prompt:
Chapter: VI. PEARL.

[Illustration]

We have as yet hardly spoken of the infant; that little creature,
whose innocent life had sprung, by the inscrutable decree of
Providence, a lovely and immortal flower, out of the rank luxuriance
of a guilty passion. How strange it seemed to the sad woman, as she
watched the growth, and the beauty that became every day more
brilliant, and the intelligence that threw its quivering sunshine over
the tiny features of this child! Her Pearl!--For so had Hester called
her; not as a name expressive of her aspect, which had nothing of the
calm, white, unimpassioned lustre that would be indicated by the
comparison. But she named the infant "Pearl," as being of great
price,--purchased with all she had,--her mother's only treasure! How
strange, indeed! Man had marked this woman's sin by a scarlet letter,
which had such potent and disastrous efficacy that no human sympathy
could reach her, save it were sinful like herself. God, as a direct
consequence of the sin which man thus punished, had given her a lovely
child, whose place was on that same dishonored bosom, to connect her
parent forever with the race and descent of mortals, and to be finally
a blessed soul in heaven! Yet these thoughts affected Hester Prynne
less with hope than apprehension. She knew that her deed had been
evil; she could have no faith, therefore, that its result would be
good. Day after day, she looked fearfully into the child's expanding
nature, ever dreading to detect some dark and wild peculiarity, that
should correspond with the guiltiness to which she owed her being.

Certainly, there was no physical defect. By its perfect shape, its
vigor, and its natural dexterity in the use of all its untried limbs,
the infant was worthy to have been brought forth in Eden; worthy to
have been left there, to be the plaything of the angels, after the
world's first parents were driven out. The child had a native grace
which does not invariably coexist with faultless beauty; its attire,
however simple, always impressed the beholder as if it were the very
garb that precisely became it best. But little Pearl was not clad in
rustic weeds. Her mother, with a morbid purpose that may be better
understood hereafter, had bought the richest tissues that could be
procured, and allowed her imaginative faculty its full play in the
arrangement and decoration of the dresses which the child wore, before
the public eye. So magnificent was the small figure, when thus
arrayed, and such was the splendor of Pearl's own proper beauty,
shining through the gorgeous robes which might have extinguished a
paler loveliness, that there was an absolute circle of radiance around
her, on the darksome cottage floor. And yet a russet gown, torn and
soiled with the child's rude play, made a picture of her just as
perfect. Pearl's aspect was imbued with a spell of infinite variety;
in this one child there were many children, comprehending the full
scope between the wild-flower prettiness of a peasant-baby, and the
pomp, in little, of an infant princess. Throughout all, however, there
was a trait of passion, a certain depth of hue, which she never lost;
and if, in any of her changes, she had grown fainter or paler, she
would have ceased to be herself,--it would have been no longer Pearl!

This outward mutability indicated, and did not more than fairly
express, the various properties of her inner life. Her nature appeared
to possess depth, too, as well as variety; but--or else Hester's fears
deceived her--it lacked reference and adaptation to the world into
which she was born. The child could not be made amenable to rules. In
giving her existence, a great law had been broken; and the result was
a being whose elements were perhaps beautiful and brilliant, but all
in disorder; or with an order peculiar to themselves, amidst which the
point of variety and arrangement was difficult or impossible to be
discovered. Hester could only account for the child's character--and
even then most vaguely and imperfectly--by recalling what she herself
had been, during that momentous period while Pearl was imbibing her
soul from the spiritual world, and her bodily frame from its material
of earth. The mother's impassioned state had been the medium through
which were transmitted to the unborn infant the rays of its moral
life; and, however white and clear originally, they had taken the deep
stains of crimson and gold, the fiery lustre, the black shadow, and
the untempered light of the intervening substance. Above all, the
warfare of Hester's spirit, at that epoch, was perpetuated in Pearl.
She could recognize her wild, desperate, defiant mood, the flightiness
of her temper, and even some of the very cloud-shapes of gloom and
despondency that had brooded in her heart. They were now illuminated
by the morning radiance of a young child's disposition, but later in
the day of earthly existence might be prolific of the storm and
whirlwind.

The discipline of the family, in those days, was of a far more rigid
kind than now. The frown, the harsh rebuke, the frequent application
of the rod, enjoined by Scriptural authority, were used, not merely in
the way of punishment for actual offences, but as a wholesome regimen
for the growth and promotion of all childish virtues. Hester Prynne,
nevertheless, the lonely mother of this one child, ran little risk of
erring on the side of undue severity. Mindful, however, of her own
errors and misfortunes, she early sought to impose a tender, but
strict control over the infant immortality that was committed to her
charge. But the task was beyond her skill. After testing both smiles
and frowns, and proving that neither mode of treatment possessed any
calculable influence, Hester was ultimately compelled to stand aside,
and permit the child to be swayed by her own impulses. Physical
compulsion or restraint was effectual, of course, while it lasted. As
to any other kind of discipline, whether addressed to her mind or
heart, little Pearl might or might not be within its reach, in
accordance with the caprice that ruled the moment. Her mother, while
Pearl was yet an infant, grew acquainted with a certain peculiar look,
that warned her when it would be labor thrown away to insist,
persuade, or plead. It was a look so intelligent, yet inexplicable,
so perverse, sometimes so malicious, but generally accompanied by a
wild flow of spirits, that Hester could not help questioning, at such
moments, whether Pearl were a human child. She seemed rather an airy
sprite, which, after playing its fantastic sports for a little while
upon the cottage floor, would flit away with a mocking smile. Whenever
that look appeared in her wild, bright, deeply black eyes, it invested
her with a strange remoteness and intangibility; it was as if she were
hovering in the air and might vanish, like a glimmering light, that
comes we know not whence, and goes we know not whither. Beholding it,
Hester was constrained to rush towards the child,--to pursue the
little elf in the flight which she invariably began,--to snatch her to
her bosom, with a close pressure and earnest kisses,--not so much from
overflowing love, as to assure herself that Pearl was flesh and blood,
and not utterly delusive. But Pearl's laugh, when she was caught,
though full of merriment and music, made her mother more doubtful than
before.

Heart-smitten at this bewildering and baffling spell, that so often
came between herself and her sole treasure, whom she had bought so
dear, and who was all her world, Hester sometimes burst into
passionate tears. Then, perhaps,--for there was no foreseeing how it
might affect her,--Pearl would frown, and clench her little fist, and
harden her small features into a stern, unsympathizing look of
discontent. Not seldom, she would laugh anew, and louder than before,
like a thing incapable and unintelligent of human sorrow. Or--but this
more rarely happened--she would be convulsed with a rage of grief, and
sob out her love for her mother, in broken words, and seem intent on
proving that she had a heart, by breaking it. Yet Hester was hardly
safe in confiding herself to that gusty tenderness; it passed, as
suddenly as it came. Brooding over all these matters, the mother felt
like one who has evoked a spirit, but, by some irregularity in the
process of conjuration, has failed to win the master-word that should
control this new and incomprehensible intelligence. Her only real
comfort was when the child lay in the placidity of sleep. Then she was
sure of her, and tasted hours of quiet, sad, delicious happiness;
until--perhaps with that perverse expression glimmering from beneath
her opening lids--little Pearl awoke!

