine: and

the physician knew it well. Would he startle him with sudden fear? As at the waving of a magician's wand, up

rose a grisly rose a thousand phantomsin many shapes, of death, or more awful shame, all flocking round

All this was accomplished with a subtlety so perfect, that the minister, though he had constantly a dim

perception of some evil influence watching over him, could never gain a knowledge of its actual nature. True,

he looked doubtfully, fearfullyeven, at times, with horror and the bitterness of hatredat the deformed

figure of the old physician. His gestures, his gait, his grizzled beard, his slightest and most indifferent acts,

odious in the clergyman's sight; a token implicitly to be relied on of a deeper antipathy in the breast of the

latter than he was willing to acknowledge to himself. For, as it was impossible to assign a reason for such

distrust and abhorrence, so Mr. Dimmesdale, conscious that the poison of one morbid spot was infecting his

heart's entire substance, attributed all his presentiments to no other cause. He took himself to task for his bad

sympathies in reference to Roger Chillingworth, disregarded the lesson that he should have drawn from them,

and did his best to root them out. Unable to accomplish this, he nevertheless, as a matter of principle,

continued his habits of social familiarity with the old man, and thus gave him constant opportunities for

perfecting the purpose to whichpoor forlorn creature that he was, and more wretched than his victimthe

While thus suffering under bodily disease, and gnawed and tortured by some black trouble of the soul, and

given over to the machinations of his deadliest enemy, the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale had achieved a brilliant

popularity in his sacred office. He won it indeed, in great part, by his sorrows. His intellectual gifts, his moral

perceptions, his power of experiencing and communicating emotion, were kept in a state of preternatural

activity by the prick and anguish of his daily life. His fame, though still on its upward slope, already

overshadowed the soberer reputations of his fellowclergymen, eminent as several of them were. There are

scholars among them, who had spent more years in acquiring abstruse lore, connected with the divine

profession, than Mr. Dimmesdale had lived; and who might well, therefore, be more profoundly versed in

such solid and valuable attainments than their youthful brother. There were men, too, of a sturdier texture of

mind than his, and endowed with a far greater share of shrewd, hard iron, or granite understanding; which,

duly mingled with a fair proportion of doctrinal ingredient, constitutes a highly respectable, efficacious, and

unamiable variety of the clerical species. There were others again, true saintly fathers, whose faculties had

been elaborated by weary toil among their books, and by patient thought, and etherealised, moreover, by

spiritual communications with the better world, into which their purity of life had almost introduced these

holy personages, with their garments of mortality still clinging to them. All that they lacked was, the gift that

descended upon the chosen disciples at Pentecost, in tongues of flame; symbolising, it would seem, not the

power of speech in foreign and unknown languages, but that of addressing the whole human brotherhood in

the heart's native language. These fathers, otherwise so apostolic, lacked Heaven's last and rarest attestation

of their office, the Tongue of Flame. They would have vainly soughthad they ever dreamed of seekingto

express the highest truths through the humblest medium of familiar words and images. Their voices came

down, afar and indistinctly, from the upper heights where they habitually dwelt.

Not improbably, it was to this latter class of ms that Mr. Dimmesdale, by many of his traits of character,

naturally belonged. To the high mountain peaks of faith and sanctity he would have climbed, had not the

tendency been thwarted by the burden, whatever it might be, of crime or anguish, beneath which it was his

doom to totter. It kept him down on a level with the lowest; him, the man of ethereal attributes, whose voice

the angels might else have listened to and answered! But this very burden it was that gave him sympathies so

intimate with the sinful brotherhood of mankind; so that his heart vibrated in unison with theirs, and received

their pain into itself and sent its own throb of pain through a thousand other hearts, in gushes of sad,

persuasive eloquence. Oftenest persuasive, but sometimes terrible! The people knew not the power that

moved them thus. They deemed the young clergyman a miracle of holiness. They fancied him the

mouthpiece of Heaven's messages of wisdom, and rebuke, and love. In their eyes, the very ground on which

he trod was sanctified. The virgins of his church grew pale around him, victims of a passion so imbued with

religious sentiment, that they imagined it to be all religion, and brought it openly, in their white bosoms, as

their most acceptable sacrifice before the altar. The aged members of his flock, beholding Mr. Dimmesdale's

frame so feeble, while they were themselves so rugged in their infirmity, believed that he would go

heavenward before them, and enjoined it upon their children that their old bones should be buried close to

their young pastor's holy grave. And all this time, perchance, when poor Mr. Dimmesdale was thinking of his

grave, he questioned with himself whether the grass would ever grow on it, because an accursed thing must

It is inconceivable, the agony with which this public veneration tortured him. It was his genuine impulse to

adore the truth, and to reckon all things shadowlike, and utterly devoid of weight or value, that had not its

divine essence as the life within their life. Then what was he?a substance?or the dimmest of all

shadows? He longed to speak out from his own pulpit at the full height of his voice, and tell the people what

he was. "I, whom you behold in these black garments of the priesthoodI, who ascend the sacred desk, and

turn my pale face heavenward, taking upon myself to hold communion in your behalf with the Most High

OmniscienceI, in whose daily life you discern the sanctity of EnochI, whose footsteps, as you suppose,

leave a gleam along my earthly track, whereby the Pilgrims that shall come after me may be guided to the

regions of the blestI, who have laid the hand of baptism upon your childrenI, who have breathed the

parting prayer over your dying friends, to whom the Amen sounded faintly from a world which they had

quittedI, your pastor, whom you so reverence and trust, am utterly a pollution and a lie!"

More than once, Mr. Dimmesdale had gone into the pulpit, with a purpose never to come down its steps until

he should have spoken words like the above. More than once he had cleared his throat, and drawn in the long,

deep, and tremulous breath, which, when sent forth again, would come burdened with the black secret of his

soul. More than oncenay, more than a hundred timeshe had actually spoken! Spoken! But how? He had

told his hearers that he was altogether vile, a viler companion of the vilest, the worst of sinners, an

abomination, a thing of unimaginable iniquity, and that the only wonder was that they did not see his

wretched body shrivelled up before their eyes by the burning wrath of the Almighty! Could there be plainer

speech than this? Would not the people start up in their seats, by a simultaneous impulse, and tear him down

out of the pulpit which he defiled? Not so, indeed! They heard it all, and did but reverence him the more.

They little guessed what deadly purport lurked in those selfcondemning words. "The godly youth!" said

they among themselves. "The saint on earth! Alas! if he discern such sinfulness in his own white soul, what

horrid spectacle would he behold in thine or mine!" The minister well knewsubtle, but remorseful

hypocrite that he was!the light in which his vague confession would be viewed. He had striven to put a

cheat upon himself by making the avowal of a guilty conscience, but had gained only one other sin, and a

selfacknowledged shame, without the momentary relief of being selfdeceived. He had spoken the very

truth, and transformed it into the veriest falsehood. And yet, by the constitution of his nature, he loved the

truth, and loathed the lie, as few men ever did. Therefore, above all things else, he loathed his miserable self!

His inward trouble drove him to practices more in accordance with the old, corrupted faith of Rome than with

the better light of the church in which he had been born and bred. In Mr. Dimmesdale's secret closet, under

lock and key, there was a bloody scourge. Oftentimes, this Protestant and Puritan divine had plied it on his

own shoulders, laughing bitterly at himself the while, and smiting so much the more pitilessly because of that

bitter laugh. It was his custom, too, as it has been that of many other pious Puritans, to fastnot however,

like them, in order to purify the body, and render it the fitter medium of celestial illuminationbut

rigorously, and until his knees trembled beneath him, as an act of penance. He kept vigils, likewise, night

after night, sometimes in utter darkness, sometimes with a glimmering lamp, and sometimes, viewing his

own face in a lookingglass, by the most powerful light which he could throw upon it. He thus typified the

constant introspection wherewith he tortured, but could not purify himself. In these lengthened vigils, his

brain often reeled, and visions seemed to flit before him; perhaps seen doubtfully, and by a faint light of their

own, in the remote dimness of the chamber, or more vividly and close beside him, within the lookingglass.

Now it was a herd of diabolic shapes, that grinned and mocked at the pale minister, and beckoned him away

with them; now a group of shining angels, who flew upward heavily, as sorrowladen, but grew more

ethereal as they rose. Now came the dead friends of his youth, and his whitebearded father, with a saintlike

frown, and his mother turning her face away as she passed by Ghost of a motherthinnest fantasy of a

mothermethinks she might yet have thrown a pitying glance towards her son! And now, through the

chamber which these spectral thoughts had made so ghastly, glided Hester Prynne leading along little Pearl,

in her scarlet garb, and pointing her forefinger, first at the scarlet letter on her bosom, and then at the

None of these visions ever quite deluded him. At any moment, by an effort of his will, he could discern

substances through their misty lack of substance, and convince himself that they were not solid in their

nature, like yonder table of carved oak, or that big, square, leatherbound and brazenclasped volume of

divinity. But, for all that, they were, in one sense, the truest and most substantial things which the poor

minister now dealt with. It is the unspeakable misery of a life so false as his, that it steals the pith and

substance out of whatever realities there are around us, and which were meant by Heaven to be the spirit's joy

and nutriment. To the untrue man, the whole universe is falseit is impalpableit shrinks to nothing within

his grasp. And he himself in so far as he shows himself in a false light, becomes a shadow, or, indeed, ceases

to exist. The only truth that continued to give Mr. Dimmesdale a real existence on this earth was the anguish

in his inmost soul, and the undissembled expression of it in his aspect. Had he once found power to smile,

On one of those ugly nights, which we have faintly hinted at, but forborne to picture forth, the minister

started from his chair. A new thought had struck him. There might be a moment's peace in it. Attiring himself

with as much care as if it had been for public worship, and precisely in the same manner, he stole softly down

Walking in the shadow of a dream, as it were, and perhaps actually under the influence of a species of

somnambulism, Mr. Dimmesdale reached the spot where, now so long since, Hester Prynne had lived through

her first hours of public ignominy. The same platform or scaffold, black and weatherstained with the storm

or sunshine of seven long years, and footworn, too, with the tread of many culprits who had since ascended

it, remained standing beneath the balcony of the meetinghouse. The minister went up the steps.

It was an obscure night in early May. An unwearied pall of cloud muffled the whole expanse of sky from

zenith to horizon. If the same multitude which had stood as eyewitnesses while Hester Prynne sustained her

punishment could now have been summoned forth, they would have discerned no face above the platform nor

hardly the outline of a human shape, in the dark grey of the midnight. But the town was all asleep. There was

no peril of discovery. The minister might stand there, if it so pleased him, until morning should redden in the

east, without other risk than that the dank and chill night air would creep into his frame, and stiffen his joints

with rheumatism, and clog his throat with catarrh and cough; thereby defrauding the expectant audience of

tomorrow's prayer and sermon. No eye could see him, save that everwakeful one which had seen him in

his closet, wielding the bloody scourge. Why, then, had he come hither? Was it but the mockery of

penitence? A mockery, indeed, but in which his soul trifled with itself! A mockery at which angels blushed

and wept, while fiends rejoiced with jeering laughter! He had been driven hither by the impulse of that

Remorse which dogged him everywhere, and whose own sister and closely linked companion was that

Cowardice which invariably drew him back, with her tremulous gripe, just when the other impulse had

hurried him to the verge of a disclosure. Poor, miserable man! what right had infirmity like his to burden

itself with crime? Crime is for the ironnerved, who have their choice either to endure it, or, if it press too

hard, to exert their fierce and savage strength for a good purpose, and fling it off at once! This feeble and

most sensitive of spirits could do neither, yet continually did one thing or another, which intertwined, in the

And thus, while standing on the scaffold, in this vain show of expiation, Mr. Dimmesdale was overcome with

a great horror of mind, as if the universe were gazing at a scarlet token on his naked breast, right over his

heart. On that spot, in very truth, there was, and there had long been, the gnawing and poisonous tooth of

bodily pain. Without any effort of his will, or power to restrain himself, he shrieked aloud: an outcry that

went pealing through the night, and was beaten back from one house to another, and reverberated from the

hills in the background; as if a company of devils, detecting so much misery and terror in it, had made a

"It is done!" muttered the minister, covering his face with his hands. "The whole town will awake and hurry

But it was not so. The shriek had perhaps sounded with a far greater power, to his own startled ears, than it

actually possessed. The town did not awake; or, if it did, the drowsy slumberers mistook the cry either for

something frightful in a dream, or for the noise of witches, whose voices, at that period, were often heard to

pass over the settlements or lonely cottages, as they rode with Satan through the air. The clergyman,

therefore, hearing no symptoms of disturbance, uncovered his eyes and looked about him. At one of the

chamberwindows of Governor Bellingham's mansion, which stood at some distance, on the line of another

street, he beheld the appearance of the old magistrate himself with a lamp in his hand a white nightcap on

his head, and a long white gown enveloping his figure. He looked like a ghost evoked unseasonably from the

grave. The cry had evidently startled him. At another window of the same house, moreover appeared old

Mistress Hibbins, the Governor's sister, also with a lamp, which even thus far off revealed the expression of

her sour and discontented face. She thrust forth her head from the lattice, and looked anxiously upward

Beyond the shadow of a doubt, this venerable witchlady had heard Mr. Dimmesdale's outcry, and

interpreted it, with its multitudinous echoes and reverberations, as the clamour of the fiends and nighthags,

Detecting the gleam of Governor Bellingham's lamp, the old lady quickly extinguished her own, and

vanished. Possibly, she went up among the clouds. The minister saw nothing further of her motions. The

magistrate, after a wary observation of the darknessinto which, nevertheless, he could see but little further

The minister grew comparatively calm. His eyes, however, were soon greeted by a little glimmering light,

which, at first a long way off was approaching up the street. It threw a gleam of recognition, on here a post,

and there a garden fence, and here a latticed windowpane, and there a pump, with its full trough of water,

and here again an arched door of oak, with an iron knocker, and a rough log for the doorstep. The Reverend

Mr. Dimmesdale noted all these minute particulars, even while firmly convinced that the doom of his

existence was stealing onward, in the footsteps which he now heard; and that the gleam of the lantern would

fall upon him in a few moments more, and reveal his longhidden secret. As the light drew nearer, be beheld,

within its illuminated circle, his brother clergymanor, to speak more accurately, his professional father, as

well as highly valued friendthe Reverend Mr. Wilson, who, as Mr. Dimmesdale now conjectured, had been

praying at the bedside of some dying man. And so he had. The good old minister came freshly from the

deathchamber of Governor Winthrop, who had passed from earth to heaven within that very hour. And now

surrounded, like the saintlike personage of olden times, with a radiant halo, that glorified him amid this

gloomy night of sinas if the departed Governor had left him an inheritance of his glory, or as if he had

caught upon himself the distant shine of the celestial city, while looking thitherward to see the triumphant

pilgrim pass within its gatesnow, in short, good Father Wilson was moving homeward, aiding his footsteps

with a lighted lantern! The glimmer of this luminary suggested the above conceits to Mr. Dimmesdale, who

As the Reverend Mr. Wilson passed beside the scaffold, closely muffling his Geneva cloak about him with

one arm, and holding the lantern before his breast with the other, the minister could hardly restrain himself

"A good evening to you, venerable Father Wilson. Come up hither, I pray you, and pass a pleasant hour with

Good Heavens! Had Mr. Dimmesdale actually spoken? For one instant he believed that these words had

passed his lips. But they were uttered only within his imagination. The venerable Father Wilson continued to

step slowly onward, looking carefully at the muddy pathway before his feet, and never once turning his head

towards the guilty platform. When the light of the glimmering lantern had faded quite away, the minister

discovered, by the faintness which came over him, that the last few moments had been a crisis of terrible

anxiety, although his mind had made an involuntary effort to relieve itself by a kind of lurid playfulness.

Shortly afterwards, the like grisly sense of the humorous again stole in among the solemn phantoms of his

thought. He felt his limbs growing stiff with the unaccustomed chilliness of the night, and doubted whether

he should be able to descend the steps of the scaffold. Morning would break and find him there The

neighbourhood would begin to rouse itself. The earliest riser, coming forth in the dim twilight, would

perceive a vaguelydefined figure aloft on the place of shame; and halfcrazed betwixt alarm and curiosity,

would go knocking from door to door, summoning all the people to behold the ghostas he needs must

think itof some defunct transgressor. A dusky tumult would flap its wings from one house to another.

Thenthe morning light still waxing strongerold patriarchs would rise up in great haste, each in his

flannel gown, and matronly dames, without pausing to put off their nightgear. The whole tribe of decorous

personages, who had never heretofore been seen with a single hair of their heads awry, would start into public

view with the disorder of a nightmare in their aspects. Old Governor Bellingham would come grimly forth,

with his King James' ruff fastened askew, and Mistress Hibbins, with some twigs of the forest clinging to her

skirts, and looking sourer than ever, as having hardly got a wink of sleep after her night ride; and good Father

Wilson too, after spending half the night at a deathbed, and liking ill to be disturbed, thus early, out of his

dreams about the glorified saints. Hither, likewise, would come the elders and deacons of Mr. Dimmesdale's

church, and the young virgins who so idolized their minister, and had made a shrine for him in their white

bosoms, which now, bythebye, in their hurry and confusion, they would scantly have given themselves

time to cover with their kerchiefs. All people, in a word, would come stumbling over their thresholds, and

turning up their amazed and horrorstricken visages around the scaffold. Whom would they discern there,

with the red eastern light upon his brow? Whom, but the Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, halffrozen to death,

Carried away by the grotesque horror of this picture, the minister, unawares, and to his own infinite alarm,

burst into a great peal of laughter. It was immediately responded to by a light, airy, childish laugh, in which,

with a thrill of the heartbut he knew not whether of exquisite pain, or pleasure as acutehe recognised the

"Pearl! Little Pearl!" cried he, after a moment's pause; then, suppressing his voice"Hester! Hester Prynne!

"Yes; it is Hester Prynne!" she replied, in a tone of surprise; and the minister heard her footsteps approaching

from the sidewalk, along which she had been passing. "It is I, and my little Pearl."

"I have been watching at a deathbed," answered Hester Prynne "at Governor Winthrop's deathbed, and

"Come up hither, Hester, thou and Little Pearl," said the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale. "Ye have both been here

before, but I was not with you. Come up hither once again, and we will stand all three together."

She silently ascended the steps, and stood on the platform, holding little Pearl by the hand. The minister felt

for the child's other hand, and took it. The moment that he did so, there came what seemed a tumultuous rush

of new life, other life than his own pouring like a torrent into his heart, and hurrying through all his veins, as

if the mother and the child were communicating their vital warmth to his halftorpid system. The three

"Nay; not so, my little Pearl," answered the minister; for, with the new energy of the moment, all the dread of

public exposure, that had so long been the anguish of his life, had returned upon him; and he was already

trembling at the conjunction in whichwith a strange joy, neverthelesshe now found himself"not so,

my child. I shall, indeed, stand with thy mother and thee one other day, but not tomorrow."

Pearl laughed, and attempted to pull away her hand. But the minister held it fast.

"But wilt thou promise," asked Pearl, "to take my hand, and mother's hand, tomorrow noontide?"

"At the great judgment day," whispered the minister; and, strangely enough, the sense that he was a

professional teacher of the truth impelled him to answer the child so. "Then, and there, before the

judgmentseat, thy mother, and thou, and I must stand together. But the daylight of this world shall not see

But before Mr. Dimmesdale had done speaking, a light gleamed far and wide over all the muffled sky. It was

doubtless caused by one of those meteors, which the nightwatcher may so often observe burning out to

waste, in the vacant regions of the atmosphere. So powerful was its radiance, that it thoroughly illuminated

the dense medium of cloud betwixt the sky and earth. The great vault brightened, like the dome of an

immense lamp. It showed the familiar scene of the street with the distinctness of midday, but also with the

awfulness that is always imparted to familiar objects by an unaccustomed light The wooden houses, with

their jutting storeys and quaint gablepeaks; the doorsteps and thresholds with the early grass springing up

about them; the gardenplots, black with freshlyturned earth; the wheeltrack, little worn, and even in the

marketplace margined with green on either sideall were visible, but with a singularity of aspect that

seemed to give another moral interpretation to the things of this world than they had ever borne before. And

there stood the minister, with his hand over his heart; and Hester Prynne, with the embroidered letter

glimmering on her bosom; and little Pearl, herself a symbol, and the connecting link between those two. They

stood in the noon of that strange and solemn splendour, as if it were the light that is to reveal all secrets, and

There was witchcraft in little Pearl's eyes; and her face, as she glanced upward at the minister, wore that

naughty smile which made its expression frequently so elvish. She withdrew her hand from Mr.

