An old French Governor of Acadie, the predecessor of D'Aulnay, paid for some merchandise, which he bought of the captain of an English vessel, with six or seven hundred buttons of massive gold, taken from one of his suits. (Mass. Hist. Coll.) * * * * * An apparition haunts the front yard. I have often, while sitting in the parlor, in the daytime, had a perception that somebody was passing the windows; but, looking towards them, nobody is there. The appearance is never observable when looking directly towards the window, but only by such a sidelong or indirect glance as one gets while reading, or when intent on something else. But I know not how many times I have raised my head or turned with the certainty that somebody were passing. The other day I found that my wife was equally aware of the spectacle, and that, as likewise agrees with my own observation, it always appears to be entering the yard from the street, never going out. * * * * * The immortal flowers,--a child's story. * * * * * "He looked as if he had been standing up thirty years against a northeast storm." Description of an old mate of a vessel, by Pike. * * * * * Death possesses a good deal of real estate, namely, the graveyards in every town. Of late years, too, he has pleasure-grounds, as at Mount Auburn and elsewhere. * * * * * Corwin is going to Lynn; Oliver proposes to walk thither with him. "No," says Corwin, "I don't want you. You take great, long steps; or, if you take short ones, 'tis all hypocrisy. And, besides, you keep humming all the time." * * * * * _May 18, 1848._--Decay of the year has already commenced. I saw a dandelion gone to seed, this afternoon, in the Great Pasture. * * * * * Words, so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become, in the hands of one who knows how to combine them. * * * * *