How soon--with what strange rapidity, indeed!--did Pearl arrive at an
age that was capable of social intercourse, beyond the mother's
ever-ready smile and nonsense-words! And then what a happiness would
it have been, could Hester Prynne have heard her clear, bird-like
voice mingling with the uproar of other childish voices, and have
distinguished and unravelled her own darling's tones, amid all the
entangled outcry of a group of sportive children! But this could never
be. Pearl was a born outcast of the infantile world. An imp of evil,
emblem and product of sin, she had no right among christened infants.
Nothing was more remarkable than the instinct, as it seemed, with
which the child comprehended her loneliness; the destiny that had
drawn an inviolable circle round about her; the whole peculiarity, in
short, of her position in respect to other children. Never, since her
release from prison, had Hester met the public gaze without her. In
all her walks about the town, Pearl, too, was there; first as the babe
in arms, and afterwards as the little girl, small companion of her
mother, holding a forefinger with her whole grasp, and tripping along
at the rate of three or four footsteps to one of Hester's. She saw the
children of the settlement, on the grassy margin of the street, or at
the domestic thresholds, disporting themselves in such grim fashion
as the Puritanic nurture would permit; playing at going to church,
perchance; or at scourging Quakers; or taking scalps in a sham-fight
with the Indians; or scaring one another with freaks of imitative
witchcraft. Pearl saw, and gazed intently, but never sought to make
acquaintance. If spoken to, she would not speak again. If the children
gathered about her, as they sometimes did, Pearl would grow positively
terrible in her puny wrath, snatching up stones to fling at them, with
shrill, incoherent exclamations, that made her mother tremble, because
they had so much the sound of a witch's anathemas in some unknown
tongue.

The truth was, that the little Puritans, being of the most intolerant
brood that ever lived, had got a vague idea of something outlandish,
unearthly, or at variance with ordinary fashions, in the mother and
child; and therefore scorned them in their hearts, and not
unfrequently reviled them with their tongues. Pearl felt the
sentiment, and requited it with the bitterest hatred that can be
supposed to rankle in a childish bosom. These outbreaks of a fierce
temper had a kind of value, and even comfort, for her mother; because
there was at least an intelligible earnestness in the mood, instead of
the fitful caprice that so often thwarted her in the child's
manifestations. It appalled her, nevertheless, to discern here, again,
a shadowy reflection of the evil that had existed in herself. All this
enmity and passion had Pearl inherited, by inalienable right, out of
Hester's heart. Mother and daughter stood together in the same circle
of seclusion from human society; and in the nature of the child seemed
to be perpetuated those unquiet elements that had distracted Hester
Prynne before Pearl's birth, but had since begun to be soothed away by
the softening influences of maternity.

At home, within and around her mother's cottage, Pearl wanted not a
wide and various circle of acquaintance. The spell of life went forth
from her ever-creative spirit, and communicated itself to a thousand
objects, as a torch kindles a flame wherever it may be applied. The
unlikeliest materials--a stick, a bunch of rags, a flower--were the
puppets of Pearl's witchcraft, and, without undergoing any outward
change, became spiritually adapted to whatever drama occupied the
stage of her inner world. Her one baby-voice served a multitude of
imaginary personages, old and young, to talk withal. The pine-trees,
aged, black and solemn, and flinging groans and other melancholy
utterances on the breeze, needed little transformation to figure as
Puritan elders; the ugliest weeds of the garden were their children,
whom Pearl smote down and uprooted, most unmercifully. It was
wonderful, the vast variety of forms into which she threw her
intellect, with no continuity, indeed, but darting up and dancing,
always in a state of preternatural activity,--soon sinking down, as if
exhausted by so rapid and feverish a tide of life,--and succeeded by
other shapes of a similar wild energy. It was like nothing so much as
the phantasmagoric play of the northern lights. In the mere exercise
of the fancy, however, and the sportiveness of a growing mind, there
might be little more than was observable in other children of bright
faculties; except as Pearl, in the dearth of human playmates, was
thrown more upon the visionary throng which she created. The
singularity lay in the hostile feelings with which the child regarded
all these offspring of her own heart and mind. She never created a
friend, but seemed always to be sowing broadcast the dragon's teeth,
whence sprung a harvest of armed enemies, against whom she rushed to
battle. It was inexpressibly sad--then what depth of sorrow to a
mother, who felt in her own heart the cause!--to observe, in one so
young, this constant recognition of an adverse world, and so fierce a
training of the energies that were to make good her cause, in the
contest that must ensue.

Gazing at Pearl, Hester Prynne often dropped her work upon her knees,
and cried out with an agony which she would fain have hidden, but
which made utterance for itself, betwixt speech and a groan,--"O
Father in Heaven,--if Thou art still my Father,--what is this being
which I have brought into the world!" And Pearl, overhearing the
ejaculation, or aware, through some more subtile channel, of those
throbs of anguish, would turn her vivid and beautiful little face upon
her mother, smile with sprite-like intelligence, and resume her play.

[Illustration: A touch of Pearl's baby-hand]

One peculiarity of the child's deportment remains yet to be told. The
very first thing which she had noticed in her life was--what?--not the
mother's smile, responding to it, as other babies do, by that faint,
embryo smile of the little mouth, remembered so doubtfully afterwards,
and with such fond discussion whether it were indeed a smile. By no
means! But that first object of which Pearl seemed to become aware
was--shall we say it?--the scarlet letter on Hester's bosom! One day,
as her mother stooped over the cradle, the infant's eyes had been
caught by the glimmering of the gold embroidery about the letter; and,
putting up her little hand, she grasped at it, smiling, not
doubtfully, but with a decided gleam, that gave her face the look of a
much older child. Then, gasping for breath, did Hester Prynne clutch
the fatal token, instinctively endeavoring to tear it away; so
infinite was the torture inflicted by the intelligent touch of Pearl's
baby-hand. Again, as if her mother's agonized gesture were meant only
to make sport for her, did little Pearl look into her eyes, and
smile! From that epoch, except when the child was asleep, Hester had
never felt a moment's safety; not a moment's calm enjoyment of her.
Weeks, it is true, would sometimes elapse, during which Pearl's gaze
might never once be fixed upon the scarlet letter; but then, again, it
would come at unawares, like the stroke of sudden death, and always
with that peculiar smile, and odd expression of the eyes.

Once, this freakish, elvish cast came into the child's eyes, while
Hester was looking at her own image in them, as mothers are fond of
doing; and, suddenly,--for women in solitude, and with troubled
hearts, are pestered with unaccountable delusions,--she fancied that
she beheld, not her own miniature portrait, but another face, in the
small black mirror of Pearl's eye. It was a face, fiend-like, full of
smiling malice, yet bearing the semblance of features that she had
known full well, though seldom with a smile, and never with malice in
them. It was as if an evil spirit possessed the child, and had just
then peeped forth in mockery. Many a time afterwards had Hester been
tortured, though less vividly, by the same illusion.

In the afternoon of a certain summer's day, after Pearl grew big
enough to run about, she amused herself with gathering handfuls of
wild-flowers, and flinging them, one by one, at her mother's bosom;
dancing up and down, like a little elf, whenever she hit the scarlet
letter. Hester's first motion had been to cover her bosom with her
clasped hands. But, whether from pride or resignation, or a feeling
that her penance might best be wrought out by this unutterable pain,
she resisted the impulse, and sat erect, pale as death, looking sadly
into little Pearl's wild eyes. Still came the battery of flowers,
almost invariably hitting the mark, and covering the mother's breast
with hurts for which she could find no balm in this world, nor knew
how to seek it in another. At last, her shot being all expended, the
child stood still and gazed at Hester, with that little, laughing
image of a fiend peeping out--or, whether it peeped or no, her mother
so imagined it--from the unsearchable abyss of her black eyes.

"Child, what art thou?" cried the mother.

"O, I am your little Pearl!" answered the child.

But, while she said it, Pearl laughed, and began to dance up and down,
with the humorsome gesticulation of a little imp, whose next freak
might be to fly up the chimney.

"Art thou my child, in very truth?" asked Hester.

Nor did she put the question altogether idly, but, for the moment,
with a portion of genuine earnestness; for, such was Pearl's wonderful
intelligence, that her mother half doubted whether she were not
acquainted with the secret spell of her existence, and might not now
reveal herself.

"Yes; I am little Pearl!" repeated the child, continuing her antics.

"Thou art not my child! Thou art no Pearl of mine!" said the mother,
half playfully; for it was often the case that a sportive impulse came
over her, in the midst of her deepest suffering. "Tell me, then, what
thou art, and who sent thee hither."