Dimmesdale's, and pointed across the street. But he clasped both his hands over his breast, and cast his eyes

Nothing was more common, in those days, than to interpret all meteoric appearances, and other natural

phenomena that occured with less regularity than the rise and set of sun and moon, as so many revelations

from a supernatural source. Thus, a blazing spear, a sword of flame, a bow, or a sheaf of arrows seen in the

midnight sky, prefigured Indian warfare. Pestilence was known to have been foreboded by a shower of

crimson light. We doubt whether any marked event, for good or evil, ever befell New England, from its

settlement down to revolutionary times, of which the inhabitants had not been previously warned by some

spectacle of its nature. Not seldom, it had been seen by multitudes. Oftener, however, its credibility rested on

the faith of some lonely eyewitness, who beheld the wonder through the coloured, magnifying, and distorted

medium of his imagination, and shaped it more distinctly in his afterthought. It was, indeed, a majestic idea

that the destiny of nations should be revealed, in these awful hieroglyphics, on the cope of heaven. A scroll so

wide might not be deemed too expensive for Providence to write a people's doom upon. The belief was a

favourite one with our forefathers, as betokening that their infant commonwealth was under a celestial

guardianship of peculiar intimacy and strictness. But what shall we say, when an individual discovers a

revelation addressed to himself alone, on the same vast sheet of record. In such a case, it could only be the

symptom of a highly disordered mental state, when a man, rendered morbidly selfcontemplative by long,

intense, and secret pain, had extended his egotism over the whole expanse of nature, until the firmament itself

We impute it, therefore, solely to the disease in his own eye and heart that the minister, looking upward to the

zenith, beheld there the appearance of an immense letterthe letter Amarked out in lines of dull red light.

Not but the meteor may have shown itself at that point, burning duskily through a veil of cloud, but with no

such shape as his guilty imagination gave it, or, at least, with so little definiteness, that another's guilt might

There was a singular circumstance that characterised Mr. Dimmesdale's psychological state at this moment.

All the time that he gazed upward to the zenith, he was, nevertheless, perfectly aware that little Pearl was

hinting her finger towards old Roger Chillingworth, who stood at no great distance from the scaffold. The

minister appeared to see him, with the same glance that discerned the miraculous letter. To his feature as to

all other objects, the meteoric light imparted a new expression; or it might well be that the physician was not

careful then, as at all other times, to hide the malevolence with which he looked upon his victim. Certainly, if

the meteor kindled up the sky, and disclosed the earth, with an awfulness that admonished Hester Prynne and

the clergyman of the day of judgment, then might Roger Chillingworth have passed with them for the

archfiend, standing there with a smile and scowl, to claim his own. So vivid was the expression, or so

intense the minister's perception of it, that it seemed still to remain painted on the darkness after the meteor

had vanished, with an effect as if the street and all things else were at once annihilated.

"Who is that man, Hester?" gasped Mr. Dimmesdale, overcome with terror. "I shiver at him! Dost thou know

"I tell thee, my soul shivers at him!" muttered the minister again. "Who is he? Who is he? Canst thou do

"Quickly, then, child!" said the minister, bending his ear close to her lips. "Quickly, and as low as thou canst

Pearl mumbled something into his ear that sounded, indeed, like human language, but was only such

gibberish as children may be heard amusing themselves with by the hour together. At all events, if it involved

any secret information in regard to old Roger Chillingworth, it was in a tongue unknown to the erudite

clergyman, and did but increase the bewilderment of his mind. The elvish child then laughed aloud.

"Thou wast not bold!thou wast not true!" answered the child. "Thou wouldst not promise to take my hand,

"Worthy sir," answered the physician, who had now advanced to the foot of the platform"pious Master

Dimmesdale! can this be you? Well, well, indeed! We men of study, whose heads are in our books, have need

to be straitly looked after! We dream in our waking moments, and walk in our sleep. Come, good sir, and my

"Verily, and in good faith," answered Roger Chillingworth, "I knew nothing of the matter. I had spent the

better part of the night at the bedside of the worshipful Governor Winthrop, doing what my poor skill might

to give him ease. He, going home to a better world, I, likewise, was on my way homeward, when this light

shone out. Come with me, I beseech you, Reverend sir, else you will be poorly able to do Sabbath duty

tomorrow. Aha! see now how they trouble the brainthese books!these books! You should study less,

good sir, and take a little pastime, or these night whimsies will grow upon you."

With a chill despondency, like one awakening, all nerveless, from an ugly dream, he yielded himself to the

The next day, however, being the Sabbath, he preached a discourse which was held to be the richest and most

powerful, and the most replete with heavenly influences, that had ever proceeded from his lips. Souls, it is

said, more souls than one, were brought to the truth by the efficacy of that sermon, and vowed within

themselves to cherish a holy gratitude towards Mr. Dimmesdale throughout the long hereafter. But as he

came down the pulpit steps, the greybearded sexton met him, holding up a black glove, which the minister

"It was found," said the Sexton, "this morning on the scaffold where evildoers are set up to public shame.

Satan dropped it there, I take it, intending a scurrilous jest against your reverence. But, indeed, he was blind

"Thank you, my good friend," said the minister, gravely, but startled at heart; for so confused was his

remembrance, that he had almost brought himself to look at the events of the past night as visionary.

"And, since Satan saw fit to steal it, your reverence must needs handle him without gloves henceforward,"

remarked the old sexton, grimly smiling. "But did your reverence hear of the portent that was seen last night?

a great red letter in the skythe letter A, which we interpret to stand for Angel. For, as our good Governor

Winthrop was made an angel this past night, it was doubtless held fit that there should be some notice

In her late singular interview with Mr. Dimmesdale, Hester Prynne was shocked at the condition to which she

found the clergyman reduced. His nerve seemed absolutely destroyed. His moral force was abased into more

than childish weakness. It grovelled helpless on the ground, even while his intellectual faculties retained their

pristine strength, or had perhaps acquired a morbid energy, which disease only could have given them. With

her knowledge of a train of circumstances hidden from all others, she could readily infer that, besides the

legitimate action of his own conscience, a terrible machinery had been brought to bear, and was still

operating, on Mr. Dimmesdale's wellbeing and repose. Knowing what this poor fallen man had once been,

her whole soul was moved by the shuddering terror with which he had appealed to herthe outcast

womanfor support against his instinctively discovered enemy. She decided, moreover, that he had a right

to her utmost aid. Little accustomed, in her long seclusion from society, to measure her ideas of right and

wrong by any standard external to herself, Hester sawor seemed to seethat there lay a responsibility

upon her in reference to the clergyman, which she owned to no other, nor to the whole world besides. The

links that united her to the rest of humankindlinks of flowers, or silk, or gold, or whatever the

materialhad all been broken. Here was the iron link of mutual crime, which neither he nor she could break.

Hester Prynne did not now occupy precisely the same position in which we beheld her during the earlier

periods of her ignominy. Years had come and gone. Pearl was now seven years old. Her mother, with the

scarlet letter on her breast, glittering in its fantastic embroidery, had long been a familiar object to the

townspeople. As is apt to be the case when a person stands out in any prominence before the community, and,

at the same time, interferes neither with public nor individual interests and convenience, a species of general

regard had ultimately grown up in reference to Hester Prynne. It is to the credit of human nature that, except

where its selfishness is brought into play, it loves more readily than it hates. Hatred, by a gradual and quiet

process, will even be transformed to love, unless the change be impeded by a continually new irritation of the

original feeling of hostility. In this matter of Hester Prynne there was neither irritation nor irksomeness. She

never battled with the public, but submitted uncomplainingly to its worst usage; she made no claim upon it in

requital for what she suffered; she did not weigh upon its sympathies. Then, also, the blameless purity of her

life during all these years in which she had been set apart to infamy was reckoned largely in her favour. With

nothing now to lose, in the sight of mankind, and with no hope, and seemingly no wish, of gaining anything,

it could only be a genuine regard for virtue that had brought back the poor wanderer to its paths.

It was perceived, too, that while Hester never put forward even the humblest title to share in the world's

privilegesfurther than to breathe the common air and earn daily bread for little Pearl and herself by the

faithful labour of her handsshe was quick to acknowledge her sisterhood with the race of man whenever

benefits were to be conferred. None so ready as she to give of her little substance to every demand of poverty,

even though the bitterhearted pauper threw back a gibe in requital of the food brought regularly to his door,

or the garments wrought for him by the fingers that could have embroidered a monarch's robe. None so

selfdevoted as Hester when pestilence stalked through the town. In all seasons of calamity, indeed, whether

general or of individuals, the outcast of society at once found her place. She came, not as a guest, but as a

rightful inmate, into the household that was darkened by trouble, as if its gloomy twilight were a medium in

which she was entitled to hold intercourse with her fellowcreature There glimmered the embroidered letter,

with comfort in its unearthly ray. Elsewhere the token of sin, it was the taper of the sick chamber. It had even

thrown its gleam, in the sufferer's bard extremity, across the verge of time. It had shown him where to set his

foot, while the light of earth was fast becoming dim, and ere the light of futurity could reach him. In such

emergencies Hester's nature showed itself warm and richa wellspring of human tenderness, unfailing to

every real demand, and inexhaustible by the largest. Her breast, with its badge of shame, was but the softer

pillow for the head that needed one. She was selfordained a Sister of Mercy, or, we may rather say, the

world's heavy hand had so ordained her, when neither the world nor she looked forward to this result. The

letter was the symbol of her calling. Such helpfulness was found in herso much power to do, and power to

sympathisethat many people refused to interpret the scarlet A by its original signification. They said that it

It was only the darkened house that could contain her. When sunshine came again, she was not there. Her

shadow had faded across the threshold. The helpful inmate had departed, without one backward glance to

gather up the meed of gratitude, if any were in the hearts of those whom she had served so zealously. Meeting

them in the street, she never raised her head to receive their greeting. If they were resolute to accost her, she

laid her finger on the scarlet letter, and passed on. This might be pride, but was so like humility, that it

produced all the softening influence of the latter quality on the public mind. The public is despotic in its

temper; it is capable of denying common justice when too strenuously demanded as a right; but quite as

frequently it awards more than justice, when the appeal is made, as despots love to have it made, entirely to

its generosity. Interpreting Hester Prynne's deportment as an appeal of this nature, society was inclined to

show its former victim a more benign countenance than she cared to be favoured with, or, perchance, than she

The rulers, and the wise and learned men of the community, were longer in acknowledging the influence of

Hester's good qualities than the people. The prejudices which they shared in common with the latter were

fortified in themselves by an iron framework of reasoning, that made it a far tougher labour to expel them.

Day by day, nevertheless, their sour and rigid wrinkles were relaxing into something which, in the due course

of years, might grow to be an expression of almost benevolence. Thus it was with the men of rank, on whom

their eminent position imposed the guardianship of the public morals. Individuals in private life, meanwhile,

had quite forgiven Hester Prynne for her frailty; nay, more, they had begun to look upon the scarlet letter as

the token, not of that one sin for which she had borne so long and dreary a penance, but of her many good

deeds since. "Do you see that woman with the embroidered badge?" they would say to strangers. "It is our

Hesterthe town's own Hesterwho is so kind to the poor, so helpful to the sick, so comfortable to the

afflicted!" Then, it is true, the propensity of human nature to tell the very worst of itself, when embodied in

the person of another, would constrain them to whisper the black scandal of bygone years. It was none the

less a fact, however, that in the eyes of the very men who spoke thus, the scarlet letter had the effect of the

cross on a nun's bosom. It imparted to the wearer a kind of sacredness, which enabled her to walk securely

amid all peril. Had she fallen among thieves, it would have kept her safe. It was reported, and believed by

many, that an Indian had drawn his arrow against the badge, and that the missile struck it, and fell harmless to

The effect of the symbolor rather, of the position in respect to society that was indicated by iton the

mind of Hester Prynne herself was powerful and peculiar. All the light and graceful foliage of her character

had been withered up by this redhot brand, and had long ago fallen away, leaving a bare and harsh outline,

which might have been repulsive had she possessed friends or companions to be repelled by it. Even the

attractiveness of her person had undergone a similar change. It might be partly owing to the studied austerity

of her dress, and partly to the lack of demonstration in her manners. It was a sad transformation, too, that her

rich and luxuriant hair had either been cut off, or was so completely hidden by a cap, that not a shining lock

of it ever once gushed into the sunshine. It was due in part to all these causes, but still more to something

else, that there seemed to be no longer anything in Hester's face for Love to dwell upon; nothing in Hester's

form, though majestic and statue like, that Passion would ever dream of clasping in its embrace; nothing in

Hester's bosom to make it ever again the pillow of Affection. Some attribute had departed from her, the

permanence of which had been essential to keep her a woman. Such is frequently the fate, and such the stern

development, of the feminine character and person, when the woman has encountered, and lived through, an

experience of peculiar severity. If she be all tenderness, she will die. If she survive, the tenderness will either

be crushed out of her, orand the outward semblance is the samecrushed so deeply into her heart that it

can never show itself more. The latter is perhaps the truest theory. She who has once been a woman, and

ceased to be so, might at any moment become a woman again, if there were only the magic touch to effect the

transformation. We shall see whether Hester Prynne were ever afterwards so touched and so transfigured.

Much of the marble coldness of Hester's impression was to be attributed to the circumstance that her life had

turned, in a great measure, from passion and feeling to thought. Standing alone in the worldalone, as to any

dependence on society, and with little Pearl to be guided and protectedalone, and hopeless of retrieving her

position, even had she not scorned to consider it desirableshe cast away the fragment a broken chain. The

world's law was no law for her mind. It was an age in which the human intellect, newly emancipated, had

taken a more active and a wider range than for many centuries before. Men of the sword had overthrown

nobles and kings. Men bolder than these had overthrown and rearrangednot actually, but within the sphere

of theory, which was their most real abodethe whole system of ancient prejudice, wherewith was linked

much of ancient principle. Hester Prynne imbibed this spirit. She assumed a freedom of speculation, then

common enough on the other side of the Atlantic, but which our forefathers, had they known it, would have

held to be a deadlier crime than that stigmatised by the scarlet letter. In her lonesome cottage, by the

seashore, thoughts visited her such as dared to enter no other dwelling in New England; shadowy guests, that

would have been as perilous as demons to their entertainer, could they have been seen so much as knocking

It is remarkable that persons who speculate the most boldly often conform with the most perfect quietude to

the external regulations of society. The thought suffices them, without investing itself in the flesh and blood

of action. So it seemed to be with Hester. Yet, had little Pearl never come to her from the spiritual world, it

might have been far otherwise. Then she might have come down to us in history, hand in hand with Ann

Hutchinson, as the foundress of a religious sect. She might, in one of her phases, have been a prophetess. She

might, and not improbably would, have suffered death from the stern tribunals of the period, for attempting to

undermine the foundations of the Puritan establishment. But, in the education of her child, the mother's

enthusiasm thought had something to wreak itself upon. Providence, in the person of this little girl, had

assigned to Hester's charge, the germ and blossom of womanhood, to be cherished and developed amid a host

of difficulties. Everything was against her. The world was hostile. The child's own nature had something

wrong in it which continually betokened that she had been born amissthe effluence of her mother's lawless

passionand often impelled Hester to ask, in bitterness of heart, whether it were for ill or good that the poor

Indeed, the same dark question often rose into her mind with reference to the whole race of womanhood. Was

existence worth accepting even to the happiest among them? As concerned her own individual existence, she

as settled. A tendency to speculation, though it may keep women quiet, as it does man, yet makes her sad.

She discerns, it may be, such a hopeless task before her. As a first step, the whole system of society is to be

torn down and built up anew. Then the very nature of the opposite sex, or its long hereditary habit, which has

become like nature, is to be essentially modified before woman can be allowed to assume what seems a fair

and suitable position. Finally, all other difficulties being obviated, woman cannot take advantage of these

preliminary reforms until she herself shall have undergone a still mightier change, in which, perhaps, the

ethereal essence, wherein she has her truest life, will be found to have evaporated. A woman never

overcomes these problems by any exercise of thought. They are not to be solved, or only in one way. If her

heart chance to come uppermost, they vanish. Thus Hester Prynne, whose heart had lost its regular and

healthy throb, wandered without a clue in the dark labyrinth of mind; now turned aside by an insurmountable

precipice; now starting back from a deep chasm. There was wild and ghastly scenery all around her, and a

home and comfort nowhere. At times a fearful doubt strove to possess her soul, whether it were not better to

send Pearl at once to Heaven, and go herself to such futurity as Eternal Justice should provide.

The scarlet letter had not done its office. Now, however, her interview with the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale,

on the night of his vigil, had given her a new theme of reflection, and held up to her an object that appeared

worthy of any exertion and sacrifice for its attainment. She had witnessed the intense misery beneath which

the minister struggled, or, to speak more accurately, had ceased to struggle. She saw that he stood on the

verge of lunacy, if he had not already stepped across it. It was impossible to doubt that, whatever painful

efficacy there might be in the secret sting of remorse, a deadlier venom had been infused into it by the hand

that proffered relief. A secret enemy had been continually by his side, under the semblance of a friend and

helper, and had availed himself of the opportunities thus afforded for tampering with the delicate springs of

Mr. Dimmesdale's nature. Hester could not but ask herself whether there had not originally been a defect of

truth, courage, and loyalty on her own part, in allowing the minister to be thrown into position where so much

evil was to be foreboded and nothing auspicious to be hoped. Her only justification lay in the fact that she had

been able to discern no method of rescuing him from a blacker ruin than had overwhelmed herself except by

acquiescing in Roger Chillingworth's scheme of disguise. Under that impulse she had made her choice, and

had chosen, as it now appeared, the more wretched alternative of the two. She determined to redeem her error

so far as it might yet be possible. Strengthened by years of hard and solemn trial, she felt herself no longer so

inadequate to cope with Roger Chillingworth as on that night, abased by sin and halfmaddened by the

ignominy that was still new, when they had talked together in the prisonchamber. She had climbed her way

since then to a higher point. The old man, on the other hand, had brought himself nearer to her level, or,

In fine, Hester Prynne resolved to meet her former husband, and do what might be in her power for the rescue

of the victim on whom he had so evidently set his gripe. The occasion was not long to seek. One afternoon,

walking with Pearl in a retired part of the peninsula, she beheld the old physician with a basket on one arm

and a staff in the other hand, stooping along the ground in quest of roots and herbs to concoct his medicine

Hester bade little Pearl run down to the margin of the water, and play with the shells and tangled seaweed,

until she should have talked awhile with yonder gatherer of herbs. So the child flew away like a bird, and,

making bare her small white feet went pattering along the moist margin of the sea. Here and there she came

to a full stop, ad peeped curiously into a pool, left by the retiring tide as a mirror for Pearl to see her face in.

Forth peeped at her, out of the pool, with dark, glistening curls around her head, and an elfsmile in her eyes,

the image of a little maid whom Pearl, having no other playmate, invited to take her hand and run a race with

her. But the visionary little maid on her part, beckoned likewise, as if to say"This is a better place; come

thou into the pool." And Pearl, stepping in midleg deep, beheld her own white feet at the bottom; while, out

of a still lower depth, came the gleam of a kind of fragmentary smile, floating to and fro in the agitated water.

Meanwhile her mother had accosted the physician. "I would speak a word with you," said she"a word that

"Aha! and is it Mistress Hester that has a word for old Roger Chillingworth?" answered he, raising himself

from his stooping posture. "With all my heart! Why, mistress, I hear good tidings of you on all hands! No

longer ago than yestereve, a magistrate, a wise and godly man, was discoursing of your affairs, Mistress

Hester, and whispered me that there had been question concerning you in the council. It was debated whether

or no, with safety to the commonweal, yonder scarlet letter might be taken off your bosom. On my life,

Hester, I made my intreaty to the worshipful magistrate that it might be done forthwith."

"It lies not in the pleasure of the magistrates to take off the badge," calmly replied Hester. "Were I worthy to

be quit of it, it would fall away of its own nature, or be transformed into something that should speak a

"Nay, then, wear it, if it suit you better," rejoined he, "A woman must needs follow her own fancy touching

the adornment of her person. The letter is gaily embroidered, and shows right bravely on your bosom!"

All this while Hester had been looking steadily at the old man, and was shocked, as well as wondersmitten,

to discern what a change had been wrought upon him within the past seven years. It was not so much that he

had grown older; for though the traces of advancing life were visible he bore his age well, and seemed to

retain a wiry vigour and alertness. But the former aspect of an intellectual and studious man, calm and quiet,

which was what she best remembered in him, had altogether vanished, and been succeeded by a eager,

searching, almost fierce, yet carefully guarded look. It seemed to be his wish and purpose to mask this

expression with a smile, but the latter played him false, and flickered over his visage so derisively that the

spectator could see his blackness all the better for it. Ever and anon, too, there came a glare of red light out of

his eyes, as if the old man's soul were on fire and kept on smouldering duskily within his breast, until by

some casual puff of passion it was blown into a momentary flame. This he repressed as speedily as possible,

In a word, old Roger Chillingworth was a striking evidence of man's faculty of transforming himself into a

devil, if he will only, for a reasonable space of time, undertake a devil's office. This unhappy person had

effected such a transformation by devoting himself for seven years to the constant analysis of a heart full of

torture, and deriving his enjoyment thence, and adding fuel to those fiery tortures which he analysed and

The scarlet letter burned on Hester Prynne's bosom. Here was another ruin, the responsibility of which came

"What see you in my face," asked the physician, "that you look at it so earnestly?"

