The Custom-House and Hawthorne's Ancestral Guilt

From The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
The introductory sketch caused scandal in Salem and contains Hawthorne's famous reckoning with his Puritan forebears, including the witch-trial judge Hathorne.
The Custom-House

Hawthorne takes shame upon himself for his ancestors' persecutions and discovers the faded scarlet cloth — claiming the manuscript origin of the tale.

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