Page 52 - THE SCARLET LETTER

The Scarlet Letter

opened, and had the satisfaction to find recorded by the
old Surveyor’s pen, a reasonably complete explanation of
the whole affair. There were several foolscap sheets,
containing many particulars respecting the life and

conversation of one Hester Prynne, who appeared to have
been rather a noteworthy personage in the view of our
ancestors. She had flourished during the period between
the early days of Massachusetts and the close of the
seventeenth century. Aged persons, alive in the time of
Mr. Surveyor Pue, and from whose oral testimony he had
made up his narrative, remembered her, in their youth, as
a very old, but not decrepit woman, of a stately and
solemn aspect. It had been her habit, from an almost
immemorial date, to go about the country as a kind of
voluntary nurse, and doing whatever miscellaneous good
she might; taking upon herself, likewise, to give advice in
all matters, especially those of the heart, by which
means—as a person of such propensities inevitably must—
she gained from many people the reverence due to an
angel, but, I should imagine, was looked upon by others as
an intruder and a nuisance. Prying further into the
manuscript, I found the record of other doings and
sufferings of this singular woman, for most of which the
reader is referred to the story entitled ‘THE SCARLET

51 of 394