wrong by any standard
external to herself, Hester saw - or seemed to see - that there lay a
responsibility upon her, in reference to the clergyman, which she owed to no
other, nor to the whole world besides. The links that united her to the rest of
human kind - links of flowers, or silk, or gold, or whatever the material - had
all been broken. Here was the iron link of mutual crime, which neither he nor
she could break. Like all other ties, it brought along with it its obligations.
    Hester Prynne did not now occupy precisely the same position in which we
beheld her during the earlier periods of her ignominy. Years had come, and gone.
Pearl was now seven years old. Her mother, with the scarlet letter on her
breast, glittering in its fantastic embroidery, had long been a familiar object
to the townspeople. As is apt to be the case when a person stands out in any
prominence before the community, and, at the same time, interferes neither with
public nor individual interests and convenience, a species of general regard had
ultimately grown up in reference to Hester Prynne. It is to the credit of human
nature, that, except where its selfishness is brought into play, it loves more
readily than it hates. Hatred, by a gradual and quiet process, will even be
transformed to love, unless the change be impeded by a continually new
irritation of the original feeling of hostility. In this matter of Hester
Prynne, there was neither irritation nor irksomeness. She never battled with the
public, but submitted uncomplainingly to its worst usage; she made no claim upon
it, in requital for what she suffered; she did not weigh upon its sympathies.
Then, also, the blameless purity of her life, during all these years in which
she had been set apart to infamy, was reckoned largely in her favor. With
nothing now to lose, in the sight of mankind, and with no hope, and seemingly no
wish, of gaining any thing, it could only be a genuine regard for virtue that
had brought back the poor wanderer to its paths.
    It was perceived, too, that, while Hester never put forward even the
humblest title to share in the world's privileges, - farther than to breathe the
common air, and earn daily bread for little Pearl and herself by the faithful
labor of her hands, - she was quick to acknowledge her sisterhood with the race
of man, whenever benefits were to be conferred. None so ready as she to give of
her little substance to every demand of