“After putting her fingers in her mouth, with many ungrateful refusals to answer Mr.. Wilson’s question, the child finally announced that she had not been made at all, but had been plucked by her mother off the bush of wild roses that grew by the prison door”
“ ‘He hath done a wild thing ere now, this pious Mr. Dimmesdale, in the hot passion of his heart!’”
“Such helpfulness was found in her—so much power to do and power to sympathize that many people refused to interpret the scarlet ‘A’ by it’s original signification. They said that it meant ‘Able’; so strong was Hester Prynne, with a women’s strength.”
“‘That old man!- the physician!- the one whom they call Roger Chillingworth!—he was my husband!’”

“Pacify her, if thou lovest me!”

“‘Hester Prynne’ cried he, with a piercing earnestness ‘in the name of Him, so terrible and so merciful, who gives me grace, at this last moment, to do what for my own heavy sin and miserable agony—I withheld myself from doing seven years ago, come hither now, and twine thy strength about me!”

  For me, Hawthorne’s other famous work The Scarlet Letter is a vastly better book than The House of the Seven Gables. The image of the branded woman alone cements it’s place in immortality, but what I really liked about it was that through his Hester Prynne character, who wears her shame with pride and dignity, he was able to penetrate more deeply the absurd puritan morality of the time, presenting these characters as decent and honourable people, rather than the superstitious, self-serving nitwits as they are usually portrayed. The religiosity of the time was not backward thinking as it is usually rendered these days, but in fact the highest form of intellectual thought and genuine compassion possible at the time. Hester never stands up to them, as any post-feminist character would be obligated to do (how many free-spirited young woman could there have been in former times?) but accepts it, believes in it, and from that position, rises above it while always remaining a part of it. The best book ever written on the vastly, although very deservedly, maligned subject of Christianity.

  Hawthorne the person was weird. He was born in the 4th of July (well, some famous American had to be) 1804, in Salem Massachusetts, which was the most popular place in America for burning witches. He supported slavery and helped Franklin Pierce win the Presidency on that platform. He was rewarded with the post of American Consul in Liverpool, England. He returned to America to die, by legend (and almost in reality) at the moment the Civil War ended. He is buried, believe it or not, in Sleepy Hollow cemetery. Ralph Waldo Emerson, Oliver Wendall Holmes, Russell Lowell and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow all attended his funeral.

I’ve not had anything much to say about my football career—that is for the obvious reason. I was a large lumbering fellow, nowhere near fast enough to play small and not tall enough to play big. But Australian Rules is unique in football codes in that it accommodates all shapes and sizes, and they could play me in almost any big man position where they didn’t have anyone bigger. For that reason alone, I was always up against it.
  I can’t remember for whom nor where I played my first real game, nor who the opponents were, but I do remember the final score: 13.24.102 to 9.19.73. Sports scores have always held an unnatural fascination for me, and I’ve always preferred sports with complex scoring systems (especially cricket) over those with simple structures, like soccer or hockey. That day I was in a very short team and was their only ruckman, toiling against kids a foot taller than me, but I contributed 3 goals 6 behinds to the lopsided winning score and was mentioned amongst the best players.
  Throughout 1962 I played at centre-half back for Moorabbin 4ths—otherwise called The Black Arabs—and since centre-half-forwards tend to be the most skilful player in any team, I tended to get walloped most weeks. But the Arabs won the premiership that year by one point—12.16.88 to 12.15.87—in which game I got about three kicks—but since my several opponents fared just as badly, it was considered I had made an important contribution.
  In 1963, I trained two nights week with the Moorabbin 3rds who also won the flag, but that size-speed ratio became a serious problem and I never got a game. Anyway, I preferred watching the big league on Saturday arvos. I wanted to quit but the coach asked me to stick at it in 1964 because I was getting faster and was sure to get a run in the first game of the season. But fate would have it that that game never occurred.
  Over that Summer, it emerged that the StKilda Football Club had been looking for a bigger ground and had their eye on the Moorabbin oval. The City Council entered negotiations and accepted their offer. Although they had no part in those discussions, Moorabbin Football Club was suspended by the VFA for disloyalty, despite being the reigning premiers. The coach walked onto the field that wet and windy night and told us we were wasting our time. “I’m off to Brighton-Caulfield,” he declared. In that instant, Moorabbin went out of existence and so did my football dreams and ambitions.
  With all those surplus Moorabbin players available, no one wanted a marginal player like me and I lost my hard-won momentum. I only played irregularly in minor competitions and social games after that. But it was the first time that some event directly involving me made headlines in the daily newspapers. I learned that this was something usually best avoided.