"But thou shalt leave it all behind thee! It shall not
cumber thy steps, as thou treadest along the forest-path:
neither shalt thou freight the ship with it, if thou prefer to
cross the sea. Leave this wreck and ruin here where it hath
happened. Meddle no more with it! Begin all anew! Hast thou
exhausted possibility in the failure of this one trial? Not so!
The future is yet full of trial and success. There is happiness
to be enjoyed! There is good to be done! Exchange this false
life of thine for a true one. Be, if thy spirit summon thee to
such a mission, the teacher and apostle of the red men. Or, as
is more thy nature, be a scholar and a sage among the wisest and
the most renowned of the cultivated world. Preach! Write! Act!
Do anything, save to lie down and die! Give up this name of
Arthur Dimmesdale, and make thyself another, and a high one,
such as thou canst wear without fear or shame. Why shouldst thou
tarry so much as one other day in the torments that have so
gnawed into thy life? that have made thee feeble to will and to
do? that will leave thee powerless even to repent? Up, and
away!"
"Oh, Hester!" cried Arthur Dimmesdale, in whose eyes a fitful
light, kindled by her enthusiasm, flashed up and died away,
"thou tellest of running a race to a man whose knees are
tottering beneath him! I must die here! There is not the
strength or courage left me to venture into the wide, strange,
difficult world alone!"
It was the last expression of the despondency of a broken
spirit.
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