Day: December 5, 2014

1. “A story there passeth of an Indian king that sent unto Alexander a fair woman, fed with aconite and other poisons, with this intent complexionally to destroy him!” –Sir T. Browne.
2. Dialogues of the unborn, like dialogues of the dead,–or between two young children.
3. A mortal symptom for a person being to lose his own aspect and to take the family lineaments, which were hidden deep in the healthful visage. Perhaps a seeker might thus recognize the man he had sought, after long intercourse with him unknowingly.
4. Some moderns to build a fire on Ararat with the remnants of the ark.
5. Two little boats of cork, with a magnet in one and steel in the other.
6. To have ice in one’s blood.
7. To make a story of all strange and impossible things,–as the Salamander, the Phoenix.

From Nathaniel Hawthorne’s American Note-Books.