But she named the infant "Pearl," as being of great price-purchased with all she had-her mother's only treasure!

...Chillingworth was a striking evidence of man's faculty of transforming himself into a devil, if he will only, for a reasonable space of time, undertake a devil's office.

But, all this while, I was giving myself very unnecessary alarm. Providence had mediated better things for me than I could possibly imagine for myself.

Time flies over us, but leaves its shadow behind.

I have laughed, in bitterness and agony of heart, at the contrast between what I seem and what I am!

If the truth were to be known, everyone would be wearing a scarlet letter of one form or another.

Before this ugly edifice, and between it and the wheel-track of the street, was a grass-plot, much overgrown with burdock, pig-weed, apple-pern, and such unsightly vegetation, which evidently found something congenial in the soil that had so early borne the black flower of civilized society, a prison.