“No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which one is true.”
It would
probably be on the fourth day from the present. “That is most
fortunate!” he had then said to himself. Now, why the Reverend Mr.
Dimmesdale considered it so very fortunate, we hesitate to reveal.
Nevertheless,—to hold nothing back from the reader,—it was because,
on the third day from the present, he was to preach the Election
Sermon; and, as such an occasion formed an honorable epoch in the life
of a New England clergyman, he could not have chanced upon a more
suitable mode and time of terminating his professional career. “At
least, they shall say of me,” thought this exemplary man, “that I
leave no public duty unperformed, nor ill performed!” Sad, indeed,
that an introspection so profound and acute as this poor minister’s
should be so miserably deceived! We have had, and may still have,
worse things to tell of him; but none, we apprehend, so pitiably weak;
no evidence, at once so slight and irrefragable, of a subtle disease,
that had long since begun to eat into the real substance of his
character. No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to
himself, and another to the multitude, without finally getting
bewildered as to which may be the true.
The excitement of Mr. Dimmesdale’s feelings, as he returned from his
interview with Hester, lent him unaccustomed physical energy, and
hurried him townward at a rapid pace. The pathway among the woods
seemed wilder, more uncouth with its rude natural obstacles, and less
trodden by the foot of man, than he remembered it on his outward
journey. But he leaped across the plashy places, thrust himself
through the clinging underbrush, climbed the ascent, plunged into the
hollow, and overcame, in short, all the difficulties of the track,
with an unweariable activity that astonished him. He could not but
recall how feebly, and with what frequent pauses for breath, he had
toiled over the same ground, only two days before. As he drew near the
town, he took an impression of change from the series of familiar
objects that presented themselves. It seemed not yesterday, not one,
nor two, but many days, or even years ago, since he had quitted them.
There, indeed, was each former trace of the street, as he remembered
it, and all the peculiarities of the houses, with the due multitude
of gable-peaks, and a weathercock at every point where his memory
suggested one.
“Every individual has a place to fill in the world and is important in some respect whether he chooses to be so or not.”
Saw an elderly man
laden with two dry, yellow, rustling bundles of Indian corn-stalks,--a
good personification of Autumn. Another man hoeing up potatoes. Rows of
white cabbages lay ripening. Fields of dry Indian corn. The grass has
still considerable greenness. Wild rose-bushes devoid of leaves, with
their deep, bright red seed-vessels. Meeting-house in Danvers seen at a
distance, with the sun shining through the windows of its belfry.
Barberry-bushes,--the leaves now of a brown red, still juicy and healthy;
very few berries remaining, mostly frost-bitten and wilted. All among
the yet green grass, dry stalks of weeds. The down of thistles
occasionally seen flying through the sunny air.
In this dismal chamber FAME was won. (Salem, Union Street.)
Those who are very difficult in choosing wives seem as if they would take
none of Nature's ready-made works, but want a woman manufactured
particularly to their order.
A council of the passengers in a street: called by somebody to decide
upon some points important to him.
Every individual has a place to fill in the world, and is important in
some respects, whether he chooses to be so or not.
A Thanksgiving dinner. All the miserable on earth are to be invited,
--as the drunkard, the bereaved parent, the ruined merchant, the
broken-hearted lover, the poor widow, the old man and woman who have
outlived their generation, the disappointed author, the wounded, sick,
and broken soldier, the diseased person, the infidel, the man with an
evil conscience, little orphan children or children of neglectful
parents, shall be admitted to the table, and many others. The giver of
the feast goes out to deliver his invitations. Some of the guests he
meets in the streets, some he knocks for at the doors of their houses.
The description must be rapid. But who must be the giver of the feast,
and what his claims to preside? A man who has never found out what he is
fit for, who has unsettled aims or objects in life, and whose mind gnaws
him, making him the sufferer of many kinds of misery. He should meet
some pious, old, sorrowful person, with more outward calamities than any
other, and invite him, with a reflection that piety would make all that
miserable company truly thankful.
“What other dungeon is so dark as ones own heart! What jailer so inexorable as ones self !”
Their hearts quaked within them at the idea of taking one step
farther.
“It cannot be, Hepzibah!—it is too late,” said Clifford with deep
sadness. “We are ghosts! We have no right among human beings,—no right
anywhere but in this old house, which has a curse on it, and which,
therefore, we are doomed to haunt! And, besides,” he continued, with a
fastidious sensibility, inalienably characteristic of the man, “it
would not be fit nor beautiful to go! It is an ugly thought that I
should be frightful to my fellow-beings, and that children would cling
to their mothers’ gowns at sight of me!”
They shrank back into the dusky passage-way, and closed the door. But,
going up the staircase again, they found the whole interior of the
house tenfold more dismal, and the air closer and heavier, for the
glimpse and breath of freedom which they had just snatched. They could
not flee; their jailer had but left the door ajar in mockery, and stood
behind it to watch them stealing out. At the threshold, they felt his
pitiless gripe upon them. For, what other dungeon is so dark as one’s
own heart! What jailer so inexorable as one’s self!
