II. THE MARKET-PLACE
The grass-plot before the jail, in Prison Lane, on a certain
summer morning, not less than two centuries ago, was occupied by
a pretty large number of the inhabitants of Boston, all with
their eyes intently fastened on the iron-clamped oaken door.
Amongst any other population, or at a later period in the
history of New England, the grim rigidity that petrified the
bearded physiognomies of these good people would have augured
some awful business in hand. It could have betokened nothing
short of the anticipated execution of some noted culprit, on
whom the sentence of a legal tribunal had but confirmed the
verdict of public sentiment. But, in that early severity of the
Puritan character, an inference of this kind could not so
indubitably be drawn. It might be that a sluggish bond-servant,
or an undutiful child, whom his parents had given over to the
civil authority, was to be corrected at the whipping-post. It
might be that an Antinomian, a Quaker, or other heterodox
religionist, was to be scourged out of the town, or an idle or
vagrant Indian, whom the white man's firewater had made riotous
about the streets, was to be driven with stripes into the shadow
of the forest.
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