Picture House Managers in Pilgrim Costumes
Ldywrtr0
Joe Knapp
Ldywrtr0 wrote in message <19990130091320...@ng-ft1.aol.com>...
>IT fits rather well. Goes with the whole witchhunt theme, too
apologies in advance to Nathaniel Hawthorne:
The grim sargeant-at-arms now made a gesture with his gavel. "Make way,
good people, make way, in the Majority Leader's name!" cried he. "Open a
passage; and, I promise ye, Mistress Lewinsky shall be set where man, woman,
and child, may have a fair sight of her brave apparel, from this time till
an hour past meridian. A blessing on the righteous District of Columbia,
where iniquity is dragged out into the sunshine! Come along, Madam Lewinsky,
and show your scarlet letter in the market-place!"
A lane was forthwith opened through the crowd of spectators. Preceded by the
sargeant-at-arms, and attended by an irregular procession of stern-browed
men and unkindly-visaged women, Monica Lewinsky set forth towards the place
appointed for her punishment. A crowd of eager and curious schoolboys,
understanding little of the matter in hand, except that it gave them a
half-holiday, ran before her progress, turning their heads continually to
stare into her face, and at the ignominious letter on her breast. It was no
great distance, in those days, from the Watergate Hotel to the well of the
Senate. Measured by the prisoner's experience, however, it might be reckoned
a journey of some length; for, haughty as her demeanour was, she perchance
underwent an agony from every footstep of those that thronged to see her, as
if her heart had been flung into the street for them all to spurn and
trample upon. In our nature, however, there is a provision alike marvellous
and merciful, that the sufferer should never know the intensity of what he
endures by its present torture, but chiefly by the pang that rankles after
it. With almost a serene deportment, therefore, Monica Lewinsky passed
through this portion of her ordeal, and came to a sort of scaffold, at the
western extremity of Capitol Hill.
In fact, this scaffold constituted a portion of a penal machine, which now,
for two or three generations past, has been merely historical and
traditionary among us, but was held, in the old time, to be as effectual an
agent, in the promotion of good citizenship, as ever was the guillotine
among the terrorists of France. It was, in short, the platform of the
pillory; and above it rose the framework of that instrument of discipline,
so fashioned as to confine the human head in its tight grasp, and thus hold
it up to the public gaze. The very ideal of ignominy was embodied and made
manifest in this contrivance of wood and iron. There can be no outrage,
methinks, against our common nature- whatever be the delinquencies of the
individual- no outrage more flagrant than to forbid the culprit to hide his
face for shame; as it was the essence of this punishment to do. In Monica
Lewinsky's instance, however, as not unfrequently in other cases, her
sentence bore, that she should stand a certain time upon the platform, but
without undergoing that gripe about the neck and confinement of the head,
the proneness to which was the most devilish characteristic of this ugly
engine. Knowing well her part, she ascended a flight of wooden steps, and
was thus displayed to the surrounding multitude, at about the height of a
man's shoulders above the street.
Had there been a papist among the crowd of Puritans, he might have seen in
this beautiful woman, so picturesque in her attire and mien, an object to
remind him of the image of Divine Maternity, which so many illustrious
painters have vied with one another to represent; something which should
remind him, indeed, but only by contrast, of that sacred image of sinless
motherhood, whose infant was to redeem the world. Here, there was the taint
of deepest sin in the most sacred quality of human life, working such
effect, that the world was only the darker for this woman's beauty.
The scene was not without a mixture of awe, such as must always invest the
spectacle of guilt and shame in a fellow-creature, before society shall have
grown corrupt enough to smile, instead of shuddering, at it. The witnesses
of Monica Lewinsky's disgrace had not yet passed beyond their simplicity.
