The next morning, young Goodman Brown came slowly into the streetof Salem village, staring around him like a bewildered man. The goodold minister was taking a walk along the graveyard, to get an appetitefor breakfast and meditate his sermon, and bestowed a blessing, ashe passed, on Goodman Brown. He shrank from the venerable saint, as ifto avoid an anathema. Old Deacon Gookin was at domestic worship, andthe holy words of his prayer were heard through the open window. "WhatGod doth the wizard pray to?" quoth Goodman Brown. Goody Cloyse,that excellent old Christian, stood in the early sunshine, at herown lattice, catechising a little girl, who had brought her a pintof morning's milk. Goodman Brown snatched away the child, as fromthe grasp of the fiend himself. Turning the corner by themeeting-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 husbandbefore the whole village. But Goodman Brown looked sternly and sadlyinto her face, and passed on without a greeting.
Had Goodman Brown fallen asleep in the forest, and only dreamed awild dream of a witch-meeting?
Be it so, if you will. But, alas! it was a dream of evil omen foryoung Goodman Brown. A stern, a sad, a darkly meditative, adistrustful, if not a desperate man, did he become, from the nightof that fearful dream. On the Sabbath-day, when the congregationwere singing a holy psalm, he could not listen, because an anthem ofsin rushed loudly upon his ear, and drowned all the blessed strain.
When the minister spoke from the pulpit, with power and fervideloquence, and with his hand on the open Bible, of the sacred truthsof our religion, and of saint-like lives and triumphant deaths, and offuture bliss or misery unutterable, then did Goodman Brown turnpale, dreading lest the roof should thunder down upon the grayblasphemer and his hearers. Often, awaking suddenly at midnight, heshrank from the bosom of Faith, and at morning or eventide, when thefamily knelt down at prayer, he scowled, and muttered to himself,and gazed sternly at his wife, and turned away. And when he hadlived long, and was borne to his grave, a hoary corpse, followed byFaith, an aged woman, and children and grandchildren, a goodlyprocession, besides neighbors, not a few, they carved no hopeful verseupon his tombstone; for his dying hour was gloom.
THE END
.
1837
TWICE-TOLD TALES
DR. HEIDEGGER'S EXPERIMENT
by Nathaniel Hawthorne
THAT VERY SINGULAR MAN, old Dr. Heidegger, once invited fourvenerable friends to meet him in his study. There were threewhite-bearded gentlemen, Mr. Medbourne, Colonel Killigrew, and Mr.
Gascoigne, and a withered gentlewoman, whose name was the WidowWycherly. They were all melancholy old creatures, who had beenunfortunate in life, and whose greatest misfortune it was that theywere not long ago in their graves. Mr. Medbourne, in the vigor ofhis age, had been a prosperous merchant, but had lost his all by afrantic speculation, and was now little better than a mendicant.
Colonel Killigrew had wasted his best years, and his health andsubstance, in the pursuit of sinful pleasures, which had given birthto a brood of pains, such as the gout, and divers other torments ofsoul and body. Mr. Gascoigne was a ruined politician, a man of evilfame, or at least had been so till time had buried him from theknowledge of the present generation, and made him obscure instead ofinfamous. As for the Widow Wycherly, tradition tells us that she was agreat beauty in her day; but, for a long while past, she had livedin deep seclusion, on account of certain scandalous stories whichhad prejudiced the gentry of the town against her. It is acircumstance worth mentioning that each of these three oldgentlemen, Mr. Medbourne, Colonel Killigrew, and Mr. Gascoigne, wereearly lovers of the Widow Wycherly, and had once been on the pointof cutting each other's throats for her sake. And, before proceedingfurther, I will merely hint that Dr. Heidegger and all his four guestswere sometimes thought to be a little beside themselves- as is notunfrequently the case with old people, when worried either bypresent troubles or woful recollections.
"My dear old friends," said Dr. Heidegger, motioning them to beseated, I am desirous of your assistance in one of those littleexperiments with which I amuse myself here in my study."If all stories were true, Dr. Heidegger's study must have been avery curious place. It was a dim, old-fashioned chamber, festoonedwith cobwebs, and besprinkled with antique dust. Around the wallsstood several oaken bookcases, the lower shelves of which werefilled with rows of gigantic folios and black-letter quartos, andthe upper with little parchment-covered duodecimos. Over the centralbookcase was a bronze bust of Hippocrates, with which, according tosome authorities, Dr. Heidegger was accustomed to hold consultationsin all difficult cases of his practice. In the obscurest corner of theroom stood a tall and narrow oaken closet, with its door ajar,within which doubtfully appeared a skeleton. Between two of thebookcases hung a looking-glass, presenting its high and dusty platewithin a tarnished gilt frame. Among many wonderful stories related ofthis mirror, it was fabled that the spirits of all the doctor'sdeceased patients dwelt within its verge, and would stare him in theface whenever he looked thitherward. The opposite side of thechamber was ornamented with the full-length portrait of a younglady, arrayed in the faded magnificence of silk, satin, and brocade,and with a visage as faded as her dress. Above half a century ago, Dr.
