“They wait to see the procession pass,” said Hester.  “For the Governor and the magistrates are to go by, and the ministers, and all the great people and good people, with the music and the soldiers marching before them.”

“And will the minister be there?” asked Pearl.  “And will he hold out both his hands to me, as when thou ledst me to him from the brook-side?”

“He will be there, child,” answered her mother, “but he will not greet thee to-day, nor must thou greet him.”

“What a strange, sad man is he!” said the child, as if speaking partly to herself.  “In the dark nighttime he calls us to him, and holds thy hand and mine, as when we stood with him on the scaffold yonder!  And in the deep forest, where only the old trees can hear, and the strip of sky see it, he talks with thee, sitting on a heap of moss!  And he kisses my forehead, too, so that the little brook would hardly wash it off!  But, here, in the sunny day, and among all the people, he knows us not; nor must we know him!  A strange, sad man is he, with his hand always over his heart!”

“Be quiet, Pearl—­thou understandest not these things,” said her mother.  “Think not now of the minister, but look about thee, and see how cheery is everybody’s face to-day.  The children have come from their schools, and the grown people from their workshops and their fields, on purpose to be happy, for, to-day, a new man is beginning to rule over them; and so—­as has been the custom of mankind ever since a nation was first gathered—­they make merry and rejoice:  as if a good and golden year were at length to pass over the poor old world!”

It was as Hester said, in regard to the unwonted jollity that brightened the faces of the people.  Into this festal season of the year—­as it already was, and continued to be during the greater part of two centuries—­the Puritans compressed whatever mirth and public joy they deemed allowable to human infirmity; thereby so far dispelling the customary cloud, that, for the space of a single holiday, they appeared scarcely more grave than most other communities at a period of general affliction.

But we perhaps exaggerate the gray or sable tinge, which undoubtedly characterized the mood and manners of the age.  The persons now in the market-place of Boston had not been born to an inheritance of Puritanic gloom.  They were native Englishmen, whose fathers had lived in the sunny richness of the Elizabethan epoch; a time when the life of England, viewed as one great mass, would appear to have been as stately, magnificent, and joyous, as the world has ever witnessed.  Had they followed their hereditary taste, the New England settlers would have illustrated all events of public importance by bonfires, banquets, pageantries, and processions.  Nor would it have been impracticable, in the observance of majestic ceremonies, to combine mirthful recreation with solemnity, and give, as it were, a grotesque and brilliant embroidery to the great