The Goodland republic. [volume] (Goodland, Kan.) 1891-1907, 1893-06-02

her heart had been flung into the street
for them all to spurn and trample upon
In our nature, however, there is a pro
vision, alike marvellous and mercifuI
that the sufferer should never know the
intensity of what he endures by its pres
emit torture, but chiefly by the pang thai
rankles after it. With almost a serene
department, therefore. Hester Prynne
passed through this portion of her or.
deal, and came to sort of scaffold al
the western extremity of the market
place. It stood nearly beneath the caves
of Boston's earliest church and appeared
to be fixture there.
In fact this scaffold constituted a por-
ton of penal machine, which now, fol
two or three generations past, has been
merely historical and Evolutionary
among us, but was held in the old time
to be as effectual an agent in the pro-
motion 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 disci-
pline, 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 continuance of
wood and iron. There can be no out
rage, methinks, against our common ma
ture-whatever be the delinquencies of
the individual-no outrage more fla
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 a
fight of wooden steps, and was thus dis
played to the surrounding multitude, at
about the height of a mans shoulders
above the street. The unhappy
culprit sustained herself as best woman
might, under the heavy weight of a
thousand unrelenting eyes, all fastened
upon her, and concentrated at her
bosom. It was almost intoIerable to be
borne.
OF an impulsive 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 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 shrin voiced child contributing their
individual parts-Hester Prynne might
have repaid them all with bitter and
disdainful smile. But, under the leaden
infection 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
trifling and immaterial, passages of in
fancy and school days, sports, childish
L.
Of her maiden years came swar1ning
back upon her, intermingled with recol-
1ections 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. 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 true? She clutched the
child so fercely 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 her
self that the infant and the shame were
real. Yes-these were her realities
.ll alSo bod Ny1riETcdl