A bonfire to be made of the gallows and of all symbols of evil.

(These passages were written in Hawthorne's American Note-Books in 1840, but no specific date is given.)

1840.

A man, unknown, conscious of temptation to secret crimes, puts up a note in church, desiring the prayers of the congregation for one so tempted.

Some most secret thing, valued and honoured between lovers, to be hung up in public places, and made the subject of remark by the city, remarks, sneers, and laughter.

To make a story out of a scarecrow, giving it odd attributes. From different points of view, it should appear to change, now an old man, now an old woman, a gunner, a farmer, or the Old Nick.

A ground-sparrow's nest in the slope of a bank, brought to view by mowing the grass, but still sheltered and comfortably hidden by a blackberryvine trailing over it. At first, four brown-speckled eggs, then two little bare young ones, which, on the slightest noise, lift their heads, and open wide mouths for food, immediately dropping their heads, after a broad gape. The action looks as if they were making a most earnest, agonized petition. In another egg, as in a coffin, I could discern the quiet, death-like form of the little bird. The whole thing had something awful and mysterious in it.

A coroner's inquest on a murdered man, the gathering of the jury to be described, and the characters of the members, some with secret guilt upon their souls.

To represent a man as spending life and the intensest labour in the accomplishment of some mechanical trifle, as in making a miniature coach to be drawn by fleas, or a dinner-service to be put into a cherry-stone.

A bonfire to be made of the gallows and of all symbols of evil.