But it would be no fair picture of Clifford’s state of mind were we to
represent him as continually or prevailingly wretched. On the contrary,
there was no other man in the city, we are bold to affirm, of so much
as half his years, who enjoyed so many lightsome and griefless moments
as himself. He had no burden of care upon him; there were none of those
questions and contingencies with the future to be settled which wear
away all other lives, and render them not worth having by the very
process of providing for their support. In this respect he was a
child,—a child for the whole term of his existence, be it long or
short. Indeed, his life seemed to be standing still at a period little
in advance of childhood, and to cluster all his reminiscences about
that epoch; just as, after the torpor of a heavy blow, the sufferer’s
reviving consciousness goes back to a moment considerably behind the
accident that stupefied him. He sometimes told Phœbe and Hepzibah his
dreams, in which he invariably played the part of a child, or a very
young man.
“Time flies over us, but leaves it shadow behind”
I sleep in the tower,
and often watch very late on the battlements. There is a dismal old
staircase to climb, however, before reaching the top, and a succession
of dismal chambers, from story to story. Some of them were prison
chambers in times past, as old Tomaso will tell you."
The repugnance intimated in his tone at the idea of this gloomy
staircase and these ghostly, dimly lighted rooms, reminded Kenyon of the
original Donatello, much more than his present custom of midnight vigils
on the battlements.
"I shall be glad to share your watch," said the guest; "especially by
moonlight. The prospect of this broad valley must be very fine. But I
was not aware, my friend, that these were your country habits. I have
fancied you in a sort of Arcadian life, tasting rich figs, and squeezing
the juice out of the sunniest grapes, and sleeping soundly all night,
after a day of simple pleasures."
"I may have known such a life, when I was younger," answered the Count
gravely. "I am not a boy now. Time flies over us, but leaves its shadow
behind."
The sculptor could not but smile at the triteness of the remark, which,
nevertheless, had a kind of originality as coming from Donatello. He had
thought it out from his own experience, and perhaps considered himself
as communicating a new truth to mankind.
They were now advancing up the courtyard; and the long extent of the
villa, with its iron-barred lower windows and balconied upper ones,
became visible, stretching back towards a grove of trees.
"At some period of your family history," observed Kenyon, "the Counts
of Monte Beni must have led a patriarchal life in this vast house. A
great-grandsire and all his descendants might find ample verge here, and
with space, too, for each separate brood of little ones to play within
its own precincts. Is your present household a large one?"
"Only myself," answered Donatello, "and Tomaso, who has been butler
since my grandfather's time, and old Stella, who goes sweeping and
dusting about the chambers, and Girolamo, the cook, who has but an idle
life of it.
“My fortune somewhat resembled that of a person who should entertain an idea of committing suicide, and, altogether beyond his hopes, meet with the good hap to be murdered.”
If, heretofore, I had been none of the warmest of
partisans, I began now, at this season of peril and adversity, to be
pretty acutely sensible with which party my predilections lay; nor was
it without something like regret and shame, that, according to a
reasonable calculation of chances, I saw my own prospect of retaining
office to be better than those of my Democratic brethren. But who can
see an inch into futurity, beyond his nose? My own head was the first
that fell!
The moment when a man’s head drops off is seldom or never, I am
inclined to think, precisely the most agreeable of his life.
Nevertheless, like the greater part of our misfortunes, even so
serious a contingency brings its remedy and consolation with it, if
the sufferer will but make the best, rather than the worst, of the
accident which has befallen him. In my particular case, the
consolatory topics were close at hand, and, indeed, had suggested
themselves to my meditations a considerable time before it was
requisite to use them. In view of my previous weariness of office, and
vague thoughts of resignation, my fortune somewhat resembled that of a
person who should entertain an idea of committing suicide, and,
although beyond his hopes, meet with the good hap to be murdered. In
the Custom-House, as before in the Old Manse, I had spent three years;
a term long enough to rest a weary brain; long enough to break off old
intellectual habits, and make room for new ones; long enough, and too
long, to have lived in an unnatural state, doing what was really of no
advantage nor delight to any human being, and withholding myself from
toil that would, at least, have stilled an unquiet impulse in me.
Then, moreover, as regarded his unceremonious ejectment, the late
Surveyor was not altogether ill-pleased to be recognized by the Whigs
as an enemy; since his inactivity in political affairs—his tendency
to roam, at will, in that broad and quiet field where all mankind may
meet, rather than confine himself to those narrow paths where brethren
of the same household must diverge from one another—had sometimes
made it questionable with his brother Democrats whether he was a
friend. Now, after he had won the crown of martyrdom (though with no
longer a head to wear it on), the point might be looked upon as
settled.
“Caresses, expressions of one sort or another, are necessary to the life of the affections as leaves are to the life of a tree. If they are wholly restrained, love will die at the roots.”
Her own
marriage was the first one since that epoch, and her little Karl, now
three months old, the first-born child in all those eighty years.
