San Antonio daily light. [volume] (San Antonio, Tex.) 1886-1907, 1892-06-15
darKer tne tllrge rnar saddens II. :

WAS as II u new DiEI0, WlUu stronger
aaSimilations than the first, had con-
verified the forest land, still SO uncon-
genial to every other pilgrim and
wanderer, int Hester Prynne's wild
and dreary but lifelong home. All other
scenes of earth-even that village of
rural England, where happy infancy
and stainless maidenhood seemed yet to
be in her mothers keeping, like gar
ments put off long age-were foreign to
her In comparison. The chain that
bound her here was of iron links and
CALLING to her Utmost soul, but could
never be broken.
II might be, too-douhtless it was so,
although she hid the secret from her
self and grew paae whenever it strug
gled ont Of her heart, like serpent
from its hoie--it might he that another
feeling kept her within the scene and
pathway that had been SO fatal. There
dwelt, there trod the feet of one with
whom she deemed herself connected in
a union that, unreoognized on earth,
would bring them together before the
bar of final judgment and make that
their marriage altar for joint futurity
of endless retribution. Over and over
again the tenpter of souls had thrust
this idea upon Hester's contemplation,
and laughed at the passionate and des-
perate joy with which she seized and
then strove to cast it from her. She
barely looked the idea in the face and
hastened to bar it in its dungeon. What
she. compelled herself to believe-what
finally she reasoned upon as her motive
for continuing resident of New Eng
land-was half truth and half self
delusion. Here, she said to herself, had
been the scene of her guilt, and here
should be, the scene of her earthly pun
ishment; and SO, perchance, the torture
of her daily shame would at length
purge her soul and work out another
purity than that which she had lost
more saintlike, because the result of
martyrdom.
Hester Prynne therefore did not flee.
On the outskirts of the town, within the
verge of the peninsula, but not in close
vicinity to any other habitation, there
was small matched cottage. 1t had
been built by an,earlier settler and aban-
doned because the soil about it was too
sterile for cultivation, while its com
parative remoteness put it out of the
sphere of that social activity which al
ready marked the habits of the emf
grants. 1t stood on the shore looking
across a basin of the sea at the forest
covered hills, toward tbs west. A clump
of scrubby trees, such as alone grew on
the peninsula, did not so much conceal
the cottage from view, as seem to denote
that here was some object which would
fain have been, or at least ought to be,
concealed. In this little, lonesome dwell
ing, with some slender means that she
possessed, and by the license of the mag
istrates, who still kept an inquisitorial
watch over her, Hester established her
self with her infant child. A mystic
shadow of suspicion Immediately at
tached itself to the spot. Children, too
young to comprehend wherefore this
woman should be set out from the sphere
of human charities, would creep nigh
enough to behold her plying her needle
at the cottage window, or standing in
the doorway, or laboring in her little
garden, or coming forth along the path
way that led downward; and, discerning
the scarlet letter on her breast, would
scamper off with strange, contagious
fear.
Lonely as was Hester's situation, and
without friend on earth who dared to
show himself, she, however, incurred no
risk of want. She possessed an art that
sufficed, even in a land that afforded
comparatively little scope for its exer-
else, to supply food for her thriving in
FAINT and herself. 1t was the art-then as
now almost the only one within wom-
ans grasp-of needlework. She bore on
her breast, in the curiously embroid-
cred letter, a specimen of her delicate
and imaginative skill, of which the
danes of a court might gladly have
availed themselves to add the richer
and more spiritual adornment of human
ingenuity to their fabrics of silk and
gold.
By degrees, nor very slowly, her
handiwork became what would now be
termed the fashion. Whether from COM
miseration for woman of so miserable
a destiny, or from the morbid curiosity
that gives fictitious value even to com
mon or worthless things, or by what
ever other intangible circumstance was
then as now sufficient to bestow on some
persons what others might seek in vain,
or because Hester really filled a gap
which must otherwise have remained
vacant, it is certain that she had ready
and fairly requited employment for as
many hours as she saw fit to occupy
with her needle. Vanity, it may be,