Pandora's box for a child's story.

October 24th. [1838]

View from a chamber of the Tremont of the brick edifice opposite, on the other side of Beacon Street. At one of the lower windows, a woman at work; at one above, a lady hemming a ruff or some such lady-like thing. She is pretty, young, and married ; for a little boy comes to her knees, and, she parts his hair, and caresses him in a motherly way. A note on coloured paper is brought her; and she reads it, and puts it in her bosom. At another window, at some depth within the apartment, a gentle man in a dressing-gown, reading, and rocking in an easy-chair, &c. &c. &c. A rainy day, and people passing with umbrellas disconsolately between the spectator and these various scenes of indoor occupation and comfort. With this sketch might be mingled and worked up some story that was going on within the chamber where the spectator was situated.

All the dead that had ever been drowned in a certain lake to arise.

The history of a small lake from the first, till it was drained.

An autumnal feature, boys had swept together the fallen leaves from the elms along the street in one huge pile, and had made a hollow, nest-shaped, in this pile, in which three or four of them lay curled, like young birds.

A tombstone-maker, whom Miss B---- knew, used to cut cherubs on the top of the tombstones, and had the art of carving the cherubs faces in the likeness of the deceased.

A child of Rev. E. P---- was threatened with total blindness. A week after the father had been informed of this, the child died; and, in the meanwhile, his feelings had become so much the more interested in the child, from its threatened blindness, that it was infinitely harder to give it up. Had he not been aware of it till after the child s death, it would probably have been a consolation.

Singular character of a gentleman (H. H---- , Esq.) living in retirement in Boston, esteemed a man of nicest honour, and his seclusion attributed to wounded feelings on account of the failure of his firm in business. Yet it was discovered that this man had been the mover of intrigues by which men in business had been ruined, and their property absorbed, none knew how or by whom ; love-affairs had been broken off, and much other mischief done; and for years he was not
in the least suspected. He died suddenly, soon after suspicion fell upon him. Probably it was the love of management, of having an influence on affairs, that produced these phenomena.

Character of a man who., in himself and his external circumstances, shall be equally and totally false: his fortune resting on baseless credit, his patriotism assumed, his domestic affections, his honour and honesty, all a sham. His own misery in the midst of it, it making the whole universe, heaven and earth alike, an unsubstantial mockery to him.

Dr. Johnson s penance in Uttoxeter Market. A man who does penance in what might appear to lookers-on the most glorious and triumphal circumstance of his life. Each circumstance of the career of an apparently successful man to be a penance and torture to him on account of some fundamental error in early life.

A person to catch fireflies, and try to kindle his household fire with them. It would be symbolical of something.

Thanksgiving at the Worcester Lunatic Asylum. A ball and dance of the inmates in the evening, a furious lunatic dancing with the principal s wife. Thanksgiving in an almshouse might make a better sketch.

The house on the eastern corner of North and Essex Streets [Salem], supposed to have been built about 1640, had, say sixty years later, a brick turret erected, wherein one of the ancestors of the present occupants used to practise alchemy. He was the operative of a scientific person in Boston, the director. There have been other alchemists of old in this town, one who kept his fire burning seven weeks, and then lost the elixir by letting it go out.

An ancient wine-glass (Miss Ingersol's), longstalked, with a small, cup-like bowl, round which is wreathed a branch of grape-vine, with a rich cluster of grapes, and leaves spread out. There is also some kind of a bird flying. The whole is excellently cut or engraved.

In the Duke of Buckingham's comedy "The Chances," Don Frederic says of Don John (they are two noble Spanish gentlemen), "One bed contains us".

A person, while awake and in the business of life, to think highly of another, and place perfect confidence in him, but to be troubled with dreams in which this seeming friend appears to act the part of a most deadly enemy. Finally it is discovered that the dream character is the true one. The explanation would be the soul's instinctive perception.

Pandora's box for a child's story.

Moonlight is sculpture: sunlight is painting.

"A person to look back on a long life ill-spent, and to picture forth a beautiful life which he would live if he could be permitted to begin his life over again. Finally, to discover that he had only been dreaming of old age, that he was really young, and could live such a life as he had pictured."

A newspaper, purporting to be published in a family, and satirizing the political and general world by advertisements, remarks on domestic affairs, advertisement of a lady s lost thimble, &c.

L. H . She was unwilling to die, because she had no friends to meet her in the other world. Her little son F. being very ill, on his recovery she confessed a feeling of disappointment, having supposed that he would have gone before, and welcomed her into heaven!

H. C. L heard from a French Canadian a story of a young couple in Acadie. On their marriage day, all the men of the Province were summoned to assemble in the church to hear a proclamation. When assembled, they were all seized and shipped off to be distributed through New England, among them the new bridegroom. His bride set off in search of him, wandered about New England all her lifetime, and at last, when she was old, she found her bridegroom on his death-bed. The shock was so great that it killed her likewise.