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woman, eager for widow's weeds, has given her husband a drink at bed-time, and let him sleep his
last sleep in her bosom; how beardless youth have made haste to inherit their father's wealth; and
how fair damsels- blush not, sweet ones- have dug little graves in the garden, and bidden me, the
sole guest, to an infant's funeral. By the sympathy of your human hearts for sin, ye shall scent out
all the places-whether in church, bed-chamber, street, field, or forest- where crime has been
committed, and shall exult to behold the whole earth one stain of guilt, one mighty blood-spot. Far
more than this! It shall be yours to penetrate, in every bosom, the deep mystery of sin, the fountain
of all wicked arts, and which inexhaustibly supplies more evil impulses than human power- than
my power at its utmost- can make manifest in deeds. And now, my children, look upon each
other."
They did so; and, by the blaze of the hell-kindled torches, the wretched man beheld his Faith, and
the wife her husband, trembling before that unhallowed altar.
"Lo! there ye stand, my children," said the figure, in a deep and solemn tone, almost sad, with its
despairing awfulness, as if his once angelic nature could yet mourn for our miserable race.
"Depending upon one another's hearts, ye had still hoped that virtue were not all a dream! Now are
ye undeceived! Evil is the nature of mankind. Evil must be your only happiness. Welcome, again,
my children, to the communion of your race!"
"Welcome!" repeated the fiend-worshippers, in one cry of despair and triumph.
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And there they stood, the only pair, as it seemed, who were yet hesitating on the verge of
wickedness, in this dark world. A basin was hollowed, naturally, in the rock. Did it contain water,
reddened by the lurid light? or was it blood? or, perchance, a liquid flame? Herein did the Shape of
Evil dip his hand, and prepare to lay the mark of baptism upon their foreheads, that they might be
partakers of the mystery of sin, more conscious of the secret guilt of others, both in deed and
thought, than they could now be of their own. The husband cast one look at his pale wife, and
Faith at him. What polluted wretches would the next glance show them to each other, shuddering
alike at what they disclosed and what they saw!
"Faith! Faith!" cried the husband. "Look up to Heaven, and resist the Wicked One!"
Whether Faith obeyed, he knew not. Hardly had he spoken, when he found himself amid calm
night and solitude, listening to a roar of the wind, which died heavily away through the forest. He
staggered against the rock, and felt it chill and damp, while a hanging twig, that had been all on
fire, besprinkled his cheek with the coldest dew.
The next morning, young Goodman Brown came slowly into the street of Salem village, staring
around him like a bewildered man. The good old minister was taking a walk along the graveyard,
to get an appetite for breakfast and meditate his sermon, and bestowed a blessing, as he passed, on
Goodman Brown. He shrank from the venerable saint, as if to avoid an anathema. Old Deacon
Gookin was at domestic worship, and the holy words of his prayer were heard through the open
window. "What God doth the wizard pray to?" quoth Goodman Brown. Goody Cloyse, that
excellent old Christian, stood in the early sunshine, at her own lattice, catechising a little girl, who
had brought her a pint of morning's milk. Goodman Brown snatched away the child, as from the
grasp of the fiend himself. Turning the corner by the meeting-house, he spied the head of Faith,
with the pink ribbons, gazing anxiously forth, and bursting into such joy at sight of him, that she
skipt along the street, and almost kissed her husband before the whole village. But Goodman
Brown looked sternly and sadly into her face, and passed on without a greeting.
Had Goodman Brown fallen asleep in the forest, and only dreamed a wild dream of a
witch-meeting?
Be it so, if you will. But, alas! it was a dream of evil omen for young Goodman Brown. A stern, a
sad, a darkly meditative, a distrustful, if not a desperate man, did he become, from the night of that
fearful dream. On the Sabbath-day, when the congregation were singing a holy psalm, he could not
listen, because an anthem of sin rushed loudly upon his ear, and drowned all the blessed strain.
When the minister spoke from the pulpit, with power and fervid eloquence, and with his hand on
the open Bible, of the sacred truths of our religion, and of saint-like lives and triumphant deaths,
and of future bliss or misery unutterable, then did Goodman Brown turn pale, dreading lest the
roof should thunder down upon the gray blasphemer and his hearers. Often, awaking suddenly at
midnight, he shrank from the bosom of Faith, and at morning or eventide, when the family knelt
down at prayer, he scowled, and muttered to himself, and gazed sternly at his wife, and turned
away. And when he had lived long, and was borne to his grave, a hoary corpse, followed by Faith,
an aged woman, and children and grandchildren, a goodly procession, besides neighbors, not a
few, they carved no hopeful verse upon his tombstone; for his dying hour was gloom.
THE END .
9/3/96
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