"Tell me, mother!" said the child, seriously, coming up to Hester, and
pressing herself close to her knees. "Do thou tell me!"

"Thy Heavenly Father sent thee!" answered Hester Prynne.

But she said it with a hesitation that did not escape the acuteness of
the child. Whether moved only by her ordinary freakishness, or
because an evil spirit prompted her, she put up her small forefinger,
and touched the scarlet letter.

"He did not send me!" cried she, positively. "I have no Heavenly
Father!"

"Hush, Pearl, hush! Thou must not talk so!" answered the mother,
suppressing a groan. "He sent us all into this world. He sent even me,
thy mother. Then, much more, thee! Or, if not, thou strange and elfish
child, whence didst thou come?"

"Tell me! Tell me!" repeated Pearl, no longer seriously, but laughing,
and capering about the floor. "It is thou that must tell me!"

But Hester could not resolve the query, being herself in a dismal
labyrinth of doubt. She remembered--betwixt a smile and a shudder--the
talk of the neighboring towns-people; who, seeking vainly elsewhere
for the child's paternity, and observing some of her odd attributes,
had given out that poor little Pearl was a demon offspring; such as,
ever since old Catholic times, had occasionally been seen on earth,
through the agency of their mother's sin, and to promote some foul and
wicked purpose. Luther, according to the scandal of his monkish
enemies, was a brat of that hellish breed; nor was Pearl the only
child to whom this inauspicious origin was assigned, among the New
England Puritans.

[Illustration]

                            [Illustration]

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: Pearl Hester's one consolation is her daughter, Pearl, who is described in great detail in this chapter. A beautiful flower growing out of sinful soil, Pearl is so named because she was "purchased with all had--her mother's only treasure. Because "in giving her existence a great law had been broken," Pearl's very being seems to be inherently at odds with the strict rules of Puritan society. Pearl has inherited all of Hester's moodiness, passion, and defiance, and she constantly makes mischief. Hester loves but worries about her child. When the narrator describes Pearl as an "outcast," he understates: Pearl is an "imp of evil, emblem and product of sin, she had no right among christened infants. Pearl herself is aware of her difference from others, and when Hester tries to teach her about God, Pearl says, "I have no Heavenly Father. Because Pearl is her mother's constant companion, she, too, is subject to the cruelties of the townspeople. The other children are particularly cruel because they can sense that something is not quite right about Hester and her child. Knowing that she is alone in this world, Pearl creates casts of characters in her imagination to keep her company. Pearl is fascinated by the scarlet letter and at times seems to intentionally torture her mother by playing with it. Once, when Pearl is pelting the letter with wildflowers, Hester exclaims in frustration, "Child, what art thou. Pearl turns the question back on her mother, insisting that Hester tell her of her origins. Surprised at the impudence of a child so young , Hester wonders if Pearl might not be the demon-child that many of the townspeople believe her to be


prompt:
Chapter: VII. THE GOVERNOR'S HALL.

[Illustration]

Hester Prynne went, one day, to the mansion of Governor Bellingham,
with a pair of gloves, which she had fringed and embroidered to his
order, and which were to be worn on some great occasion of state; for,
though the chances of a popular election had caused this former ruler
to descend a step or two from the highest rank, he still held an
honorable and influential place among the colonial magistracy.

Another and far more important reason than the delivery of a pair of
embroidered gloves impelled Hester, at this time, to seek an interview
with a personage of so much power and activity in the affairs of the
settlement. It had reached her ears, that there was a design on the
part of some of the leading inhabitants, cherishing the more rigid
order of principles in religion and government, to deprive her of her
child. On the supposition that Pearl, as already hinted, was of demon
origin, these good people not unreasonably argued that a Christian
interest in the mother's soul required them to remove such a
stumbling-block from her path. If the child, on the other hand, were
really capable of moral and religious growth, and possessed the
elements of ultimate salvation, then, surely, it would enjoy all the
fairer prospect of these advantages, by being transferred to wiser and
better guardianship than Hester Prynne's. Among those who promoted the
design, Governor Bellingham was said to be one of the most busy. It
may appear singular, and indeed, not a little ludicrous, that an
affair of this kind, which, in later days, would have been referred to
no higher jurisdiction than that of the selectmen of the town, should
then have been a question publicly discussed, and on which statesmen
of eminence took sides. At that epoch of pristine simplicity, however,
matters of even slighter public interest, and of far less intrinsic
weight, than the welfare of Hester and her child, were strangely mixed
up with the deliberations of legislators and acts of state. The period
was hardly, if at all, earlier than that of our story, when a dispute
concerning the right of property in a pig not only caused a fierce and
bitter contest in the legislative body of the colony, but resulted in
an important modification of the framework itself of the legislature.

Full of concern, therefore,--but so conscious of her own right that it
seemed scarcely an unequal match between the public, on the one side,
and a lonely woman, backed by the sympathies of nature, on the
other,--Hester Prynne set forth from her solitary cottage. Little
Pearl, of course, was her companion. She was now of an age to run
lightly along by her mother's side, and, constantly in motion, from
morn till sunset, could have accomplished a much longer journey than
that before her. Often, nevertheless, more from caprice than
necessity, she demanded to be taken up in arms; but was soon as
imperious to be set down again, and frisked onward before Hester on
the grassy pathway, with many a harmless trip and tumble. We have
spoken of Pearl's rich and luxuriant beauty; a beauty that shone with
deep and vivid tints; a bright complexion, eyes possessing intensity
both of depth and glow, and hair already of a deep, glossy brown, and
which, in after years, would be nearly akin to black. There was fire
in her and throughout her; she seemed the unpremeditated offshoot of a
passionate moment. Her mother, in contriving the child's garb, had
allowed the gorgeous tendencies of her imagination their full play;
arraying her in a crimson velvet tunic, of a peculiar cut, abundantly
embroidered with fantasies and flourishes of gold-thread. So much
strength of coloring, which must have given a wan and pallid aspect to
cheeks of a fainter bloom, was admirably adapted to Pearl's beauty,
and made her the very brightest little jet of flame that ever danced
upon the earth.

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 spake 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
befitted 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.

Pearl, looking at this bright wonder of a house, began to caper and
dance, and imperatively required that the whole breadth of sunshine
should be stripped off its front, and given her to play with.

"No, my little Pearl!" said her mother. "Thou must gather thine own
sunshine. I have none to give thee!"

They approached the door; which was of an arched form, and flanked on
each side by a narrow tower or projection of the edifice, in both of
which were lattice-windows, with wooden shutters to close over them at
need. Lifting the iron hammer that hung at the portal, Hester Prynne
gave a summons, which was answered by one of the Governor's
bond-servants; a free-born Englishman, but now a seven years' slave.
During that term he was to be the property of his master, and as much
a commodity of bargain and sale as an ox, or a joint-stool. The serf
wore the blue coat, which was the customary garb of serving-men of
that period, and long before, in the old hereditary halls of England.

"Is the worshipful Governor Bellingham within?" inquired Hester.

"Yea, forsooth," replied the bond-servant, staring with wide-open eyes
at the scarlet letter, which, being a new-comer in the country, he had
never before seen. "Yea, his honorable worship is within. But he hath
a godly minister or two with him, and likewise a leech. Ye may not see
his worship now."

"Nevertheless, I will enter," answered Hester Prynne, and the
bond-servant, perhaps judging from the decision of her air, and the
glittering symbol in her bosom, that she was a great lady in the land,
offered no opposition.

