The two versions of “The Hall of Fantasy” reveal that the intellectual exchange between Hawthorne and Thoreau at the beginning of the Old Manse period was far more extensive and formative than has hitherto been supposed. The narrator's companion-guide is a strikingly full, thinly disguised fictional portrait of Thoreau as he appeared to Hawthorne in August and September 1842, when their friendship first developed. This portrait provides a new set of insights into their relationship and a more accurate notion of their attitudes toward Emerson, Alcott, and the whole intellectual ferment around Concord. The narrator and his guide assume the precise moral stances of Hawthorne and Thoreau concerning Transcendentalism, technical progress, reform movements, vegetarianism, “Adamism,” and other prominent philosophical and social issues. These discussions largely determined the subjects each would write about for the next year, especially in Hawthorne's “The Old Manse,” “The New Adam and Eve,” and “Earth's Holocaust,” and in Thoreau's two contributions to The Democratic Review. “The Landlord” and “Paradise (to be) Regained.” Their influence can still be seen in the major works of the late 1840's and early 1850's: “The Custom House,” The Bouse of the Seven Gables, The Blithedale Romance, and the different versions of Walden.