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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.)

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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.

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The immortal flowers,—­a child’s story.

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“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.

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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.

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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.”

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May 18, 1848.—­Decay of the year has already commenced.  I saw a dandelion gone to seed, this afternoon, in the Great Pasture.

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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.

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Captain B——­ tells a story of an immense turtle which he saw at sea, on a voyage to Batavia,—­so long, that the look-out at the mast-head mistook it for a rock.  The ship passed close to it, and it was apparently longer than the long-boat, “with a head bigger than any dog’s head you ever see,” and great prickles on his back a foot long.  Arriving at Batavia, he told the story, and an old pilot exclaimed, “What! have you seen Bellysore Tom?” It seems that the pilots had been acquainted with this turtle as many as twelve years, and always found him in the same latitude.  They never did him any injury, but were accustomed to throw him pieces of meat, which he received in good part, so that there was a mutual friendship between him and the pilots.  Old Mr. L——­, in confirmation of the story, asserted that he had often heard other shipmasters speak of the same, monster; but he being a notorious liar, and Captain B——­ an unconscionable spinner of long yarns and travellers’ tales, the evidence is by no means perfect.  The pilots estimated his length at not less than twenty feet.