Page:Mosses from an old manse.djvu/12

 VI* INTRODUCTORT NOTE. the custom of Adam and Eve, that we generally furnish forth our feasts with portions of some delicate calf or lamb/' *' It is one of the drawbacks upon our Eden that it contains no water fit either to drink or to bathe in;" and so on. It was, in fact, a similitude which both the romancer and his bride in this first and so idyllic home of theirs delighted to keep up — this con- ception that they were a sort of new Adam and Eve in an unpretentious Paradise. " Buds and Bird- Voices " also shows the traces of his new surroundings^ which he has so fully and exquisitely described in his intro- ductory chapter that nothing remains to be added. Other pieces had been printed in the magazines be- fore he went to the Manse at all. Those which he wrote there — " The Celestial Railroad," " Bappaccini's Daughter," and various others — came out in the '< Democratic Be view," then the most important lit- erary magazine in the country. They represent nearly all that he put forward in the line of original composi- tion from 1842 to 1846; but during that period he edited the ** Journal of an African Cruiser" by his friend Horatio Bridge, of the United States Navy, and some " Papers of an Old Dartmoor Prisoner," neither of which has since been republished. Finally, just at the close of his residence at the Manse, the " Mosses " were issued in two volumes, at New York. G. P. L.