[Then follow extracts from the Church Records of Gosport.]
This book of the church records of Gosport is a small folio, well bound
in dark calf, and about an inch thick; the paper very stout, with a
water-mark of an armed man in a sitting posture, holding a spear . . . .
over a lion, who brandishes a sword; on alternate pages the Crown, and
beneath it the letters G. R. The motto of the former device Pro Patria.
The book is written in a very legible hand, probably by the Rev. Mr.
Tucke. The ink is not much faded.
Concord, March 9th, 1853.--Finished, this day, the last story of
Tanglewood Tales. They were written in the following order.
The Pomegranate Seeds.
The Minotaur.
The Golden Fleece.
The Dragons' Teeth.
Circe's Palace.
The Pygmies.
The introduction is yet to be written. Wrote it 13th March. I went to
Washington (my first visit) on 14th April.
Caresses, expressions of one sort or another, are necessary to the life
of the affections, as leaves are to the life of a tree. If they are
wholly restrained, love will die at the roots.
June 9th.--Cleaning the attic to-day, here at the Wayside, the woman
found an immense snake, flat and outrageously fierce, thrusting out its
tongue. Ellen, the cook, killed it. She called it an adder, but it
appears to have been a striped snake. It seems a fiend, haunting the
house. On further inquiry, the snake is described as plaided with brown
and black.
Cupid in these latter times has probably laid aside his bow and arrows,
and uses fire-arms,--a pistol,--perhaps a revolver.
I burned great heaps of old letters and other papers, a little while ago,
preparatory to going to England. Among them were hundreds of ------'s
letters. The world has no more such, and now they are all dust and
ashes. What a trustful guardian of secret matters is fire! What should
we do without fire and death?
END OF VOL. II
*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PASSAGES FROM THE AMERICAN NOTEBOOKS, VOLUME 2 ***
Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will
be renamed.
“She had not known the weight until she felt the freedom!”
us not look back,” answered Hester Prynne. “The past is gone!
Wherefore should we linger upon it now? See! With this symbol, I undo
it all, and make it as it had never been!”
So speaking, she undid the clasp that fastened the scarlet letter,
and, taking it from her bosom, threw it to a distance among the
withered leaves. The mystic token alighted on the hither verge of the
stream. With a hand’s breadth farther flight it would have fallen into
the water, and have given the little brook another woe to carry
onward, besides the unintelligible tale which it still kept murmuring
about. But there lay the embroidered letter, glittering like a lost
jewel, which some ill-fated wanderer might pick up, and thenceforth be
haunted by strange phantoms of guilt, sinkings of the heart, and
unaccountable misfortune.
[Illustration: A Gleam of Sunshine]
The stigma gone, Hester heaved a long, deep sigh, in which the burden
of shame and anguish departed from her spirit. O exquisite relief! She
had not known the weight, until she felt the freedom! By another
impulse, she took off the formal cap that confined her hair; and down
it fell upon her shoulders, dark and rich, with at once a shadow and a
light in its abundance, and imparting the charm of softness to her
features. There played around her mouth, and beamed out of her eyes, a
radiant and tender smile, that seemed gushing from the very heart of
womanhood. A crimson flush was glowing on her cheek, that had been
long so pale. Her sex, her youth, and the whole richness of her
beauty, came back from what men call the irrevocable past, and
clustered themselves, with her maiden hope, and a happiness before
unknown, within the magic circle of this hour. And, as if the gloom of
the earth and sky had been but the effluence of these two mortal
hearts, it vanished with their sorrow. All at once, as with a sudden
smile of heaven, forth burst the sunshine, pouring a very flood into
the obscure forest, gladdening each green leaf, transmuting the yellow
fallen ones to gold, and gleaming adown the gray trunks of the solemn
trees.
“There is no season when such pleasant and sunny spots may be lighted on, and produce so pleasant an effect on the feelings, as now in October”
I have taken a long walk this forenoon along the Needham road, and across
the bridge, thence pursuing a cross-road through the woods, parallel with
the river, which I crossed again at Dedham. Most of the road lay through
a growth of young oaks principally. They still retain their verdure,
though, looking closely in among them, one perceives the broken sunshine
falling on a few sere or bright-hued tufts of shrubbery. In low, marshy
spots, on the verge of the meadows or along the river-side, there is a
much more marked autumnal change. Whole ranges of bushes are there
painted with many variegated lines, not of the brightest tint, but of a
sober cheerfulness. I suppose this is owing more to the late rains than
to the frost; for a heavy rain changes the foliage somewhat at this
season. The first marked frost was seen last Saturday morning. Soon
after sunrise it lay, white as snow, over all the grass, and on the tops
of the fences, and in the yard, on the heap of firewood. On Sunday, I
think, there was a fall of snow, which, however, did not lie on the
ground a moment.
There is no season when such pleasant and sunny spots may be lighted on,
and produce so pleasant an effect on the feelings, as now in October.
