The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Chapter 1

The Prison-Door

"A throng of bearded men, in sad-coloured garments and gray, steeple-crowned

hats, intermixed with women, some wearing hoods, and others bareheaded,

was assembled in front of a wooden edifice, the door of which was heavily

timbered with oak, and studded with iron spikes.

The founders of the new colony, whatever Utopia of human virtue and happiness

they might originally project, have invariably recognised it among their earliest

practical necessities to allot a portion of the virgin soil as a cemetery, and

another portion as the site of a prison. In accordance with this rule, it may

safely be assumed that the forefathers of Boston had built the first prison-house,

somewhere in the vicinity of Cornhill, almost as seasonably as they marked out

the first burial-ground, on Isaac Johnson's lot, and round about his grave, which

subsequently became the nucleus of all the congregated sepulchres in the old

churchyard of King's Chapel."