Hester Prynne's Reminiscences

Hester prynne felt at moments as if she must needs shriek out with the full power of her lungs and cast herself from the scaffold down upon the ground, or else go mad at once. Her mind, and especially her memory, was preternaturally active and kept bringing up other scenes than this roughly hewn street of a little town on the edge of the western wilderness. Reminiscences the most trifling and immaterial passages of infancy and school days came swarming back upon her. One picture precisely as vivid as another, as if all were of similar importance, or all alike o play.