CHAPTER 1
THE PRISON-DOOR
CHAPTER 2
THE MARKET-PLACE
CHAPTER 3
THE RECOGNITION
CHAPTER 4
THE INTERVIEW
CHAPTER 5
HESTER AT HER NEEDLE
CHAPTER 6
PEARL
CHAPTER 7
THE GOVERNOR''S HALL
CHAPTER 8
THE ELF-CHILD AND THE MINISTER
CHAPTER 9
THE LEECH
CHAPTER 10
THE LEECH AND HIS PATIENT
CHAPTER 11
THE INTERIOR OF A HEART
CHAPTER 12
THE MINISTER''S VIGIL
CHAPTER 13
ANOTHER VIEW OF HESTER
CHAPTER 14
HESTER AND THE PHYSICIAN
CHAPTER 15
HESTER AND PEARL
CHAPTER 16
A FOREST WALK
CHAPTER 17
THE PASTOR AND HIS PARISHIONER
CHAPTER 18
A FLOOD OF SUNSHINE
CHAPTER 19
THE CHILD AT THE BROOK-SIDE
CHAPTER 20
THE MINISTER IN A MAZE
CHAPTER 21
THE NEW ENGLAND HOLIDAY
CHAPTER 22
THE PROCESSION
CHAPTER 23
THE REVELATION OF THE SCARLET LETTER
CHAPTER 24
CONCLUSION
內容試閱：
Most of the spectators testified to having seen, on the breast
of the unhappy minister, a SCARLET LETTER—the very semblance of
that worn by Hester Prynne—imprinted in the flesh. As regarded its
origin there were various explanations, all of which must
necessarily have been conjectural. Some affirmed that the Reverend
Mr. Dimmesdale, on the very day when Hester Prynne first wore her
ignominious badge, had begun a course of penance—which he
afterwards, in so many futile methods, followed out—by inflicting a
hideous torture on himself. Others contended that the stigma had
not been produced until a long time subsequent, when old Roger
Chillingworth, being a potent necromancer, had caused it to appear,
through the agency of magic and poisonous drugs. Others, again and
those best able to appreciate the minister''s peculiar sensibility,
and the wonderful operation of his spirit upon the body—whispered
their belief, that the awful symbol was the effect of the
ever-active tooth of remorse, gnawing from the inmost heart
outwardly, and at last manifesting Heaven''s dreadful judgment by
the visible presence of the letter. The reader may choose among
these theories. We have thrown all the light we could acquire upon
the portent, and would gladly, now that it has done its office,
erase its deep print out of our own brain, where long meditation
has fixed it in very undesirable distinctness.
It is singular, nevertheless, that certain persons, who were
spectators of the whole scene, and professed never once to have
removed their eyes from the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale, denied that
there was any mark whatever on his breast, more than on a new-born
infant''s. Neither, by their report, had his dying words
acknowledged, nor even remotely implied, any—the
slightest—connexion on his part, with the guilt for which Hester
Prynne had so long worn the scarlet letter. According to these
highly-respectable witnesses, the minister, conscious that he was
dying—conscious, also, that the reverence of the multitude placed
him already among saints and angels—had desired, by yielding up his
breath in the arms of that fallen woman, to express to the world
how utterly nugatory is the choicest of man''s own righteousness.
After exhausting life in his efforts for mankind''s spiritual good,
he had made the manner of his death a parable, in order to impress
on his admirers the mighty and mournful lesson, that, in the view
of Infinite Purity, we are sinners all alike. It was to teach them,
that the holiest amongst us has but attained so far above his
fellows as to discern more clearly the Mercy which looks down, and
repudiate more utterly the phantom of human merit, which would look
aspiringly upward. Without disputing a truth so momentous, we must
be allowed to consider this version of Mr. Dimmesdale''s story as
only an instance of that stubborn fidelity with which a man''s
friends—and especially a clergyman''s—will sometimes uphold his
character, when proofs, clear as the mid-day sunshine on the
scarlet letter, establish him a false and sin-stained creature of
the dust.
……
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