"Something that would make me weep, if there were any tears bitter enough for it," answered she. "But let it

"And what of him?" cried Roger Chillingworth, eagerly, as if he loved the topic, and were glad of an

opportunity to discuss it with the only person of whom he could make a confidant. "Not to hide the truth,

Mistress Hester, my thoughts happen just now to be busy with the gentleman. So speak freely and I will make

"When we last spake together," said Hester, "now seven years ago, it was your pleasure to extort a promise of

secrecy as touching the former relation betwixt yourself and me. As the life and good fame of yonder man

were in your hands there seemed no choice to me, save to be silent in accordance with your behest. Yet it was

not without heavy misgivings that I thus bound myself, for, having cast off all duty towards other human

beings, there remained a duty towards him, and something whispered me that I was betraying it in pledging

myself to keep your counsel. Since that day no man is so near to him as you. You tread behind his every

footstep. You are beside him, sleeping and waking. You search his thoughts. You burrow and rankle in his

heart! Your clutch is on his life, and you cause him to die daily a living death, and still he knows you not. In

permitting this I have surely acted a false part by the only man to whom the power was left me to be true!"

"What choice had you?" asked Roger Chillingworth. "My finger, pointed at this man, would have hurled him

"What evil have I done the man?" asked Roger Chillingworth again. "I tell thee, Hester Prynne, the richest fee

that ever physician earned from monarch could not have bought such care as I have wasted on this miserable

priest! But for my aid his life would have burned away in torments within the first two years after the

perpetration of his crime and thine. For, Hester, his spirit lacked the strength that could have borne up, as

thine has, beneath a burden like thy scarlet letter. Oh, I could reveal a goodly secret! But enough. What art

can do, I have exhausted on him. That he now breathes and creeps about on earth is owing all to me!"

"Yea, woman, thou sayest truly!" cried old Roger Chillingworth, letting the lurid fire of his heart blaze out

before her eyes. "Better had he died at once! Never did mortal suffer what this man has suffered. And all, all,

in the sight of his worst enemy! He has been conscious of me. He has felt an influence dwelling always upon

him like a curse. He knew, by some spiritual sensefor the Creator never made another being so sensitive as

thishe knew that no friendly hand was pulling at his heartstrings, and that an eye was looking curiously

into him, which sought only evil, and found it. But he knew not that the eye and hand were mine! With the

superstition common to his brotherhood, he fancied himself given over to a fiend, to be tortured with frightful

dreams and desperate thoughts, the sting of remorse and despair of pardon, as a foretaste of what awaits him

beyond the grave. But it was the constant shadow of my presence, the closest propinquity of the man whom

he had most vilely wronged, and who had grown to exist only by this perpetual poison of the direst revenge!

Yea, indeed, he did not err, there was a fiend at his elbow! A mortal man, with once a human heart, has

The unfortunate physician, while uttering these words, lifted his hands with a look of horror, as if he had

beheld some frightful shape, which he could not recognise, usurping the place of his own image in a glass. It

was one of those momentswhich sometimes occur only at the interval of yearswhen a man's moral

aspect is faithfully revealed to his mind's eye. Not improbably he had never before viewed himself as he did

"Hast thou not tortured him enough?" said Hester, noticing the old man's look. "Has he not paid thee all?"

"No, no! He has but increased the debt!" answered the physician, and as he proceeded, his manner lost its

fiercer characteristics, and subsided into gloom. "Dost thou remember me, Hester, as I was nine years agone?

Even then I was in the autumn of my days, nor was it the early autumn. But all my life had been made up of

earnest, studious, thoughtful, quiet years, bestowed faithfully for the increase of mine own knowledge, and

faithfully, too, though this latter object was but casual to the otherfaithfully for the advancement of human

welfare. No life had been more peaceful and innocent than mine; few lives so rich with benefits conferred.

Dost thou remember me? Was I not, though you might deem me cold, nevertheless a man thoughtful for

others, craving little for himselfkind, true, just and of constant, if not warm affections? Was I not all this?"

"And what am I now?" demanded he, looking into her face, and permitting the whole evil within him to be

written on his features. "I have already told thee what I ama fiend! Who made me so?"

"It was myself," cried Hester, shuddering. "It was I, not less than he. Why hast thou not avenged thyself on

"I have left thee to the scarlet letter," replied Roger Chillingworth. "If that has not avenged me, I can do no

"I judged no less," said the physician. "And now what wouldst thou with me touching this man?"

"I must reveal the secret," answered Hester, firmly. "He must discern thee in thy true character. What may be

the result I know not. But this long debt of confidence, due from me to him, whose bane and ruin I have been,

shall at length be paid. So far as concerns the overthrow or preservation of his fair fame and his earthly state,

and perchance his life, he is in my hands. Nor do Iwhom the scarlet letter has disciplined to truth, though it

be the truth of redhot iron entering into the soulnor do I perceive such advantage in his living any longer

a life of ghastly emptiness, that I shall stoop to implore thy mercy. Do with him as thou wilt! There is no

good for him, no good for me, no good for thee. There is no good for little Pearl. There is no path to guide us

"Woman, I could wellnigh pity thee," said Roger Chillingworth, unable to restrain a thrill of admiration too,

for there was a quality almost majestic in the despair which she expressed. "Thou hadst great elements.

Peradventure, hadst thou met earlier with a better love than mine, this evil had not been. I pity thee, for the

"And I thee," answered Hester Prynne, "for the hatred that has transformed a wise and just man to a fiend!

Wilt thou yet purge it out of thee, and be once more human? If not for his sake, then doubly for thine own!

Forgive, and leave his further retribution to the Power that claims it! I said, but now, that there could be no

good event for him, or thee, or me, who are here wandering together in this gloomy maze of evil, and

stumbling at every step over the guilt wherewith we have strewn our path. It is not so! There might be good

for thee, and thee alone, since thou hast been deeply wronged and hast it at thy will to pardon. Wilt thou give

"Peace, Hesterpeace!" replied the old man, with gloomy sternness"it is not granted me to pardon. I have

no such power as thou tellest me of. My old faith, long forgotten, comes back to me, and explains all that we

do, and all we suffer. By thy first step awry, thou didst plant the germ of evil; but since that moment it has all

been a dark necessity. Ye that have wronged me are not sinful, save in a kind of typical illusion; neither am I

fiendlike, who have snatched a fiend's office from his hands. It is our fate. Let the black flower blossom as it

He waved his hand, and betook himself again to his employment of gathering herbs.

So Roger Chillingwortha deformed old figure with a face that haunted men's memories longer than they

likedtook leave of Hester Prynne, and went stooping away along the earth. He gathered here and there a

herb, or grubbed up a root and put it into the basket on his arm. His gray beard almost touched the ground as

he crept onward. Hester gazed after him a little while, looking with a half fantastic curiosity to see whether

the tender grass of early spring would not be blighted beneath him and show the wavering track of his

footsteps, sere and brown, across its cheerful verdure. She wondered what sort of herbs they were which the

old man was so sedulous to gather. Would not the earth, quickened to an evil purpose by the sympathy of his

eye, greet him with poisonous shrubs of species hitherto unknown, that would start up under his fingers? Or

might it suffice him that every wholesome growth should be converted into something deleterious and

malignant at his touch? Did the sun, which shone so brightly everywhere else, really fall upon him? Or was

there, as it rather seemed, a circle of ominous shadow moving along with his deformity whichever way he

turned himself? And whither was he now going? Would he not suddenly sink into the earth, leaving a barren

and blasted spot, where, in due course of time, would be seen deadly nightshade, dogwood, henbane, and

whatever else of vegetable wickedness the climate could produce, all flourishing with hideous luxuriance? Or

would he spread bat's wings and flee away, looking so much the uglier the higher he rose towards heaven?

"Be it sin or no," said Hester Prynne, bitterly, as still she gazed after him, "I hate the man!"

She upbraided herself for the sentiment, but could not overcome or lessen it. Attempting to do so, she thought

of those longpast days in a distant land, when he used to emerge at eventide from the seclusion of his study

and sit down in the firelight of their home, and in the light of her nuptial smile. He needed to bask himself in

that smile, he said, in order that the chill of so many lonely hours among his books might be taken off the

scholar's heart. Such scenes had once appeared not otherwise than happy, but now, as viewed through the

dismal medium of her subsequent life, they classed themselves among her ugliest remembrances. She

marvelled how such scenes could have been! She marvelled how she could ever have been wrought upon to

marry him! She deemed in her crime most to be repented of, that she had ever endured and reciprocated the

lukewarm grasp of his hand, and had suffered the smile of her lips and eyes to mingle and melt into his own.

And it seemed a fouler offence committed by Roger Chillingworth than any which had since been done him,

that, in the time when her heart knew no better, he had persuaded her to fancy herself happy by his side.

"Yes, I hate him!" repeated Hester more bitterly than before. "He betrayed me! He has done me worse wrong

Let men tremble to win the hand of woman, unless they win along with it the utmost passion of her heart!

Else it may be their miserable fortune, as it was Roger Chillingworth's, when some mightier touch than their

own may have awakened all her sensibilities, to be reproached even for the calm content, the marble image of

happiness, which they will have imposed upon her as the warm reality. But Hester ought long ago to have

done with this injustice. What did it betoken? Had seven long years, under the torture of the scarlet letter,

The emotion of that brief space, while she stood gazing after the crooked figure of old Roger Chillingworth,

threw a dark light on Hester's state of mind, revealing much that she might not otherwise have acknowledged

Pearl, whose activity of spirit never flagged, had been at no loss for amusement while her mother talked with

the old gatherer of herbs. At first, as already told, she had flirted fancifully with her own image in a pool of

water, beckoning the phantom forth, andas it declined to ventureseeking a passage for herself into its

sphere of impalpable earth and unattainable sky. Soon finding, however, that either she or the image was

unreal, she turned elsewhere for better pastime. She made little boats out of birchbark, and

freighted them with snailshells, and sent out more ventures on the mighty deep than any merchant in New

England; but the larger part of them foundered near the shore. She seized a live horseshoe by the tail, and

made prize of several fivefingers, and laid out a jellyfish to melt in the warm sun. Then she took up the

white foam that streaked the line of the advancing tide, and threw it upon the breeze, scampering after it with

winged footsteps to catch the great snowflakes ere they fell. Perceiving a flock of beachbirds that fed and

fluttered along the shore, the naughty child picked up her apron full of pebbles, and, creeping from rock to

rock after these small seafowl, displayed remarkable dexterity in pelting them. One little gray bird, with a

white breast, Pearl was almost sure had been hit by a pebble, and fluttered away with a broken wing. But then

the elfchild sighed, and gave up her sport, because it grieved her to have done harm to a little being that was

Her final employment was to gather seaweed of various kinds, and make herself a scarf or mantle, and a

headdress, and thus assume the aspect of a little mermaid. She inherited her mother's gift for devising

drapery and costume. As the last touch to her mermaid's garb, Pearl took some eelgrass and imitated, as best

she could, on her own bosom the decoration with which she was so familiar on her mother's. A letterthe

letter Abut freshly green instead of scarlet. The child bent her chin upon her breast, and contemplated this

device with strange interest, even as if the one only thing for which she had been sent into the world was to

Just then she heard her mother's voice, and, flitting along as lightly as one of the little seabirds, appeared

before Hester Prynne dancing, laughing, and pointing her finger to the ornament upon her bosom.

"My little Pearl," said Hester, after a moment's silence, "the green letter, and on thy childish bosom, has no

purport. But dost thou know, my child, what this letter means which thy mother is doomed to wear?"

"Yes, mother," said the child. "It is the great letter A. Thou hast taught me in the hornbook. "

Hester looked steadily into her little face; but though there was that singular expression which she had so

often remarked in her black eyes, she could not satisfy herself whether Pearl really attached any meaning to

"Truly do I!" answered Pearl, looking brightly into her mother's face. "It is for the same reason that the

"And what reason is that?" asked Hester, half smiling at the absurd incongruity of the child's observation; but

"Nay, mother, I have told all I know," said Pearl, more seriously than she was wont to speak. "Ask yonder old

man whom thou hast been talking with,it may be he can tell. But in good earnest now, mother dear, what

does this scarlet letter mean?and why dost thou wear it on thy bosom?and why does the minister keep

She took her mother's hand in both her own, and gazed into her eyes with an earnestness that was seldom

seen in her wild and capricious character. The thought occurred to Hester, that the child might really be

seeking to approach her with childlike confidence, and doing what she could, and as intelligently as she knew

how, to establish a meetingpoint of sympathy. It showed Pearl in an unwonted aspect. Heretofore, the

mother, while loving her child with the intensity of a sole affection, had schooled herself to hope for little

other return than the waywardness of an April breeze, which spends its time in airy sport, and has its gusts of

inexplicable passion, and is petulant in its best of moods, and chills oftener than caresses you, when you take

it to your bosom; in requital of which misdemeanours it will sometimes, of its own vague purpose, kiss your

cheek with a kind of doubtful tenderness, and play gently with your hair, and then be gone about its other idle

business, leaving a dreamy pleasure at your heart. And this, moreover, was a mother's estimate of the child's

disposition. Any other observer might have seen few but unamiable traits, and have given them a far darker

colouring. But now the idea came strongly into Hester's mind, that Pearl, with her remarkable precocity and

acuteness, might already have approached the age when she could have been made a friend, and intrusted

with as much of her mother's sorrows as could be imparted, without irreverence either to the parent or the

child. In the little chaos of Pearl's character there might be seen emerging and could have been from the very

firstthe steadfast principles of an unflinching couragean uncontrollable willsturdy pride, which might

be disciplined into selfrespectand a bitter scorn of many things which, when examined, might be found to

have the taint of falsehood in them. She possessed affections, too, though hitherto acrid and disagreeable, as

are the richest flavours of unripe fruit. With all these sterling attributes, thought Hester, the evil which she

inherited from her mother must be great indeed, if a noble woman do not grow out of this elfish child.

Pearl's inevitable tendency to hover about the enigma of the scarlet letter seemed an innate quality of her

being. From the earliest epoch of her conscious life, she had entered upon this as her appointed mission.

Hester had often fancied that Providence had a design of justice and retribution, in endowing the child with

this marked propensity; but never, until now, had she bethought herself to ask, whether, linked with that

design, there might not likewise be a purpose of mercy and beneficence. If little Pearl were entertained with

faith and trust, as a spirit messenger no less than an earthly child, might it not be her errand to soothe away

the sorrow that lay cold in her mother's heart, and converted it into a tomb?and to help her to overcome the

passion, once so wild, and even yet neither dead nor asleep, but only imprisoned within the same tomblike

Such were some of the thoughts that now stirred in Hester's mind, with as much vivacity of impression as if

they had actually been whispered into her ear. And there was little Pearl, all this while, holding her mother's

hand in both her own, and turning her face upward, while she put these searching questions, once and again,

"What does the letter mean, mother? and why dost thou wear it? and why does the minister keep his hand

"What shall I say?" thought Hester to herself. "No! if this be the price of the child's sympathy, I cannot pay it.

"Silly Pearl," said she, "what questions are these? There are many things in this world that a child must not

ask about. What know I of the minister's heart? And as for the scarlet letter, I wear it for the sake of its gold

In all the seven bygone years, Hester Prynne had never before been false to the symbol on her bosom. It may

be that it was the talisman of a stern and severe, but yet a guardian spirit, who now forsook her; as

recognising that, in spite of his strict watch over her heart, some new evil had crept into it, or some old one

had never been expelled. As for little Pearl, the earnestness soon passed out of her face.

But the child did not see fit to let the matter drop. Two or three times, as her mother and she went homeward,

and as often at suppertime, and while Hester was putting her to bed, and once after she seemed to be fairly

And the next morning, the first indication the child gave of being awake was by popping up her head from the

pillow, and making that other enquiry, which she had so unaccountably connected with her investigations

"Hold thy tongue, naughty child!" answered her mother, with an asperity that she had never permitted to

Hester Prynne remained constant in her resolve to make known to Mr. Dimmesdale, at whatever risk of

present pain or ulterior consequences, the true character of the man who had crept into his intimacy. For

several days, however, she vainly sought an opportunity of addressing him in some of the meditative walks

which she knew him to be in the habit of taking along the shores of the Peninsula, or on the wooded hills of

the neighbouring country. There would have been no scandal, indeed, nor peril to the holy whiteness of the

clergyman's good fame, had she visited him in his own study, where many a penitent, ere now, had confessed

sins of perhaps as deep a dye as the one betokened by the scarlet letter. But, partly that she dreaded the secret

or undisguised interference of old Roger Chillingworth, and partly that her conscious heart imparted

suspicion where none could have been felt, and partly that both the minister and she would need the whole

wide world to breathe in, while they talked togetherfor all these reasons Hester never thought of meeting

At last, while attending a sick chamber, whither the Rev. Mr. Dimmesdale had been summoned to make a

prayer, she learnt that he had gone, the day before, to visit the Apostle Eliot, among his Indian converts. He

would probably return by a certain hour in the afternoon of the morrow. Betimes, therefore, the next day,

Hester took little Pearlwho was necessarily the companion of all her mother's expeditions, however

The road, after the two wayfarers had crossed from the Peninsula to the mainland, was no other than a

footpath. It straggled onward into the mystery of the primeval forest. This hemmed it in so narrowly, and

stood so black and dense on either side, and disclosed such imperfect glimpses of the sky above, that, to

Hester's mind, it imaged not amiss the moral wilderness in which she had so long been wandering. The day

was chill and sombre. Overhead was a gray expanse of cloud, slightly stirred, however, by a breeze; so that a

gleam of flickering sunshine might now and then be seen at its solitary play along the path. This flitting

cheerfulness was always at the further extremity of some long vista through the forest. The sportive

sunlightfeebly sportive, at best, in the predominant pensiveness of the day and scenewithdrew itself as

they came nigh, and left the spots where it had danced the drearier, because they had hoped to find them

"Mother," said little Pearl, "the sunshine does not love you. It runs away and hides itself, because it is afraid

of something on your bosom. Now, see! There it is, playing a good way off. Stand you here, and let me run

and catch it. I am but a child. It will not flee from mefor I wear nothing on my bosom yet!"

"And why not, mother?" asked Pearl, stopping short, just at the beginning of her race. "Will not it come of its

"Run away, child," answered her mother, "and catch the sunshine. It will soon be gone "

Pearl set forth at a great pace, and as Hester smiled to perceive, did actually catch the sunshine, and stood

laughing in the midst of it, all brightened by its splendour, and scintillating with the vivacity excited by rapid

motion. The light lingered about the lonely child, as if glad of such a playmate, until her mother had drawn

"See!" answered Hester, smiling; "now I can stretch out my hand and grasp some of it."

As she attempted to do so, the sunshine vanished; or, to judge from the bright expression that was dancing on

Pearl's features, her mother could have fancied that the child had absorbed it into herself, and would give it

forth again, with a gleam about her path, as they should plunge into some gloomier shade. There was no other

attribute that so much impressed her with a sense of new and untransmitted vigour in Pearl's nature, as this

never failing vivacity of spirits: she had not the disease of sadness, which almost all children, in these latter

days, inherit, with the scrofula, from the troubles of their ancestors. Perhaps this, too, was a disease, and but

the reflex of the wild energy with which Hester had fought against her sorrows before Pearl's birth. It was

certainly a doubtful charm, imparting a hard, metallic lustre to the child's character. She wantedwhat some

people want throughout lifea grief that should deeply touch her, and thus humanise and make her capable

"Come, my child!" said Hester, looking about her from the spot where Pearl had stood still in the

"I am not aweary, mother," replied the little girl. "But you may sit down, if you will tell me a story

"Oh, a story about the Black Man," answered Pearl, taking hold of her mother's gown, and looking up, half

"How he haunts this forest, and carries a book with him a big, heavy book, with iron clasps; and how this

ugly Black Man offers his book and an iron pen to everybody that meets him here among the trees; and they

are to write their names with their own blood; and then he sets his mark on their bosoms. Didst thou ever

"And who told you this story, Pearl," asked her mother, recognising a common superstition of the period.

"It was the old dame in the chimney corner, at the house where you watched last night," said the child. "But

she fancied me asleep while she was talking of it. She said that a thousand and a thousand people had met

him here, and had written in his book, and have his mark on them. And that ugly tempered lady, old Mistress

Hibbins, was one. And, mother, the old dame said that this scarlet letter was the Black Man's mark on thee,

and that it glows like a red flame when thou meetest him at midnight, here in the dark wood. Is it true,

"Didst thou ever awake and find thy mother gone?" asked Hester. "Not that I remember," said the child. "If

thou fearest to leave me in our cottage, thou mightest take me along with thee. I would very gladly go! But,

mother, tell me now! Is there such a Black Man? And didst thou ever meet him? And is this his mark?"

"Once in my life I met the Black Man!" said her mother. This scarlet letter is his mark!"