They were stern enough to look upon her death, had that been the sentence,
without a murmur at its severity, but had none of the heartlessness of
another social state, which would find only a theme for jest in an
exhibition like the present. Even if there had been a disposition to turn
the matter into ridicule, it must have been repressed and overpowered by the
solemn presence of men no less dignified than the Majority Leader, and
several of his counsellors, a judge, a general, and the ministers of the
Hill; all of whom sat or stood in a balcony of the meetinghouse, looking
down upon the platform. When such personages could constitute a part of the
spectacle, without risking the majesty or reverence of rank and office, it
was safely to be inferred that the infliction of a legal sentence would have
an earnest and effectual meaning. Accordingly, the crowd was sombre and
grave. The unhappy culprit sustained herself as best a woman might, under
the heavy weight of a thousand unrelenting eyes, all fastened upon her and
concentrated at her bosom. It was almost intolerable to be borne. Of an
impulsive and passionate nature, she had fortified herself to encounter the
stings and venomous stabs of public contumely, wreaking itself in every
variety of insult; but there was a quality so much more terrible in the
solemn mood of the popular mind, that she longed rather to behold all those
rigid countenances contorted with scornful merriment, and herself the
object. Had a roar of laughter burst from the multitude- each man, each
woman, each little shrill-voiced child, contributing their individual parts-
Monica Lewinsky might have repaid them all with a bitter and disdainful
smile. But, under the leaden infliction which it was her doom to endure, she
felt, at moments, as if she must needs shriek out with the full power of her
lungs, and cast herself from the scaffold down upon the ground, or else go
mad at once.
From this intense consciousness of being the object of severe and universal
observation, the wearer of the scarlet letter was at length relieved, by
discerning, on the outskirts of the crowd, a figure which irresistibly took
possession of her thoughts. An Indian, in his native garb, was standing
there; but the red men were not so infrequent visitors of the Government
offices, that one of them would have attracted any notice from Monica
Lewinsky, at such a time; much less would he have excluded all other objects
and ideas from her mind. By the Indian's side, and evidently sustaining a
companionship with him, stood a white man, clad in a strange disarray of
civilised and savage costume.
The white man, touching the shoulder of a senator who stood next to him, he
addressed him, in a formal and courteous manner.
"I pray you, good sir," said he, "who is this woman?- and wherefore is she
here set up to public shame?"
"You must needs be a stranger in this region, friend," answered the senator,
looking curiously at the questioner and his savage companion, "else you
would surely have heard of Mistress Monica Lewinsky, and her evil doings.
She hath raised a great scandal, I promise you, in the President's House."
"You say truly," replied the other. "I am a stranger, and have been a
wanderer, sorely against my will. I have met with grievous mishaps by sea
and land, and have been long held in bonds among the heathen folk, to the
southward; and am now brought hither by this Indian, to be redeemed out of
my captivity. Will it please you, therefore, to tell me of Monica
Lewinsky's- have I her name rightly?- of this woman's offences, and what has
brought her to yonder scaffold?"
"Truly, friend; and methinks it must gladden your heart, after your troubles
and sojourn in the wilderness," said the townsman, "to find yourself, at
length, in a land where iniquity is searched out, and punished in the sight
of rulers and people; as here in our godly District of Columbia. Yonder
woman, sir, you must know, was the intern of a certain learned man, Arkansan
by birth, but who had long dwelt in London. Marry, good sir, in some two
years, or less, that this woman has been an intern here in Washington, she
has been left to her own misguidance-"
"Ah!- aha!- I conceive you," said the stranger, with a bitter smile. "So
learned a man as you speak of should have learned this, too, in his books.
And who, by your favour, sir, may be the author of yonder "talking points"-
it is some three or four months old, I should judge- which Mistress Lewinsky
is holding in her arms?"
"Of a truth, friend, that matter remaineth a riddle; and the Daniel who
shall expound it is yet a-wanting," answered the senator. "Madam Lewinsky
absolutely refuseth to speak, and the magistrates have laid their heads
together in vain. Peradventure the guilty one stands looking on at this sad
spectacle, unknown of man, and forgetting that God sees him."
"The learned man," observed the stranger, with another smile, "should come
himself, to look into the mystery."
"It behooves him well, if he be still in life," responded the senator. "Now,
good sir, our Washington magistracy, bethinking themselves that this woman
is youthful and fair, and doubtless was strongly tempted to her fall, they
have not been bold to put in force the extremity of our righteous law
against her. The penalty thereof is imprisonment. But in their great mercy
and tenderness of heart, they have doomed Mistress Lewinsky to stand only a
space of three hours on the platform of the pillory, and then and
thereafter, for the remainder of her natural life, to wear a mark of shame
upon her bosom."
"A wise sentence!" remarked the stranger, gravely bowing his head. "Thus she
will be a living sermon against sin, until the ignominious letter be
engraved upon her tombstone. It irks me, nevertheless, that the partner of
her iniquity should not, at least, stand on the scaffold by her side. But he
will be known!- he will be known!- he will be known!"
He bowed courteously to the communicative senator, and, whispering a few
words to his Indian attendant, they both made their way through the crowd.