Twice Told Tales - Nathaniel Hawthorne

Still the death-bell tolled so mournfully that the sunshine seemed to fade in the air. A whisper, commu ...

gloomy pomp, the death-knell and the funeral. It was the bridegroom in his shroud. No garb but that of the grav ...

"Cruel?" repeated he; then, losing his deathlike composure in a wild bitterness, "Heaven judge which ...

marriage-words,—all marked the funeral of earthly hopes. But as the ceremony proceeded, the organ, as if stirred by the ...

excuse himself yesterday, being to preach a funeral sermon." The cause of so much amazement may appear suffici ...

had ascended the stairs and showed himself in the pulpit, face to face with his congregation except for the ...

profaned the Sabbath-day with ostentatious laughter. A few shook their sagacious heads, intimatin ...

was interrupted by the appearance of Mr. Hooper, still covered with his black veil. It was now an appropriate emblem ...

and could portend nothing but evil to the wedding. Such was its immediate effect on the guests that a cloud ...

scandal. Never did an embassy so ill discharge its duties. The minister received them with friendly courtes ...

from them, at least." "Elizabeth, I will," said he, "so far as my vow may suffer me. Know, then, this veil ...

The color rose into her cheeks as she intimated the nature of the rumors that were already abroad in the vil ...

material emblem had separated him from happiness, though the horrors which it shadowed forth must be drawn ...

before he brought them to celestial light they had been with him behind the black veil. Its gloom, i ...

and kept him in that saddest of all prisons his own heart; and still it lay upon his face, as if to deepen ...

But, exerting a sudden energy that made all the beholders stand aghast, Father Hooper snatched both h ...

THE MAYPOLE OF MERRY MOUNT. There is an admirable foundation for a philosophic romance in the curious ...

But what was the wild throng that stood hand in hand about the Maypole? It could not be that the f ...

curls of each, and were scattered round their feet or had sprung up spontaneously there. Behind this li ...

be that nothing of futurity will be brighter than the mere remembrance of what is now passing." "That ...