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A Virtuoso's Collection (From "Mosses from an Old Manse")

Chapter 1: A Virtuoso’s Collection
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About This Book

A visitor explores an eccentric private museum where an officious attendant leads a whimsical tour of stuffed animals, legendary beasts, and literary relics. The cabinet mixes natural history specimens with mythic and literary references—wolves from fairy tales, ancient heroes' steeds, classical birds, and objects like a wishing-cap and Aladdin's lamp—blurring fact and fiction. The catalogue-like narration satirizes the collector's taste by cataloguing improbable provenance and playful misidentifications, prompting reflections on how imagination, authority, and scholarly display shape meaning. Through vivid descriptive detail and ironic observation, the piece examines the human appetite for curiosities and the thin line between preservation and invention.

The Project Gutenberg eBook of A Virtuoso's Collection (From "Mosses from an Old Manse")

This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.

Title: A Virtuoso's Collection (From "Mosses from an Old Manse")

Author: Nathaniel Hawthorne

Release date: November 1, 2005 [eBook #9235]
Most recently updated: November 9, 2022

Language: English

Credits: David Widger and Al Haines

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A VIRTUOSO'S COLLECTION (FROM "MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE") ***

A Virtuoso’s Collection

by Nathaniel Hawthorne