So,
said Hester Prynne, and glanced her sad eyes downward at the scarlet
letter. And, after many, many years a
new grave was delved, near an old and sunken one, in that burial-ground beside
which King's Chapel has since been built.
It was near that old sunken grave, yet with a space between, as if the
dust of the two sleepers had no right to mingle. Yet one tombstone served for both. All around, there were monuments carved with
armorial bearings; and on this simple slab of slate - as the curious
investigator may still discern, and perplex himself with the purport - appeared
the semblance of an engraved escutcheon.
It bore a device, a herald's wording of which might serve for a motto
and brief description of our now concluded legend; so sombre is it, and
relieved only by one ever-growing point of light gloomier than the shadow :
On
a field, sable
The
letter A, gules
The Scarlet Letter.
"Why,
if you will believe me, there was a small figure of a girl , dressed all in
white, with rose-tinged cheeks and ringlets of golden hue, playing about the
garden with the two children."
A stranger
though she was, the child seemed to be on as familiar terms with Violet and
Peony, and they with her, as if all the three had been playmates during the
whole of their little lives.... There was certainly something very singular in
the aspect of the little stranger. Of all
the children in the neighbourhood, the lady could remember no such face, with
its pure white, and delicate rose colour, and the golden ringlets tossing about
the forehead and cheeks. And as for her
dress, which was entirely of white, and fluttering in the breeze, it was such
as no reasonable woman would put upon a little girl, when sending her out to
play, in the depth of winter. It made this kind and careful mother shiver only
to look at those small feet, with nothing in the world on them, except a very
thin pair of white slippers. Nevertheless,
airily as she was clad, the child seemed to feel not the slightest inconvenience
from the cold, but danced so lightly over the snow that the tips of her toes
left hardly a print in its surface...
The Snow Image, published in Philadelphia, 1907
I'm a collector of books and when they have a history, they are all the more interesting! Published
in 1899 in New York, my copy of 'The Blithedale Romance' moved from the
hands of Mr and Mrs F H Russell with their compliments to an unknown owner on
February 22nd, 1902. Subsequently it found its way into 'The W. G. Library' in 1949, and from there it
moved to the ownership of an Erwin B Carter of Orr, Minnesota. Somewhere between Minnesota and my bookshelf
it languished in a bookstore in the US until I rescued it. And here's a favourite little piece from that story...
... I
perceive, moreover, that the confession, brief as it shall be, will throw a
gleam of light over my behaviour throughout the foregoing incidents, and is,
indeed, essential to the full understanding of my story. The reader, therefore, since I have disclosed
so much, is entitled to this one word more.
As I write it, he will charitably suppose me to blush, and turn away my
face : -
I-I
myself-was in love...
Miles
Coverdale's confession
The Blithedale Romance
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