So the mother and little Pearl were admitted into the hall of
entrance. With many variations, suggested by the nature of his
building-materials, diversity of climate, and a different mode of
social life, Governor Bellingham had planned his new habitation after
the residences of gentlemen of fair estate in his native land. Here,
then, was a wide and reasonably lofty hall, extending through the
whole depth of the house, and forming a medium of general
communication, more or less directly, with all the other apartments.
At one extremity, this spacious room was lighted by the windows of the
two towers, which formed a small recess on either side of the portal.
At the other end, though partly muffled by a curtain, it was more
powerfully illuminated by one of those embowed hall-windows which we
read of in old books, and which was provided with a deep and cushioned
seat. Here, on the cushion, lay a folio tome, probably of the
Chronicles of England, or other such substantial literature; even as,
in our own days, we scatter gilded volumes on the centre-table, to be
turned over by the casual guest. The furniture of the hall consisted
of some ponderous chairs, the backs of which were elaborately carved
with wreaths of oaken flowers; and likewise a table in the same taste;
the whole being of the Elizabethan age, or perhaps earlier, and
heirlooms, transferred hither from the Governor's paternal home. On
the table--in token that the sentiment of old English hospitality had
not been left behind--stood a large pewter tankard, at the bottom of
which, had Hester or Pearl peeped into it, they might have seen the
frothy remnant of a recent draught of ale.

On the wall hung a row of portraits, representing the forefathers of
the Bellingham lineage, some with armor on their breasts, and others
with stately ruffs and robes of peace. All were characterized by the
sternness and severity which old portraits so invariably put on; as if
they were the ghosts, rather than the pictures, of departed worthies,
and were gazing with harsh and intolerant criticism at the pursuits
and enjoyments of living men.

[Illustration: The Governor's Breastplate]

At about the centre of the oaken panels, that lined the hall, was
suspended a suit of mail, not, like the pictures, an ancestral relic,
but of the most modern date; for it had been manufactured by a skilful
armorer in London, the same year in which Governor Bellingham came
over to New England. There was a steel head-piece, a cuirass, a
gorget, and greaves, with a pair of gauntlets and a sword hanging
beneath; all, and especially the helmet and breastplate, so highly
burnished as to glow with white radiance, and scatter an illumination
everywhere about upon the floor. This bright panoply was not meant for
mere idle show, but had been worn by the Governor on many a solemn
muster and training field, and had glittered, moreover, at the head of
a regiment in the Pequod war. For, though bred a lawyer, and
accustomed to speak of Bacon, Coke, Noye, and Finch as his
professional associates, the exigencies of this new country had
transformed Governor Bellingham into a soldier, as well as a statesman
and ruler.

Little Pearl--who was as greatly pleased with the gleaming armor as
she had been with the glittering frontispiece of the house--spent some
time looking into the polished mirror of the breastplate.

"Mother," cried she, "I see you here. Look! Look!"

Hester looked, by way of humoring the child; and she saw that, owing
to the peculiar effect of this convex mirror, the scarlet letter was
represented in exaggerated and gigantic proportions, so as to be
greatly the most prominent feature of her appearance. In truth, she
seemed absolutely hidden behind it. Pearl pointed upward, also, at a
similar picture in the head-piece; smiling at her mother, with the
elfish intelligence that was so familiar an expression on her small
physiognomy. That look of naughty merriment was likewise reflected in
the mirror, with so much breadth and intensity of effect, that it made
Hester Prynne feel as if it could not be the image of her own child,
but of an imp who was seeking to mould itself into Pearl's shape.

"Come along, Pearl," said she, drawing her away. "Come and look into
this fair garden. It may be we shall see flowers there; more beautiful
ones than we find in the woods."

Pearl, accordingly, ran to the bow-window, at the farther end of the
hall, and looked along the vista of a garden-walk, carpeted with
closely shaven grass, and bordered with some rude and immature attempt
at shrubbery. But the proprietor appeared already to have
relinquished, as hopeless, the effort to perpetuate on this side of
the Atlantic, in a hard soil and amid the close struggle for
subsistence, the native English taste for ornamental gardening.
Cabbages grew in plain sight; and a pumpkin-vine, rooted at some
distance, had run across the intervening space, and deposited one of
its gigantic products directly beneath the hall-window; as if to warn
the Governor that this great lump of vegetable gold was as rich an
ornament as New England earth would offer him. There were a few
rose-bushes, however, and a number of apple-trees, probably the
descendants of those planted by the Reverend Mr. Blackstone, the first
settler of the peninsula; that half-mythological personage, who rides
through our early annals, seated on the back of a bull.

Pearl, seeing the rose-bushes, began to cry for a red rose, and would
not be pacified.

"Hush, child, hush!" said her mother, earnestly. "Do not cry, dear
little Pearl! I hear voices in the garden. The Governor is coming, and
gentlemen along with him!"

In fact, adown the vista of the garden avenue a number of persons were
seen approaching towards the house. Pearl, in utter scorn of her
mother's attempt to quiet her, gave an eldritch scream, and then
became silent; not from any notion of obedience, but because the quick
and mobile curiosity of her disposition was excited by the appearance
of these new personages.

                            [Illustration]

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: The Governor's Hall Hester pays a visit to Governor Bellingham's mansion. She has two intentions: to deliver a pair of ornate gloves she has made for the governor, and to find out if there is any truth to the rumors that Pearl, now three, may be taken from her. Some of the townspeople, apparently including the governor, have come to suspect Pearl of being a sort of demon-child. The townspeople reason that if Pearl is a demon-child, she should be taken from Hester for Hester's sake. And, they reason, if Pearl is indeed a human child, she should be taken away from her mother for her own sake and given to a "better" parent than Hester Prynne. On their way to see the governor, Hester and Pearl are attacked by a group of children, who try to fling mud at them. Pearl becomes angry and frightens the children off. The governor's mansion is stuffy and severe. It is built in the style of the English aristocracy, complete with family portraits and a suit of armor, which the governor has worn in battles with the Native Americans. Pearl is fascinated by the armor. When she points out her mother's reflection in it, Hester is horrified to see that the scarlet letter dominates the reflection. Pearl begins to scream for a rose from the bush outside the window, but she is quieted by the entrance of a group of men


prompt:
Chapter: VIII. THE ELF-CHILD AND THE MINISTER.

Governor Bellingham, in a loose gown and easy cap,--such as elderly
gentlemen loved to endue themselves with, in their domestic
privacy,--walked foremost, and appeared to be showing off his estate,
and expatiating on his projected improvements. The wide circumference
of an elaborate ruff, beneath his gray beard, in the antiquated
fashion of King James's reign, caused his head to look not a little
like that of John the Baptist in a charger. The impression made by his
aspect, so rigid and severe, and frost-bitten with more than autumnal
age, was hardly in keeping with the appliances of worldly enjoyment
wherewith he had evidently done his utmost to surround himself. But it
is an error to suppose that our grave forefathers--though accustomed
to speak and think of human existence as a state merely of trial and
warfare, and though unfeignedly prepared to sacrifice goods and life
at the behest of duty--made it a matter of conscience to reject such
means of comfort, or even luxury, as lay fairly within their grasp.
This creed was never taught, for instance, by the venerable pastor,
John Wilson, whose beard, white as a snow-drift, was seen over
Governor Bellingham's shoulder; while its wearer suggested that pears
and peaches might yet be naturalized in the New England climate, and
that purple grapes might possibly be compelled to nourish, against the
sunny garden-wall. The old clergyman, nurtured at the rich bosom of
the English Church, had a long-established and legitimate taste for
all good and comfortable things; and however stern he might show
himself in the pulpit, or in his public reproof of such transgressions
as that of Hester Prynne, still the genial benevolence of his private
life had won him warmer affection than was accorded to any of his
professional contemporaries.

Behind the Governor and Mr. Wilson came two other guests: one the
Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, whom the reader may remember as having
taken a brief and reluctant part in the scene of Hester Prynne's
disgrace; and, in close companionship with him, old Roger
Chillingworth, a person of great skill in physic, who, for two or
three years past, had been settled in the town. It was understood that
this learned man was the physician as well as friend of the young
minister, whose health had severely suffered, of late, by his too
unreserved self-sacrifice to the labors and duties of the pastoral
relation.

