- On being transported to strange scenes, we feel as if all were unreal. This is but the perception of the true unreality of earthly things, made evident by the want of congruity between ourselves and them. By and by we become mutually adapted, and the perception is lost.
- An old looking-glass. Somebody finds out the secret of making all the images that have been reflected in it pass back again across its surface.
- Our Indian races having reared no monuments, like the Greeks, Romans, and Egyptians, when they have disappeared from the earth their history will appear a fable, and they misty phantoms.
- A woman to sympathize with all emotions, but to have none of her own.
- A portrait of a person in New England to be recognized as of the same person represented by a portrait in Old England. Having distinguished himself there, he had suddenly vanished, and had never been heard of till he was thus discovered to be identical with a distinguished man in New England.
- Men of cold passions have quick eyes.
- A virtuous but giddy girl to attempt to play a trick on a man. He sees what she is about, and contrives matters so that she throws herself completely into his power, and is ruined,–all in jest.
- A letter, written a century or more ago, but which has never yet been unsealed.
- A partially insane man to believe himself the Provincial Governor or other great official of Massachusetts. The scene might be the Province House.
- A dreadful secret to be communicated to several people of various characters,–grave or gay, and they all to become insane, according to their characters, by the influence of the secret.
From Nathaniel Hawthorne’s American Note-Books.
Biblioklept 