Thus conversing, they entered sufficiently deep into the wood to secure themselves from the observation of

any casual passenger along the forest track. Here they sat down on a luxuriant heap of moss; which at some

epoch of the preceding century, had been a gigantic pine, with its roots and trunk in the darksome shade, and

its head aloft in the upper atmosphere It was a little dell where they had seated themselves, with a leafstrewn

bank rising gently on either side, and a brook flowing through the midst, over a bed of fallen and drowned

leaves. The trees impending over it had flung down great branches from time to time, which choked up the

current, and compelled it to form eddies and black depths at some points; while, in its swifter and livelier

passages there appeared a channelway of pebbles, and brown, sparkling sand. Letting the eyes follow along

the course of the stream, they could catch the reflected light from its water, at some short distance within the

forest, but soon lost all traces of it amid the bewilderment of treetrunks and underbush, and here and there a

huge rock covered over with gray lichens. All these giant trees and boulders of granite seemed intent on

making a mystery of the course of this small brook; fearing, perhaps, that, with its neverceasing loquacity, it

should whisper tales out of the heart of the old forest whence it flowed, or mirror its revelations on the

smooth surface of a pool. Continually, indeed, as it stole onward, the streamlet kept up a babble, kind, quiet,

soothing, but melancholy, like the voice of a young child that was spending its infancy without playfulness,

"Oh, brook! Oh, foolish and tiresome little brook!" cried Pearl, after listening awhile to its talk, "Why art thou

But the brook, in the course of its little lifetime among the forest trees, had gone through so solemn an

experience that it could not help talking about it, and seemed to have nothing else to say. Pearl resembled the

brook, inasmuch as the current of her life gushed from a wellspring as mysterious, and had flowed through

scenes shadowed as heavily with gloom. But, unlike the little stream, she danced and sparkled, and prattled

"If thou hadst a sorrow of thine own, the brook might tell thee of it," answered her mother, "even as it is

telling me of mine. But now, Pearl, I hear a footstep along the path, and the noise of one putting aside the

branches. I would have thee betake thyself to play, and leave me to speak with him that comes yonder."

"Wilt thou go and play, child?" repeated her mother, "But do not stray far into the wood. And take heed that

"Yes, mother," answered Pearl, "But if it be the Black Man, wilt thou not let me stay a moment, and look at

"Go, silly child!" said her mother impatiently. "It is no Black Man! Thou canst see him now, through the

"And so it is!" said the child. "And, mother, he has his hand over his heart! Is it because, when the minister

wrote his name in the book, the Black Man set his mark in that place? But why does he not wear it outside his

"Go now, child, and thou shalt tease me as thou wilt another time," cried Hester Prynne. "But do not stray far.

The child went singing away, following up the current of the brook, and striving to mingle a more lightsome

stream would not be comforted, and still kept telling its unintelligible secret of some very mournful mystery

that had happenedor making a prophetic lamentation about something that was yet to happenwithin the

verge of the dismal forest. So Pearl, who had enough of shadow in her own little life, chose to break off all

acquaintance with this repining brook. She set herself, therefore, to gathering violets and woodanemones,

and some scarlet columbines that she found growing in the crevice of a high rock.

When her elfchild had departed, Hester Prynne made a step or two towards the track that led through the

forest, but still remained under the deep shadow of the trees. She beheld the minister advancing along the

path entirely alone, and leaning on a staff which he had cut by the wayside. He looked haggard and feeble,

and betrayed a nerveless despondency in his air, which had never so remarkably characterised him in his

walks about the settlement, nor in any other situation where he deemed himself liable to notice. Here it was

wofully visible, in this intense seclusion of the forest, which of itself would have been a heavy trial to the

spirits. There was a listlessness in his gait, as if he saw no reason for taking one step further, nor felt any

desire to do so, but would have been glad, could he be glad of anything, to fling himself down at the root of

the nearest tree, and lie there passive for evermore. The leaves might bestrew him, and the soil gradually

accumulate and form a little hillock over his frame, no matter whether there were life in it or no. Death was

To Hester's eye, the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale exhibited no symptom of positive and vivacious suffering,

Slowly as the minister walked, he had almost gone by before Hester Prynne could gather voice enough to

"Arthur Dimmesdale!" she said, faintly at first, then louder, but hoarsely"Arthur Dimmesdale!"

"Who speaks?" answered the minister. Gathering himself quickly up, he stood more erect, like a man taken

by surprise in a mood to which he was reluctant to have witnesses. Throwing his eyes anxiously in the

direction of the voice, he indistinctly beheld a form under the trees, clad in garments so sombre, and so little

relieved from the gray twilight into which the clouded sky and the heavy foliage had darkened the noontide,

that he knew not whether it were a woman or a shadow. It may be that his pathway through life was haunted

"Even so." she answered. "In such life as has been mine these seven years past! And thou, Arthur

It was no wonder that they thus questioned one another's actual and bodily existence, and even doubted of

their own. So strangely did they meet in the dim wood that it was like the first encounter in the world beyond

the grave of two spirits who had been intimately connected in their former life, but now stood coldly

shuddering in mutual dread, as not yet familiar with their state, nor wonted to the companionship of

disembodied beings. Each a ghost, and awestricken at the other ghost. They were awestricken likewise at

themselves, because the crisis flung back to them their consciousness, and revealed to each heart its history

and experience, as life never does, except at such breathless epochs. The soul beheld its features in the mirror

of the passing moment. It was with fear, and tremulously, and, as it were, by a slow, reluctant necessity, that

Arthur Dimmesdale put forth his hand, chill as death, and touched the chill hand of Hester Prynne. The grasp,

cold as it was, took away what was dreariest in the interview. They now felt themselves, at least, inhabitants

Without a word more spokenneither he nor she assuming the guidance, but with an unexpressed

consentthey glided back into the shadow of the woods whence Hester had emerged, and sat down on the

heap of moss where she and Pearl had before been sitting. When they found voice to speak, it was at first

only to utter remarks and inquiries such as any two acquaintances might have made, about the gloomy sky,

the threatening storm, and, next, the health of each. Thus they went onward, not boldly, but step by step, into

the themes that were brooding deepest in their hearts. So long estranged by fate and circumstances, they

needed something slight and casual to run before and throw open the doors of intercourse, so that their real

"Nonenothing but despair!" he answered. "What else could I look for, being what I am, and leading such a

life as mine? Were I an atheista man devoid of consciencea wretch with coarse and brutal instinctsI

might have found peace long ere now. Nay, I never should have lost it. But, as matters stand with my soul,

whatever of good capacity there originally was in me, all of God's gifts that were the choicest have become

"The people reverence thee," said Hester. "And surely thou workest good among them! Doth this bring thee

"More misery, Hester!Only the more misery!" answered the clergyman with a bitter smile. "As concerns

the good which I may appear to do, I have no faith in it. It must needs be a delusion. What can a ruined soul

like mine effect towards the redemption of other souls?or a polluted soul towards their purification? And

as for the people's reverence, would that it were turned to scorn and hatred! Canst thou deem it, Hester, a

consolation that I must stand up in my pulpit, and meet so many eyes turned upward to my face, as if the light

of heaven were beaming from it!must see my flock hungry for the truth, and listening to my words as if a

tongue of Pentecost were speaking!and then look inward, and discern the black reality of what they

idolise? I have laughed, in bitterness and agony of heart, at the contrast between what I seem and what I am!

"You have deeply and sorely repented. Your sin is left behind you in the days long past. Your present life is

not less holy, in very truth, than it seems in people's eyes. Is there no reality in the penitence thus sealed and

"No, Hesterno!" replied the clergyman. "There is no substance in it] It is cold and dead, and can do nothing

for me! Of penance, I have had enough! Of penitence, there has been none! Else, I should long ago have

thrown off these garments of mock holiness, and have shown myself to mankind as they will see me at the

judgmentseat. Happy are you, Hester, that wear the scarlet letter openly upon your bosom! Mine burns in

secret! Thou little knowest what a relief it is, after the torment of a seven years' cheat, to look into an eye that

recognises me for what I am! Had I one friendor were it my worst enemy!to whom, when sickened with

the praises of all other men, I could daily betake myself, and known as the vilest of all sinners, methinks my

soul might keep itself alive thereby. Even thus much of truth would save me! But now, it is all

Hester Prynne looked into his face, but hesitated to speak. Yet, uttering his longrestrained emotions so

vehemently as he did, his words here offered her the very point of circumstances in which to interpose what

"Such a friend as thou hast even now wished for," said she, "with whom to weep over thy sin, thou hast in

me, the partner of it!" Again she hesitated, but brought out the words with an effort "Thou hast long had such

The minister started to his feet, gasping for breath, and clutching at his heart, as if he would have torn it out

"Ha! What sayest thou?" cried he. "An enemy! And under mine own roof! What mean you?"

Hester Prynne was now fully sensible of the deep injury for which she was responsible to this unhappy man,

in permitting him to lie for so many years, or, indeed, for a single moment, at the mercy of one whose

purposes could not be other than malevolent. The very contiguity of his enemy, beneath whatever mask the

latter might conceal himself, was enough to disturb the magnetic sphere of a being so sensitive as Arthur

Dimmesdale. There had been a period when Hester was less alive to this consideration; or, perhaps, in the

misanthropy of her own trouble, she left the minister to bear what she might picture to herself as a more

tolerable doom. But of late, since the night of his vigil, all her sympathies towards him had been both

softened and invigorated. She now read his heart more accurately. She doubted not that the continual

presence of Roger Chillingworththe secret poison of his malignity, infecting all the air about himand his

authorised interference, as a physician, with the minister's physical and spiritual infirmitiesthat these bad

opportunities had been turned to a cruel purpose. By means of them, the sufferer's conscience had been kept

in an irritated state, the tendency of which was, not to cure by wholesome pain, but to disorganize and corrupt

his spiritual being. Its result, on earth, could hardly fail to be insanity, and hereafter, that eternal alienation

Such was the ruin to which she had brought the man, oncenay, why should we not speak it?still so

passionately loved! Hester felt that the sacrifice of the clergyman's good name, and death itself, as she had

already told Roger Chillingworth, would have been infinitely preferable to the alternative which she had

taken upon herself to choose. And now, rather than have had this grievous wrong to confess, she would

gladly have laid down on the forest leaves, and died there, at Arthur Dimmesdale's feet.

"Oh, Arthur!" cried she, "forgive me! In all things else, I have striven to be true! Truth was the one virtue

which I might have held fast, and did hold fast, through all extremity; save when thy goodthy lifethy

famewere put in question! Then I consented to a deception. But a lie is never good, even though death

threaten on the other side! Dost thou not see what I would say? That old man!the physician!he whom

The minister looked at her for an instant, with all that violence of passion, whichintermixed in more shapes

than one with his higher, purer, softer qualitieswas, in fact, the portion of him which the devil claimed, and

through which he sought to win the rest. Never was there a blacker or a fiercer frown than Hester now

encountered. For the brief space that it lasted, it was a dark transfiguration. But his character had been so

much enfeebled by suffering, that even its lower energies were incapable of more than a temporary struggle.

"I might have known it," murmured he"I did know it! Was not the secret told me, in the natural recoil of

my heart at the first sight of him, and as often as I have seen him since? Why did I not understand? Oh,

Hester Prynne, thou little, little knowest all the horror of this thing! And the shame!the indelicacy!the

horrible ugliness of this exposure of a sick and guilty heart to the very eye that would gloat over it! Woman,

"Thou shalt forgive me!" cried Hester, flinging herself on the fallen leaves beside him. "Let God punish!

With sudden and desperate tenderness she threw her arms around him, and pressed his head against her

bosom, little caring though his cheek rested on the scarlet letter. He would have released himself, but strove

in vain to do so. Hester would not set him free, lest he should look her sternly in the face. All the world had

frowned on herfor seven long years had it frowned upon this lonely womanand still she bore it all, nor

ever once turned away her firm, sad eyes. Heaven, likewise, had frowned upon her, and she had not died. But

the frown of this pale, weak, sinful, and sorrowstricken man was what Hester could not bear, and live!

"Wilt thou yet forgive me?" she repeated, over and over again. "Wilt thou not frown? Wilt thou forgive?"

"I do forgive you, Hester," replied the minister at length, with a deep utterance, out of an abyss of sadness,

but no anger. "I freely forgive you now. May God forgive us both. We are not, Hester, the worst sinners in

the world. There is one worse than even the polluted priest! That old man's revenge has been blacker than my

sin. He has violated, in cold blood, the sanctity of a human heart. Thou and I, Hester, never did so!"

"Never, never!" whispered she. "What we did had a consecration of its own. We felt it so! We said so to each

"Hush, Hester!" said Arthur Dimmesdale, rising from the ground. "No; I have not forgotten!"

They sat down again, side by side, and hand clasped in hand, on the mossy trunk of the fallen tree. Life had

never brought them a gloomier hour; it was the point whither their pathway had so long been tending, and

darkening ever, as it stole alongand yet it unclosed a charm that made them linger upon it, and claim

another, and another, and, after all, another moment. The forest was obscure around them, and creaked with a

blast that was passing through it. The boughs were tossing heavily above their heads; while one solemn old

tree groaned dolefully to another, as if telling the sad story of the pair that sat beneath, or constrained to

And yet they lingered. How dreary looked the foresttrack that led backward to the settlement, where Hester

Prynne must take up again the burden of her ignominy and the minister the hollow mockery of his good

name! So they lingered an instant longer. No golden light had ever been so precious as the gloom of this dark

forest. Here seen only by his eyes, the scarlet letter need not burn into the bosom of the fallen woman! Here

seen only by her eyes, Arthur Dimmesdale, false to God and man, might be, for one moment true!

"Hester!" cried he, "here is a new horror! Roger Chillingworth knows your purpose to reveal his true

character. Will he continue, then, to keep our secret? What will now be the course of his revenge?"

"There is a strange secrecy in his nature," replied Hester, thoughtfully; "and it has grown upon him by the

hidden practices of his revenge. I deem it not likely that he will betray the secret. He will doubtless seek other

"And I! how am I to live longer, breathing the same air with this deadly enemy?" exclaimed Arthur

nervously against his hearta gesture that had grown involuntary with him. "Think for me, Hester! Thou art

"Thou must dwell no longer with this man," said Hester, slowly and firmly. "Thy heart must be no longer

"It were far worse than death!" replied the minister. "But how to avoid it? What choice remains to me? Shall I

lie down again on these withered leaves, where I cast myself when thou didst tell me what he was? Must I

"Alas! what a ruin has befallen thee!" said Hester, with the tears gushing into her eyes. "Wilt thou die for

"The judgment of God is on me," answered the consciencestricken priest. "It is too mighty for me to

"Heaven would show mercy," rejoined Hester, "hadst thou but the strength to take advantage of it. "

"Is the world, then, so narrow?" exclaimed Hester Prynne, fixing her deep eyes on the minister's, and

instinctively exercising a magnetic power over a spirit so shattered and subdued that it could hardly hold

itself erect. "Doth the universe lie within the compass of yonder town, which only a little time ago was but a

leafstrewn desert, as lonely as this around us? Whither leads yonder foresttrack? Backward to the

settlement, thou sayest! Yes; but, onward, too! Deeper it goes, and deeper into the wilderness, less plainly to

be seen at every step; until some few miles hence the yellow leaves will show no vestige of the white man's

tread. There thou art free! So brief a journey would bring thee from a world where thou hast been most

wretched, to one where thou mayest still be happy! Is there not shade enough in all this boundless forest to

"Yes, Hester; but only under the fallen leaves!" replied the minister, with a sad smile.

"Then there is the broad pathway of the sea!" continued Hester. "It brought thee hither. If thou so choose, it

will bear thee back again. In our native land, whether in some remote rural village, or in vast Londonor,

surely, in Germany, in France, in pleasant Italythou wouldst be beyond his power and knowledge! And

what hast thou to do with all these iron men, and their opinions? They have kept thy better part in bondage

"It cannot be!" answered the minister, listening as if he were called upon to realise a dream. "I am powerless

to go. Wretched and sinful as I am, I have had no other thought than to drag on my earthly existence in the

sphere where Providence hath placed me. Lost as my own soul is, I would still do what I may for other

human souls! I dare not quit my post, though an unfaithful sentinel, whose sure reward is death and

"Thou art crushed under this seven years' weight of misery," replied Hester, fervently resolved to buoy him

up with her own energy. "But thou shalt leave it all behind thee! It shall not cumber thy steps, as thou treadest

along the forestpath: neither shalt thou freight the ship with it, if thou prefer to cross the sea. Leave this

wreck and ruin here where it hath happened. Meddle no more with it! Begin all anew! Hast thou exhausted

possibility in the failure of this one trial? Not so! The future is yet full of trial and success. There is happiness

to be enjoyed! There is good to be done! Exchange this false life of thine for a true one. Be, if thy spirit

summon thee to such a mission, the teacher and apostle of the red men. Or, as is more thy nature, be a scholar

and a sage among the wisest and the most renowned of the cultivated world. Preach! Write! Act! Do

anything, save to lie down and die! Give up this name of Arthur Dimmesdale, and make thyself another, and

a high one, such as thou canst wear without fear or shame. Why shouldst thou tarry so much as one other day

in the torments that have so gnawed into thy life? that have made thee feeble to will and to do? that will leave

"Oh, Hester!" cried Arthur Dimmesdale, in whose eyes a fitful light, kindled by her enthusiasm, flashed up

and died away, "thou tellest of running a race to a man whose knees are tottering beneath him! I must die

here! There is not the strength or courage left me to venture into the wide, strange, difficult world alone!"

It was the last expression of the despondency of a broken spirit. He lacked energy to grasp the better fortune

"Thou shall not go alone!" answered she, in a deep whisper. Then, all was spoken!

Arthur Dimmesdale gazed into Hester's face with a look in which hope and joy shone out, indeed, but with

fear betwixt them, and a kind of horror at her boldness, who had spoken what he vaguely hinted at, but dared

But Hester Prynne, with a mind of native courage and activity, and for so long a period not merely estranged,

but outlawed from society, had habituated herself to such latitude of speculation as was altogether foreign to

the clergyman. She had wandered, without rule or guidance, in a moral wilderness, as vast, as intricate, and

shadowy as the untamed forest, amid the gloom of which they were now holding a colloquy that was to

decide their fate. Her intellect and heart had their home, as it were, in desert places, where she roamed as

freely as the wild Indian in his woods. For years past she had looked from this estranged point of view at

human institutions, and whatever priests or legislators had established; criticising all with hardly more

reverence than the Indian would feel for the clerical band, the judicial robe, the pillory, the gallows, the

fireside, or the church. The tendency of her fate and fortunes had been to set her flee. The scarlet letter was

her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her

teachersstern and wild onesand they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.

The minister, on the other hand, had never gone through an experience calculated to lead him beyond the

scope of generally received laws; although, in a single instance, he had so fearfully transgressed one of the

most sacred of them. But this had been a sin of passion, not of principle, nor even purpose. Since that

wretched epoch, he had watched with morbid zeal and minuteness, not his actsfor those it was easy to

arrangebut each breath of emotion, and his every thought. At the head of the social system, as the

clergymen of that day stood, he was only the more trammelled by its regulations, its principles, and even its

prejudices. As a priest, the framework of his order inevitably hemmed him in. As a man who had once

sinned, but who kept his conscience all alive and painfully sensitive by the fretting of an unhealed wound, he

might have been supposed safer within the line of virtue than if he had never sinned at all.

Thus we seem to see that, as regarded Hester Prynne, the whole seven years of outlaw and ignominy had been

little other than a preparation for this very hour. But Arthur Dimmesdale! Were such a man once more to fall,

what plea could be urged in extenuation of his crime? None; unless it avail him somewhat that he was broker,

down by long and exquisite suffering; that his mind was darkened and confused by the very remorse which

harrowed it; that, between fleeing as an avowed criminal, and remaining as a hypocrite, conscience might

find it hard to strike the balance; that it was human to avoid the peril of death and infamy, and the inscrutable

machinations of an enemy; that, finally, to this poor pilgrim, on his dreary and desert path, faint, sick,

miserable, there appeared a glimpse of human affection and sympathy, a new life, and a true one, in exchange

for the heavy doom which he was now expiating. And be the stern and sad truth spoken, that the breach

which guilt has once made into the human soul is never, in this mortal state, repaired. It may be watched and

guarded, so that the enemy shall not force his way again into the citadel, and might even in his subsequent

assaults, select some other avenue, in preference to that where he had formerly succeeded. But there is still

the ruined wall, and near it the stealthy tread of the foe that would win over again his unforgotten triumph.

The struggle, if there were one, need not be described. Let it suffice that the clergyman resolved to flee, and

"If in all these past seven years," thought he, "I could recall one instant of peace or hope, 1 would yet endure,

for the sake of that earnest of Heaven's mercy. But nowsince I am irrevocably doomedwherefore should

I not snatch the solace allowed to the condemned culprit before his execution? Or, if this be the path to a

better life, as Hester would persuade me, I surely give up no fairer prospect by pursuing it! Neither can I any

longer live without her companionship; so powerful is she to sustainso tender to soothe! O Thou to whom I

The decision once made, a glow of strange enjoyment threw its flickering brightness over the trouble of his

breast. It was the exhilarating effectupon a prisoner just escaped from the dungeon of his own heartof

breathing the wild, free atmosphere of an unredeemed, unchristianised, lawless region His spirit rose, as it

were, with a bound, and attained a nearer prospect of the sky, than throughout all the misery which had kept

him grovelling on the earth. Of a deeply religious temperament, there was inevitably a tinge of the devotional

"Do I feel joy again?" cried he, wondering at himself. "Methought the germ of it was dead in me! Oh, Hester,

thou art my better angel! I seem to have flung myselfsick, sinstained, and sorrowblackeneddown

upon these forest leaves, and to have risen up all made anew, and with new powers to glorify Him that hath

"Let us not look back," answered Hester Prynne. "The past is gone! Wherefore should we linger upon it now?

