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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from House of Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne: the cottage, and made it seem almost a religious act to drive
the plough over the little area of his habitation, and obliterate
his place and memory from among men.
Old Matthew Maule, in a word, was executed for the crime of
witchcraft. He was one of the martyrs to that terrible delusion,
which should teach us, among its other morals, that the influential
classes, and those who take upon themselves to be leaders of the
people, are fully liable to all the passionate error that has ever
characterized the maddest mob. Clergymen, judges, statesmen,--the
wisest, calmest, holiest persons of their day stood in the inner
circle round about the gallows, loudest to applaud the work of
House of Seven Gables |
