No More Learning

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 manuscripts--filled not
with the dulness of official formalities, but with the thought of
inventive brains and the rich effusion of deep hearts--had gone
equally to oblivion; and that, moreover, without serving a purpose in
their day, as these heaped-up papers had, and--saddest of
all--without purchasing for their writers the comfortable livelihood
which the clerks of the Custom-House 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
merchants,--old King Derby, old Billy Gray, old Simon Forrester, and
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 long-established rank.

Prior to the Revolution there is a dearth of records; the earlier
documents and archives of the Custom-House 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
arrow-heads in the field near the Old Manse.

But, one idle and rainy day, it was my fortune to make a discovery of
some little interest. Poking and burrowing into the heaped-up 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, half-reluctant interest which we
bestow on the corpse of dead activity,--and exerting my fancy,
sluggish with little use, to raise up from these dry bones an image of
the old town's brighter aspect, when India was a new region, and only
Salem knew the way thither,--I 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 favor of one Jonathan Pue, as Surveyor of
his Majesty's Customs for the port of Salem, in the Province of
Massachusetts Bay. I remember 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
Custom-House lumber only by the fact that Mr. Pue'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 public
concern, was left behind, and had remained ever since unopened.

The ancient Surveyor--being little molested, I suppose, at that early
day, with business pertaining to his office--seems 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 been eaten up
with rust. A portion of his facts, by the by, 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 labor off my hands. As a final disposition, I
contemplate depositing them with the Essex Historical Society.

But the object that most drew my attention, in 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 recovered even by the process of picking out the threads.
This rag of scarlet cloth,--for time and wear and a sacrilegious moth
had reduced it to little other than a rag,--on careful examination,
assumed the shape of a letter. 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, honor, and dignity, in by-past 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 analysis of my mind.

While thus perplexed,--and 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 Indians,--I
happened to place it on my breast. It seemed to me,--the reader may
smile, but must not doubt my word,--it seemed to me, then, that I
experienced a sensation not altogether physical, yet almost so, of
burning heat; and as if the letter were not of red cloth, but red-hot
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
means, as a person of such propensities inevitably must, she 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 itself,--a most
curious relic,--are 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 as
affirming, that, in the dressing up of the tale, and imagining the
motives 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 half a dozen 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 I
contend for is the authenticity of the outline.

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 wig,--which was buried with him, but did not
perish in the grave,--had met me in the deserted chamber of the
Custom-House. 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 splendor that shone so dazzlingly about the throne. How unlike,
alas! the hang-dog 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 him,--who might reasonably regard himself as my
official ancestor,--to bring his mouldy and moth-eaten 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 life-lease, 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 hundred-fold repetition, the
long extent from the front-door of the Custom-House 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 quarter-deck. They probably
fancied that my sole object--and, indeed, the sole object for which a
sane man could ever put himself into voluntary motion--was, 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 custom-house 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 only with miserable
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 once have 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 sea-shore walks, and
rambles into the country, whenever--which was seldom and
reluctantly--I 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 parlor, lighted only by the glimmering coal-fire
and the moon, striving to picture forth imaginary scenes, which, the
next day, might flow out on the brightening page in many-hued
description.

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
distinctly,--making every object so minutely visible, yet so unlike a
morning or noontide visibility,--is a medium the most suitable for a
romance-writer to get acquainted with his illusive guests. There is
the little domestic scenery of the well-known apartment; the chairs,
with each its separate individuality; the centre-table, sustaining a
work-basket, a volume or two, and an extinguished lamp; the sofa; the
bookcase; the picture on the wall;--all these details, so completely
seen, are so spiritualized 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 hobby-horse;--whatever, 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
fairy-land, 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, or had never once stirred from our fireside.

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 from 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 up. It converts them
from snow-images into men and women. Glancing at the looking-glass, we
behold--deep within its haunted verge--the smouldering glow of the
half-extinguished 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 need
never try to write romances.

But, for myself, during the whole of my Custom-House 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 tallow-candle. An entire class of susceptibilities, and a
gift connected with them,--of no great richness or value, but the best
I had,--was gone from me.

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 marvellous gifts as a story-teller. Could I have
preserved the picturesque force of his style, and the humorous
coloring 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 soap-bubble 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 to-day, and thus to make it a bright
transparency; to spiritualize 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 have 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 favorable 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 Custom-House 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, which--though, I trust, an
honest one--is of such a sort that he does not share in the united
effort of mankind.