The Governor, in advance of his visitors, ascended one or two steps,
and, throwing open the leaves of the great hall-window, found himself
close to little Pearl. The shadow of the curtain fell on Hester
Prynne, and partially concealed her.

"What have we here?" said Governor Bellingham, looking with surprise
at the scarlet little figure before him. "I profess, I have never seen
the like, since my days of vanity, in old King James's time, when I
was wont to esteem it a high favor to be admitted to a court mask!
There used to be a swarm of these small apparitions, in holiday time;
and we called them children of the Lord of Misrule. But how gat such a
guest into my hall?"

"Ay, indeed!" cried good old Mr. Wilson. "What little bird of scarlet
plumage may this be? Methinks I have seen just such figures, when the
sun has been shining through a richly painted window, and tracing out
the golden and crimson images across the floor. But that was in the
old land. Prithee, young one, who art thou, and what has ailed thy
mother to bedizen thee in this strange fashion? Art thou a Christian
child,--ha? Dost know thy catechism? Or art thou one of those naughty
elfs or fairies, whom we thought to have left behind us, with other
relics of Papistry, in merry old England?"

"I am mother's child," answered the scarlet vision, "and my name is
Pearl!"

"Pearl?--Ruby, rather!--or Coral!--or Red Rose, at the very least,
judging from thy hue!" responded the old minister, putting forth his
hand in a vain attempt to pat little Pearl on the cheek. "But where is
this mother of thine? Ah! I see," he added; and, turning to Governor
Bellingham, whispered, "This is the selfsame child of whom we have
held speech together; and behold here the unhappy woman, Hester
Prynne, her mother!"

"Sayest thou so?" cried the Governor. "Nay, we might have judged that
such a child's mother must needs be a scarlet woman, and a worthy type
of her of Babylon! But she comes at a good time; and we will look into
this matter forthwith."

Governor Bellingham stepped through the window into the hall, followed
by his three guests.

"Hester Prynne," said he, fixing his naturally stern regard on the
wearer of the scarlet letter, "there hath been much question
concerning thee, of late. The point hath been weightily discussed,
whether we, that are of authority and influence, do well discharge our
consciences by trusting an immortal soul, such as there is in yonder
child, to the guidance of one who hath stumbled and fallen, amid the
pitfalls of this world. Speak thou, the child's own mother! Were it
not, thinkest thou, for thy little one's temporal and eternal welfare
that she be taken out of thy charge, and clad soberly, and disciplined
strictly, and instructed in the truths of heaven and earth? What canst
thou do for the child, in this kind?"

"I can teach my little Pearl what I have learned from this!" answered
Hester Prynne, laying her finger on the red token.

"Woman, it is thy badge of shame!" replied the stern magistrate. "It
is because of the stain which that letter indicates, that we would
transfer thy child to other hands."

"Nevertheless," said the mother, calmly, though growing more pale,
"this badge hath taught me--it daily teaches me--it is teaching me at
this moment--lessons whereof my child may be the wiser and better,
albeit they can profit nothing to myself."

"We will judge warily," said Bellingham, "and look well what we are
about to do. Good Master Wilson, I pray you, examine this
Pearl,--since that is her name,--and see whether she hath had such
Christian nurture as befits a child of her age."

The old minister seated himself in an arm-chair, and made an effort to
draw Pearl betwixt his knees. But the child, unaccustomed to the touch
or familiarity of any but her mother, escaped through the open window,
and stood on the upper step, looking like a wild tropical bird, of
rich plumage, ready to take flight into the upper air. Mr. Wilson, not
a little astonished at this outbreak,--for he was a grandfatherly sort
of personage, and usually a vast favorite with children,--essayed,
however, to proceed with the examination.

"Pearl," said he, with great solemnity, "thou must take heed to
instruction, that so, in due season, thou mayest wear in thy bosom the
pearl of great price. Canst thou tell me, my child, who made thee?"

Now Pearl knew well enough who made her; for Hester Prynne, the
daughter of a pious home, very soon after her talk with the child
about her Heavenly Father, had begun to inform her of those truths
which the human spirit, at whatever stage of immaturity, imbibes with
such eager interest. Pearl, therefore, so large were the attainments
of her three years' lifetime, could have borne a fair examination in
the New England Primer, or the first column of the Westminster
Catechisms, although unacquainted with the outward form of either of
those celebrated works. But that perversity which all children have
more or less of, and of which little Pearl had a tenfold portion, now,
at the most inopportune moment, took thorough possession of her, and
closed her lips, or impelled her to speak words amiss. After putting
her finger in her mouth, with many ungracious refusals to answer good
Mr. Wilson's question, the child finally announced that she had not
been made at all, but had been plucked by her mother off the bush of
wild roses that grew by the prison-door.

This fantasy was probably suggested by the near proximity of the
Governor's red roses, as Pearl stood outside of the window; together
with her recollection of the prison rose-bush, which she had passed in
coming hither.

Old Roger Chillingworth, with a smile on his face, whispered something
in the young clergyman's ear. Hester Prynne looked at the man of
skill, and even then, with her fate hanging in the balance, was
startled to perceive what a change had come over his features,--how
much uglier they were,--how his dark complexion seemed to have grown
duskier, and his figure more misshapen,--since the days when she had
familiarly known him. She met his eyes for an instant, but was
immediately constrained to give all her attention to the scene now
going forward.

"This is awful!" cried the Governor, slowly recovering from the
astonishment into which Pearl's response had thrown him. "Here is a
child of three years old, and she cannot tell who made her! Without
question, she is equally in the dark as to her soul, its present
depravity, and future destiny! Methinks, gentlemen, we need inquire no
further."

Hester caught hold of Pearl, and drew her forcibly into her arms,
confronting the old Puritan magistrate with almost a fierce
expression. Alone in the world, cast off by it, and with this sole
treasure to keep her heart alive, she felt that she possessed
indefeasible rights against the world, and was ready to defend them to
the death.

"God gave me the child!" cried she. "He gave her in requital of all
things else, which ye had taken from me. She is my happiness!--she is
my torture, none the less! Pearl keeps me here in life! Pearl punishes
me too! See ye not, she is the scarlet letter, only capable of being
loved, and so endowed with a million-fold the power of retribution for
my sin? Ye shall not take her! I will die first!"

[Illustration: "Look thou to it! I will not lose the child!"]

"My poor woman," said the not unkind old minister, "the child shall be
well cared for!--far better than thou canst do it!"

"God gave her into my keeping," repeated Hester Prynne, raising her
voice almost to a shriek. "I will not give her up!"--And here, by a
sudden impulse, she turned to the young clergyman, Mr. Dimmesdale, at
whom, up to this moment, she had seemed hardly so much as once to
direct her eyes.--"Speak thou for me!" cried she. "Thou wast my
pastor, and hadst charge of my soul, and knowest me better than these
men can. I will not lose the child! Speak for me! Thou knowest,--for
thou hast sympathies which these men lack!--thou knowest what is in my
heart, and what are a mother's rights, and how much the stronger they
are, when that mother has but her child and the scarlet letter! Look
thou to it! I will not lose the child! Look to it!"

At this wild and singular appeal, which indicated that Hester Prynne's
situation had provoked her to little less than madness, the young
minister at once came forward, pale, and holding his hand over his
heart, as was his custom whenever his peculiarly nervous temperament
was thrown into agitation. He looked now more care-worn and emaciated
than as we described him at the scene of Hester's public ignominy; and
whether it were his failing health, or whatever the cause might be,
his large dark eyes had a world of pain in their troubled and
melancholy depth.

"There is truth in what she says," began the minister, with a voice
sweet, tremulous, but powerful, insomuch that the hall re-echoed, and
the hollow armor rang with it,--"truth in what Hester says, and in the
feeling which inspires her! God gave her the child, and gave her, too,
an instinctive knowledge of its nature and requirements,--both
seemingly so peculiar,--which no other mortal being can possess. And,
moreover, is there not a quality of awful sacredness in the relation
between this mother and this child?"

