The Scarlet Letter by: Nathaniel Hawthorne

Discerning the impraticale state of the poor culprit's mind, the elder clergyman, who had carefully prepared himself for the occassion, addressed to the multiude a discourse on sin, in all it's branches, but with continual reference to the ignominious letter. So forcibly did he dwell upon this symbol, for the hour or more during which his periods were rolling over the poeple's heads, that is assumed new terrors in their imagination, and seemed to derive it's scar;et hue from the flames of the infernal pit. Hester Prynne, meanwhile, kept her place upon the pedestal of shame, with glazed eyes, and an air of weary indifference. She had borne, that morning, all that nature could endure; and as her temperment was not of the order that escapes from to intense suffering by a swoon, ehr spirit could only shelter itself beneth a stony crust of insensibility, while the facilities of animal life remained entire. In this state, the voice of the preacher thundered remorselessly, but unavailingly, upon her ears. The infant, during the wailings and screams; she strove to hush it, mechanically, but seemed scarcely to sympathize with it's trouble. With the sae hard demeanor, she was led back to prison, and vanished from the public gaze within it's iron clamped portal. It was whispered, by those who peered after her that the scarlet letter threw a lurid gleam along the dark passage-way of the interior.