There were trifles,
too, little ornaments, beautiful tokens of a continual remembrance,
that must have been wrought by delicate fingers, at the impulse of a
fond heart. And, once, Hester was seen embroidering a baby-garment,
with such a lavish richness of golden fancy as would have raised a
public tumult, had any infant, thus apparelled, been shown to our
sober-hued community.

In fine, the gossips of that day believed,--and Mr. Surveyor Pue, who
made investigations a century later, believed,--and one of his recent
successors in office, moreover, faithfully believes,--that Pearl was
not only alive, but married, and happy, and mindful of her mother, and
that she would most joyfully have entertained that sad and lonely
mother at her fireside.

But there was a more real life for Hester Prynne here, in New England,
than in that unknown region where Pearl had found a home. Here had
been her sin; here, her sorrow; and here was yet to be her penitence.
She had returned, therefore, and resumed,--of her own free will, for
not the sternest magistrate of that iron period would have imposed
it,--resumed the symbol of which we have related so dark a tale. Never
afterwards did it quit her bosom. But, in the lapse of the toilsome,
thoughtful, and self-devoted years that made up Hester's life, the
scarlet letter ceased to be a stigma which attracted the world's scorn
and bitterness, and became a type of something to be sorrowed over,
and looked upon with awe, yet with reverence too. And, as Hester
Prynne had no selfish ends, nor lived in any measure for her own
profit and enjoyment, people brought all their sorrows and
perplexities, and besought her counsel, as one who had herself gone
through a mighty trouble. Women, more especially,--in the continually
recurring trials of wounded, wasted, wronged, misplaced, or erring and
sinful passion,--or with the dreary burden of a heart unyielded,
because unvalued and unsought,--came to Hester's cottage, demanding
why they were so wretched, and what the remedy! Hester comforted and
counselled them as best she might. She assured them, too, of her firm
belief, that, at some brighter period, when the world should have
grown ripe for it, in Heaven's own time, a new truth would be
revealed, in order to establish the whole relation between man and
woman on a surer ground of mutual happiness. Earlier in life, Hester
had vainly imagined that she herself might be the destined prophetess,
but had long