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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: Hawthorne, was a magistrate at Salem in the latter part of the
seventeenth century, and officiated at the famous trials for
witchcraft held there. It is of record that he used peculiar
severity towards a certain woman who was among the accused;
and the husband of this woman prophesied that God would take
revenge upon his wife's persecutors. This circumstance doubtless
furnished a hint for that piece of tradition in the book which
represents a Pyncheon of a former generation as having persecuted
one Maule, who declared that God would give his enemy "blood to drink."
It became a conviction with The Hawthorne family that a curse had been
pronounced upon its members, which continued in force in the time of
House of Seven Gables |
