up from these dry bones an image of the old town’s brighter aspect, when India was a new region, and only Salem knew the way thither—­I chanced to lay my hand on a small package, carefully done up in a piece of ancient yellow parchment.  This envelope had the air of an official record of some period long past, when clerks engrossed their stiff and formal chirography on more substantial materials than at present.  There was something about it that quickened an instinctive curiosity, and made me undo the faded red tape that tied up the package, with the sense that a treasure would here be brought to light.  Unbending the rigid folds of the parchment cover, I found it to be a commission, under the hand and seal of Governor Shirley, in favour of one Jonathan Pue, as Surveyor of His Majesty’s Customs for the Port of Salem, in the Province of Massachusetts Bay.  I remembered to have read (probably in Felt’s “Annals”) a notice of the decease of Mr. Surveyor Pue, about fourscore years ago; and likewise, in a newspaper of recent times, an account of the digging up of his remains in the little graveyard of St. Peter’s Church, during the renewal of that edifice.  Nothing, if I rightly call to mind, was left of my respected predecessor, save an imperfect skeleton, and some fragments of apparel, and a wig of majestic frizzle, which, unlike the head that it once adorned, was in very satisfactory preservation.  But, on examining the papers which the parchment commission served to envelop, I found more traces of Mr. Pue’s mental part, and the internal operations of his head, than the frizzled wig had contained of the venerable skull itself.

They were documents, in short, not official, but of a private nature, or, at least, written in his private capacity, and apparently with his own hand.  I could account for their being included in the heap of Custom-House lumber only by the fact that Mr. Pue’s death had happened suddenly, and that these papers, which he probably kept in his official desk, had never come to the knowledge of his heirs, or were supposed to relate to the business of the revenue.  On the transfer of the archives to Halifax, this package, proving to be of no public concern, was left behind, and had remained ever since unopened.

The ancient Surveyor—­being little molested, I suppose, at that early day with business pertaining to his office—­seems to have devoted some of his many leisure hours to researches as a local antiquarian, and other inquisitions of a similar nature.  These supplied material for petty activity to a mind that would otherwise have been eaten up with rust.