asses of hotels and taverns, and the
prominent personages in each. There should be some story connected with
it,--as of a person commencing with boarding at a great hotel, and
gradually, as his means grew less, descending in life, till he got below
ground into a cellar.

* * * * *

A person to be in the possession of something as perfect as mortal man
has a right to demand; he tries to make it better, and ruins it
entirely.

* * * * *

A person to spend all his life and splendid talents in trying to achieve
something naturally impossible,--as to make a conquest over Nature.

* * * * *

Meditations about the main gas-pipe of a great city,--if the supply were
to be stopped, what would happen? How many different scenes it sheds
light on? It might be made emblematical of something.

* * * * *

_December 6th, 1837._--A fairy tale about chasing Echo to her
hiding-place. Echo is the voice of a reflection in a mirror.

* * * * *

A house to be built over a natural spring of inflammable gas, and to be
constantly illuminated therewith. What moral could be drawn from this?
It is carburetted hydrogen gas, and is cooled from a soft shale or
slate, which is sometimes bituminous, and contains more or less
carbonate of lime. It appears in the vicinity of Lockport and Niagara
Falls, and elsewhere in New York. I believe it indicates coal. At
Fredonia, the whole village is lighted by it. Elsewhere, a farm-house
was lighted by it, and no other fuel used in the coldest weather.

* * * * *

Gnomes, or other mischievous little fiends, to be represented as
burrowing in the hollow teeth of some person who has subjected himself
to their power. It should be a child's story. This should be one of many
modes of petty torment. They should be contrasted with beneficent
fairies, who minister to the pleasures of the good.

* * * * *

A man will undergo great toil and hardship for ends that must be many
years distant,--as wealth or fame,--but none for an end that may be
close at hand,--as the joys of heaven.

* * * * *

Insincerity in a man's own heart must make all his enjoyments, all that
concerns him, unreal; so that his whole life must seem like a merely
dramatic representation. And thi