So speaking, she undid the clasp that fastened the scarlet letter, and, taking it from her bosom, threw it to a

distance among the withered leaves. The mystic token alighted on the hither verge of the stream. With a

hand'sbreadth further flight, it would have fallen into the water, and have give, the little brook another woe

to carry onward, besides the unintelligible tale which it still kept murmuring about. But there lay the

embroidered letter, glittering like a lost jewel, which some illfated wanderer might pick up, and thenceforth

be haunted by strange phantoms of guilt, sinkings of the heart, and unaccountable misfortune.

The stigma gone, Hester heaved a long, deep sigh, in which the burden of shame and anguish departed from

her spirit. O exquisite relief! She had not known the weight until she felt the freedom! By another impulse,

she took off the formal cap that confined her hair, and down it fell upon her shoulders, dark and rich, with at

once a shadow and a light in its abundance, and imparting the charm of softness to her features. There played

around her mouth, and beamed out of her eyes, a radiant and tender smile, that seemed gushing from the very

heart of womanhood. A crimson flush was glowing on her cheek, that had been long so pale. Her sex, her

youth, and the whole richness of her beauty, came back from what men call the irrevocable past, and

clustered themselves with her maiden hope, and a happiness before unknown, within the magic circle of this

hour. And, as if the gloom of the earth and sky had been but the effluence of these two mortal hearts, it

vanished with their sorrow. All at once, as with a sudden smile of heaven, forth burst the sunshine, pouring a

very flood into the obscure forest, gladdening each green leaf, transmuting the yellow fallen ones to gold, and

gleaming adown the gray trunks of the solemn trees. The objects that had made a shadow hitherto, embodied

the brightness now. The course of the little brook might be traced by its merry gleam afar into the wood's

Such was the sympathy of Naturethat wild, heathen Nature of the forest, never subjugated by human law,

nor illumined by higher truthwith the bliss of these two spirits! Love, whether newlyborn, or aroused

from a deathlike slumber, must always create a sunshine, filling the heart so full of radiance, that it

overflows upon the outward world. Had the forest still kept its gloom, it would have been bright in Hester's

"Thou must know Pearl!" said she. "Our little Pearl! Thou hast seen heryes, I know it!but thou wilt see

her now with other eyes. She is a strange child! I hardly comprehend her! But thou wilt love her dearly, as I

"Dost thou think the child will be glad to know me?" asked the minister, somewhat uneasily. "I have long

shrunk from children, because they often show a distrusta backwardness to be familiar with me. I have

"Ah, that was sad!" answered the mother. "But she will love thee dearly, and thou her. She is not far off. I

"I see the child," observed the minister. "Yonder she is, standing in a streak of sunshine, a good way off, on

Hester smiled, and again called to Pearl, who was visible at some distance, as the minister had described her,

like a brightapparelled vision in a sunbeam, which fell down upon her through an arch of boughs. The ray

quivered to and fro, making her figure dim or distinctnow like a real child, now like a child's spiritas the

splendour went and came again. She heard her mother's voice, and approached slowly through the forest.

Pearl had not found the hour pass wearisomely while her mother sat talking with the clergyman. The great

black foreststern as it showed itself to those who brought the guilt and troubles of the world into its

bosombecame the playmate of the lonely infant, as well as it knew how. Sombre as it was, it put on the

kindest of its moods to welcome her. It offered her the partridgeberries, the growth of the preceding autumn,

but ripening only in the spring, and now red as drops of blood upon the withered leaves. These Pearl

gathered, and was pleased with their wild flavour. The small denizens of the wilderness hardly took pains to

move out of her path. A partridge, indeed, with a brood of ten behind her, ran forward threateningly, but soon

repented of her fierceness, and clucked to her young ones not to be afraid. A pigeon, alone on a low branch,

allowed Pearl to come beneath, and uttered a sound as much of greeting as alarm. A squirrel, from the lofty

depths of his domestic tree, chattered either in anger or merrimentfor the squirrel is such a choleric and

humorous little personage, that it is hard to distinguish between his moodsso he chattered at the child, and

flung down a nut upon her bead. It was a last year's nut, and already gnawed by his sharp tooth. A fox,

startled from his sleep by her light footstep on the leaves, looked inquisitively at Pearl, as doubting whether it

were better to steal off, or renew his nap on the same spot. A wolf, it is saidbut here the tale has surely

lapsed into the improbablecame up and smelt of Pearl's robe, and offered his savage head to be patted by

her hand. The truth seems to be, however, that the motherforest, and these wild things which it nourished,

And she was gentler here than in the grassymargined streets of the settlement, or in her mother's cottage.

The Bowers appeared to know it, and one and another whispered as she passed, "Adorn thyself with me, thou

beautiful child, adorn thyself with me!" and, to please them, Pearl gathered the violets, and anemones, and

columbines, and some twigs of the freshest green, which the old trees held down before her eyes. With these

she decorated her hair and her young waist, and became a nymph child, or an infant dryad, or whatever else

was in closest sympathy with the antique wood. In such guise had Pearl adorned herself, when she heard her

"Thou will love her dearly," repeated Hester Prynne, as she and the minister sat watching little Pearl. "Dost

thou not think her beautiful? And see with what natural skill she has made those simple flowers adorn her!

Had she gathered pearls, and diamonds, and rubies in the wood, they could not have become her better! She

"Dost thou know, Hester," said Arthur Dimmesdale, with an unquiet smile, "that this dear child, tripping

about always at thy side, hath caused me many an alarm? Methoughtoh, Hester, what a thought is that, and

how terrible to dread it!that my own features were partly repeated in her face, and so strikingly that the

"No, no! Not mostly!" answered the mother, with a tender smile. "A little longer, and thou needest not to be

afraid to trace whose child she is. But how strangely beautiful she looks with those wild flowers in her hair! It

is as if one of the fairies, whom we left in dear old England, had decked her out to meet us."

It was with a feeling which neither of them had ever before experienced, that they sat and watched Pearl's

slow advance. In her was visible the tie that united them. She had been offered to the world, these seven past

years, as the living hieroglyphic, in which was revealed the secret they so darkly sought to hideall written

in this symbolall plainly manifesthad there been a prophet or magician skilled to read the character of

flame! And Pearl was the oneness of their being. Be the foregone evil what it might, how could they doubt

that their earthly lives and future destinies were conjoined when they beheld at once the material union, and

the spiritual idea, in whom they met, and were to dwell immortally together; thoughts like theseand

perhaps other thoughts, which they did not acknowledge or definethrew an awe about the child as she

"Let her see nothing strangeno passion or eagernessin thy way of accosting her," whispered Hester.

"Our Pearl is a fitful and fantastic little elf sometimes. Especially she is generally intolerant of emotion, when

she does not fully comprehend the why and wherefore. But the child hath strong affections! She loves me,

"Thou canst not think," said the minister, glancing aside at Hester Prynne, "how my heart dreads this

interview, and yearns for it! But, in truth, as I already told thee, children are not readily won to be familiar

with me. They will not climb my knee, nor prattle in my ear, nor answer to my smile, but stand apart, and eye

me strangely. Even little babes, when I take them in my arms, weep bitterly. Yet Pearl, twice in her little

lifetime, hath been kind to me! The first timethou knowest it well! The last was when thou ledst her with

"And thou didst plead so bravely in her behalf and mine!" answered the mother. "I remember it; and so shall

little Pearl. Fear nothing. She may be strange and shy at first, but will soon learn to love thee!"

By this time Pearl had reached the margin of the brook, and stood on the further side, gazing silently at

Hester and the clergyman, who still sat together on the mossy treetrunk waiting to receive her. Just where

she had paused, the brook chanced to form a pool so smooth and quiet that it reflected a perfect image of her

little figure, with all the brilliant picturesqueness of her beauty, in its adornment of flowers and wreathed

foliage, but more refined and spiritualized than the reality. This image, so nearly identical with the living

Pearl, seemed to communicate somewhat of its own shadowy and intangible quality to the child herself. It

was strange, the way in which Pearl stood, looking so steadfastly at them through the dim medium of the

forest gloom, herself, meanwhile, all glorified with a ray of sunshine, that was attracted thitherward as by a

certain sympathy. In the brook beneath stood another childanother and the samewith likewise its ray of

golden light. Hester felt herself, in some indistinct and tantalizing manner, estranged from Pearl, as if the

child, in her lonely ramble through the forest, had strayed out of the sphere in which she and her mother

There were both truth and error in the impression; the child and mother were estranged, but through Hester's

fault, not Pearl's. Since the latter rambled from her side, another inmate had been admitted within the circle of

the mother's feelings, and so modified the aspect of them all, that Pearl, the returning wanderer, could not

"I have a strange fancy," observed the sensitive minister, "that this brook is the boundary between two

worlds, and that thou canst never meet thy Pearl again. Or is she an elfish spirit, who, as the legends of our

childhood taught us, is forbidden to cross a running stream? Pray hasten her, for this delay has already

"Come, dearest child!" said Hester encouragingly, and stretching out both her arms. "How slow thou art!

When hast thou been so sluggish before now? Here is a friend of mine, who must be thy friend also. Thou

wilt have twice as much love henceforward as thy mother alone could give thee! Leap across the brook and

Pearl, without responding in any manner to these honeysweet expressions, remained on the other side of the

brook. Now she fixed her bright wild eyes on her mother, now on the minister, and now included them both

in the same glance, as if to detect and explain to herself the relation which they bore to one another. For some

unaccountable reason, as Arthur Dimmesdale felt the child's eyes upon himself, his handwith that gesture

so habitual as to have become involuntarystole over his heart. At length, assuming a singular air of

authority, Pearl stretched out her hand, with the small forefinger extended, and pointing evidently towards her

mother's breast. And beneath, in the mirror of the brook, there was the flowergirdled and sunny image of

Pearl still pointed with her forefinger, and a frown gathered on her browthe more impressive from the

childish, the almost babylike aspect of the features that conveyed it. As her mother still kept beckoning to

her, and arraying her face in a holiday suit of unaccustomed smiles, the child stamped her foot with a yet

more imperious look and gesture. In the brook, again, was the fantastic beauty of the image, with its reflected

frown, its pointed finger, and imperious gesture, giving emphasis to the aspect of little Pearl.

"Hasten, Pearl, or I shall be angry with thee!" cried Hester Prynne, who, however, inured to such behaviour

on the elfchild's part at other seasons, was naturally anxious for a more seemly deportment now. "Leap

But Pearl, not a whit startled at her mother's threats any more than mollified by her entreaties, now suddenly

burst into a fit of passion, gesticulating violently, and throwing her small figure into the most extravagant

contortions She accompanied this wild outbreak with piercing shrieks, which the woods reverberated on all

sides, so that, alone as she was in her childish and unreasonable wrath, it seemed as if a hidden multitude

were lending her their sympathy and encouragement. Seen in the brook once more was the shadowy wrath of

Pearl's image, crowned and girdled with flowers, but stamping its foot, wildly gesticulating, and, in the midst

"I see what ails the child," whispered Hester to the clergyman, and turning pale in spite of a strong effort to

conceal her trouble and annoyance, "Children will not abide any, the slightest, change in the accustomed

aspect of things that are daily before their eyes. Pearl misses something that she has always seen me wear!"

"I pray you," answered the minister, "if thou hast any means of pacifying the child, do it forthwith! Save it

were the cankered wrath of an old witch like Mistress Hibbins," added he, attempting to smile, "I know

nothing that I would not sooner encounter than this passion in a child. In Pearl's young beauty, as in the

Hester turned again towards Pearl with a crimson blush upon her cheek, a conscious glance aside clergyman,

and then a heavy sigh, while, even before she had time to speak, the blush yielded to a deadly pallor.

"Pearl," said she sadly, "look down at thy feet! There!before thee!on the hither side of the brook!"

The child turned her eyes to the point indicated, and there lay the scarlet letter so close upon the margin of the

"Was ever such a child!" observed Hester aside to the minister. "Oh, I have much to tell thee about her! But,

in very truth, she is right as regards this hateful token. I must bear its torture yet a little longeronly a few

days longeruntil we shall have left this region, and look back hither as to a land which we have dreamed

of. The forest cannot hide it! The midocean shall take it from my hand, and swallow it up for ever!"

With these words she advanced to the margin of the brook, took up the scarlet letter, and fastened it again

into her bosom. Hopefully, but a moment ago, as Hester had spoken of drowning it in the deep sea, there was

a sense of inevitable doom upon her as she thus received back this deadly symbol from the hand of fate. She

had flung it into infinite space! she had drawn an hour's free breath! and here again was the scarlet misery

glittering on the old spot! So it ever is, whether thus typified or no, that an evil deed invests itself with the

character of doom. Hester next gathered up the heavy tresses of her hair and confined them beneath her cap.

As if there were a withering spell in the sad letter, her beauty, the warmth and richness of her womanhood,

"Dost thou know thy mother now, child?", asked she, reproachfully, but with a subdued tone. "Wilt thou

come across the brook, and own thy mother, now that she has her shame upon hernow that she is sad?"

"Yes; now I will!" answered the child, bounding across the brook, and clasping Hester in her arms "Now thou

In a mood of tenderness that was not usual with her, she drew down her mother's head, and kissed her brow

and both her cheeks. But thenby a kind of necessity that always impelled this child to alloy whatever

comfort she might chance to give with a throb of anguishPearl put up her mouth and kissed the scarlet

"That was not kind!" said Hester. "When thou hast shown me a little love, thou mockest me!"

"He waits to welcome thee," replied her mother. "Come thou, and entreat his blessing! He loves thee, my

little Pearl, and loves thy mother, too. Wilt thou not love him? Come he longs to greet thee!"

"Doth he love us?" said Pearl, looking up with acute intelligence into her mother's face. "Will he go back

"Not now, my child," answered Hester. "But in days to come he will walk hand in hand with us. We will have

a home and fireside of our own; and thou shalt sit upon his knee; and he will teach thee many things, and love

"Foolish child, what a question is that!" exclaimed her mother. "Come, and ask his blessing!"

But, whether influenced by the jealousy that seems instinctive with every petted child towards a dangerous

rival, or from whatever caprice of her freakish nature, Pearl would show no favour to the clergyman. It was

only by an exertion of force that her mother brought her up to him, hanging back, and manifesting her

reluctance by odd grimaces; of which, ever since her babyhood, she had possessed a singular variety, and

could transform her mobile physiognomy into a series of different aspects, with a new mischief in them, each

and all. The ministerpainfully embarrassed, but hoping that a kiss might prove a talisman to admit him into

the child's kindlier regardsbent forward, and impressed one on her brow. Hereupon, Pearl broke away from

her mother, and, running to the brook, stooped over it, and bathed her forehead, until the unwelcome kiss was

quite washed off and diffused through a long lapse of the gliding water. She then remained apart, silently

watching Hester and the clergyman; while they talked together and made such arrangements as were

And now this fateful interview had come to a close. The dell was to be left in solitude among its dark, old

trees, which, with their multitudinous tongues, would whisper long of what had passed there, and no mortal

be the wiser. And the melancholy brook would add this other tale to the mystery with which its little heart

was already overburdened, and whereof it still kept up a murmuring babble, with not a whit more

As the minister departed, in advance of Hester Prynne and little Pearl, he threw a backward glance, half

expecting that he should discover only some faintly traced features or outline of the mother and the child,

slowly fading into the twilight of the woods. So great a vicissitude in his life could not at once be received as

real. But there was Hester, clad in her gray robe, still standing beside the treetrunk, which some blast had

overthrown a long antiquity ago, and which time had ever since been covering with moss, so that these two

fated ones, with earth's heaviest burden on them, might there sit down together, and find a single hour's rest

and solace. And there was Pearl, too, lightly dancing from the margin of the brooknow that the intrusive

third person was goneand taking her old place by her mother's side. So the minister had not fallen asleep

In order to free his mind from this indistinctness and duplicity of impression, which vexed it with a strange

disquietude, he recalled and more thoroughly defined the plans which Hester and himself had sketched for

their departure. It had been determined between them that the Old World, with its crowds and cities, offered

them a more eligible shelter and concealment than the wilds of New England or all America, with its

alternatives of an Indian wigwam, or the few settlements of Europeans scattered thinly along the seaboard.

Not to speak of the clergyman's health, so inadequate to sustain the hardships of a forest life, his native gifts,

his culture, and his entire development would secure him a home only in the midst of civilization and

refinement; the higher the state the more delicately adapted to it the man. In futherance of this choice, it so

happened that a ship lay in the harbour; one of those unquestionable cruisers, frequent at that day, which,

without being absolutely outlaws of the deep, yet roamed over its surface with a remarkable irresponsibility

of character. This vessel had recently arrived from the Spanish Main, and within three days' time would sail

for Bristol. Hester Prynnewhose vocation, as a selfenlisted Sister of Charity, had brought her acquainted

with the captain and crewcould take upon herself to secure the passage of two individuals and a child with

The minister had inquired of Hester, with no little interest, the precise time at which the vessel might be

expected to depart. It would probably be on the fourth day from the present. "This is most fortunate!" he had

then said to himself. Now, why the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale considered it so very fortunate we hesitate to

reveal. Neverthelessto hold nothing back from the readerit was because, on the third day from the

present, he was to preach the Election Sermon; and, as such an occasion formed an honourable epoch in the

life of a New England Clergyman, he could not have chanced upon a more suitable mode and time of

terminating his professional career. "At least, they shall say of me," thought this exemplary man, "that I leave

no public duty unperformed or illperformed!" Sad, indeed, that an introspection so profound and acute as

this poor minister's should be so miserably deceived! We have had, and may still have, worse things to tell of

him; but none, we apprehend, so pitiably weak; no evidence, at once so slight and irrefragable, of a subtle

disease that had long since begun to eat into the real substance of his character. No man, for any considerable

period, can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to

The excitement of Mr. Dimmesdale's feelings as he returned from his interview with Hester, lent him

unaccustomed physical energy, and hurried him townward at a rapid pace. The pathway among the woods

seemed wilder, more uncouth with its rude natural obstacles, and less trodden by the foot of man, than he

remembered it on his outward journey. But he leaped across the plashy places, thrust himself through the

clinging underbush, climbed the ascent, plunged into the hollow, and overcame, in short, all the difficulties of

the track, with an unweariable activity that astonished him. He could not but recall how feebly, and with what

frequent pauses for breath he had toiled over the same ground, only two days before. As he drew near the

town, he took an impression of change from the series of familiar objects that presented themselves. It

seemed not yesterday, not one, not two, but many days, or even years ago, since he had quitted them. There,

indeed, was each former trace of the street, as he remembered it, and all the peculiarities of the houses, with

the due multitude of gablepeaks, and a weathercock at every point where his memory suggested one. Not

the less, however, came this importunately obtrusive sense of change. The same was true as regarded the

acquaintances whom he met, and all the wellknown shapes of human life, about the little town. They looked

neither older nor younger now; the beards of the aged were no whiter, nor could the creeping babe of

yesterday walk on his feet today; it was impossible to describe in what respect they differed from the

individuals on whom he had so recently bestowed a parting glance; and yet the minister's deepest sense

seemed to inform him of their mutability. A similar impression struck him most remarkably a he passed

under the walls of his own church. The edifice had so very strange, and yet so familiar an aspect, that Mr.

Dimmesdale's mind vibrated between two ideas; either that he had seen it only in a dream hitherto, or that he

This phenomenon, in the various shapes which it assumed, indicated no external change, but so sudden and

important a change in the spectator of the familiar scene, that the intervening space of a single day had

operated on his consciousness like the lapse of years. The minister's own will, and Hester's will, and the fate

that grew between them, had wrought this transformation. It was the same town as heretofore, but the same

minister returned not from the forest. He might have said to the friends who greeted him"I am not the man

for whom you take me! I left him yonder in the forest, withdrawn into a secret dell, by a mossy tree trunk,

and near a melancholy brook! Go, seek your minister, and see if his emaciated figure, his thin cheek, his

white, heavy, painwrinkled brow, be not flung down there, like a castoff garment!" His friends, no doubt,

would still have insisted with him"Thou art thyself the man!" but the error would have been their own, not

Before Mr. Dimmesdale reached home, his inner man gave him other evidences of a revolution in the sphere

of thought and feeling. In truth, nothing short of a total change of dynasty and moral code, in that interior

kingdom, was adequate to account for the impulses now communicated to the unfortunate and startled

minister. At every step he was incited to do some strange, wild, wicked thing or other, with a sense that it

would be at once involuntary and intentional, in spite of himself, yet growing out of a profounder self than

that which opposed the impulse. For instance, he met one of his own deacons. The good old man addressed

him with the paternal affection and patriarchal privilege which his venerable age, his upright and holy

character, and his station in the church, entitled him to use and, conjoined with this, the deep, almost

worshipping respect, which the minister's professional and private claims alike demanded. Never was there a

more beautiful example of how the majesty of age and wisdom may comport with the obeisance and respect

enjoined upon it, as from a lower social rank, and inferior order of endowment, towards a higher. Now,

during a conversation of some two or three moments between the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale and this

excellent and hoarybearded deacon, it was only by the most careful selfcontrol that the former could

refrain from uttering certain blasphemous suggestions that rose into his mind, respecting the

communionsupper. He absolutely trembled and turned pale as ashes, lest his tongue should wag itself in

utterance of these horrible matters, and plead his own consent for so doing, without his having fairly given it.

