The Goodland republic. [volume] (Goodland, Kan.) 1891-1907, 1893-06-09
CHAPTER ".
HESTER AT HER NEEDLE.

Hester Prynne's term of confinement
was now at an end. Her prison door
was thrown open and she came forth into
the sunshine, which, falling on all alike,
seemed to her sick and morbid heart as
if meant for no other purpose than to
reveal the scarlet letter on her breast.
Perhaps there was a more real torture
in her first unattended footsteps from
the threshold of the prison than even in
the procession and spectacle that have
been described, where she was made the
common infamy, at which all mankind
was summoned to point it's finger. Then
she was supported by an unnatural ten
sion of the nerves and by all the COM
bative energy Of her character, which
enabled her to convert the scene into
kind of 1urid triumph.
It was, moreover, a separate and in
sulated event, to occur but once in her
lifetime, and to meet which, therefore,
reckless of economy. she might call VI
the vital strength that would have suf-
feed for many quiet years. The very
law that condemned her-a giant of
stern features, but with vigor to sup
port, as well as to annihilate, in his iron
arm-had held her up, through the ter
rible ordeal of her ignominy. But now,
with this unattended walk from her
prison door, began the daily custom;
and she must either sustain and carry it
forward by the ordinary resources of
| her nature or sink beneath it. She
could no longer borrow from the future
| to help her through the present grief.
| Tomorrow would bring its own trial
with it; SO would the next day, and so
would the next; each its own trial, and
yet the very same that was now so IN
utterably grievous to be borne.
The days of the far off future would
toll onward, still with the same burden
for her to take up and bear along with
her, but never to fling down, for the ac-
cumulating days and added years would
pile up their misery upon the heap OF
shame Throughout them all, giving uI
her individuality, she would become the
general symbol at which the preacher
and moralist might point and in which
they might vivify and embody their i'm
ages of woman's frailty and sinful pas
sion. Thus the young and pure would
be taught to look at her, with the scarlet
letter flaming on her breast-at her, the
child of honorable parents; at her, the
mother of babe that would hereafter
be a woman; at her, who had once beer
innocent-as the figure, the body, tn.
reality of sin And over her grave til,
infamy that she must carry thithe
would be her only monument.
It may seem marvellous that with tn
world before her-kept by no RESTRICTIVE,
clause Of her condemnation within tn
limits of the Puritan settlement, so re
mote and so obscure-free to return t.
her birthplace or to any other European
land, and there hide her character ant
} identity under new exterior, as com
pletely as if emerging into another stat
of being, and having also the passes o
the dark, inscrutable forest open to her
where the wildness of her nature nigh
. assimilate itself with a people who's
customs and life were alien from tn
: law that had condemned her-it ma
, seem marvellous that this woman SHOULD
still call that place her home, where
and where only, she must needs be tn
/ type of shame. But there is a fatality
a feeling so irresistible and inevitabl
that it has the force of doom, which a
5 most invariably compels human being
3 to hnger around and haunt, ghostEke
( the spot where some great and marke
5 event has given the color to their life
7 time, and still the more irresis6bly, tn
f darker the tinge that saddens it.
2 Her sin, her ignominy, were the root
S which she had struck into the soil.
| was as IL a new birth, with stronge
t assimilations than the first, had cor
: verted the forest land, still so uncos
. genial to every other pilgrim an
Wanderer, into Hester Prynne's vii
!. and dreaxy but lifelong home. Ali 9th:
S scenes of earth-even that village {
rural England, where happy infanc
l and stainless maidenhcod seemed yet
e be In her mothers keeping, like ga
{ ments put OF long ago-were foreign
i her in comparison. The chain tn
5 bound her here was Of iron links an
t CALLING to her Utmost soul. bat coul
) never be broken.
D &c might be, too-doubtless It was S
T although she hid the secret from he
d self and grew pale whenever It strn
g gIed out Of her heart, Ike a serpel
i tom itszI,nla-it L1ixl1t be that anoth