Martinsburg independent. [volume] (Martinsburg, W. Va.) 1875-1900, 1892-06-25

kled brow be not flung down there like
a cast off garment His friends, no
doubt, would still have insisted with
him, Thou art myself the man!' but
the error would have been their own,
not his.
Before Mr.. Dimmesdale reached home
his inner man gave him other evidences
of 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 ade-
auate to account for the impulses now
communicated to the unfortunate and
startled minister. AT every step he was
melted to do some strange, wild, wicked
thing or other, with 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.
He had by this time reached his
dwelling on the edge of the burial
ground, and Fastening up the stairs
took refuge in his study. The minister
was glad to have reached t}lis shelter,
without first betraying himself to the
world by any of those strange and wicked
eccentricities to which he had been con-
tinually 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
speaking to him, and Gods voice through
ALL 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
white checked 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, plying, but
half envious, curiosity. That self was
gone Another man had returned out
of the forest, a wiser one, with knowl
edge of hidden mysteries which the sim
plicity of the former never could have
reached. A bitter kind of knowledge
thatl
While occupied with these reflections
the minister summoned a ser
want of the house and requested food
which being set before him he ate will
ravenous appetite Then, finging thu
already written pages of the election
sermon into the fire, he forthwith began
another, which he wrote with such al
impulsive flow of thought and emotion
that he fancied himself inspired, ant
only wondered that heaven should SCI
fit to transmit the grand and solemn
1 music of its oracles through so foul al
organ pipe as he. However, leaving
that mystery to solve itself or go un
solved forever, he drove his task onward
l with earnest haste and ecstasy. Thu
the night fed away as if it were |
winged steed and he careering on it
morning came and peeped, bluslIing
through the curtains, and at last sun
rise threw a golden beam into the stud.
l and laid it right across the minister
bedazzled eyes. There he was, with tn
pen still between his fingers, and vast
| unreasonable tract of written space be
1 hind him.