Hawthorne's fundamental respect for the Quakers and their "new idea" along
with his scorn for the suspicion with which his ancestors regarded Quakers
comes through clearly in this passage.
Look now at the street, and observe a strange people entering
it. Their garments are torn and disordered, their faces haggard, their
figures emaciated; for they have made their way hither through pathless
deserts, suffering hunger and hardship, with no other shelter than a hollow
tree, the lair of a wild beast, or an Indian wigwam. Nor, in the most inhospitable
and dangerous of such lodging-places, was there half the peril that awaits
them in this thoroughfare of Christian men, with those secure dwellings
and warm hearths on either side of it, and yonder meeting-house as the
central object of the scene. These wanderers have received from Heaven
a gift that, in all epochs of the world, has brought with it the penalties
of mortal suffering and persecution, scorn, enmity, and death itself;--a
gift that, thus terrible to its possessors, has ever been most hateful
to all other men, since its very existence seems to threaten the overthrow
of whatever else the toilsome ages have built up;--the gift of a new idea.
You can discern it in them, illuminating their faces--their whole persons,
indeed, however earthly and cloddish--with a light that inevitably shines
through, and makes the startled community aware that these men are not
as they themselves are; not brethren nor neighbors of their thought. Forthwith,
it is as if an earthquake rumbled through the town, making its vibrations
felt at every hearthstone, and especially causing the spire of the meeting-house
to totter. The Quakers have come! We are in peril! See! they trample upon
our wise and well-established laws in the person of our chief magistrate;
for Governor Endicott is passing, now an aged man, and dignified with long
habits of authority,--and not one of the irreverent vagabonds has moved
his hat! Did you note the ominous frown of the white-bearded Puritan governor,
as he turned himself about, and, in his anger, half uplifted the staff
that has become a needful support to his old age? Here comes old Mr. Norris,
our venerable minister. Will they doff their hats, and pay reverence to
him? No: their hats stick fast to their ungracious heads, as if they grew
there; and--impious varlets that they are, and worse than the heathen Indians!--they
eye our reverend pastor with a peculiar scorn, distrust, unbelief, and
utter denial of his sanctified pretensions, of which he himself immediately
becomes conscious; the more bitterly conscious, as he never knew nor dreamed
of the like before.
