1 If sages were ever wise in their own behoof, I might have foreseen all this.
2 Meagre, indeed, and cold, was the sympathy that a transgressor might look for, from such bystanders, at the scaffold.
The Scarlet Letter By Nathaniel HawthorneContextHighlight In II. THE MARKET-PLACE 3 It might be, too, that a witch, like old Mistress Hibbins, the bitter-tempered widow of the magistrate, was to die upon the gallows.
The Scarlet Letter By Nathaniel HawthorneContextHighlight In II. THE MARKET-PLACE 4 It might be that a sluggish bond-servant, or an undutiful child, whom his parents had given over to the civil authority, was to be corrected at the whipping-post.
The Scarlet Letter By Nathaniel HawthorneContextHighlight In II. THE MARKET-PLACE 5 The unhappy culprit sustained herself as best a woman might, under the heavy weight of a thousand unrelenting eyes, all fastened upon her, and concentrated at her bosom.
The Scarlet Letter By Nathaniel HawthorneContextHighlight In II. THE MARKET-PLACE 6 Be that as it might, the scaffold of the pillory was a point of view that revealed to Hester Prynne the entire track along which she had been treading, since her happy infancy.
The Scarlet Letter By Nathaniel HawthorneContextHighlight In II. THE MARKET-PLACE 7 He presented the cup to Hester, who received it with a slow, earnest look into his face; not precisely a look of fear, yet full of doubt and questioning as to what his purposes might be.
8 On the other hand, a penalty which, in our days, would infer a degree of mocking infamy and ridicule, might then be invested with almost as stern a dignity as the punishment of death itself.
The Scarlet Letter By Nathaniel HawthorneContextHighlight In II. THE MARKET-PLACE 9 His face darkened with some powerful emotion, which, nevertheless, he so instantaneously controlled by an effort of his will, that, save at a single moment, its expression might have passed for calmness.
The Scarlet Letter By Nathaniel HawthorneContextHighlight In III. THE RECOGNITION 10 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 Scarlet Letter By Nathaniel HawthorneContextHighlight In III. THE RECOGNITION 11 It was, moreover, a separate and insulated event, to occur but once in her lifetime, and to meet which, therefore, reckless of economy, she might call up the vital strength that would have sufficed for many quiet years.
The Scarlet Letter By Nathaniel HawthorneContextHighlight In V. HESTER AT HER NEEDLE 12 It was a circumstance to be noted on the summer morning when our story begins its course, that the women, of whom there were several in the crowd, appeared to take a peculiar interest in whatever penal infliction might be expected to ensue.
The Scarlet Letter By Nathaniel HawthorneContextHighlight In II. THE MARKET-PLACE 13 I might have known that, as I came out of the vast and dismal forest, and entered this settlement of Christian men, the very first object to meet my eyes would be thyself, Hester Prynne, standing up, a statue of ignominy, before the people.
14 It might be that an Antinomian, a Quaker, or other heterodox religionist, was to be scourged out of the town, or an idle or vagrant Indian, whom the white man's firewater had made riotous about the streets, was to be driven with stripes into the shadow of the forest.
The Scarlet Letter By Nathaniel HawthorneContextHighlight In II. THE MARKET-PLACE 15 Knowing your natural temper better than I, he could the better judge what arguments to use, whether of tenderness or terror, such as might prevail over your hardness and obstinacy, insomuch that you should no longer hide the name of him who tempted you to this grievous fall.
The Scarlet Letter By Nathaniel HawthorneContextHighlight In III. THE RECOGNITION 16 The founders of a new colony, whatever Utopia of human virtue and happiness they might originally project, have invariably recognised it among their earliest practical necessities to allot a portion of the virgin soil as a cemetery, and another portion as the site of a prison.
17 Measured by the prisoner's experience, however, it might be reckoned a journey of some length; for haughty as her demeanour was, she perchance underwent an agony from every footstep of those that thronged to see her, as if her heart had been flung into the street for them all to spurn and trample upon.
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