San Antonio daily light. [volume] (San Antonio, Tex.) 1886-1907, 1892-06-16
THE SCARLET LETTER
By NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE.

seemed tethe sad woman as she watched
the growth and the beauty that became
every day more brilliant, and the intelli-
gence that threw its quivering sunshine
over the tiny features of this child! Her
Pearl-for so had Hester called her; not
as a nameexpressiyeof her aspect, which
had nothing of the calm, white, unim-
passioned luster that would be indicated
by the comparison.
But she named the infant Pearl" as
being of great price, purchased with all
she had, her mothers only treasure!
How strange, indeed! Man had marked
this woman's sin by q scarlet letter,
which had such potent and disastrous
efficacy that no human sympathy could
reach her, save it were sinful like her
self. God, as direct consequence of
the sin which man thus punished, had
given her a lovely child, whose place
was ON that same dishonored bosom, to
connect her parent forever with the
race and descent of mortals, and to be
finally 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 ex-
panding nature, ever dreading to detect
some dark and wild popularity that
should correspond with the outlines to
which she owed her being.
Certainly there was no physical de
feet. By its perfect shape, its vigor 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 worlds
first parents were driven out. The child
had native grace which does not in
variably coexist with faultless beauty
its attire, however simple, always i'm
pressed 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 morbid pur-
pose that may be better understood here
after, had bought the richest tissues that
could be procured, and allowed her i'm
aginative 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
splendor of Pearls own proper beauty,
shining through the gorgeous robes
which might have extinguished paler
loneliness, that there was an absolute
circle of radiance around her on the
darksome cottage floor. And yet russell
gown, torn and soiled with the childs
rude play, made picture of her just as
perfect. Pearls aspect was imbued with
, a spell of infinite variety; in this one
child there were many children, COM
pretending the full scope between the
wild flower prettiness of peasant baby
and the pomp, in little, of an infant
princess. Throughout all, however,
there was 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 be herself-it would have been no
longer Pearl!
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, but-or else Hester's
fears deceived her-it lacked reference
and adaptation to the world into which
she was born. The child could not bC
made amenable to rules. In giving hel
existence a great law had been broken
and the result was a being whose ele
ments were perhaps beautiful and bril-
liant, but all in disorder, or with an or
der peculiar to themselves, amid which
the point of variety and arrangement
was difficult or impossible to be discov
cred.
How soon-with what strange rapid
ity, indeed!-did Pearl arrive at an ag
that was capable of social intercourse
beyond the mothers ever ready smil
and nonsense words! And then what
happiness would it have been could Hes
ter Prynne have heard her clear, bird
like voice mingling with the uproar @
other childish voices, and have distir
guished and unraveled her own darling
tones amid all the entangled outcry G
group of sportive childrenl But thi
could never be. Pearl was born ou
cast of the infantile world An imp {
evil, emblem and product of sin, she ha
no right among christened infant
Nothing was more remarkable than I'll
instinct, as it seemed, with which IL
child comprehended her loneliness: IL
destiny that had drawn an inviolab
circle round about her; the whole pecu
iarity, in short, of her position in r
spect to other children.