The Scarlet Letter

While Hester stood in that magic circle of ignominy, where the

cunning cruelty of her sentence seemed to have fixed her for

ever, the admirable preacher was looking down from the sacred

pulpit upon an audience whose very inmost spirits had yielded to

his control. The sainted minister in the church! The woman of

the scarlet letter in the marketplace! What imagination would

have been irreverent enough to surmise that the same scorching

stigma was on them both!