His own misery in the midst of it,--it making the whole
universe, heaven and earth alike, all unsubstantial mockery to him.
Dr. Johnson's penance in Uttoxeter Market. A man who does penance in
what might appear to lookers-on the most glorious and triumphal
circumstance of his life. Each circumstance of the career of an
apparently successful man to be a penance and torture to him on account
of some fundamental error in early life.
A person to catch fire-flies, and try to kindle his household fire with
them. It would be symbolical of something.
Thanksgiving at the Worcester Lunatic Asylum. A ball and dance of the
inmates in the evening,--a furious lunatic dancing with the principal's
wife. Thanksgiving in an almshouse might make a better sketch.
The house on the eastern corner of North and Essex Streets [Salem],
supposed to have been built about 1640, had, say sixty years later, a
brick turret erected, wherein one of the ancestors of the present
occupants used to practise alchemy. He was the operative of a scientific
person in Boston, the director.
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