Question

Note to players: Description acceptable. In this essay, a “gray shade” is imagined lamenting the narrator's dissoluteness with lines like “the degenerate fellow might as well have been a fiddler!” Its narrator asserts that the words “I'll try, Sir!” would be “the best and fittest of all mottoes” for General Miller, after earlier praising the ability to “recollect good dinners” exhibited by a man who otherwise had “no soul, no heart, no mind, nothing [...] but instincts.” This essay describes how moonlight helps turn a room into a “neutral territory” where the (*) “Actual and the Imaginary may meet.” This essay's narrator finds a package of manuscripts by Jonathan (10[1]-5[1])Pue (10[1])that also (10[1])contains a cloth that burns his breast. The narrator describes working in the port of Salem in, for 10 points, what essay that leads into Nathaniel Hawthorne's novel about Hester Prynne? ■END■

ANSWER: “The Custom-House” [accept answers that describe an introductory essay/sketch or introduction or preface or prologue to The Scarlet Letter; reject answers that suggest “first chapter” or similar]
<RC>
= Average correct buzz position

Back to tossups

Buzzes

PlayerTeamOpponentBuzz PositionValue
Eve FleisigBerkeley A[Insert Lawyer Joke Here]10710
Stephen Liu[Insert Lawyer Joke Here]Berkeley A107-5
Tim MorrisonStanford AIt's Joever10810
Anuttam RamjiBerkeley BStanford B11010

Summary

2023 BHSU @ Northwestern02/25/2023Y683%17%33%115.00
2023 BHSU @ Maryland03/11/2023Y3100%0%33%121.67
2023 BHSU @ Berkeley03/18/2023Y3100%0%33%108.33
2023 BHSU @ Yale04/08/2023Y3100%33%0%101.33
2023 BHSU Online04/15/2023Y4100%25%0%117.50
2023 BHSU @ Sheffield04/15/2023Y2100%0%0%137.00
2023 BHSU @ Waterloo04/15/2023Y3100%0%33%130.33