Martinsburg independent. [volume] (Martinsburg, W. Va.) 1875-1900, 1892-04-23

grant 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 grippe about the
neck and confinement of the head, the
proneness to which was the most devil
ish characteristic of this ugly engine.
Knowing well her part she assembled
fight of wooden steps, and was thus dis
playel to the surrounding multitude, at
about the height of a mans shoulders
above the street. The unhappy
culprit sustained herself as best a woman
might, under the heavy weight of
thousand unrelenting eyes, all fastened
upon her, and concentrated at her
bosom 1t was almost intolerable to be
borne
OF an impnlsiye and passionate nature,
she had fortified herself to encounter the
stings and venomous stabs of public con-
tumely, 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 counte-
nances contorted with scornful merri-
ment and herself the object. Had a
roar of laughter burst from the multi
tude-each man, each woman, each lit
tie shrill voiced child contributing their
individual parts-Hester Prynne might
have repaid them all with bitter and
disdainful smile. But. under the leaden
infiction which it was her doom to
endure, she felt at moments as if she
must needs shrek 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 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
trifing and immaterial, passages of in
fancy and school days, sports, childish
quarrels and the little domestic traits
of her maiden years came swarlning
back upon her, intermingled with recol-
lections 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 play. Posi-
bly, it was an instructive device of her
spirit to relieve itself by the exhibition
of these phantasmagoric forms from the
cruel weight and hardness of the reality.
Lastly, in lieu of these shifting scenes,
came back the rude market place of the
Puritan settlement, with all the towns
people assembled and leveling 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, Enthusiastically en-
broidered with gold thread, upon her
bosom.
Could it be true2 She clutched the
child SO fiercely to her breast that it
sent forth cry; she turned her eyes
downward at the scarlet letter, and even
touched it with her finger to assure her
self that the infant and the shame were
real. Yesl-these were her realities
all else had vanished!