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The Scarlet letter
A
throng
of
bearded
men
,
in
sad-coloured
garments
and
grey
steeple-crowned
hats
,
inter-mixed
with
women
,
some
wearing
hoods
,
and
others
bareheaded
,
was
assembled
in
front
of
a
wooden
edifice
,
the
door
of
which
was
heavily
timbered
with
oak
,
and
studded
with
iron
spikes
.
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
prison-house
somewhere
in
the
Vicinity
of
Cornhill
,
almost
as
seasonably
as
they
marked
out
the
first
burial-ground
,
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
weather-stains
and
other
indications
of
age
,
which
gave
a
yet
darker
aspect
to
its
beetle-browed
and
gloomy
front
.
The
rust
on
the
ponderous
iron-work
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
wheel-track
of
the
street
,
was
a
grass-plot
,
much
overgrown
with
burdock
,
pig-weed
,
apple-pern
,
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
rose-bush
,
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
heart
of
Nature
could
pity
and
be
kind
to
him
.
This
rose-bush
,
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
prison-door
,
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
human
frailty
and
sorrow
.
The
grass-plot
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
iron-clamped
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
bond-servant
,
or
an
undutiful
child
,
whom
his
parents
had
given
over
to
the
civil
authority
,
was
to
be
corrected
at
the
whipping-post
.
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
bitter-tempered
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
death
itself
.
It
was
a
circumstance
to
be
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
and
briefer
beauty
,
and
a
slighter
physical
frame
,
if
not
character
of
less
force
and
solidity
than
her
own
.
The
women
who
were
now
standing
about
the
prison-door
stood
within
less
than
half
a
century
of
the
period
when
the
man-like
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
well-developed
busts
,
and
on
round
and
ruddy
cheeks
,
that
had
ripened
in
the
far-off
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
hard-featured
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
church-members
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
worshipful
magistrates
have
awarded
?
Marry
,
I
trow
not
"
"
People
say
,
"
said
another
,
"
that
the
Reverend
Master
Dimmesdale
,
her
godly
pastor
,
takes
it
very
grievously
to
heart
that
such
a
scandal
should
have
come
upon
his
congregation
.
"