An effect--which I believe to be observable, more or less, in every
individual who has occupied the position--is, 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 self-support. If he possess 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 officer--fortunate in the unkindly shove that sends him
forth betimes, to struggle amid a struggling world--may 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 infirmity,--that his tempered steel and elasticity are lost,--he
forever afterwards looks wistfully about him in quest of support
external to himself. His pervading and continual hope--a 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
death--is, 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 gold--meaning no disrespect to the worthy old
gentleman--has, 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, its self-reliance, and all that gives the
emphasis to manly character.

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 endeavored to calculate how much
longer I could stay in the Custom-House, and yet go forth a man. To
confess the truth, it was my greatest apprehension,--as 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 resign,--it
was my chief trouble, therefore, that I was likely to grow gray 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 friend,--to make the dinner-hour 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 look-forward 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 meditated
better things for me than I could possibly imagine for myself.

A remarkable event of the third year of my Surveyorship--to 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 blood-thirstiness 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 tendency--which I now witnessed in men no worse than their
neighbors--to grow cruel, merely because they possessed the power of
inflicting harm. If the guillotine, as applied to office-holders,
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 me--who have been a
calm and curious observer, as well in victory as defeat--that 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
were 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 ill-will; nor is it their custom
ignominiously to kick the head which they have just struck off.

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, I 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 Custom-House, as before in the Old Manse, I had spent three years;
a 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 ill-pleased to be recognized by the Whigs
as an enemy; since his inactivity in political affairs--his 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 another--had 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
of a friendly one.

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 politically 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 long-disused writing-desk, and was
again a literary man.

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 honors 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. [1] 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 enemies! For I am in the realm of quiet!

[Footnote 1: At the time of writing this article the author
intended to publish, along with "The Scarlet Letter," several
shorter tales and sketches. These it has been thought
advisable to defer. ]

The life of the Custom-House lies like a dream behind me. The old
Inspector,--who, by the by, I regret to say, was overthrown and killed
by a horse, some time ago; else he would certainly have lived
forever,--he, and all those other venerable personages who sat with
him at the receipt of custom, are but shadows in my view; white-headed
and wrinkled images, which my fancy used to sport with, and has now
flung aside forever. The merchants,--Pingree, Phillips, Shepard,
Upton, Kimball, Bertram, Hunt,--these, and many other names, which had
such a classic familiarity for my ear six months ago,--these men of
traffic, who seemed to occupy so important a position in the
world,--how little time has it required to disconnect me from them
all, not merely in act, but recollection! It is with an effort that 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 cloud-land, 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 towns-people will not much regret me; for--though 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 burial-place of so many of my forefathers--_there_ 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, however,--O, transporting and triumphant thought! --that the
great-grandchildren 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!

[Illustration]




[Illustration: The Prison Door]




[Illustration: Vignette,--Wild Rose]

THE SCARLET LETTER.




I.

THE PRISON-DOOR.


[Illustration]

A throng of bearded men, in sad-colored garments, and gray,
steeple-crowned hats, intermixed 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 recognized 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, pigweed, apple-peru, and such unsightly vegetation, which
evidently found something congenial in the soil that had so early
borne the black flower of civilized 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 fair 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 symbolize some
sweet moral blossom, that may be found along the track, or relieve the
darkening close of a tale of human frailty and sorrow.

[Illustration]




[Illustration]

II.

THE MARKET-PLACE.


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 noted
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 and vagrant Indian, whom the white man's fire-water
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 demeanor on the part of the spectators; as befitted a
people amongst whom religion and law were almost identical, and in
whose character both were so thoroughly interfused, that the mildest
and the 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 has
transmitted to her child a fainter bloom, a more delicate and briefer
beauty, and a slighter physical frame, if not a 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. "

"The magistrates are God-fearing gentlemen, but merciful
overmuch,--that 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. Madam Hester would have winced at that, I warrant
me. But she,--the 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 such like heathenish adornment, and so walk the streets
as brave as ever! "

"Ah, but," interposed, more softly, a young wife, holding a child by
the hand, "let her cover the mark as she will, the pang of it will be
always in her heart. "

[Illustration: The Gossips]

"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 self-constituted 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
statute-book. Then let the magistrates, who have made it of no effect,
thank themselves if their own wives and daughters go astray! "

"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 in the prison-door, and here comes Mistress Prynne
herself. "

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 grisly presence of the town-beadle, with a sword by his side, and
his staff of office in his hand. This personage prefigured and
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
prison-door, 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 acquainted only with the gray twilight of a dungeon, or other
darksome apartment of the prison.