And, even with this terror in his heart, he could hardly avoid laughing, to imagine how the sanctified old

Again, another incident of the same nature. Hurrying along the street, the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale

encountered the eldest female member of his church, a most pious and exemplary old dame, poor, widowed,

lonely, and with a heart as full of reminiscences about her dead husband and children, and her dead friends of

long ago, as a burialground is full of storied gravestones. Yet all this, which would else have been such

heavy sorrow, was made almost a solemn joy to her devout old soul, by religious consolations and the truths

of Scripture, wherewith she had fed herself continually for more than thirty years. And since Mr. Dimmesdale

had taken her in charge, the good grandam's chief earthly comfortwhich, unless it had been likewise a

heavenly comfort, could have been none at allwas to meet her pastor, whether casually, or of set purpose,

and be refreshed with a word of warm, fragrant, heavenbreathing Gospel truth, from his beloved lips, into

her dulled, but rapturously attentive ear. But, on this occasion, up to the moment of putting his lips to the old

recall no text of Scripture, nor aught else, except a brief, pithy, and, as it then appeared to him, unanswerable

argument against the immortality of the human soul. The instilment thereof into her mind would probably

have caused this aged sister to drop down dead, at once, as by the effect of an intensely poisonous infusion.

What he really did whisper, the minister could never afterwards recollect. There was, perhaps, a fortunate

disorder in his utterance, which failed to impart any distinct idea to the good widows comprehension, or

which Providence interpreted after a method of its own. Assuredly, as the minister looked back, he beheld an

expression of divine gratitude and ecstasy that seemed like the shine of the celestial city on her face, so

Again, a third instance. After parting from the old church member, he met the youngest sister of them all. It

was a maiden newlywonand won by the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale's own sermon, on the Sabbath after

his vigilto barter the transitory pleasures of the world for the heavenly hope that was to assume brighter

substance as life grew dark around her, and which would gild the utter gloom with final glory. She was fair

and pure as a lily that had bloomed in Paradise. The minister knew well that he was himself enshrined within

the stainless sanctity of her heart, which hung its snowy curtains about his image, imparting to religion the

warmth of love, and to love a religious purity. Satan, that afternoon, had surely led the poor young girl away

from her mother's side, and thrown her into the pathway of this sorely tempted, orshall we not rather

say?this lost and desperate man. As she drew nigh, the archfiend whispered him to condense into small

compass, and drop into her tender bosom a germ of evil that would be sure to blossom darkly soon, and bear

black fruit betimes. Such was his sense of power over this virgin soul, trusting him as she did, that the

minister felt potent to blight all the field of innocence with but one wicked look, and develop all its opposite

with but a word. Sowith a mightier struggle than he had yet sustainedhe held his Geneva cloak before

his face, and hurried onward, making no sign of recognition, and leaving the young sister to digest his

rudeness as she might. She ransacked her consciencewhich was full of harmless little matters, like her

pocket or her workbagand took herself to task, poor thing! for a thousand imaginary faults, and went

Before the minister had time to celebrate his victory over this last temptation, he was conscious of another

impulse, more ludicrous, and almost as horrible. It waswe blush to tell itit was to stop short in the road,

and teach some very wicked words to a knot of little Puritan children who were playing there, and had but

just begun to talk. Denying himself this freak, as unworthy of his cloth, he met a drunken seaman, one of the

ship's crew from the Spanish Main. And here, since he had so valiantly forborne all

other wickedness, poor Mr. Dimmesdale longed at least to shake hands with the tarry blackguard, and

recreate himself with a few improper jests, such as dissolute sailors so abound with, and a volley of good,

round, solid, satisfactory, and heavendefying oaths! It was not so much a better principle, as partly his

natural good taste, and still more his buckramed habit of clerical decorum, that carried him safely through the

"What is it that haunts and tempts me thus?" cried the minister to himself, at length, pausing in the street, and

"Am I mad? or am I given over utterly to the fiend? Did I make a contract with him in the forest, and sign it

with my blood? And does he now summon me to its fulfilment, by suggesting the performance of every

At the moment when the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale thus communed with himself, and struck his forehead

with his hand, old Mistress Hibbins, the reputed witchlady, is said to have been passing by. She made a very

grand appearance, having on a high headdress, a rich gown of velvet, and a ruff done up with the famous

yellow starch, of which Anne Turner, her especial friend, had taught her the secret, before this last good lady

had been hanged for Sir Thomas Overbury's murder. Whether the witch had read the minister's thoughts or

no, she came to a full stop, looked shrewdly into his face, smiled craftily, andthough little given to

"So, reverend sir, you have made a visit into the forest," observed the witchlady, nodding her high

headdress at him. "The next time I pray you to allow me only a fair warning, and I shall be proud to bear

you company. Without taking overmuch upon myself my good word will go far towards gaining any strange

"I profess, madam," answered the clergyman, with a grave obeisance, such as the lady's rank demanded, and

his own good breeding made imperative"I profess, on my conscience and character, that I am utterly

bewildered as touching the purport of your words! I went not into the forest to seek a potentate, neither do I,

at any future time, design a visit thither, with a view to gaining the favour of such personage. My one

sufficient object was to greet that pious friend of mine, the Apostle Eliot, and rejoice with him over the many

"Ha, ha, ha!" cackled the old witchlady, still nodding her high headdress at the minister. "Well, well! we

must needs talk thus in the daytime! You carry it off like an old hand! But at midnight, and in the forest, we

She passed on with her aged stateliness, but often turning back her head and smiling at him, like one willing

"Have I then sold myself," thought the minister, "to the fiend whom, if men say true, this yellowstarched

The wretched minister! He had made a bargain very like it! Tempted by a dream of happiness, he had yielded

himself with deliberate choice, as he had never done before, to what he knew was deadly sin. And the

infectious poison of that sin had been thus rapidly diffused throughout his moral system. It bad stupefied all

blessed impulses, and awakened into vivid life the whole brotherhood of bad ones. Scorn, bitterness,

unprovoked malignity, gratuitous desire of ill, ridicule of whatever was good and holy, all awoke to tempt,

even while they frightened him. And his encounter with old Mistress Hibbins, if it were a real incident, did

but show its sympathy and fellowship with wicked mortals, and the world of perverted spirits.

He had by this time reached his dwelling on the edge of the burial ground, and, hastening up the stairs, took

refuge in his study. The minister was glad to have reached this shelter, without first betraying himself to the

world by any of those strange and wicked eccentricities to which he had been continually impelled while

passing through the streets. He entered the accustomed room, and looked around him on its books, its

windows, its fireplace, and the tapestried comfort of the walls, with the same perception of strangeness that

had haunted him throughout his walk from the forest dell into the town and thitherward. Here he had studied

and written; here gone through fast and vigil, and come forth half alive; here striven to pray; here borne a

hundred thousand agonies! There was the Bible, in its rich old Hebrew, with Moses and the Prophets

There on the table, with the inky pen beside it, was an unfinished sermon, with a sentence broken in the

midst, where his thoughts had ceased to gush out upon the page two days before. He knew that it was himself,

the thin and whitecheeked minister, who had done and suffered these things, and written thus far into the

Election Sermon! But he seemed to stand apart, and eye this former self with scornful pitying, but

halfenvious curiosity. That self was gone. Another man had returned out of the foresta wiser onewith a

knowledge of hidden mysteries which the simplicity of the former never could have reached. A bitter kind of

While occupied with these reflections, a knock came at the door of the study, and the minister said, "Come

in!"not wholly devoid of an idea that he might behold an evil spirit. And so he did! It was old Roger

Chillingworth that entered. The minister stood white and speechless, with one hand on the Hebrew

"Welcome home, reverend sir," said the physician "And how found you that godly man, the Apostle Eliot?

But methinks, dear sir, you look pale, as if the travel through the wilderness had been too sore for you. Will

not my aid be requisite to put you in heart and strength to preach your Election Sermon?"

"Nay, I think not so," rejoined the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale. "My journey, and the sight of the holy Apostle

yonder, and the free air which I have breathed have done me good, after so long confinement in my study. I

think to need no more of your drugs, my kind physician, good though they be, and administered by a friendly

All this time Roger Chillingworth was looking at the minister with the grave and intent regard of a physician

towards his patient. But, in spite of this outward show, the latter was almost convinced of the old man's

knowledge, or, at least, his confident suspicion, with respect to his own interview with Hester Prynne. The

physician knew then that in the minister's regard he was no longer a trusted friend, but his bitterest enemy. So

much being known, it would appear natural that a part of it should he expressed. It is singular, however, how

long a time often passes before words embody things; and with what security two persons, who choose to

avoid a certain subject, may approach its very verge, and retire without disturbing it. Thus the minister felt no

apprehension that Roger Chillingworth would touch, in express words, upon the real position which they

sustained towards one another. Yet did the physician, in his dark way, creep frightfully near the secret.

"Were it not better," said he, "that you use my poor skill tonight? Verily, dear sir, we must take pains to make

you strong and vigorous for this occasion of the Election discourse. The people look for great things from

"Yes, to another world," replied the minister with pious resignation. "Heaven grant it be a better one; for, in

good sooth, I hardly think to tarry with my flock through the flitting seasons of another year! But touching

"I joy to hear it," answered the physician. "It may be that my remedies, so long administered in vain, begin

now to take due effect. Happy man were I, and well deserving of New England's gratitude, could I achieve

"I thank you from my heart, most watchful friend," said the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale with a solemn smile.

"A good man's prayers are golden recompense!" rejoined old Roger Chillingworth, as he took his leave.

"Yea, they are the current gold coin of the New Jerusalem, with the King's own mint mark on them!"

Left alone, the minister summoned a servant of the house, and requested food, which, being set before him,

he ate with ravenous appetite. Then flinging the already written pages of the Election Sermon into the fire, he

forthwith began another, which he wrote with such an impulsive flow of thought and emotion, that he fancied

himself inspired; and only wondered that Heaven should see fit to transmit the grand and solemn music of its

oracles through so foul an organ pipe as he. However, leaving that mystery to solve itself, or go unsolved for

Thus the night fled away, as if it were a winged steed, and he careering on it; morning came, and peeped,

blushing, through the curtains; and at last sunrise threw a golden beam into the study, and laid it right across

the minister's bedazzled eyes. There he was, with the pen still between his fingers, and a vast, immeasurable

Betimes in the morning of the day on which the new Governor was to receive his office at the hands of the

people, Hester Prynne and little Pearl came into the marketplace. It was already thronged with the craftsmen

and other plebeian inhabitants of the town, in considerable numbers, among whom, likewise, were many

rough figures, whose attire of deerskins marked them as belonging to some of the forest settlements, which

On this public holiday, as on all other occasions for seven years past, Hester was clad in a garment of coarse

gray cloth. Not more by its hue than by some indescribable peculiarity in its fashion, it had the effect of

making her fade personally out of sight and outline; while again the scarlet letter brought her back from this

twilight indistinctness, and revealed her under the moral aspect of its own illumination. Her face, so long

familiar to the townspeople, showed the marble quietude which they were accustomed to behold there. It was

like a mask; or, rather like the frozen calmness of a dead woman's features; owing this dreary resemblance to

the fact that Hester was actually dead, in respect to any claim of sympathy, and had departed out of the world

It might be, on this one day, that there was an expression unseen before, nor, indeed, vivid enough to be

detected now; unless some preternaturally gifted observer should have first read the heart, and have

afterwards sought a corresponding development in the countenance and mien. Such a spiritual sneer might

have conceived, that, after sustaining the gaze of the multitude through several miserable years as a necessity,

a penance, and something which it was a stern religion to endure, she now, for one last time more,

encountered it freely and voluntarily, in order to convert what had so long been agony into a kind of triumph.

"Look your last on the scarlet letter and its wearer!"the people's victim and lifelong bondslave, as they

fancied her, might say to them. "Yet a little while, and she will be beyond your reach! A few hours longer and

the deep, mysterious ocean will quench and hide for ever the symbol which ye have caused to burn on her

bosom!" Nor were it an inconsistency too improbable to be assigned to human nature, should we suppose a

feeling of regret in Hester's mind, at the moment when she was about to win her freedom from the pain which

had been thus deeply incorporated with her being. Might there not be an irresistible desire to quaff a last,

long, breathless draught of the cup of wormwood and aloes, with which nearly all her years of womanhood

had been perpetually flavoured. The wine of life, henceforth to be presented to her lips, must be indeed rich,

delicious, and exhilarating, in its chased and golden beaker, or else leave an inevitable and weary languor,

after the lees of bitterness wherewith she had been drugged, as with a cordial of intensest potency.

Pearl was decked out with airy gaiety. It would have been impossible to guess that this bright and sunny

apparition owed its existence to the shape of gloomy gray; or that a fancy, at once so gorgeous and so delicate

as must have been requisite to contrive the child's apparel, was the same that had achieved a task perhaps

more difficult, in imparting so distinct a peculiarity to Hester's simple robe. The dress, so proper was it to

little Pearl, seemed an effluence, or inevitable development and outward manifestation of her character, no

more to be separated from her than the manyhued brilliancy from a butterfly's wing, or the painted glory

from the leaf of a bright flower. As with these, so with the child; her garb was all of one idea with her nature.

On this eventful day, moreover, there was a certain singular inquietude and excitement in her mood,

resembling nothing so much as the shimmer of a diamond, that sparkles and flashes with the varied

throbbings of the breast on which it is displayed. Children have always a sympathy in the agitations of those

connected with them: always, especially, a sense of any trouble or impending revolution, of whatever kind, in

domestic circumstances; and therefore Pearl, who was the gem on her mother's unquiet bosom, betrayed, by

the very dance of her spirits, the emotions which none could detect in the marble passiveness of Hester's

This effervescence made her flit with a birdlike movement, rather than walk by her mother's side.

She broke continually into shouts of a wild, inarticulate, and sometimes piercing music. When they reached

the marketplace, she became still more restless, on perceiving the stir and bustle that enlivened the spot; for

it was usually more like the broad and lonesome green before a village meetinghouse, than the centre of a

"Why, what is this, mother?" cried she. "Wherefore have all the people left their work today? Is it a

playday for the whole world? See, there is the blacksmith! He has washed his sooty face, and put on his

Sabbathday clothes, and looks as if he would gladly be merry, if any kind body would only teach him how!

And there is Master Brackett, the old jailer, nodding and smiling at me. Why does he do so, mother?"

"He should not nod and smile at me, for all thatthe black, grim, uglyeyed old man!" said Pearl.

"He may nod at thee, if he will; for thou art clad in gray, and wearest the scarlet letter. But see, mother, how

many faces of strange people, and Indians among them, and sailors! What have they all come to do, here in

"They wait to see the procession pass," said Hester. "For the Governor and the magistrates are to go by, and

the ministers, and all the great people and good people, with the music and the soldiers marching before

"And will the minister be there?" asked Pearl. "And will he hold out both his hands to me, as when thou led'st

"He will be there, child," answered her mother, "but he will not greet thee today, nor must thou greet him. "

"What a strange, sad man is he!" said the child, as if speaking partly to herself. "In the dark nighttime he calls

us to him, and holds thy hand and mine, as when we stood with him on the scaffold yonder! And in the deep

forest, where only the old trees can hear, and the strip of sky see it, he talks with thee, sitting on a heap of

moss! And he kisses my forehead, too, so that the little brook would hardly wash it off! But, here, in the

sunny day, and among all the people, he knows us not; nor must we know him! A strange, sad man is he, with

"Be quiet, Pearlthou understandest not these things," said her mother. "Think not now of the minister, but

look about thee, and see how cheery is everybody's face today. The children have come from their schools,

and the grown people from their workshops and their fields, on purpose to be happy, for, today, a new man

is beginning to rule over them; and soas has been the custom of mankind ever since a nation was first

gatheredthey make merry and rejoice: as if a good and golden year were at length to pass over the poor old

It was as Hester said, in regard to the unwonted jollity that brightened the faces of the people. Into this festal

season of the yearas it already was, and continued to be during the greater part of two centuriesthe

Puritans compressed whatever mirth and public joy they deemed allowable to human infirmity; thereby so far

dispelling the customary cloud, that, for the space of a single holiday, they appeared scarcely more grave than

But we perhaps exaggerate the gray or sable tinge, which undoubtedly characterized the mood and manners

of the age. The persons now in the marketplace of Boston had not been born to an inheritance of Puritanic

gloom. They were native Englishmen, whose fathers had lived in the sunny richness of the Elizabethan

epoch; a time when the life of England, viewed as one great mass, would appear to have been as stately,

magnificent, and joyous, as the world has ever witnessed. Had they followed their hereditary taste, the New

England settlers would have illustrated all events of public importance by bonfires, banquets, pageantries, and

processions. Nor would it have been impracticable, in the observance of majestic ceremonies, to combine

mirthful recreation with solemnity, and give, as it were, a grotesque and brilliant embroidery to the great robe

of state, which a nation, at such festivals, puts on. There was some shadow of an attempt of this kind in the

mode of celebrating the day on which the political year of the colony commenced. The dim reflection of a

remembered splendour, a colourless and manifold diluted repetition of what they had beheld in proud old

Londonwe will not say at a royal coronation, but at a Lord Mayor's showmight be traced in the customs

which our forefathers instituted, with reference to the annual installation of magistrates. The fathers and

founders of the commonwealththe statesman, the priest, and the soldierseemed it a duty then to assume

the outward state and majesty, which, in accordance with antique style, was looked upon as the proper garb of

public and social eminence. All came forth to move in procession before the people's eye, and thus impart a

Then, too, the people were countenanced, if not encouraged, in relaxing the severe and close application to

their various modes of rugged industry, which at all other times, seemed of the same piece and material with

their religion. Here, it is true, were none of the appliances which popular merriment would so readily have

found in the England of Elizabeth's time, or that of Jamesno rude shows of a theatrical kind; no minstrel,

with his harp and legendary ballad, nor gleeman with an ape dancing to his music; no juggler, with his tricks

of mimic witchcraft; no Merry Andrew, to stir up the multitude with jests, perhaps a hundred years old, but

still effective, by their appeals to the very broadest sources of mirthful sympathy. All such professors of the

several branches of jocularity would have been sternly repressed, not only by the rigid discipline of law, but

by the general sentiment which give law its vitality. Not the less, however, the great, honest face of the

people smiledgrimly, perhaps, but widely too. Nor were sports wanting, such as the colonists had

witnessed, and shared in, long ago, at the country fairs and on the villagegreens of England; and which it

was thought well to keep alive on this new soil, for the sake of the courage and manliness that were essential

in them. Wrestling matches, in the different fashions of Cornwall and Devonshire, were seen here and there

about the marketplace; in one corner, there was a friendly bout at quarterstaff; andwhat attracted most

interest of allon the platform of the pillory, already so noted in our pages, two masters of defence were

commencing an exhibition with the buckler and broadsword. But, much to the disappointment of the crowd,

this latter business was broken off by the interposition of the town beadle, who had no idea of permitting the

majesty of the law to be violated by such an abuse of one of its consecrated places.

