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. There can be no outrage, methinks, against our common
nature--whatever be the delinquencies of the individual--no
outrage more flagrant than to forbid the culprit to hide his
face for shame; as it was the essence of this punishment to do.
In Hester Prynne's instance, however, as not unfrequently in
other cases, her sentence bore that she should stand a certain
time upon the platform, but without undergoing that gripe about
the neck and confinement of the head, the proneness to which was
the most devilish characteristic of this ugly engine. Knowing
well her part, she ascended a flight of wooden steps, and was
thus displayed to the surrounding multitude, at about the height
of a man's shoulders above the street.
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Had there been a Papist among the crowd of Puritans, he might
have seen in this beautiful woman, so picturesque in her attire
and mien, and with the infant at her bosom, an object to remind
him of the image of Divine Maternity, which so many illustrious
painters have vied with one another to represent; something
which should remind him, indeed, but only by contrast, of that
sacred image of sinless motherhood, whose infant was to redeem
the world. Here, there was the taint of deepest sin in the most
sacred quality of human life, working such effect, that the
world was only the darker for this woman's beauty, and the more
lost for the infant that she had borne.
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