When the young woman--the mother of this child--stood 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 towns-people and neighbors. 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 splendor 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
lady-like, too, after the manner of the feminine gentility of those
days; characterized by a certain state and dignity, rather than by the
delicate, evanescent, and indescribable grace, which is now recognized
as its indication. And never had Hester Prynne appeared more
lady-like, 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
something 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 wearer,--so that both men and women, who had been
familiarly acquainted with Hester Prynne, were now impressed as if
they beheld her for the first time,--was 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 enclosing her in a sphere by herself.

"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 punishment? "

"It were well," muttered the most iron-visaged of the old dames, "if
we stripped Madam 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 mine own rheumatic flannel, to make a fitter one! "

"O, peace, neighbors, peace! " whispered their youngest companion; "do
not let her hear you! Not a stitch in that embroidered letter but she
has felt it in her heart. "

The grim beadle now made a gesture with his staff.

"Make way, good people, make 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, Madam Hester, and show your scarlet letter in the
market-place! "

A lane was forthwith opened through the crowd of spectators. Preceded
by the beadle, and attended by an irregular procession of
stern-browed men and unkindly visaged women, Hester Prynne set forth
towards the place appointed for her punishment. A crowd of eager and
curious school-boys, understanding little of the matter in hand,
except that it gave them a half-holiday, 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
market-place. Measured by the prisoner's experience, however, it might
be reckoned a journey of some length; for, haughty as her demeanor
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 market-place. It stood nearly beneath the eaves of
Boston's earliest church, and appeared to be a fixture there.

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 nature,--whatever be the delinquencies of the individual,--no
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 multitude, at
about the height of a man's shoulders above the street.

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 infant that she had borne.

The scene was not without a mixture of awe, such as must always invest
the spectacle of guilt and shame in a fellow-creature, 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 meeting-house, 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 multitude,--each man,
each woman, each little shrill-voiced child, contributing their
individual parts,--Hester 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 steeple-crowned hats. Reminiscences the most trifling
and immaterial, passages of infancy and school-days, 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 phantasmagoric forms, from the
cruel weight and hardness of the reality.

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 gray stone, with a poverty-stricken
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 bald brow, and reverend white beard, that flowed over the
old-fashioned 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, scholar-like 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 the
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 picture-gallery, the
intricate and narrow thoroughfares, the tall, gray houses, the huge
cathedrals, and the public edifices, ancient in date and quaint in
architecture, of a Continental city; where a new life had awaited her,
still in connection with the misshapen scholar; a new life, but
feeding itself on time-worn materials, like a tuft of green moss on a
crumbling wall. Lastly, in lieu of these shifting scenes, came back
the rude market-place of the Puritan settlement, with all the
towns-people assembled and levelling their stern regards at Hester
Prynne,--yes, at herself,--who stood on the scaffold of the pillory,
an infant on her arm, and the letter A, in scarlet, fantastically
embroidered with gold-thread, upon her bosom!

[Illustration: "Standing on the Miserable Eminence"]

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 shame were real. Yes! --these were her
realities,--all else had vanished!




[Illustration]

III.

THE RECOGNITION.


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 disarray of civilized and savage
costume.

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 endeavored 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 seem to hear it.

At his arrival in the market-place, 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 next to him, he
addressed him, in a formal and courteous manner.

"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 heathen-folk,
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's,--have I her name rightly? --of this woman's
offences, and what has brought her to yonder scaffold? "

"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 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 favor, Sir, may be the father of yonder
babe--it is some three or four months old, I should judge--which
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 a-wanting," answered the townsman. "Madam
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, and forgetting that
God sees him. "

"The learned man," observed the stranger, with another smile, "should
come himself, to look into the mystery. "

"It behooves 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 mark of shame upon her
bosom. "

"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 known! --he will be known! --he
will be known! "

He bowed courteously to the communicative townsman, and, whispering a
few words to his Indian attendant, they both made their way through
the crowd.

While this passed, Hester Prynne had been standing on her pedestal,
still with a fixed gaze towards the stranger; so 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, mid-day sun burning down upon her face, and
lighting up its shame; with the scarlet token of infamy on her breast;
with the sin-born 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 face, they 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 and solemn tone, audible to the
whole multitude.

"Hearken unto me, Hester Prynne! " said the voice.

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 meeting-house. 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 honor. He wore a dark feather in his hat, a border of
embroidery on his cloak, and a black velvet tunic beneath; a
gentleman advanced in years, with a hard experience written in his
wrinkles. He was not ill fitted 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 be
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 and trembled.

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 self-congratulation with him. There he
stood, with a border of grizzled locks beneath his skull-cap; while
his gray eyes, accustomed to the shaded light of his study, were
winking, like those of Hester's infant, in the unadulterated
sunshine.