"Ay!--how is that, good Master Dimmesdale?" interrupted the Governor.
"Make that plain, I pray you!"

"It must be even so," resumed the minister. "For, if we deem it
otherwise, do we not thereby say that the Heavenly Father, the Creator
of all flesh, hath lightly recognized a deed of sin, and made of no
account the distinction between unhallowed lust and holy love? This
child of its father's guilt and its mother's shame hath come from the
hand of God, to work in many ways upon her heart, who pleads so
earnestly, and with such bitterness of spirit, the right to keep her.
It was meant for a blessing; for the one blessing of her life! It was
meant, doubtless, as the mother herself hath told us, for a
retribution too; a torture to be felt at many an unthought-of moment;
a pang, a sting, an ever-recurring agony, in the midst of a troubled
joy! Hath she not expressed this thought in the garb of the poor
child, so forcibly reminding us of that red symbol which sears her
bosom?"

"Well said, again!" cried good Mr. Wilson. "I feared the woman had no
better thought than to make a mountebank of her child!"

"O, not so!--not so!" continued Mr. Dimmesdale. "She recognizes,
believe me, the solemn miracle which God hath wrought, in the
existence of that child. And may she feel, too,--what, methinks, is
the very truth,--that this boon was meant, above all things else, to
keep the mother's soul alive, and to preserve her from blacker depths
of sin into which Satan might else have sought to plunge her!
Therefore it is good for this poor, sinful woman that she hath an
infant immortality, a being capable of eternal joy or sorrow,
confided to her care,--to be trained up by her to righteousness,--to
remind her, at every moment, of her fall,--but yet to teach her, as it
were by the Creator's sacred pledge, that, if she bring the child to
heaven, the child also will bring its parent thither! Herein is the
sinful mother happier than the sinful father. For Hester Prynne's
sake, then, and no less for the poor child's sake, let us leave them
as Providence hath seen fit to place them!"

"You speak, my friend, with a strange earnestness," said old Roger
Chillingworth, smiling at him.

"And there is a weighty import in what my young brother hath spoken,"
added the Reverend Mr. Wilson. "What say you, worshipful Master
Bellingham? Hath he not pleaded well for the poor woman?"

"Indeed hath he," answered the magistrate, "and hath adduced such
arguments, that we will even leave the matter as it now stands; so
long, at least, as there shall be no further scandal in the woman.
Care must be had, nevertheless, to put the child to due and stated
examination in the catechism, at thy hands or Master Dimmesdale's.
Moreover, at a proper season, the tithing-men must take heed that she
go both to school and to meeting."

The young minister, on ceasing to speak, had withdrawn a few steps
from the group, and stood with his face partially concealed in the
heavy folds of the window-curtain; while the shadow of his figure,
which the sunlight cast upon the floor, was tremulous with the
vehemence of his appeal. Pearl, that wild and flighty little elf,
stole softly towards him, and taking his hand in the grasp of both her
own, laid her cheek against it; a caress so tender, and withal so
unobtrusive, that her mother, who was looking on, asked herself,--"Is
that my Pearl?" Yet she knew that there was love in the child's heart,
although it mostly revealed itself in passion, and hardly twice in her
lifetime had been softened by such gentleness as now. The
minister,--for, save the long-sought regards of woman, nothing is
sweeter than these marks of childish preference, accorded
spontaneously by a spiritual instinct, and therefore seeming to imply
in us something truly worthy to be loved,--the minister looked round,
laid his hand on the child's head, hesitated an instant, and then
kissed her brow. Little Pearl's unwonted mood of sentiment lasted no
longer; she laughed, and went capering down the hall, so airily, that
old Mr. Wilson raised a question whether even her tiptoes touched the
floor.

"The little baggage hath witchcraft in her, I profess," said he to Mr.
Dimmesdale. "She needs no old woman's broomstick to fly withal!"

"A strange child!" remarked old Roger Chillingworth. "It is easy to
see the mother's part in her. Would it be beyond a philosopher's
research, think ye, gentlemen, to analyze that child's nature, and,
from its make and mould, to give a shrewd guess at the father?"

"Nay; it would be sinful, in such a question, to follow the clew of
profane philosophy," said Mr. Wilson. "Better to fast and pray upon
it; and still better, it may be, to leave the mystery as we find it,
unless Providence reveal it of its own accord. Thereby, every good
Christian man hath a title to show a father's kindness towards the
poor, deserted babe."

The affair being so satisfactorily concluded, Hester Prynne, with
Pearl, departed from the house. As they descended the steps, it is
averred that the lattice of a chamber-window was thrown open, and
forth into the sunny day was thrust the face of Mistress Hibbins,
Governor Bellingham's bitter-tempered sister, and the same who, a few
years later, was executed as a witch.

"Hist, hist!" said she, while her ill-omened physiognomy seemed to
cast a shadow over the cheerful newness of the house. "Wilt thou go
with us to-night? There will be a merry company in the forest; and I
wellnigh promised the Black Man that comely Hester Prynne should make
one."

"Make my excuse to him, so please you!" answered Hester, with a
triumphant smile. "I must tarry at home, and keep watch over my little
Pearl. Had they taken her from me, I would willingly have gone with
thee into the forest, and signed my name in the Black Man's book too,
and that with mine own blood!"

"We shall have thee there anon!" said the witch-lady, frowning, as she
drew back her head.

But here--if we suppose this interview betwixt Mistress Hibbins and
Hester Prynne to be authentic, and not a parable--was already an
illustration of the young minister's argument against sundering the
relation of a fallen mother to the offspring of her frailty. Even thus
early had the child saved her from Satan's snare.

[Illustration]

                            [Illustration]

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: The Elf-Child and the Minister Bellingham, Wilson, Chillingworth, and Dimmesdale enter the room. They notice Pearl and begin to tease her by calling her a bird and a demon-child. When the governor points out that Hester is also present, they ask her why she should be allowed to keep the child. She tells the men that she will be able to teach Pearl an important lesson--the lesson that she has learned from her shame. They are doubtful, and Wilson tries to test the three-year-old's knowledge of religious subjects. Wilson resents Pearl's seeming dislike of him, and Pearl's refusal to answer even the simplest of questions does not bode well. With nowhere else to turn, Hester begs Dimmesdale to speak for her and her child. He replies by reminding the men that God sent Pearl and that the child was seemingly meant to be both a blessing and a curse. Swayed by his eloquence, Bellingham and Wilson agree not to separate mother and child. Strangely, Pearl has taken well to Dimmesdale. She goes to him and presses his hand to her cheek. Vexed because Hester seems to have triumphed, Chillingworth presses the men to reopen their investigation into the identity of Hester's lover, but they refuse, telling him that God will reveal the information when He deems it appropriate. As Hester leaves the governor's mansion, Mistress Hibbins, the governor's sister, pokes her head out of the window to invite Hester to a witches' gathering. Hester tells her that if she had not been able to keep Pearl, she would have gone willingly. The narrator notes that it seems Pearl has saved her mother from Satan's temptations.


prompt:
Chapter: IX. THE LEECH.

Under the appellation of Roger Chillingworth, the reader will
remember, was hidden another name, which its former wearer had
resolved should never more be spoken. It has been related, how, in the
crowd that witnessed Hester Prynne's ignominious exposure, stood a
man, elderly, travel-worn, who, just emerging from the perilous
wilderness, beheld the woman, in whom he hoped to find embodied the
warmth and cheerfulness of home, set up as a type of sin before the
people. Her matronly fame was trodden under all men's feet. Infamy was
babbling around her in the public market-place. For her kindred,
should the tidings ever reach them, and for the companions of her
unspotted life, there remained nothing but the contagion of her
dishonor; which would not fail to be distributed in strict accordance
and proportion with the intimacy and sacredness of their previous
relationship. Then why--since the choice was with himself--should the
individual, whose connection with the fallen woman had been the most
intimate and sacred of them all, come forward to vindicate his claim
to an inheritance so little desirable? He resolved not to be pilloried
beside her on her pedestal of shame. Unknown to all but Hester Prynne,
and possessing the lock and key of her silence, he chose to withdraw
his name from the roll of mankind, and, as regarded his former ties
and interests, to vanish out of life as completely as if he indeed lay
at the bottom of the ocean, whither rumor had long ago consigned him.
This purpose once effected, new interests would immediately spring up,
and likewise a new purpose; dark, it is true, if not guilty, but of
force enough to engage the full strength of his faculties.

