Page 68 - THE SCARLET LETTER

The Scarlet Letter

to be recognised by the Whigs as an enemy; since his
inactivity in political affairs—his tendency to roam, at will,
in that broad and quiet field where all mankind may meet,
rather than confine himself to those narrow paths where

brethren of the same household must diverge from one
another—had sometimes made it questionable with his
brother Democrats whether he was a friend. Now, after he
had won the crown of martyrdom (though with no longer
a head to wear it on), the point might be looked upon as
settled. Finally, little heroic as he was, it seemed more
decorous to be overthrown in the downfall of the party
with which he had been content to stand than to remain a
forlorn survivor, when so many worthier men were
falling: and at last, after subsisting for four years on the
mercy of a hostile administration, to be compelled then to
define his position anew, and claim the yet more
humiliating mercy of a friendly one.
Meanwhile, the press had taken up my affair, and kept
me for a week or two careering through the public prints,
in my decapitated state, like Irving’s Headless Horseman,
ghastly and grim, and longing to be buried, as a political
dead man ought. So much for my figurative self. The real
human being all this time, with his head safely on his
shoulders, had brought himself to the comfortable

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