Both Uses of
mortality
in
The Scarlet Letter
- He now dug into the poor clergyman's heart, like a miner searching for gold; or, rather, like a sexton delving into a grave, possibly in quest of a jewel that had been buried on the dead man's bosom, but likely to find nothing save mortality and corruption.†
Chpt 10 *
- There were others again, true saintly fathers, whose faculties had been elaborated by weary toil among their books, and by patient thought, and etherealised, moreover, by spiritual communications with the better world, into which their purity of life had almost introduced these holy personages, with their garments of mortality still clinging to them.†
Chpt 11
Definition:
-
(mortality) the quality of being mortal (subject to death)
or:
death rate -- often given per 1,000 people per year