In the Notebooks, particularly for 1835-1845, there is abundant record of how Hawthorne's fancy was continually at play with the material within his reach. He made definite entries as to past events and vital associations of old buildings. He made detailed studies of odd characters seen in his occasional little journeys into the world. He even saved proper names, phrases, similes, epigrams which some day might be of use: "Miss Asphyxia Davis," "A lament for life's wasted sunshine," "A scold and a blockhead,--brimstone and wood,--a good match," "Men of cold passions have quick eyes." But far more significant than these explicit items are the many which are suggestive of whole sketches or stories later to be written. Among these the following may easily be identified: "To make one's own reflection in a mirror the subject of a story"; "A snake taken into a man's stomach and nourished there from fifteen years to thirty-five, tormenting him most horribly. A type of envy or some other evil passion." "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." "Some very famous jewel or other thing, much talked of all over the world. Some person to meet with it, and get possession of it in some unexpected manner, amid homely circumstances." "The influence of a peculiar mind, in close communion with another, to drive the latter to insanity." "Pandora's Box for a child's story." "A person to be the death of his beloved in trying to raise her to more than mortal perfection; yet this should be a comfort to him for having aimed so highly and holily." "To make a story out of a scarecrow, giving it odd attributes...." "A phantom of the old royal governors, or some such shadowy pageant, on the night of the evacuation of Boston by the British." What Hawthorne attempted was essentially what Wordsworth did: to lift the material of everyday life out of the realm of the commonplace.