Page:Mosses from an old manse.djvu/11

 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. ,V 'form. The members of his family and some of his friends, knowing of his scheme, suggested articles for his collection which he admitted or rejected, as he chose. One of these, which he included, is said to have been proposed by Miss Sophia Peabody, after- wards his wife. It was the item, " Some Egyptian darkness in a blacking jug." From another person came the following, which he did not use : " The spur of the moment, from the heel of time." " A- few of the * words that burn,' in an old match-safe (very rare)," made still another article, concerning which the recollection is that he invented it; but it was not pre- served in print. Of course, the sketch as it stands is his own conception; but, as it was unlike his other pro- ductions, he talked it over with his friends, — some- thing which he scai'cely ever permitted himself to do with regard to his fictions, — and in one instance, as we have seen, adopted a clever hint. The Note-Books •contain a detached memorandum, just before the date August 5, 1842 : " In my museum, all the ducal rings that have been thrown into the Adriatic." But this was not acted upon. In the same paper the hairy ears -of Midas are described as being on exhibition; an early forerunner of the interest which he concentrated upon the mysterious ears of Douatello, in "The Marble Faun." out of his humorous musings on the life he was leading at the Manse. They were recorded in his Note-Books, August 5, 1842. "There have been three or four callers, who preposterously think that the courtesies of ihe lower world are to be responded to by people whose Jiome is in Paradise ... we have so far improved upon
 * ' The New Adam and Eve *' doubtless grew directly