It may not be too much to affirm, on the whole, (the people being then in the first stages of joyless

deportment, and the offspring of sires who had known how to be merry, in their day), that they would

compare favourably, in point of holiday keeping, with their descendants, even at so long an interval as

ourselves. Their immediate posterity, the generation next to the early emigrants, wore the blackest shade of

Puritanism, and so darkened the national visage with it, that all the subsequent years have not sufficed to

The picture of human life in the marketplace, though its general tint was the sad gray, brown, or black of the

English emigrants, was yet enlivened by some diversity of hue. A party of Indiansin their savage finery of

curiously embroidered deerskin robes, wampumbelts, red and yellow ochre, and feathers, and armed with

the bow and arrow and stoneheaded spearstood apart with countenances of inflexible gravity, beyond

what even the Puritan aspect could attain. Nor, wild as were these painted barbarians, were they the wildest

feature of the scene. This distinction could more justly be claimed by some marinersa part of the crew of

the vessel from the Spanish Mainwho had come ashore to see the humours of Election Day. They were

roughlooking desperadoes, with sunblackened faces, and an immensity of beard; their wide short trousers

were confined about the waist by belts, often clasped with a rough plate of gold, and sustaining always a long

knife, and in some instances, a sword. From beneath their broadbrimmed hats of palmleaf, gleamed eyes

which, even in goodnature and merriment, had a kind of animal ferocity. They transgressed without fear or

scruple, the rules of behaviour that were binding on all others: smoking tobacco under the beadle's very nose,

although each whiff would have cost a townsman a shilling; and quaffing at their pleasure, draughts of wine

or aquavitae from pocket flasks, which they freely tendered to the gaping crowd around them. It remarkably

characterised the incomplete morality of the age, rigid as we call it, that a licence was allowed the seafaring

class, not merely for their freaks on shore, but for far more desperate deeds on their proper element. The

sailor of that day would go near to be arraigned as a pirate in our own. There could be little doubt, for

instance, that this very ship's crew, though no unfavourable specimens of the nautical brotherhood, had been

guilty, as we should phrase it, of depredations on the Spanish commerce, such as would have perilled all their

But the sea in those old times heaved, swelled, and foamed very much at its own will, or subject only to the

by human law. The buccaneer on the wave might relinquish his calling and become at once if he chose, a man

of probity and piety on land; nor, even in the full career of his reckless life, was he regarded as a personage

with whom it was disreputable to traffic or casually associate. Thus the Puritan elders in their black cloaks,

starched bands, and steeplecrowned hats, smiled not unbenignantly at the clamour and rude deportment of

these jolly seafaring men; and it excited neither surprise nor animadversion when so reputable a citizen as old

Roger Chillingworth, the physician, was seen to enter the marketplace in close and familiar talk with the

The latter was by far the most showy and gallant figure, so far as apparel went, anywhere to be seen among

the multitude. He wore a profusion of ribbons on his garment, and gold lace on his hat, which was also

encircled by a gold chain, and surmounted with a feather. There was a sword at his side and a swordcut on

his forehead, which, by the arrangement of his hair, he seemed anxious rather to display than hide. A

landsman could hardly have worn this garb and shown this face, and worn and shown them both with such a

galliard air, without undergoing stern question before a magistrate, and probably incurring a fine or

imprisonment, or perhaps an exhibition in the stocks. As regarded the shipmaster, however, all was looked

After parting from the physician, the commander of the Bristol ship strolled idly through the marketplace;

was standing, he appeared to recognise, and did not hesitate to address her. As was usually the case wherever

Hester stood, a small vacant areaa sort of magic circlehad formed itself about her, into which, though

the people were elbowing one another at a little distance, none ventured or felt disposed to intrude. It was a

forcible type of the moral solitude in which the scarlet letter enveloped its fated wearer; partly by her own

reserve, and partly by the instinctive, though no longer so unkindly, withdrawal of her fellowcreatures.

Now, if never before, it answered a good purpose by enabling Hester and the seaman to speak together

without risk of being overheard; and so changed was Hester Prynne's repute before the public, that the matron

in town, most eminent for rigid morality, could not have held such intercourse with less result of scandal than

"So, mistress," said the mariner, "I must bid the steward make ready one more berth than you bargained for!

No fear of scurvy or ship fever this voyage. What with the ship's surgeon and this other doctor, our only

danger will be from drug or pill; more by token, as there is a lot of apothecary's stuff aboard, which I traded

"What mean you?" inquired Hester, startled more than she permitted to appear. "Have you another

"Why, know you not," cried the shipmaster, "that this physician hereChillingworth he calls himselfis

minded to try my cabinfare with you? Ay, ay, you must have known it; for he tells me he is of your party,

and a close friend to the gentleman you spoke ofhe that is in peril from these sour old Puritan rulers."

"They know each other well, indeed," replied Hester, with a mien of calmness, though in the utmost

Nothing further passed between the mariner and Hester Prynne. But at that instant she beheld old Roger

Chillingworth himself, standing in the remotest comer of the marketplace and smiling on her; a smile

whichacross the wide and bustling square, and through all the talk and laughter, and various thoughts,

Before Hester Prynne could call together her thoughts, and consider what was practicable to be done in this

new and startling aspect of affairs, the sound of military music was heard approaching along a contiguous

street. It denoted the advance of the procession of magistrates and citizens on its way towards the

meetinghouse: where, in compliance with a custom thus early established, and ever since observed, the

Soon the head of the procession showed itself, with a slow and stately march, turning a corner, and making its

way across the marketplace. First came the music. It comprised a variety of instruments, perhaps

imperfectly adapted to one another, and played with no great skill; but yet attaining the great object for which

the harmony of drum and clarion addresses itself to the multitudethat of imparting a higher and more

heroic air to the scene of life that passes before the eye. Little Pearl at first clapped her hands, but then lost

for an instant the restless agitation that had kept her in a continual effervescence throughout the morning; she

gazed silently, and seemed to be borne upward like a floating seabird on the long heaves and swells of

sound. But she was brought back to her former mood by the shimmer of the sunshine on the weapons and

bright armour of the military company, which followed after the music, and formed the honorary escort of the

procession. This body of soldierywhich still sustains a corporate existence, and marches down from past

ages with an ancient and honourable famewas composed of no mercenary materials. Its ranks were filled

with gentlemen who felt the stirrings of martial impulse, and sought to establish a kind of College of Arms,

where, as in an association of Knights Templars, they might learn the science, and, so far as peaceful exercise

would teach them, the practices of war. The high estimation then placed upon the military character might be

seen in the lofty port of each individual member of the company. Some of them, indeed, by their services in

the Low Countries and on other fields of European warfare, had fairly won their title to assume the name and

pomp of soldiership. The entire array, moreover, clad in burnished steel, and with plumage nodding over their

bright morions, had a brilliancy of effect which no modern display can aspire to equal.

And yet the men of civil eminence, who came immediately behind the military escort, were better worth a

thoughtful observer's eye. Even in outward demeanour they showed a stamp of majesty that made the

warrior's haughty stride look vulgar, if not absurd. It was an age when what we call talent had far less

consideration than now, but the massive materials which produce stability and dignity of character a great

deal more. The people possessed by hereditary right the quality of reverence, which, in their descendants, if it

survive at all, exists in smaller proportion, and with a vastly diminished force in the selection and estimate of

public men. The change may be for good or ill, and is partly, perhaps, for both. In that old day the English

settler on these rude shoreshaving left king, nobles, and all degrees of awful rank behind, while still the

faculty and necessity of reverence was strong in himbestowed it on the white hair and venerable brow of

ageon longtried integrityon solid wisdom and sadcoloured experienceon endowments of that grave

and weighty order which gave the idea of permanence, and comes under the general definition of

respectability. These primitive statesmen, thereforeBradstreet, Endicott, Dudley, Bellingham, and their

compeerswho were elevated to power by the early choice of the people, seem to have been not often

brilliant, but distinguished by a ponderous sobriety, rather than activity of intellect. They had fortitude and

selfreliance, and in time of difficulty or peril stood up for the welfare of the state like a line of cliffs against

a tempestuous tide. The traits of character here indicated were well represented in the square cast of

countenance and large physical development of the new colonial magistrates. So far as a demeanour of

natural authority was concerned, the mother country need not have been ashamed to see these foremost men

of an actual democracy adopted into the House of Peers, or make the Privy Council of the Sovereign.

Next in order to the magistrates came the young and eminently distinguished divine, from whose lips the

the profession at that era in which intellectual ability displayed itself far more than in political life;

forleaving a higher motive out of the question it offered inducements powerful enough in the almost

worshipping respect of the community, to win the most aspiring ambition into its service. Even political

poweras in the case of Increase Matherwas within the grasp of a successful priest.

It was the observation of those who beheld him now, that never, since Mr. Dimmesdale first set his foot on

the New England shore, had he exhibited such energy as was seen in the gait and air with which he kept his

pace in the procession. There was no feebleness of step as at other times; his frame was not bent, nor did his

hand rest ominously upon his heart. Yet, if the clergyman were rightly viewed, his strength seemed not of the

body. It might be spiritual and imparted to him by angelical ministrations. It might be the exhilaration of that

potent cordial which is distilled only in the furnaceglow of earnest and longcontinued thought. Or

perchance his sensitive temperament was invigorated by the loud and piercing music that swelled

heavenward, and uplifted him on its ascending wave. Nevertheless, so abstracted was his look, it might be

questioned whether Mr. Dimmesdale ever heard the music. There was his body, moving onward, and with an

unaccustomed force. But where was his mind? Far and deep in its own region, busying itself, with

preternatural activity, to marshal a procession of stately thoughts that were soon to issue thence; and so he

saw nothing, heard nothing, knew nothing of what was around him; but the spiritual element took up the

feeble frame and carried it along, unconscious of the burden, and converting it to spirit like itself. Men of

uncommon intellect, who have grown morbid, possess this occasional power of mighty effort, into which

Hester Prynne, gazing steadfastly at the clergyman, felt a dreary influence come over her, but wherefore or

whence she knew not, unless that he seemed so remote from her own sphere, and utterly beyond her reach.

One glance of recognition she had imagined must needs pass between them. She thought of the dim forest,

with its little dell of solitude, and love, and anguish, and the mossy treetrunk, where, sitting handinhand,

they had mingled their sad and passionate talk with the melancholy murmur of the brook. How deeply had

they known each other then! And was this the man? She hardly knew him now! He, moving proudly past,

enveloped as it were, in the rich music, with the procession of majestic and venerable fathers; he, so

unattainable in his worldly position, and still more so in that far vista of his unsympathizing thoughts,

through which she now beheld him! Her spirit sank with the idea that all must have been a delusion, and that,

vividly as she had dreamed it, there could be no real bond betwixt the clergyman and herself. And thus much

of woman was there in Hester, that she could scarcely forgive himleast of all now, when the heavy footstep

of their approaching Fate might be heard, nearer, nearer, nearer!for being able so completely to withdraw

himself from their mutual worldwhile she groped darkly, and stretched forth her cold hands, and found

Pearl either saw and responded to her mother's feelings, or herself felt the remoteness and intangibility that

had fallen around the minister. While the procession passed, the child was uneasy, fluttering up and down,

like a bird on the point of taking flight. When the whole had gone by, she looked up into Hester's face

"Hold thy peace, dear little Pearl!" whispered her mother. "We must not always talk in the marketplace of

"I could not be sure that it was heso strange he looked," continued the child. "Else I would have run to

him, and bid him kiss me now, before all the people, even as he did yonder among the dark old trees. What

would the minister have said, mother? Would he have clapped his hand over his heart, and scowled on me,

"What should he say, Pearl," answered Hester, "save that it was no time to kiss, and that kisses are not to be

given in the marketplace? Well for thee, foolish child, that thou didst not speak to him!"

Another shade of the same sentiment, in reference to Mr. Dimmesdale, was expressed by a person whose

eccentricitiesinsanity, as we should term itled her to do what few of the townspeople would have

ventured onto begin a conversation with the wearer of the scarlet letter in public. It was Mistress Hibbins,

who, arrayed in great magnificence, with a triple ruff, a broidered stomacher, a gown of rich velvet, and a

goldheaded cane, had come forth to see the procession. As this ancient lady had the renown (which

subsequently cost her no less a price than her life) of being a principal actor in all the works of necromancy

that were continually going forward, the crowd gave way before her, and seemed to fear the touch of her

garment, as if it carried the plague among its gorgeous folds. Seen in conjunction with Hester

Prynnekindly as so many now felt towards the latterthe dread inspired by Mistress Hibbins had doubled,

and caused a general movement from that part of the marketplace in which the two women stood.

"Now, what mortal imagination could conceive it?" whispered the old lady confidentially to Hester. "Yonder

divine man! That saint on earth, as the people uphold him to be, and asI must needs sayhe really looks!

Who, now, that saw him pass in the procession, would think how little while it is since he went forth out of

his studychewing a Hebrew text of Scripture in his mouth, I warrantto take an airing in the forest! Aha!

we know what that means, Hester Prynne! But truly, forsooth, I find it hard to believe him the same man.

Many a church member saw I, walking behind the music, that has danced in the same measure with me, when

Somebody was fiddler, and, it might be, an Indian powwow or a Lapland wizard changing hands with us!

That is but a trifle, when a woman knows the world. But this minister. Couldst thou surely tell, Hester,

"Madam, I know not of what you speak," answered Hester Prynne, feeling Mistress Hibbins to be of infirm

mind; yet strangely startled and awestricken by the confidence with which she affirmed a personal

connexion between so many persons (herself among them) and the Evil One. "It is not for me to talk lightly

"Fie, womanfie!" cried the old lady, shaking her finger at Hester. "Dost thou think I have been to the forest

so many times, and have yet no skill to judge who else has been there? Yea, though no leaf of the wild

garlands which they wore while they danced be left in their hair! I know thee, Hester, for I behold the token.

We may all see it in the sunshine! and it glows like a red flame in the dark. Thou wearest it openly, so there

need be no question about that. But this minister! Let me tell thee in thine ear! When the Black Man sees one

of his own servants, signed and sealed, so shy of owning to the bond as is the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale, he

hath a way of ordering matters so that the mark shall be disclosed, in open daylight, to the eyes of all the

world! What is that the minister seeks to hide, with his hand always over his heart? Ha, Hester Prynne?"

"What is it, good Mistress Hibbins?" eagerly asked little Pearl. "Hast thou seen it?"

"No matter, darling!" responded Mistress Hibbins, making Pearl a profound reverence. "Thou thyself wilt see

it, one time or another. They say, child, thou art of the lineage of the Prince of Air! Wilt thou ride with me

some fine night to see thy father? Then thou shalt know wherefore the minister keeps his hand over his

Laughing so shrilly that all the marketplace could hear her, the weird old gentlewoman took her departure.

By this time the preliminary prayer had been offered in the meetinghouse, and the accents of the Reverend

Mr. Dimmesdale were heard commencing his discourse. An irresistible feeling kept Hester near the spot. As

the sacred edifice was too much thronged to admit another auditor, she took up her position close beside the

scaffold of the pillory. It was in sufficient proximity to bring the whole sermon to her ears, in the shape of an

This vocal organ was in itself a rich endowment, insomuch that a listener, comprehending nothing of the

language in which the preacher spoke, might still have been swayed to and fro by the mere tone and cadence.

Like all other music, it breathed passion and pathos, and emotions high or tender, in a tongue native to the

human heart, wherever educated. Muffled as the sound was by its passage through the church walls, Hester

Prynne listened with such intenseness, and sympathized so intimately, that the sermon had throughout a

meaning for her, entirely apart from its indistinguishable words. These, perhaps, if more distinctly heard,

might have been only a grosser medium, and have clogged the spiritual sense. Now she caught the low

undertone, as of the wind sinking down to repose itself; then ascended with it, as it rose through progressive

gradations of sweetness and power, until its volume seemed to envelop her with an atmosphere of awe and

solemn grandeur. And yet, majestic as the voice sometimes became, there was for ever in it an essential

character of plaintiveness. A loud or low expression of anguishthe whisper, or the shriek, as it might be

conceived, of suffering humanity, that touched a sensibility in every bosom! At times this deep strain of

pathos was all that could be heard, and scarcely heard sighing amid a desolate silence. But even when the

minister's voice grew high and commandingwhen it gushed irrepressibly upwardwhen it assumed its

utmost breadth and power, so overfilling the church as to burst its way through the solid walls, and diffuse

itself in the open airstill, if the auditor listened intently, and for the purpose, he could detect the same cry

of pain. What was it? The complaint of a human heart, sorrowladen, perchance guilty, telling its secret,

whether of guilt or sorrow, to the great heart of mankind; beseeching its sympathy or forgiveness,at every

moment,in each accent,and never in vain! It was this profound and continual undertone that gave the

During all this time, Hester stood, statuelike, at the foot of the scaffold. If the minister's voice had not kept

her there, there would, nevertheless, have been an inevitable magnetism in that spot, whence she dated the

first hour of her life of ignominy. There was a sense within hertoo illdefined to be made a thought, but

weighing heavily on her mindthat her whole orb of life, both before and after, was connected with this

Little Pearl, meanwhile, had quitted her mother's side, and was playing at her own will about the

marketplace. She made the sombre crowd cheerful by her erratic and glistening ray, even as a bird of bright

plumage illuminates a whole tree of dusky foliage by darting to and fro, half seen and half concealed amid

the twilight of the clustering leaves. She had an undulating, but oftentimes a sharp and irregular movement. It

indicated the restless vivacity of her spirit, which today was doubly indefatigable in its tiptoe dance,

because it was played upon and vibrated with her mother's disquietude. Whenever Pearl saw anything to

excite her ever active and wandering curiosity, she flew thitherward, and, as we might say, seized upon that

man or thing as her own property, so far as she desired it, but without yielding the minutest degree of control

over her motions in requital. The Puritans looked on, and, if they smiled, were none the less inclined to

pronounce the child a demon offspring, from the indescribable charm of beauty and eccentricity that shone

through her little figure, and sparkled with its activity. She ran and looked the wild Indian in the face, and he

grew conscious of a nature wilder than his own. Thence, with native audacity, but still with a reserve as

characteristic, she flew into the midst of a group of mariners, the swarthycheeked wild men of the ocean, as

the Indians were of the land; and they gazed wonderingly and admiringly at Pearl, as if a flake of the

seafoam had taken the shape of a little maid, and were gifted with a soul of the seafire, that flashes beneath

One of these seafaring men the shipmaster, indeed, who had spoken to Hester Prynne was so smitten with

Pearl's aspect, that he attempted to lay hands upon her, with purpose to snatch a kiss. Finding it as impossible

to touch her as to catch a hummingbird in the air, he took from his hat the gold chain that was twisted about

it, and threw it to the child. Pearl immediately twined it around her neck and waist with such happy skill, that,

once seen there, it became a part of her, and it was difficult to imagine her without it.

"Thy mother is yonder woman with the scarlet letter," said the seaman, "Wilt thou carry her a message from

"Then tell her," rejoined he, "that I spake again with the blackavisaged, hump shouldered old doctor, and

he engages to bring his friend, the gentleman she wots of, aboard with him. So let thy mother take no thought,

"Mistress Hibbins says my father is the Prince of the Air!" cried Pearl, with a naughty smile. "If thou callest

me that illname, I shall tell him of thee, and he will chase thy ship with a tempest!"

Pursuing a zigzag course across the marketplace, the child returned to her mother, and communicated what

the mariner had said. Hester's strong, calm steadfastlyenduring spirit almost sank, at last, on beholding this

dark and grim countenance of an inevitable doom, which at the moment when a passage seemed to open for

the minister and herself out of their labyrinth of miseryshowed itself with an unrelenting smile, right in the

With her mind harassed by the terrible perplexity in which the shipmaster's intelligence involved her, she was

also subjected to another trial. There were many people present from the country round about, who had often

heard of the scarlet letter, and to whom it had been made terrific by a hundred false or exaggerated rumours,

but who had never beheld it with their own bodily eyes. These, after exhausting other modes of amusement,

now thronged about Hester Prynne with rude and boorish intrusiveness. Unscrupulous as it was, however, it

could not bring them nearer than a circuit of several yards. At that distance they accordingly stood, fixed

there by the centrifugal force of the repugnance which the mystic symbol inspired. The whole gang of sailors,

likewise, observing the press of spectators, and learning the purport of the scarlet letter, came and thrust their

sunburnt and desperadolooking faces into the ring. Even the Indians were affected by a sort of cold shadow

of the white man's curiosity and, gliding through the crowd, fastened their snakelike black eyes on Hester's

bosom, conceiving, perhaps, that the wearer of this brilliantly embroidered badge must needs be a personage

of high dignity among her people. Lastly, the inhabitants of the town (their own interest in this wornout

subject languidly reviving itself, by sympathy with what they saw others feel) lounged idly to the same

quarter, and tormented Hester Prynne, perhaps more than all the rest, with their cool, wellacquainted gaze at

her familiar shame. Hester saw and recognized the selfsame faces of that group of matrons, who had awaited

her forthcoming from the prisondoor seven years ago; all save one, the youngest and only compassionate

among them, whose burialrobe she had since made. At the final hour, when she was so soon to fling aside

the burning letter, it had strangely become the centre of more remark and excitement, and was thus made to

sear her breast more painfully, than at any time since the first day she put it on.

While Hester stood in that magic circle of ignominy, where the cunning cruelty of her sentence seemed to

have fixed her for ever, the admirable preacher was looking down from the sacred pulpit upon an audience

whose very inmost spirits had yielded to his control. The sainted minister in the church! The woman of the

scarlet letter in the marketplace! What imagination would have been irreverent enough to surmise that the

The eloquent voice, on which the souls of the listening audience had been borne aloft as on the swelling

waves of the sea, at length came to a pause. There was a momentary silence, profound as what should follow

the utterance of oracles. Then ensued a murmur and halfhushed tumult, as if the auditors, released from the

high spell that had transported them into the region of another's mind, were returning into themselves, with

all their awe and wonder still heavy on them. In a moment more the crowd began to gush forth from the doors

of the church. Now that there was an end, they needed more breath, more fit to support the gross and earthly

life into which they relapsed, than that atmosphere which the preacher had converted into words of flame, and

In the open air their rapture broke into speech. The street and the marketplace absolutely babbled, from side

to side, with applauses of the minister. His hearers could not rest until they had told one another of what each

According to their united testimony, never had man spoken in so wise, so high, and so holy a spirit, as he that

spake this day; nor had inspiration ever breathed through mortal lips more evidently than it did through his.

