read this excerpt from chapter 2 of the scarlet letter. meagre, indeed, and cold, was the sympathy that a transgressor might look for, from such bystanders at the scaffold. on the other hand, a penalty which, in our days, would infer a degree of mocking infamy and ridicule, might then be invested with almost as stern a dignity as the punishment of death itself. which best describes the purpose of the words "meagre," "scaffold," "stern," and "punishment of death"?