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The closest Larson, 53, has come to working lately — and he didn't much like it, or stick to his planned fall 2002 deadline — was to compile every cartoon he ever syndicated into the giant, two-volume hardcover boxed set The Complete Far Side: 1980-1994 (Andrews McMeel; 1,245 pages). He spent three years perfecting it, redoing many of the eyeballs, unhappy with the way they were digitally transferred. Picking up the collection with pride, Larson says, "I just like to feel the weight. It's a 20-pounder, Mom! It can alternate as a murder weapon." He says there's not much profit in it for him, despite the fact that, as he says, at $135, it costs about one car payment. "It's just a very cool thing for a cartoonist to have. It's my death book. I can die now."

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Oxford Engl. Dict. says "For derivation cf. quot. 1669. Others have sought its origin in L. 'corculum' dim. of 'cor' heart. (Latham conjectured 'the most probable explanation lies (1) in the likeness of a heart to a cockleshell; the base of the former being compared to the hinge of the latter; (2) in the zoological name for the cockle being Cardium, from the Greek [word for] heart'."
: This is the "quot. 1669": R. Lower, "Tract. de Corde," . . . Fibrae quidem spirali suo amb tu h licem sive cochleam satis apte referunt.

TO WARM THE COCKLES OF ONE’S HEART – “…it is astonishing that anatomists of the seventeenth century were already likening the human heart to the shape and valves of the mollusk, common on European shores, and the cockle. That is to say, they saw sufficient resemblance between the two valves of the mollusk and the two ventricles of the heart to refer to the latter as the cockles. Thus, because the heart was long supposed to be the seat of the affections, men spoke of delighting, of rejoicing, of pleasing, and, more recently, of warming the cockles of one’s heart.” From “2107 Curious Word Origins, Sayings & Expressions from White Elephants to a Song and Dance” by Charles Earle Funk (Galahad Book, New York, 1993).

On the other hand…
“Cockles of the heart have nothing to do with the cockles and mussels Sweet Molly Malone used to sell…the word comes from the Latin phrase ‘cochleae cordis,’ meaning ‘ventricles of the heart,’ while the shellfish ‘cockle’ comes from the Latin ‘conchylium,’ meaning ‘conch shell.’” From “Morris Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins” by William and Mary Morris (HarperCollins, New York, 1977, 1988).

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