The Scarlet Letter: A RomanceH. Altemus Company, 1892 - 468 pages |
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Common terms and phrases
Ann Hutchinson answered Hester Art thou Arthur Dimmesdale aspect beauty beheld beneath bosom breast brook brought character child clergyman cried Custom-House dark deep Dimmes Dimmesdale's Dost thou earth earthly embroidered England evil eyes face fancy father felt forest gaze gleam Governor Bellingham grave gray guilty hand hath head heart heaven Hester Prynne hither human ignominy imagine impulse infant kind King's Chapel knew light likewise little Pearl look magistrates man's market-place ment mind minister minister's Mistress Hibbins moral murmur nature ness never Old Manse old Roger Chillingworth once pale passed passion personage physician pillory poor portunities Prynne's Puritan Reverend Roger Chil scaffold scarlet letter scene secret seemed seen shadow shame sinful smile solemn sorrow soul speak spirit step stern stood strange sunshine Surveyor sympathy thee thought tion token torture town tremulous truth voice whispered wild Wilt thou woman yonder young
Popular passages
Page 217 - It was an age in which the human intellect, newly emancipated, had taken a more active and a wider range than for many centuries before. Men of the sword had overthrown nobles and kings.
Page 51 - Thus, therefore, the floor of our familiar room has become a neutral territory, somewhere between the real world and fairy-land, where the Actual and the Imaginary may meet, and each imbue itself with the nature of the other.
Page 15 - Church; he had all the Puritanic traits, both good and evil. He was likewise a bitter persecutor; as witness the Quakers, who have remembered him in their histories, and relate an incident of his hard severity towards a woman of their sect which will last longer, it is to be feared, than any record of his better deeds, although these were many.
Page 66 - ... built the first prisonhouse, somewhere in the vicinity of Cornhill, almost as seasonably as they marked out the first burial-ground, on Isaac Johnson's lot, and round about his grave, which subsequently became the nucleus of all the congregated sepulchres in the old church-yard of King's Chapel. Certain it is, that, some fifteen or twenty years after the settlement of the town, the wooden jail was already marked with weather-stains and other indications of age, which gave a yet darker aspect...
Page 45 - I experienced a sensation not altogether physical, yet almost so, as of burning heat; and as if the letter were not of red cloth, but red-hot iron.
Page 288 - At every step he was incited to do some strange, wild, wicked thing or other, with a sense that it would be at once involuntary and intentional; in spite of himself, yet growing out of a profounder self than that which opposed the impulse.
Page 119 - 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...
Page 251 - In such life as has been mine these seven years past ! And thou, Arthur Dimmesdale, dost thou yet live ?" It was no wonder that they thus questioned one another's actual and bodily existence, and even doubted of their own. So strangely did they meet, in the dim wood, that it was like the first encounter, in the world beyond the grave, of two spirits who had been intimately connected in their former life, but now stood coldly shuddering, in mutual dread ; as not yet familiar with their state, nor...
Page 275 - By this time Pearl had reached the margin of the brook, and stood on the further side, gazing silently at Hester and the clergyman, who still sat together on the mossy tree-trunk waiting to receive her. Just where she had paused the brook chanced to form a pool, so smooth and quiet that it reflected a perfect image of her little figure, with all the brilliant picturesqueness of her beauty, in its adornment of flowers and wreathed foliage, but more refined and spiritualised than the reality.
Page 112 - Much of the time, which she might readily have applied to the better eiforts of her art, she employed in making coarse garments for the poor. It is probable that there was an idea of penance in this mode of occupation, and that she offered up a real sacrifice of enjoyment, in devoting so many hours to such rude handiwork. She had in her nature a rich, voluptuous, Oriental characteristic, — a taste for the gorgeously beautiful...