In our nature,
however, there is a provision, alike marvellous and merciful,
that the sufferer should never know the intensity of what he
endures by its present torture, but chiefly by the pang that
rankles after it. With almost a serene deportment, therefore,
Hester Prynne passed through this portion of her ordeal, and
came to a sort of scaffold, at the western extremity of the
market-place. It stood nearly beneath the eaves of Boston's
earliest church, and appeared to be a fixture there.
In fact, this scaffold constituted a portion of a penal machine,
which now, for two or three generations past, has been merely
historical and traditionary among us, but was held, in the old
time, to be as effectual an agent, in the promotion of good
citizenship, as ever was the guillotine among the terrorists of
France. It was, in short, the platform of the pillory; and above
it rose the framework of that instrument of discipline, so
fashioned as to confine the human head in its tight grasp, and
thus hold it up to the public gaze. The very ideal of ignominy
was embodied and made manifest in this contrivance of wood and
iron.
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