it may be applied. The unlikeliest materials, a stick,
a bunch of rags, a flower, were the puppets of Pearl's witchcraft, and, without
undergoing any outward change, became spiritually adapted to whatever drama
occupied the stage of her inner world. Her one baby-voice served a multitude of
imaginary personages, old and young, to talk withal. The pine-trees, aged,
black, and solemn, and flinging groans and other melancholy utterances on the
breeze, needed little transformation to figure as Puritan elders; the ugliest
weeds of the garden were their children, whom Pearl smote down and uprooted,
most unmercifully. It was wonderful, the vast variety of forms into which she
threw her intellect, with no continuity, indeed, but darting up and dancing,
always in a state of preternatural activity, - soon sinking down, as if
exhausted by so rapid and feverish a tide of life, - and succeeded by other
shapes of a similar wild energy. It was like nothing so much as the
phantasmagoric play of the northern lights. In the mere exercise of the fancy,
however, and the sportiveness of a growing mind, there might be little more than
was observable in other children of bright faculties; except as Pearl, in the
dearth of human playmates, was thrown more upon the visionary throng which she
created. The singularity lay in the hostile feelings with which the child
regarded all these offspring of her own heart and mind. She never created a
friend, but seemed always to be sowing broadcast the dragon's teeth, whence
sprung a harvest of armed enemies, against whom she rushed to battle. It was
inexpressibly sad - then what depth of sorrow to a mother, who felt in her own
heart the cause! - to observe, in one so young, this constant recognition of an
adverse world, and so fierce a training of the energies that were to make good
her cause, in the contest that must ensue.
    Gazing at Pearl, Hester Prynne often dropped her work upon her knees, and
cried out, with an agony which she would fain have hidden, but which made
utterance for itself, betwixt speech and a groan, - »O Father in Heaven, - if
Thou art still my Father, - what is this being which I have brought into the
world!« And Pearl, overhearing the ejaculation, or aware, through some more
subtile channel, of those throbs of anguish, would turn her vivid and beautiful
little face upon her mother, smile with sprite-like intelligence, and resume her
play.
    One peculiarity of the child'