The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Twice Told Tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne: figure, whenever she paused before it, looked indistinct and
ghost-like. But it was the general belief that Esther could cause
the Governors of the overthrown dynasty, with the beautiful
ladies who had once adorned their festivals, the Indian chiefs
who had come up to the Province House to hold council or swear
allegiance, the grim Provincial warriors, the severe
clergymen--in short, all the pageantry of gone days--all the
figures that ever swept across the broad plate of glass in former
times--she could cause the whole to reappear, and people the
inner world of the mirror with shadows of old life. Such legends
as these, together with the singularity of her isolated
 Twice Told Tales |