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.
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