The Scarlet Letter

But it was a remarkable attribute of this garb, and indeed, of

the child's whole appearance, that it irresistibly and

inevitably reminded the beholder of the token which Hester

Prynne was doomed to wear upon her bosom. It was the scarlet

letter in another form: the scarlet letter endowed with life!

The mother herself--as if the red ignominy were so deeply

scorched into her brain that all her conceptions assumed its

form--had carefully wrought out the similitude, lavishing many

hours of morbid ingenuity to create an analogy between the

object of her affection and the emblem of her guilt and torture.

But, in truth, Pearl was the one as well as the other; and only

in consequence of that identity had Hester contrived so

perfectly to represent the scarlet letter in her appearance.

As the two wayfarers came within the precincts of the town, the

children of the Puritans looked up from their play,--or what

passed for play with those sombre little urchins--and spoke

gravely one to another.

"Behold, verily, there is the woman of the scarlet letter: and

of a truth, moreover, there is the likeness of the scarlet

letter running along by her side! Come, therefore, and let us

fling mud at them!"

But Pearl, who was a dauntless child, after frowning, stamping

her foot, and shaking her little hand with a variety of

threatening gestures, suddenly made a rush at the knot of her

enemies, and put them all to flight. She resembled, in her

fierce pursuit of them, an infant pestilence--the scarlet fever,

or some such half-fledged angel of judgment--whose mission was

to punish the sins of the rising generation. She screamed and

shouted, too, with a terrific volume of sound, which, doubtless,

caused the hearts of the fugitives to quake within them. The

victory accomplished, Pearl returned quietly to her mother, and

looked up, smiling, into her face.

Without further adventure, they reached the dwelling of Governor

Bellingham. This was a large wooden house, built in a fashion of

which there are specimens still extant in the streets of our

older towns now moss-grown, crumbling to decay, and melancholy

at heart with the many sorrowful or joyful occurrences,

remembered or forgotten, that have happened and passed away

within their dusky chambers. Then, however, there was the

freshness of the passing year on its exterior, and the

cheerfulness, gleaming forth from the sunny windows, of a human

habitation, into which death had never entered. It had, indeed,

a very cheery aspect, the walls being overspread with a kind of

stucco, in which fragments of broken glass were plentifully

intermixed; so that, when the sunshine fell aslant-wise over the

front of the edifice, it glittered and sparkled as if diamonds

had been flung against it by the double handful. The brilliancy

might have be fitted Aladdin's palace rather than the mansion of

a grave old Puritan ruler. It was further decorated with strange

and seemingly cabalistic figures and diagrams, suitable to the

quaint taste of the age which had been drawn in the stucco, when

newly laid on, and had now grown hard and durable, for the

admiration of after times.