by
Nathaniel Hawthorne
CONTENTS
The Gray Champion
The Wedding Knell
The Minister's Black Veil
The May-Pole of Merry Mount
The Gentle Boy
Mr. Higginbotham's Catastrophe
Wakefield
The Great Carbuncle
David Swan
The Hollow of the Three Hills
Dr. Heidegger's Experiment
Legends of the Province House
I. Howe's Masquerade
II. Edward Randolph's Portrait
III. Lady Eleanore's Mantle
IV. Old Esther Dudley
The Ambitious Guest
Peter Goldthwaite's Treasure
The Shaker Bridal
Endicott and the Red Cross
There was once a time when New England groaned under the actualpressure of heavier wrongs than those threatened ones whichbrought on the Revolution. James II, the bigoted successor ofCharles the Voluptuous, had annulled the charters of all thecolonies, and sent a harsh and unprincipled soldier to take awayour liberties and endanger our religion. The administration ofSir Edmund Andros lacked scarcely a single characteristic oftyranny: a Governor and Council, holding office from the King,and wholly independent of the country; laws made and taxes leviedwithout concurrence of the people immediate or by theirrepresentatives; the rights of private citizens violated, and thetitles of all landed property declared void; the voice ofcomplaint stifled by restrictions on the press; and, finally,disaffection overawed by the first band of mercenary troops thatever marched on our free soil. For two years our ancestors werekept in sullen submission by that filial love which hadinvariably secured their allegiance to the mother country,whether its head chanced to be a Parliament, Protector, or PopishMonarch. Till these evil times, however, such allegiance had beenmerely nominal, and the colonists had ruled themselves, enjoyingfar more freedom than is even yet the privilege of the nativesubjects of Great Britain.
At length a rumor reached our shores that the Prince of Orangehad ventured on an enterprise, the success of which would be thetriumph of civil and religious rights and the salvation of NewEngland. It was but a doubtful whisper: it might be false, or theattempt might fail; and, in either case, the man that stirredagainst King James would lose his head. Still the intelligenceproduced a marked effect. The people smiled mysteriously in thestreets, and threw bold glances at their oppressors; while farand wide there was a subdued and silent agitation, as if theslightest signal would rouse the whole land from its sluggishdespondency. Aware of their danger, the rulers resolved to avertit by an imposing display of strength, and perhaps to confirmtheir despotism by yet harsher measures. One afternoon in April,1689, Sir Edmund Andros and his favorite councillors, b