American architecture should be a refinement of the log-house.

Editor's note: these passages were written between 1 September and 25 October 1836.

The elm-trees have golden branches intermingled with their green already, and so they had on the first of the month.

To picture the predicament of worldly people, if admitted to paradise.

As the architecture of a country always follows the earliest structures, American architecture should be a refinement of the log-house. The Egyptian is so of the cavern and mound; the Chinese of the tent; the Gothic, of overarching trees; the Greek, of a cabin.

Though we speak nonsense, God will pick out the meaning of it, an extempore prayer by a New England divine.