In pursuance of this resolve, he took up his residence in the Puritan
town, as Roger Chillingworth, without other introduction than the
learning and intelligence of which he possessed more than a common
measure. As his studies, at a previous period of his life, had made
him extensively acquainted with the medical science of the day, it was
as a physician that he presented himself, and as such was cordially
received. Skilful men, of the medical and chirurgical profession, were
of rare occurrence in the colony. They seldom, it would appear,
partook of the religious zeal that brought other emigrants across the
Atlantic. In their researches into the human frame, it may be that the
higher and more subtile faculties of such men were materialized, and
that they lost the spiritual view of existence amid the intricacies of
that wondrous mechanism, which seemed to involve art enough to
comprise all of life within itself. At all events, the health of the
good town of Boston, so far as medicine had aught to do with it, had
hitherto lain in the guardianship of an aged deacon and apothecary,
whose piety and godly deportment were stronger testimonials in his
favor than any that he could have produced in the shape of a diploma.
The only surgeon was one who combined the occasional exercise of that
noble art with the daily and habitual flourish of a razor. To such a
professional body Roger Chillingworth was a brilliant acquisition. He
soon manifested his familiarity with the ponderous and imposing
machinery of antique physic; in which every remedy contained a
multitude of far-fetched and heterogeneous ingredients, as elaborately
compounded as if the proposed result had been the Elixir of Life. In
his Indian captivity, moreover, he had gained much knowledge of the
properties of native herbs and roots; nor did he conceal from his
patients, that these simple medicines, Nature's boon to the untutored
savage, had quite as large a share of his own confidence as the
European pharmacopoeia, which so many learned doctors had spent
centuries in elaborating.

This learned stranger was exemplary, as regarded, at least, the
outward forms of a religious life, and, early after his arrival, had
chosen for his spiritual guide the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale. The young
divine, whose scholar-like renown still lived in Oxford, was
considered by his more fervent admirers as little less than a
heaven-ordained apostle, destined, should he live and labor for the
ordinary term of life, to do as great deeds for the now feeble New
England Church, as the early Fathers had achieved for the infancy of
the Christian faith. About this period, however, the health of Mr.
Dimmesdale had evidently begun to fail. By those best acquainted with
his habits, the paleness of the young minister's cheek was accounted
for by his too earnest devotion to study, his scrupulous fulfilment of
parochial duty, and, more than all, by the fasts and vigils of which
he made a frequent practice, in order to keep the grossness of this
earthly state from clogging and obscuring his spiritual lamp. Some
declared, that, if Mr. Dimmesdale were really going to die, it was
cause enough, that the world was not worthy to be any longer trodden
by his feet. He himself, on the other hand, with characteristic
humility, avowed his belief, that, if Providence should see fit to
remove him, it would be because of his own unworthiness to perform its
humblest mission here on earth. With all this difference of opinion as
to the cause of his decline, there could be no question of the fact.
His form grew emaciated; his voice, though still rich and sweet, had a
certain melancholy prophecy of decay in it; he was often observed, on
any slight alarm or other sudden accident, to put his hand over his
heart, with first a flush and then a paleness, indicative of pain.

Such was the young clergyman's condition, and so imminent the prospect
that his dawning light would be extinguished, all untimely, when Roger
Chillingworth made his advent to the town. His first entry on the
scene, few people could tell whence, dropping down, as it were, out of
the sky, or starting from the nether earth, had an aspect of mystery,
which was easily heightened to the miraculous. He was now known to be
a man of skill; it was observed that he gathered herbs, and the
blossoms of wild-flowers, and dug up roots, and plucked off twigs from
the forest-trees, like one acquainted with hidden virtues in what was
valueless to common eyes. He was heard to speak of Sir Kenelm Digby,
and other famous men,--whose scientific attainments were esteemed
hardly less than supernatural,--as having been his correspondents or
associates. Why, with such rank in the learned world, had he come
hither? What could he, whose sphere was in great cities, be seeking in
the wilderness? In answer to this query, a rumor gained ground,--and,
however absurd, was entertained by some very sensible people,--that
Heaven had wrought an absolute miracle, by transporting an eminent
Doctor of Physic, from a German university, bodily through the air,
and setting him down at the door of Mr. Dimmesdale's study!
Individuals of wiser faith, indeed, who knew that Heaven promotes its
purposes without aiming at the stage-effect of what is called
miraculous interposition, were inclined to see a providential hand in
Roger Chillingworth's so opportune arrival.

This idea was countenanced by the strong interest which the physician
ever manifested in the young clergyman; he attached himself to him as
a parishioner, and sought to win a friendly regard and confidence from
his naturally reserved sensibility. He expressed great alarm at his
pastor's state of health, but was anxious to attempt the cure, and, if
early undertaken, seemed not despondent of a favorable result. The
elders, the deacons, the motherly dames, and the young and fair
maidens, of Mr. Dimmesdale's flock, were alike importunate that he
should make trial of the physician's frankly offered skill. Mr.
Dimmesdale gently repelled their entreaties.

"I need no medicine," said he.

But how could the young minister say so, when, with every successive
Sabbath, his cheek was paler and thinner, and his voice more tremulous
than before,--when it had now become a constant habit, rather than a
casual gesture, to press his hand over his heart? Was he weary of his
labors? Did he wish to die? These questions were solemnly propounded
to Mr. Dimmesdale by the elder ministers of Boston and the deacons of
his church, who, to use their own phrase, "dealt with him" on the sin
of rejecting the aid which Providence so manifestly held out. He
listened in silence, and finally promised to confer with the
physician.

"Were it God's will," said the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale, when, in
fulfilment of this pledge, he requested old Roger Chillingworth's
professional advice, "I could be well content, that my labors, and my
sorrows, and my sins, and my pains, should shortly end with me, and
what is earthly of them be buried in my grave, and the spiritual go
with me to my eternal state, rather than that you should put your
skill to the proof in my behalf."

"Ah," replied Roger Chillingworth, with that quietness which, whether
imposed or natural, marked all his deportment, "it is thus that a
young clergyman is apt to speak. Youthful men, not having taken a deep
root, give up their hold of life so easily! And saintly men, who walk
with God on earth, would fain be away, to walk with him on the golden
pavements of the New Jerusalem."

"Nay," rejoined the young minister, putting his hand to his heart,
with a flush of pain flitting over his brow, "were I worthier to walk
there, I could be better content to toil here."

"Good men ever interpret themselves too meanly," said the physician.

[Illustration: The Minister and Leech]

In this manner, the mysterious old Roger Chillingworth became the
medical adviser of the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale. As not only the
disease interested the physician, but he was strongly moved to look
into the character and qualities of the patient, these two men, so
different in age, came gradually to spend much time together. For the
sake of the minister's health, and to enable the leech to gather
plants with healing balm in them, they took long walks on the
sea-shore, or in the forest; mingling various talk with the plash and
murmur of the waves, and the solemn wind-anthem among the tree-tops.
Often, likewise, one was the guest of the other, in his place of
study and retirement. There was a fascination for the minister in the
company of the man of science, in whom he recognized an intellectual
cultivation of no moderate depth or scope; together with a range and
freedom of ideas, that he would have vainly looked for among the
members of his own profession. In truth, he was startled, if not
shocked, to find this attribute in the physician. Mr. Dimmesdale was a
true priest, a true religionist, with the reverential sentiment
largely developed, and an order of mind that impelled itself
powerfully along the track of a creed, and wore its passage
continually deeper with the lapse of time. In no state of society
would he have been what is called a man of liberal views; it would
always be essential to his peace to feel the pressure of a faith about
him, supporting, while it confined him within its iron framework. Not
the less, however, though with a tremulous enjoyment, did he feel the
occasional relief of looking at the universe through the medium of
another kind of intellect than those with which he habitually held
converse. It was as if a window were thrown open, admitting a freer
atmosphere into the close and stifled study, where his life was
wasting itself away, amid lamplight, or obstructed day-beams, and the
musty fragrance, be it sensual or moral, that exhales from books. But
the air was too fresh and chill to be long breathed with comfort. So
the minister, and the physician with him, withdrew again within the
limits of what their church defined as orthodox.

