"The Scarlet Letter"
by Nathaniel Hawthorne

  Previous Page   Next Page   Speaker On

     "You speak in riddles, learned sir," said the pale minister, glancing aside out of the window.

     "Then, to speak more plainly," continued the physician, "and I crave pardon, sir, should it seem to require pardon, for this needful plainness of my speech. Let me ask as your friend, as one having charge, under Providence, of your life and physical well being, hath all the operations of this disorder been fairly laid open and recounted to me?"

     "How can you question it?" asked the minister. "Surely it were child's play to call in a physician and then hide the sore!"

 

     "You would tell me, then, that I know all?" said Roger Chillingworth, deliberately, and fixing an eye, bright with intense and concentrated intelligence, on the minister's face. "Be it so! But again! He to whom only the outward and physical evil is laid open, knoweth, oftentimes, but half the evil which he is called upon to cure. A bodily disease, which we look upon as whole and entire within itself, may, after all, be but a symptom of some ailment in the spiritual part. Your pardon once again, good sir, if my speech give the shadow of offence. You, sir, of all men whom I have known, are he whose body is the closest conjoined, and imbued, and identified, so to speak, with the spirit whereof it is the instrument."

 
Text provided by Project Gutenberg.
Audio by Verkaro.com and performed by Mary Woods.
Audio copyright 2008, LoudLit.org
Audio production made possible through the generous support of
Gordon W. Draper, Lois and Will Yeats, Theresa Mahoney and Todd Fadoir.
Flash mp3 player by Jeroen Wijering. (cc) some rights reserved.
Web page presentation by LoudLit.org.