Dec 06 2009
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until it had repeated her name more than once, in a loud and solemn
tone, audible to the whole multitude.
“Hearken unto me, Hester Prynne!” said the voice.
It has already been noticed, that directly over the platform on
which Hester Prynne stood was a kind of balcony, or open gallery,
appended to the meeting-house. It was the place whence proclamations
were wont to be made, amidst an assemblage of the magistracy, with all
the ceremonial that attended such public observances in those days.
Here, to witness the scene which we are describing, sat Governor
Bellingham himself,Ugg Ultra Boots, with four sergeants about his chair, bearing
halberds, as a guard of honour. He wore a dark feather in his hat, a
border of embroidery on his cloak, and a black velvet tunic beneath; a
gentleman advanced in years, with a hard experience written in his
wrinkles. He was not ill fitted to be the head and representative of a
community, which owed its origin and progress, and its present state
of development, not to the impulses of youth, but to the stern and
tempered energies of manhood, and the sombre sagacity of age;
accomplishing so much,ugg tasmina, precisely because it imagined and hoped so
little. The other eminent characters, by whom the chief ruler was
surrounded, were distinguished by a dignity of mien, belonging to a
period when the forms of authority were felt to possess the sacredness
of Divine institutions. They were,ugg new short boots, doubtless, good men, just, and
sage. But, out of the whole human family, it would not have been
easy to select the same number of wise and virtuous persons, who
should be less capable of sitting in judgment on an erring woman’s
heart, and disentangling its mesh of good and evil, than the sages
of rigid aspect towards whom Hester Prynne now turned her face. She
seemed conscious, indeed, that whatever sympathy she might expect, lay
in the larger and warmer heart of the multitude; for, as she lifted
her eyes towards the balcony, the unhappy woman grew pale and
trembled.
The voice which had called her attention was that of the reverend
and famous John Wilson, the eldest clergyman of Boston, a great
scholar, like most of his contemporaries in the profession, and withal
a man of kind and genial spirit. This last attribute, however, had
been less carefully developed than his intellectual gifts, and was, in
truth, rather a matter of shame than self-congratulation with him.
There he stood, with a border of grizzled locks beneath his skull-cap;
while his grey eyes, accustomed to the shaded light of his study, were
winking, like those of Hester’s infant, in the unadulterated sunshine.
He looked like the darkly engraved portraits which we see prefixed
to old volumes of sermons; and had no more right than one of those
portraits would have, to step forth, as he now did, and meddle with
a question of human guilt, passion, and anguish.
“Hester Prynne,” said the clergyman, “I have striven with my young
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