Thus Roger Chillingworth scrutinized his patient carefully, both as he
saw him in his ordinary life, keeping an accustomed pathway in the
range of thoughts familiar to him, and as he appeared when thrown
amidst other moral scenery, the novelty of which might call out
something new to the surface of his character. He deemed it essential,
it would seem, to know the man, before attempting to do him good.
Wherever there is a heart and an intellect, the diseases of the
physical frame are tinged with the peculiarities of these. In Arthur
Dimmesdale, thought and imagination were so active, and sensibility so
intense, that the bodily infirmity would be likely to have its
groundwork there. So Roger Chillingworth--the man of skill, the kind
and friendly physician--strove to go deep into his patient's bosom,
delving among his principles, prying into his recollections, and
probing everything with a cautious touch, like a treasure-seeker in a
dark cavern. Few secrets can escape an investigator, who has
opportunity and license to undertake such a quest, and skill to follow
it up. A man burdened with a secret should especially avoid the
intimacy of his physician. If the latter possess native sagacity, and
a nameless something more,--let us call it intuition; if he show no
intrusive egotism, nor disagreeably prominent characteristics of his
own; if he have the power, which must be born with him, to bring his
mind into such affinity with his patient's, that this last shall
unawares have spoken what he imagines himself only to have thought; if
such revelations be received without tumult, and acknowledged not so
often by an uttered sympathy as by silence, an inarticulate breath,
and here and there a word, to indicate that all is understood; if to
these qualifications of a confidant be joined the advantages afforded
by his recognized character as a physician;--then, at some inevitable
moment, will the soul of the sufferer be dissolved, and flow forth in
a dark, but transparent stream, bringing all its mysteries into the
daylight.

Roger Chillingworth possessed all, or most, of the attributes above
enumerated. Nevertheless, time went on; a kind of intimacy, as we have
said, grew up between these two cultivated minds, which had as wide a
field as the whole sphere of human thought and study, to meet upon;
they discussed every topic of ethics and religion, of public affairs
and private character; they talked much, on both sides, of matters
that seemed personal to themselves; and yet no secret, such as the
physician fancied must exist there, ever stole out of the minister's
consciousness into his companion's ear. The latter had his suspicions,
indeed, that even the nature of Mr. Dimmesdale's bodily disease had
never fairly been revealed to him. It was a strange reserve!

After a time, at a hint from Roger Chillingworth, the friends of Mr.
Dimmesdale effected an arrangement by which the two were lodged in the
same house; so that every ebb and flow of the minister's life-tide
might pass under the eye of his anxious and attached physician. There
was much joy throughout the town, when this greatly desirable object
was attained. It was held to be the best possible measure for the
young clergyman's welfare; unless, indeed, as often urged by such as
felt authorized to do so, he had selected some one of the many
blooming damsels, spiritually devoted to him, to become his devoted
wife. This latter step, however, there was no present prospect that
Arthur Dimmesdale would be prevailed upon to take; he rejected all
suggestions of the kind, as if priestly celibacy were one of his
articles of church-discipline. Doomed by his own choice, therefore, as
Mr. Dimmesdale so evidently was, to eat his unsavory morsel always at
another's board, and endure the life-long chill which must be his lot
who seeks to warm himself only at another's fireside, it truly seemed
that this sagacious, experienced, benevolent old physician, with his
concord of paternal and reverential love for the young pastor, was the
very man, of all mankind, to be constantly within reach of his voice.

The new abode of the two friends was with a pious widow, of good
social rank, who dwelt in a house covering pretty nearly the site on
which the venerable structure of King's Chapel has since been built.
It had the graveyard, originally Isaac Johnson's home-field, on one
side, and so was well adapted to call up serious reflections, suited
to their respective employments, in both minister and man of physic.
The motherly care of the good widow assigned to Mr. Dimmesdale a front
apartment, with a sunny exposure, and heavy window-curtains, to create
a noontide shadow, when desirable. The walls were hung round with
tapestry, said to be from the Gobelin looms, and, at all events,
representing the Scriptural story of David and Bathsheba, and Nathan
the Prophet, in colors still unfaded, but which made the fair woman
of the scene almost as grimly picturesque as the woe-denouncing seer.
Here the pale clergyman piled up his library, rich with
parchment-bound folios of the Fathers, and the lore of Rabbis, and
monkish erudition, of which the Protestant divines, even while they
vilified and decried that class of writers, were yet constrained often
to avail themselves. 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. Dimmesdale. At first, his
expression had been calm, meditative, scholar-like. Now, there was
something ugly and evil in his face, which they had not previously
noticed, and which grew still the more obvious to sight, the oftener
they looked upon him. According to the vulgar idea, the fire in his
laboratory had been brought from the lower regions, and was fed with
infernal fuel; and so, as might be expected, his visage was getting
sooty with the smoke.

To sum up the matter, it grew to be a widely diffused opinion, that
the Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, like many other personages of especial
sanctity, in all ages of the Christian world, was haunted either by
Satan himself, or Satan's emissary, in the guise of old Roger
Chillingworth. This diabolical agent had the Divine permission, for a
season, to burrow into the clergyman's intimacy, and plot against his
soul. No sensible man, it was confessed, could doubt on which side the
victory would turn. The people looked, with an unshaken hope, to see
the minister come forth out of the conflict, transfigured with the
glory which he would unquestionably win. Meanwhile, nevertheless, it
was sad to think of the perchance mortal agony through which he must
struggle towards his triumph.

Alas! to judge from the gloom and terror in the depths of the poor
minister's eyes, the battle was a sore one and the victory anything
but secure.

[Illustration]

                            [Illustration]

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: The Leech By renaming himself upon his arrival in Boston, Chillingworth has hidden his past from everyone except Hester, whom he has sworn to secrecy. He incorporates himself into society in the role of a doctor, and since the townsfolk have very little access to good medical care, he is welcomed and valued. In addition to his training in European science, he also has some knowledge of "native" or "natural" remedies, because he was captured by Native Americans and lived with them for a time. The town sometimes refers to the doctor colloquially as a "leech," which was a common epithet for physicians at the time. The name derives from the practice of using leeches to drain blood from their patients, which used to be regarded as a curative process. Much to the community's concern, Dimmesdale has been suffering from severe health problems. He appears to be wasting away, and he frequently clutches at his chest as though his heart pains him. Because Dimmesdale refuses to marry any of the young women who have devoted themselves to him, Chillingworth urges the town leadership to insist that Dimmesdale allow the doctor to live with him. In this way, Chillingworth may have a chance to diagnose and cure the younger man. The two men take rooms next to the cemetery in a widow's home, which gives them an opportunity for the contemplation of sin and death. The minister's room is hung with tapestries depicting biblical scenes of adultery and its punishment, while Chillingworth's room contains a laboratory that is sophisticated for its time. The townspeople were initially grateful for Chillingworth's presence and deemed his arrival a divine miracle designed to help Dimmesdale. As time has passed, however, rumors have spread concerning Chillingworth's personal history. Even more ominously, the man's face has begun to take on a look of evil. A majority of the townspeople begin to suspect that Chillingworth is the Devil, come to wage battle for Dimmesdale's soul