The sunshine is peculiarly genial; and in sheltered places, as on the
side of a bank, or of a barn or house, one becomes acquainted and
friendly with the sunshine. It seems to be of a kindly and homely
nature. And the green grass, strewn with a few withered leaves, looks
the more green and beautiful for them. In summer or spring, Nature is
farther from one's sympathies.
October 8th.--Another gloomy day, lowering with portents of rain close at
hand. I have walked up into the pastures this morning, and looked about
me a little. The woods present a very diversified appearance just now,
with perhaps more varieties of tint than they are destined to wear at a
somewhat later period. There are some strong yellow hues, and some deep
red; there are innumerable shades of green, some few having the depth of
summer; others, partially changed towards yellow, look freshly verdant
with the delicate tinge of early summer or of May. Then there is the
solemn and dark green of the pines.
“Moonlight is sculpture.”
He was the operative of a scientific
person in Boston, the director. There have been other alchemists of old
in this town,--one who kept his fire burning seven weeks, and then lost
the elixir by letting it go out.
An ancient wineglass (Miss Ingersol's), long-stalked, with a small,
cup-like bowl, round which is wreathed a branch of grape-vine, with a
rich cluster of grapes, and leaves spread out. There is also some kind
of a bird flying. The whole is excellently cut or engraved.
In the Duke of Buckingham's comedy "The Chances," Don Frederic says of
Don John (they are two noble Spanish gentlemen), "One bed contains us
ever."
A person, while awake and in the business of life, to think highly of
another, and place perfect confidence in him, but to be troubled with
dreams in which this seeming friend appears to act the part of a most
deadly enemy. Finally it is discovered that the dream-character is the
true one. The explanation would be--the soul's instinctive perception.
Pandora's box for a child's story.
Moonlight is sculpture; sunlight is painting.
"A person to look back on a long life ill-spent, and to picture forth a
beautiful life which he would live, if he could be permitted to begin his
life over again. Finally to discover that he had only been dreaming of
old age,--that he was really young, and could live such a life as he had
pictured."
A newspaper, purporting to be published in a family, and satirizing the
political and general world by advertisements, remarks on domestic
affairs,--advertisement of a lady's lost thimble, etc.
L. H------. She was unwilling to die, because she had no friends to meet
her in the other world. Her little son F. being very ill, on his
recovery she confessed a feeling of disappointment, having supposed that
he would have gone before, and welcomed her into heaven!
H. L. C------ heard from a French Canadian a story of a young couple in
Acadie. On their marriage day, all the men of the Province were summoned
to assemble in the church to hear a proclamation.
“Our Creator would never have made such lovely days, and have given us the deep hearts to enjoy them, above and beyond all thought, unless we were meant to be immortal.”
It is
impossible not to be fond of our mother now; for she is so fond of us!
At other periods she does not make this impression on me, or only at
rare intervals; but in those genial days of autumn, when she has
perfected her harvests and accomplished every needful thing that was
given her to do, then she overflows with a blessed superfluity of love.
She has leisure to caress her children now. It is good to be alive and
at such times. Thank Heaven for breath—yes, for mere breath—when it is
made up of a heavenly breeze like this! It comes with a real kiss upon
our cheeks; it would linger fondly around us if it might; but, since it
must be gone, it embraces us with its whole kindly heart and passes
onward to embrace likewise the next thing that it meets. A blessing is
flung abroad and scattered far and wide over the earth, to be gathered
up by all who choose. I recline upon the still unwithered grass and
whisper to myself, “O perfect day! O beautiful world! O beneficent
God!” And it is the promise of a blessed eternity; for our Creator
would never have made such lovely days and have given us the deep
hearts to enjoy them, above and beyond all thought, unless we were
meant to be immortal. This sunshine is the golden pledge thereof. It
beams through the gates of paradise and shows us glimpses far inward.
By and by, in a little time, the outward world puts on a drear
austerity. On some October morning there is a heavy hoarfrost on the
grass and along the tops of the fences; and at sunrise the leaves fall
from the trees of our avenue, without a breath of wind, quietly
descending by their own weight. All summer long they have murmured like
the noise of waters; they have roared loudly while the branches were
wrestling with the thunder-gust; they have made music both glad and
solemn; they have attuned my thoughts by their quiet sound as I paced
to and fro beneath the arch of intermingling boughs. Now they can only
rustle under my feet. Henceforth the gray parsonage begins to assume a
larger importance, and draws to its fireside,—for the abomination of
the air-tight stove is reserved till wintry weather,—draws closer and
closer to its fireside the vagrant impulses that had gone wandering
about through the summer.
“Love, whether newly born, or aroused from a deathlike slumber, must always create sunshine, filling the heart so full of radiance, this it overflows upon the outward world.”
Her sex, her youth, and the whole richness of her
beauty, came back from what men call the irrevocable past, and
clustered themselves, with her maiden hope, and a happiness before
unknown, within the magic circle of this hour. And, as if the gloom of
the earth and sky had been but the effluence of these two mortal
hearts, it vanished with their sorrow. All at once, as with a sudden
smile of heaven, forth burst the sunshine, pouring a very flood into
the obscure forest, gladdening each green leaf, transmuting the yellow
fallen ones to gold, and gleaming adown the gray trunks of the solemn
trees. The objects that had made a shadow hitherto, embodied the
brightness now. The course of the little brook might be traced by its
merry gleam afar into the wood’s heart of mystery, which had become a
mystery of joy.
Such was the sympathy of Nature—that wild, heathen Nature of the
forest, never subjugated by human law, nor illumined by higher
truth—with the bliss of these two spirits! Love, whether newly born,
or aroused from a death-like slumber, must always create a sunshine,
filling the heart so full of radiance, that it overflows upon the
outward world. Had the forest still kept its gloom, it would have been
bright in Hester’s eyes, and bright in Arthur Dimmesdale’s!
Hester looked at him with the thrill of another joy.
“Thou must know Pearl!” said she. “Our little Pearl! Thou hast seen
her,—yes, I know it!—but thou wilt see her now with other eyes. She
is a strange child! I hardly comprehend her! But thou wilt love her
dearly, as I do, and wilt advise me how to deal with her.”
“Dost thou think the child will be glad to know me?” asked the
minister, somewhat uneasily. “I have long shrunk from children,
because they often show a distrust,—a backwardness to be familiar
with me. I have even been afraid of little Pearl!”
“Ah, that was sad!” answered the mother. “But she will love thee
dearly, and thou her. She is not far off. I will call her! Pearl!
Pearl!”
“I see the child,” observed the minister. “Yonder she is, standing in
a streak of sunshine, a good way off, on the other side of the brook.
So thou thinkest the child will love me?
There have been other alchemists of old
in this town,--one who kept his fire burning seven weeks, and then lost
the elixir by letting it go out.
An ancient wineglass (Miss Ingersol's), long-stalked, with a small,
cup-like bowl, round which is wreathed a branch of grape-vine, with a
rich cluster of grapes, and leaves spread out. There is also some kind
of a bird flying. The whole is excellently cut or engraved.
In the Duke of Buckingham's comedy "The Chances," Don Frederic says of
Don John (they are two noble Spanish gentlemen), "One bed contains us
ever."
A person, while awake and in the business of life, to think highly of
another, and place perfect confidence in him, but to be troubled with
dreams in which this seeming friend appears to act the part of a most
deadly enemy. Finally it is discovered that the dream-character is the
true one. The explanation would be--the soul's instinctive perception.
Pandora's box for a child's story.
Moonlight is sculpture; sunlight is painting.
"A person to look back on a long life ill-spent, and to picture forth a
beautiful life which he would live, if he could be permitted to begin his
life over again. Finally to discover that he had only been dreaming of
old age,--that he was really young, and could live such a life as he had
pictured."
A newspaper, purporting to be published in a family, and satirizing the
political and general world by advertisements, remarks on domestic
affairs,--advertisement of a lady's lost thimble, etc.
L. H------. She was unwilling to die, because she had no friends to meet
her in the other world. Her little son F. being very ill, on his
recovery she confessed a feeling of disappointment, having supposed that
he would have gone before, and welcomed her into heaven!
H. L. C------ heard from a French Canadian a story of a young couple in
Acadie. On their marriage day, all the men of the Province were summoned
to assemble in the church to hear a proclamation. When assembled, they
were all seized and shipped off to be distributed through New England,--
among them the new bridegroom.
“In the depths of every heart, there is a tomb and a dungeon, though the lights, the music, and revelry above may cause us to forget their existence, and the buried ones, or prisoners whom they hide. But sometimes, and oftenest at midnight, those dark receptacles are flung wide open. In an hour like this, when the mind has a passive sensibility, but no active strength; when the imagination is a mirror, imparting vividness to all ideas, without the power of selecting or controlling them; then pray that your grieves may slumber, and the brotherhood of remorse not break their chain.”
Its beams are distinguishable
from all the rest, and actually cast the shadow of the casement on the
bed, with a radiance of deeper hue than moonlight, though not so
accurate an outline.
You sink down and muffle your head in the clothes, shivering all the
while, but less from bodily chill than the bare idea of a polar
atmosphere. It is too cold even for the thoughts to venture abroad.
You speculate on the luxury of wearing out a whole existence in bed,
like an oyster in its shell, content with the sluggish ecstasy of
inaction, and drowsily conscious of nothing but delicious warmth, such
as you now feel again. Ah! that idea has brought a hideous one in its
train. You think how the dead are lying in their cold shrouds and
narrow coffins, through the drear winter of the grave, and cannot
persuade your fancy that they neither shrink nor shiver, when the snow
is drifting over their little hillocks, and the bitter blast howls
against the door of the tomb. That gloomy thought will collect a
gloomy multitude, and throw its complexion over your wakeful hour.
In the depths of every heart there is a tomb and a dungeon, though the
lights, the music, and revelry above may cause us to forget their
existence, and the buried ones, or prisoners whom they hide. But
sometimes, and oftenest at midnight, these dark receptacles are flung
wide open. In an hour like this, when the mind has a passive
sensibility, but no active strength; when the imagination is a mirror,
imparting vividness to all ideas, without the power of selecting or
controlling them; then pray that your griefs may slumber, and the
brotherhood of remorse not break their chain. It is too late! A
funeral train comes gliding by your bed, in which Passion and Feeling
assume bodily shape, and things of the mind become dire spectres to
the eye. There is your earliest Sorrow, a pale young mourner, wearing
a sister's likeness to first love, sadly beautiful, with a hallowed
sweetness in her melancholy features, and grace in the flow of her
sable robe. Next appears a shade of ruined loveliness, with dust
among her golden hair, and her bright garments all faded and defaced,
stealing from your glance with drooping head, as fearful of reproach;
she was your fondest Hope, but a delusive one; so call her
Disappointment now. A sterner form succeeds, with a brow of wrinkles,
a look and gesture of iron authority; there is no name for him unless
it be Fatality, an emblem of the evil influence that rules your
fortunes; a demon to whom you subjected yourself by some error at the
outset of life, and were bound his slave forever, by once obeying him.
See!
“You are the only person in the world that was ever necessary to me.”
But, hereupon, thy sister Elizabeth,
who was likewise present, informed the company, that, in this state of
affairs, having ceased to be thy husband, I of course became hers; and
turning to me, very coolly inquired whether she or I should write to
inform my mother of the new arrangement! How the children were to be
divided, I know not. I only know that my heart suddenly broke loose,
and I began to expostulate with thee in an infinite agony, in the
midst of which I awoke; but the sense of unspeakable injury and
outrage hung about me for a long time--and even yet it has not quite
departed. Thou shouldst not behave so, when thou comest to me in
dreams.
I had a letter from Bridge, yesterday, dated in the latter part of
April. He seems to be having a very pleasant time with his wife; but I
do not understand that she is, as the Germans say, "of good hope." In
the beginning of the letter, he says that Mrs. Bridge will return to
America this summer. In another part, he says that the ship in which
he is will probably return late in the autumn; but he rather wishes
that it may [be] delayed till Spring, because Mrs. Bridge desires to
spend the winter in Italy.
Oh, Phoebe, I want thee much. My bosom needs thy head upon it,--thou
alone art essential. Thou art the only person in the world that ever
was necessary to me. Other people have occasionally been more or less
agreeable; but I think I was always more at ease alone than in
anybody's company, till I knew thee. And now I am only myself when
thou art within my reach. Thou art an unspeakably beloved woman. How
couldst thou inflict such frozen agony upon me, in that dream! Thou
shouldst have caressed me and embraced me.
But do not think, much as I want thee, that I wish thee to come as
long as thou judgest it good for the children to be away, and as long
as thou thinkest we can afford the expense. We have a pervading
happiness, that goes on whether we are present or absent in the body.
Their happiness depends upon time and place; and the difference to
them between town and country must be almost that of a cage or the
free air, to the birds. And then it is so much better for their
health.
Hast thou remembered to ask Mrs. Mann whether little Pick Mann was
named out of pure gratitude and respect for the old refugee Colonel,
or whether there was not a little earthly alloy--an idea of gilding an
ugly name with a rich legacy?
Love, whether newly born or aroused from a deathlike slumber, must always create sunshine, filling the heart so full of radiance, that it overflows upon the outward world.
Her sex, her youth, and the whole richness of her
beauty, came back from what men call the irrevocable past, and
clustered themselves, with her maiden hope, and a happiness before
unknown, within the magic circle of this hour. And, as if the gloom of
the earth and sky had been but the effluence of these two mortal
hearts, it vanished with their sorrow. All at once, as with a sudden
smile of heaven, forth burst the sunshine, pouring a very flood into
the obscure forest, gladdening each green leaf, transmuting the yellow
fallen ones to gold, and gleaming adown the gray trunks of the solemn
trees. The objects that had made a shadow hitherto, embodied the
brightness now. The course of the little brook might be traced by its
merry gleam afar into the wood’s heart of mystery, which had become a
mystery of joy.
Such was the sympathy of Nature—that wild, heathen Nature of the
forest, never subjugated by human law, nor illumined by higher
truth—with the bliss of these two spirits! Love, whether newly born,
or aroused from a death-like slumber, must always create a sunshine,
filling the heart so full of radiance, that it overflows upon the
outward world. Had the forest still kept its gloom, it would have been
bright in Hester’s eyes, and bright in Arthur Dimmesdale’s!
Hester looked at him with the thrill of another joy.
“Thou must know Pearl!” said she. “Our little Pearl! Thou hast seen
her,—yes, I know it!—but thou wilt see her now with other eyes. She
is a strange child! I hardly comprehend her! But thou wilt love her
dearly, as I do, and wilt advise me how to deal with her.”
“Dost thou think the child will be glad to know me?” asked the
minister, somewhat uneasily. “I have long shrunk from children,
because they often show a distrust,—a backwardness to be familiar
with me. I have even been afraid of little Pearl!”
“Ah, that was sad!” answered the mother. “But she will love thee
dearly, and thou her. She is not far off. I will call her! Pearl!
Pearl!”
“I see the child,” observed the minister. “Yonder she is, standing in
a streak of sunshine, a good way off, on the other side of the brook.
So thou thinkest the child will love me?
Every individual has a place to fill in the world and is important in some respect, whether he chooses to be so or not.
Saw an elderly man
laden with two dry, yellow, rustling bundles of Indian corn-stalks,--a
good personification of Autumn. Another man hoeing up potatoes. Rows of
white cabbages lay ripening. Fields of dry Indian corn. The grass has
still considerable greenness. Wild rose-bushes devoid of leaves, with
their deep, bright red seed-vessels. Meeting-house in Danvers seen at a
distance, with the sun shining through the windows of its belfry.
Barberry-bushes,--the leaves now of a brown red, still juicy and healthy;
very few berries remaining, mostly frost-bitten and wilted. All among
the yet green grass, dry stalks of weeds. The down of thistles
occasionally seen flying through the sunny air.
In this dismal chamber FAME was won. (Salem, Union Street.)
Those who are very difficult in choosing wives seem as if they would take
none of Nature's ready-made works, but want a woman manufactured
particularly to their order.
A council of the passengers in a street: called by somebody to decide
upon some points important to him.
Every individual has a place to fill in the world, and is important in
some respects, whether he chooses to be so or not.
A Thanksgiving dinner. All the miserable on earth are to be invited,
--as the drunkard, the bereaved parent, the ruined merchant, the
broken-hearted lover, the poor widow, the old man and woman who have
outlived their generation, the disappointed author, the wounded, sick,
and broken soldier, the diseased person, the infidel, the man with an
evil conscience, little orphan children or children of neglectful
parents, shall be admitted to the table, and many others. The giver of
the feast goes out to deliver his invitations. Some of the guests he
meets in the streets, some he knocks for at the doors of their houses.
The description must be rapid. But who must be the giver of the feast,
and what his claims to preside? A man who has never found out what he is
fit for, who has unsettled aims or objects in life, and whose mind gnaws
him, making him the sufferer of many kinds of misery. He should meet
some pious, old, sorrowful person, with more outward calamities than any
other, and invite him, with a reflection that piety would make all that
miserable company truly thankful.
Death should take me while I am in the mood.
How many
men, I wonder, does one meet with in a lifetime, whom he would choose
for his deathbed companions! At the crisis of my fever I besought
Hollingsworth to let nobody else enter the room, but continually to
make me sensible of his own presence by a grasp of the hand, a word, a
prayer, if he thought good to utter it; and that then he should be the
witness how courageously I would encounter the worst. It still
impresses me as almost a matter of regret that I did not die then, when
I had tolerably made up my mind to it; for Hollingsworth would have
gone with me to the hither verge of life, and have sent his friendly
and hopeful accents far over on the other side, while I should be
treading the unknown path. Now, were I to send for him, he would
hardly come to my bedside, nor should I depart the easier for his
presence.
"You are not going to die, this time," said he, gravely smiling. "You
know nothing about sickness, and think your case a great deal more
desperate than it is."
"Death should take me while I am in the mood," replied I, with a little
of my customary levity.
"Have you nothing to do in life," asked Hollingsworth, "that you fancy
yourself so ready to leave it?"
"Nothing," answered I; "nothing that I know of, unless to make pretty
verses, and play a part, with Zenobia and the rest of the amateurs, in
our pastoral. It seems but an unsubstantial sort of business, as
viewed through a mist of fever. But, dear Hollingsworth, your own
vocation is evidently to be a priest, and to spend your days and nights
in helping your fellow creatures to draw peaceful dying breaths."
"And by which of my qualities," inquired he, "can you suppose me fitted
for this awful ministry?"
"By your tenderness," I said. "It seems to me the reflection of God's
own love."
"And you call me tender!" repeated Hollingsworth thoughtfully. "I
should rather say that the most marked trait in my character is an
inflexible severity of purpose. Mortal man has no right to be so
inflexible as it is my nature and necessity to be.
When an uninstructed multitude attempts to see with its eyes, it is exceedingly apt to be deceived. When, however, it forms its judgment, as it usually does, on the intuitions of its great and warm heart, the conclusions thus attained are often so profound and so unerring as to possess the character of truth supernaturally revealed.
On the other side of the house old Roger
Chillingworth arranged his study and laboratory; not such as a modern
man of science would reckon even tolerably complete, but provided with
a distilling apparatus, and the means of compounding drugs and
chemicals, which the practised alchemist knew well how to turn to
purpose. With such commodiousness of situation, these two learned
persons sat themselves down, each in his own domain, yet familiarly
passing from one apartment to the other, and bestowing a mutual and
not incurious inspection into one another’s business.
And the Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale’s best discerning friends, as we
have intimated, very reasonably imagined that the hand of Providence
had done all this, for the purpose—besought in so many public, and
domestic, and secret prayers—of restoring the young minister to
health. But—it must now be said—another portion of the community had
latterly begun to take its own view of the relation betwixt Mr.
Dimmesdale and the mysterious old physician. When an uninstructed
multitude attempts to see with its eyes, it is exceedingly apt to be
deceived. When, however, it forms its judgment, as it usually does, on
the intuitions of its great and warm heart, the conclusions thus
attained are often so profound and so unerring, as to possess the
character of truths supernaturally revealed. The people, in the case
of which we speak, could justify its prejudice against Roger
Chillingworth by no fact or argument worthy of serious refutation.
There was an aged handicraftsman, it is true, who had been a citizen
of London at the period of Sir Thomas Overbury’s murder, now some
thirty years agone; he testified to having seen the physician, under
some other name, which the narrator of the story had now forgotten, in
company with Doctor Forman, the famous old conjurer, who was
implicated in the affair of Overbury. Two or three individuals hinted,
that the man of skill, during his Indian captivity, had enlarged his
medical attainments by joining in the incantations of the savage
priests; who were universally acknowledged to be powerful enchanters,
often performing seemingly miraculous cures by their skill in the
black art. A large number—and many of these were persons of such
sober sense and practical observation that their opinions would have
been valuable, in other matters—affirmed that Roger Chillingworth’s
aspect had undergone a remarkable change while he had dwelt in town,
and especially since his abode with Mr.
There can be, if I forebode aright, no power, short of the Divine mercy, to disclose, whether by uttered words, or by type or emblem, the secrets that may be buried with a human heart. The heart, making itself guilty of such secrets, must perforce hold them, until the day when all hidden things shall be revealed. Nor have I so read or interpreted the Holy Writ, as to understand that the disclosure of human thoughts and deeds, then to be made, is intended as part of the retribution. That, surely, were a shallow view of it. No; these revelations, unless I greatly error, are meant merely to promote the intellectual satisfaction of all intelligent beings, who will stand waiting, on that day, to see the dark problem of this life made plain. A knowledge of mens hearts will be needful to the completest solution of that problem. And I conceive, moreover, that the hearts holding such secrets as you speak of will yield them up, at that last day, not with reluctance, but with a joy unutterable.
“Where,” asked he, with a look askance at them,—for it was the
clergyman’s peculiarity that he seldom, nowadays, looked straightforth
at any object, whether human or inanimate,—“where, my kind doctor,
did you gather those herbs, with such a dark, flabby leaf?”
“Even in the graveyard here at hand,” answered the physician,
continuing his employment. “They are new to me. I found them growing
on a grave, which bore no tombstone, nor other memorial of the dead
man, save these ugly weeds, that have taken upon themselves to keep
him in remembrance. They grew out of his heart, and typify, it may be,
some hideous secret that was buried with him, and which he had done
better to confess during his lifetime.”
“Perchance,” said Mr. Dimmesdale, “he earnestly desired it, but could
not.”
“And wherefore?” rejoined the physician. “Wherefore not; since all the
powers of nature call so earnestly for the confession of sin, that
these black weeds have sprung up out of a buried heart, to make
manifest an unspoken crime?”
“That, good Sir, is but a fantasy of yours,” replied the minister.
“There can be, if I forebode aright, no power, short of the Divine
mercy, to disclose, whether by uttered words, or by type or emblem,
the secrets that may be buried with a human heart. The heart, making
itself guilty of such secrets, must perforce hold them, until the day
when all hidden things shall be revealed. Nor have I so read or
interpreted Holy Writ, as to understand that the disclosure of human
thoughts and deeds, then to be made, is intended as a part of the
retribution. That, surely, were a shallow view of it. No; these
revelations, unless I greatly err, are meant merely to promote the
intellectual satisfaction of all intelligent beings, who will stand
waiting, on that day, to see the dark problem of this life made plain.
A knowledge of men’s hearts will be needful to the completest solution
of that problem. And I conceive, moreover, that the hearts holding
such miserable secrets as you speak of will yield them up, at that
last day, not with reluctance, but with a joy unutterable.”
“Then why not reveal them here?” asked Roger Chillingworth, glancing
quietly aside at the minister. “Why should not the guilty ones sooner
avail themselves of this unutterable solace?”
“They mostly do,” said the clergyman, griping hard at his breast as if
afflicted with an importunate throb of pain. “Many, many a poor soul
hath given its confidence to me, not only on the death-bed, but while
strong in life, and fair in reputation. And ever, after such an
outpouring, O, what a relief have I witnessed in those sinful
brethren! even as in one who at last draws free air, after long
stifling with his own polluted breath. How can it be otherwise? Why
should a wretched man, guilty, we will say, of murder, prefer to keep
the dead corpse buried in his own heart, rather than fling it forth at
once, and let the universe take care of it!”
“Yet some men bury their secrets thus,” observed the calm physician.
“True; there are such men,” answered Mr. Dimmesdale.
“Happiness is a butterfly, which when pursued, is always just beyond your grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you”