Its influence could be seen, as it were, descending upon him, and possessing him, and continually lifting him

out of the written discourse that lay before him, and filling him with ideas that must have been as marvellous

to himself as to his audience. His subject, it appeared, had been the relation between the Deity and the

communities of mankind, with a special reference to the New England which they were here planting in the

wilderness. And, as he drew towards the close, a spirit as of prophecy had come upon him, constraining him

to its purpose as mightily as the old prophets of Israel were constrained, only with this difference, that,

whereas the Jewish seers had denounced judgments and ruin on their country, it was his mission to foretell a

high and glorious destiny for the newly gathered people of the Lord. But, throughout it all, and through the

whole discourse, there had been a certain deep, sad undertone of pathos, which could not be interpreted

otherwise than as the natural regret of one soon to pass away. Yes; their minister whom they so lovedand

who so loved them all, that he could not depart heavenward without a sighhad the foreboding of untimely

death upon him, and would soon leave them in their tears. This idea of his transitory stay on earth gave the

last emphasis to the effect which the preacher had produced; it was if an angel, in his passage to the skies, had

shaken his bright wings over the people for an instantat once a shadow and a splendourand had shed

Thus, there had come to the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdaleas to most men, in their various spheres, though

seldom recognised until they see it far behind theman epoch of life more brilliant and full of triumph than

any previous one, or than any which could hereafter be. He stood, at this moment, on the very proudest

eminence of superiority, to which the gifts or intellect, rich lore, prevailing eloquence, and a reputation of

whitest sanctity, could exalt a clergyman in New England's earliest days, when the professional character was

of itself a lofty pedestal. Such was the position which the minister occupied, as he bowed his head forward on

the cushions of the pulpit at the close of his Election Sermon. Meanwhile Hester Prynne was standing beside

the scaffold of the pillory, with the scarlet letter still burning on her breast!

Now was heard again the clamour of the music, and the measured tramp of the military escort issuing from

the church door. The procession was to be marshalled thence to the town hall, where a solemn banquet would

Once more, therefore, the train of venerable and majestic fathers were seen moving through a broad pathway

of the people, who drew back reverently, on either side, as the Governor and magistrates, the old and wise

men, the holy ministers, and all that were eminent and renowned, advanced into the midst of them. When

they were fairly in the marketplace, their presence was greeted by a shout. Thisthough doubtless it might

acquire additional force and volume from the childlike loyalty which the age awarded to its rulerswas felt

to be an irrepressible outburst of enthusiasm kindled in the auditors by that high strain of eloquence which

was yet reverberating in their ears. Each felt the impulse in himself, and in the same breath, caught it from his

neighbour. Within the church, it had hardly been kept down; beneath the sky it pealed upward to the zenith.

There were human beings enough, and enough of highly wrought and symphonious feeling to produce that

more impressive sound than the organ tones of the blast, or the thunder, or the roar of the sea; even that

mighty swell of many voices, blended into one great voice by the universal impulse which makes likewise

one vast heart out of the many. Never, from the soil of New England had gone up such a shout! Never, on

New England soil had stood the man so honoured by his mortal brethren as the preacher!

How fared it with him, then? Were there not the brilliant particles of a halo in the air about his head? So

etherealised by spirit as he was, and so apotheosised by worshipping admirers, did his footsteps, in the

As the ranks of military men and civil fathers moved onward, all eyes were turned towards the point where

the minister was seen to approach among them. The shout died into a murmur, as one portion of the crowd

after another obtained a glimpse of him. How feeble and pale he looked, amid all his triumph! The

energyor say, rather, the inspiration which had held him up, until he should have delivered the sacred

message that had brought its own strength along with it from heavenwas withdrawn, now that it had so

faithfully performed its office. The glow, which they had just before beheld burning on his cheek, was

extinguished, like a flame that sinks down hopelessly among the late decaying embers. It seemed hardly the

face of a man alive, with such a deathlike hue: it was hardly a man with life in him, that tottered on his path

One of his clerical brethrenit was the venerable John Wilsonobserving the state in which Mr.

Dimmesdale was left by the retiring wave of intellect and sensibility, stepped forward hastily to offer his

support. The minister tremulously, but decidedly, repelled the old man's arm. He still walked onward, if that

movement could be so described, which rather resembled the wavering effort of an infant, with its mother's

arms in view, outstretched to tempt him forward. And now, almost imperceptible as were the latter steps of

his progress, he had come opposite the wellremembered and weatherdarkened scaffold, where, long since,

with all that dreary lapse of time between, Hester Prynne had encountered the world's ignominious stare.

There stood Hester, holding little Pearl by the hand! And there was the scarlet letter on her breast! The

minister here made a pause; although the music still played the stately and rejoicing march to which the

procession moved. It summoned him onwardinward to the festival!but here he made a pause.

Bellingham, for the last few moments, had kept an anxious eye upon him. He now left his own place in the

procession, and advanced to give assistance judging, from Mr. Dimmesdale's aspect that he must otherwise

inevitably fall. But there was something in the latter's expression that warned back the magistrate, although a

man not readily obeying the vague intimations that pass from one spirit to another. The crowd, meanwhile,

looked on with awe and wonder. This earthly faintness, was, in their view, only another phase of the

minister's celestial strength; nor would it have seemed a miracle too high to be wrought for one so holy, had

he ascended before their eyes, waxing dimmer and brighter, and fading at last into the light of heaven!

It was a ghastly look with which he regarded them; but there was something at once tender and strangely

triumphant in it. The child, with the birdlike motion, which was one of her characteristics, flew to him, and

clasped her arms about his knees. Hester Prynneslowly, as if impelled by inevitable fate, and against her

strongest willlikewise drew near, but paused before she reached him. At this instant old Roger

Chillingworth thrust himself through the crowdor, perhaps, so dark, disturbed, and evil was his look, he

rose up out of some nether regionto snatch back his victim from what he sought to do! Be that as it might,

"Madman, hold! what is your purpose?" whispered he. "Wave back that woman! Cast off this child All shall

be well! Do not blacken your fame, and perish in dishonour! I can yet save you! Would you bring infamy on

"Ha, tempter! Methinks thou art too late!" answered the minister, encountering his eye, fearfully, but firmly.

"Hester Prynne," cried he, with a piercing earnestness, "in the name of Him, so terrible and so merciful, who

gives me grace, at this last moment, to do whatfor my own heavy sin and miserable agonyI withheld

myself from doing seven years ago, come hither now, and twine thy strength about me! Thy strength, Hester;

but let it be guided by the will which God hath granted me! This wretched and wronged old man is opposing

it with all his might!with all his own might, and the fiend's! Come, Hestercome! Support me up yonder

The crowd was in a tumult. The men of rank and dignity, who stood more immediately around the clergyman,

were so taken by surprise, and so perplexed as to the purport of what they sawunable to receive the

explanation which most readily presented itself, or to imagine any otherthat they remained silent and

inactive spectators of the judgement which Providence seemed about to work. They beheld the minister,

leaning on Hester's shoulder, and supported by her arm around him, approach the scaffold, and ascend its

steps; while still the little hand of the sinborn child was clasped in his. Old Roger Chillingworth followed,

as one intimately connected with the drama of guilt and sorrow in which they had all been actors, and well

"Hadst thou sought the whole earth over," said he looking darkly at the clergyman, "there was no one place so

secretno high place nor lowly place, where thou couldst have escaped mesave on this very scaffold!"

Yet he trembled, and turned to Hester, with an expression of doubt and anxiety in his eyes, not the less

"I know not! I know not!" she hurriedly replied "Better? Yea; so we may both die, and little Pearl die with

"For thee and Pearl, be it as God shall order," said the minister; "and God is merciful! Let me now do the will

which He hath made plain before my sight. For, Hester, I am a dying man. So let me make haste to take my

Partly supported by Hester Prynne, and holding one hand of little Pearl's, the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale

turned to the dignified and venerable rulers; to the holy ministers, who were his brethren; to the people,

whose great heart was thoroughly appalled yet overflowing with tearful sympathy, as knowing that some

deep lifematterwhich, if full of sin, was full of anguish and repentance likewisewas now to be laid

open to them. The sun, but little past its meridian, shone down upon the clergyman, and gave a distinctness to

his figure, as he stood out from all the earth, to put in his plea of guilty at the bar of Eternal Justice.

"People of New England!" cried he, with a voice that rose over them, high, solemn, and majesticyet had

always a tremor through it, and sometimes a shriek, struggling up out of a fathomless depth of remorse and

woe"ye, that have loved me!ye, that have deemed me holy!behold me here, the one sinner of the

world! At lastat last!I stand upon the spot where, seven years since, I should have stood, here, with this

woman, whose arm, more than the little strength wherewith I have crept hitherward, sustains me at this

dreadful moment, from grovelling down upon my face! Lo, the scarlet letter which Hester wears! Ye have all

shuddered at it! Wherever her walk hath beenwherever, so miserably burdened, she may have hoped to

find reposeit hath cast a lurid gleam of awe and horrible repugnance round about her. But there stood one

It seemed, at this point, as if the minister must leave the remainder of his secret undisclosed. But he fought

back the bodily weaknessand, still more, the faintness of heartthat was striving for the mastery with

him. He threw off all assistance, and stepped passionately forward a pace before the woman and the children.

"It was on him!" he continued, with a kind of fierceness; so determined was he to speak out tile whole. "God's

eye beheld it! The angels were for ever pointing at it! (The Devil knew it well, and fretted it continually with

the touch of his burning finger!) But he hid it cunningly from men, and walked among you with the mien of a

spirit, mournful, because so pure in a sinful world! and sad, because he missed his heavenly kindred! Now,

at the deathhour, he stands up before you! He bids you look again at Hester's scarlet letter! He tells you,

that, with all its mysterious horror, it is but the shadow of what he bears on his own breast, and that even this,

his own red stigma, is no more than the type of what has seared his inmost heart! Stand any here that question

With a convulsive motion, he tore away the ministerial band from before his breast. It was revealed! But it

were irreverent to describe that revelation. For an instant, the gaze of the horrorstricken multitude was

concentrated on the ghastly miracle; while the minister stood, with a flush of triumph in his face, as one who,

in the crisis of acutest pain, had won a victory. Then, down he sank upon the scaffold! Hester partly raised

him, and supported his head against her bosom. Old Roger Chillingworth knelt down beside him, with a

He withdrew his dying eyes from the old man, and fixed them on the woman and the child.

"My little Pearl," said he, feebly and there was a sweet and gentle smile over his face, as of a spirit sinking

into deep repose; nay, now that the burden was removed, it seemed almost as if he would be sportive with the

child"dear little Pearl, wilt thou kiss me now? Thou wouldst not, yonder, in the forest! But now thou wilt?"

Pearl kissed his lips. A spell was broken. The great scene of grief, in which the wild infant bore a part had

developed all her sympathies; and as her tears fell upon her father's cheek, they were the pledge that she

would grow up amid human joy and sorrow, nor forever do battle with the world, but be a woman in it.

Towards her mother, too, Pearl's errand as a messenger of anguish was fulfilled.

"Shall we not meet again?" whispered she, bending her face down close to his. "Shall we not spend our

immortal life together? Surely, surely, we have ransomed one another, with all this woe! Thou lookest far

"Hush, Hesterhush!" said he, with tremulous solemnity. "The law we broke Ithe sin here awfully

revealed!let these alone be in thy thoughts! I fear! I fear! It may be, that, when we forgot our Godwhen

we violated our reverence each for the other's soulit was thenceforth vain to hope that we could meet

hereafter, in an everlasting and pure reunion. God knows; and He is merciful! He hath proved his mercy,

most of all, in my afflictions. By giving me this burning torture to bear upon my breast! By sending yonder

dark and terrible old man, to keep the torture always at redheat! By bringing me hither, to die this death of

triumphant ignominy before the people! Had either of these agonies been wanting, I had been lost for ever!

That final word came forth with the minister's expiring breath. The multitude, silent till then, broke out in a

strange, deep voice of awe and wonder, which could not as yet find utterance, save in this murmur that rolled

After many days, when time sufficed for the people to arrange their thoughts in reference to the foregoing

scene, there was more than one account of what had been witnessed on the scaffold.

Most of the spectators testified to having seen, on the breast of the unhappy minister, a SCARLET

LETTERthe very semblance of that worn by Hester Prynneimprinted in the flesh. As regarded its origin

there were various explanations, all of which must necessarily have been conjectural. Some affirmed that the

Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale, on the very day when Hester Prynne first wore her ignominious badge, had

begun a course of penancewhich he afterwards, in so many futile methods, followed outby inflicting a

hideous torture on himself. Others contended that the stigma had not been produced until a long time

subsequent, when old Roger Chillingworth, being a potent necromancer, had caused it to appear, through the

agency of magic and poisonous drugs. Others, again and those best able to appreciate the minister's peculiar

sensibility, and the wonderful operation of his spirit upon the bodywhispered their belief, that the awful

symbol was the effect of the everactive tooth of remorse, gnawing from the inmost heart outwardly, and at

last manifesting Heaven's dreadful judgment by the visible presence of the letter. The reader may choose

among these theories. We have thrown all the light we could acquire upon the portent, and would gladly, now

that it has done its office, erase its deep print out of our own brain, where long meditation has fixed it in very

It is singular, nevertheless, that certain persons, who were spectators of the whole scene, and professed never

once to have removed their eyes from the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale, denied that there was any mark

whatever on his breast, more than on a newborn infant's. Neither, by their report, had his dying words

acknowledged, nor even remotely implied, anythe slightestconnexion on his part, with the guilt for

which Hester Prynne had so long worn the scarlet letter. According to these highlyrespectable witnesses, the

minister, conscious that he was dyingconscious, also, that the reverence of the multitude placed him

already among saints and angelshad desired, by yielding up his breath in the arms of that fallen woman, to

express to the world how utterly nugatory is the choicest of man's own righteousness. After exhausting life in

his efforts for mankind's spiritual good, he had made the manner of his death a parable, in order to impress on

his admirers the mighty and mournful lesson, that, in the view of Infinite Purity, we are sinners all alike. It

was to teach them, that the holiest amongst us has but attained so far above his fellows as to discern more

looks down, and repudiate more utterly the phantom of human merit, which would look aspiringly upward.

Without disputing a truth so momentous, we must be allowed to consider this version of Mr. Dimmesdale's

story as only an instance of that stubborn fidelity with which a man's friendsand especially a

clergyman'swill sometimes uphold his character, when proofs, clear as the midday sunshine on the scarlet

The authority which we have chiefly followeda manuscript of old date, drawn up from the verbal

testimony of individuals, some of whom had known Hester Prynne, while others had heard the tale from

contemporary witnesses fully confirms the view taken in the foregoing pages. Among many morals which

press upon us from the poor minister's miserable experience, we put only this into a sentence:"Be true! Be

true! Be true! Show freely to the world, if not your worst, yet some trait whereby the worst may be inferred!"

Nothing was more remarkable than the change which took place, almost immediately after Mr. Dimmesdale's

death, in the appearance and demeanour of the old man known as Roger Chillingworth. All his strength and

energyall his vital and intellectual forceseemed at once to desert him, insomuch that he positively

withered up, shrivelled away and almost vanished from mortal sight, like an uprooted weed that lies wilting

in the sun. This unhappy man had made the very principle of his life to consist in the pursuit and systematic

exercise revenge; and when, by its completest triumph consummation that evil principle was left with no

further material to support itwhen, in short, there was no more Devil's work on earth for him to do, it only

remained for the unhumanised mortal to betake himself whither his master would find him tasks enough, and

pay him his wages duly. But, to all these shadowy beings, so long our near acquaintancesas well Roger

Chillingworth as his companions we would fain be merciful. It is a curious subject of observation and

inquiry, whether hatred and love be not the same thing at bottom. Each, in its utmost development, supposes

a high degree of intimacy and heartknowledge; each renders one individual dependent for the food of his

affections and spiritual fife upon another: each leaves the passionate lover, or the no less passionate hater,

forlorn and desolate by the withdrawal of his subject. Philosophically considered, therefore, the two passions

seem essentially the same, except that one happens to be seen in a celestial radiance, and the other in a dusky

and lurid glow. In the spiritual world, the old physician and the ministermutual victims as they have

beenmay, unawares, have found their earthly stock of hatred and antipathy transmuted into golden love.

Leaving this discussion apart, we have a matter of business to communicate to the reader. At old Roger

Chillingworth's decease, (which took place within the year), and by his last will and testament, of which

Governor Bellingham and the Reverend Mr. Wilson were executors, he bequeathed a very considerable

amount of property, both here and in England to little Pearl, the daughter of Hester Prynne.

So Pearlthe elf childthe demon offspring, as some people up to that epoch persisted in considering

herbecame the richest heiress of her day in the New World. Not improbably this circumstance wrought a

very material change in the public estimation; and had the mother and child remained here, little Pearl at a

marriageable period of life might have mingled her wild blood with the lineage of the devoutest Puritan

among them all. But, in no long time after the physician's death, the wearer of the scarlet letter disappeared,

and Pearl along with her. For many years, though a vague report would now and then find its way across the

sealike a shapeless piece of driftwood tossed ashore with the initials of a name upon ityet no tidings of

them unquestionably authentic were received. The story of the scarlet letter grew into a legend. Its spell,

however, was still potent, and kept the scaffold awful where the poor minister had died, and likewise the

cottage by the seashore where Hester Prynne had dwelt. Near this latter spot, one afternoon some children

were at play, when they beheld a tall woman in a gray robe approach the cottagedoor. In all those years it

had never once been opened; but either she unlocked it or the decaying wood and iron yielded to her hand, or

On the threshold she pausedturned partly roundfor perchance the idea of entering alone and all so

changed, the home of so intense a former life, was more dreary and desolate than even she could bear. But

her hesitation was only for an instant, though long enough to display a scarlet letter on her breast.

And Hester Prynne had returned, and taken up her longforsaken shame! But where was little Pearl? If still

alive she must now have been in the flush and bloom of early womanhood. None knewnor ever learned

with the fulness of perfect certaintywhether the elfchild had gone thus untimely to a maiden grave; or

whether her wild, rich nature had been softened and subdued and made capable of a woman's gentle

happiness. But through the remainder of Hester's life there were indications that the recluse of the scarlet

letter was the object of love and interest with some inhabitant of another land. Letters came, with armorial

seals upon them, though of bearings unknown to English heraldry. In the cottage there were articles of

comfort and luxury such as Hester never cared to use, but which only wealth could have purchased and

affection have imagined for her. There were trifles too, little ornaments, beautiful tokens of a continual

remembrance, that must have been wrought by delicate fingers at the impulse of a fond heart. And once

Hester was seen embroidering a babygarment with such a lavish richness of golden fancy as would have

raised a public tumult had any infant thus apparelled, been shown to our soberhued community.

In fine, the gossips of that day believedand Mr. Surveyor Pue, who made investigations a century later,

believedand one of his recent successors in office, moreover, faithfully believesthat Pearl was not only

alive, but married, and happy, and mindful of her mother; and that she would most joyfully have entertained

But there was a more real life for Hester Prynne, here, in New England, that in that unknown region where

Pearl had found a home. Here had been her sin; here, her sorrow; and here was yet to be her penitence. She

had returned, therefore, and resumed of her own free will, for not the sternest magistrate of that iron period

would have imposed itresumed the symbol of which we have related so dark a tale. Never afterwards did it

quit her bosom. But, in the lapse of the toilsome, thoughtful, and selfdevoted years that made up Hester's

life, the scarlet letter ceased to be a stigma which attracted the world's scorn and bitterness, and became a

type of something to be sorrowed over, and looked upon with awe, yet with reverence too. And, as Hester

Prynne had no selfish ends, nor lived in any measure for her own profit and enjoyment, people brought all

their sorrows and perplexities, and besought her counsel, as one who had herself gone through a mighty

trouble. Women, more especiallyin the continually recurring trials of wounded, wasted, wronged,

misplaced, or erring and sinful passionor with the dreary burden of a heart unyielded, because unvalued

and unsought came to Hester's cottage, demanding why they were so wretched, and what the remedy! Hester

comforted and counselled them, as best she might. She assured them, too, of her firm belief that, at some

brighter period, when the world should have grown ripe for it, in Heaven's own time, a new truth would be

revealed, in order to establish the whole relation between man and woman on a surer ground of mutual

happiness. Earlier in life, Hester had vainly imagined that she herself might be the destined prophetess, but

had long since recognised the impossibility that any mission of divine and mysterious truth should be

confided to a woman stained with sin, bowed down with shame, or even burdened with a lifelong sorrow.

The angel and apostle of the coming revelation must be a woman, indeed, but lofty, pure, and beautiful, and

wise; moreover, not through dusky grief, but the ethereal medium of joy; and showing how sacred love

So said Hester Prynne, and glanced her sad eyes downward at the scarlet letter. And, after many, many years,

a new grave was delved, near an old and sunken one, in that burialground beside which King's Chapel has

since been built. It was near that old and sunken grave, yet with a space between, as if the dust of the two

sleepers had no right to mingle. Yet one tombstone served for both. All around, there were monuments

carved with armorial bearings; and on this simple slab of slateas the curious investigator may still discern,

and perplex himself with the purportthere appeared the semblance of an engraved escutcheon. It bore a

device, a herald's wording of which may serve for a motto and brief description of our now concluded legend;

so sombre is it, and relieved only by one everglowing point of light gloomier than the shadow: