| | 1 | Author: | Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 1804-1864 | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | Alice Doane`s Appeal  | | | | Published: | 2000 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | ON A PLEASANT AFTERNOON of June, it was my good fortune to be the
companion of two young ladies in a walk. The direction of our course
being left to me, I led them neither to Legge's Hill, nor to the
Cold Spring, nor to the rude shores and old batteries of the Neck, nor
yet to Paradise; though if the latter place were rightly named, my
fair friends would have been at home there. We reached the outskirts
of the town, and turning aside from a street of tanners and
curriers, began to ascend a hill, which at a distance, by its dark
slope and the even line of its summit, resembled a green rampart along
the road. It was less steep than its aspect threatened. The eminence
formed part of an extensive tract of pasture land, and was traversed
by cow paths in various directions; but, strange to tell, though the
whole slope and summit were of a peculiarly deep green, scarce a blade
of grass was visible from the base upward. This deceitful verdure
was occasioned by a plentiful crop of "woodwax," which wears the
same dark and glossy green throughout the summer, except at one
short period, when it puts forth a profusion of yellow blossoms. At
that season, to a distant spectator, the hill appears absolutely
overlaid with gold, or covered with a glory of sunshine, even
beneath a clouded sky. But the curious wanderer on the hill will
perceive that all the grass, and everything that should nourish man or
beast, has been destroyed by this vile and ineradicable weed: its
tufted roots make the soil their own, and permit nothing else to
vegetate among them; so that a physical curse may be said to have
blasted the spot, where guilt and frenzy consummated the most
execrable scene that our history blushes to record. For this was the
field where superstition won her darkest triumph; the high place where
our fathers set up their shame, to the mournful gaze of generations
far remote. The dust of martyrs was beneath our feet. We stood on
Gallows Hill. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
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