ght scar upon his forehead, which at such
moments assumed a deep blood-red hue. Thus, in playing at brag, for
instance, his antagonist could judge from this index when he had a bad
hand. At last, discovering what it was that betrayed him, he covered the
scar with a green silk shade.

* * * * *

A dream the other night, that the world had become dissatisfied with the
inaccurate manner in which facts are reported, and had employed me, with
a salary of a thousand dollars, to relate things of public importance
exactly as they happen.

* * * * *

A person who has all the qualities of a friend, except that he
invariably fails you at the pinch.

* * * * *

_Concord, July 27, 1844._--To sit down in a solitary place or a busy and
bustling one, if you please, and await such little events as may happen,
or observe such noticeable points as the eyes fall upon around you. For
instance, I sat down to-day, at about ten o'clock in the forenoon, in
Sleepy Hollow, a shallow space scooped out among the woods, which
surround it on all sides, it being pretty nearly circular or oval, and
perhaps four or five hundred yards in diameter. At the present season, a
thriving field of Indian corn, now in its most perfect growth and
tasselled out, occupies nearly half of the hollow; and it is like the
lap of bounteous Nature, filled with breadstuff. On one verge of this
hollow, skirting it, is a terraced pathway, broad enough for a
wheel-track, overshadowed with oaks, stretching their long, knotted,
rude, rough arms between earth and sky; the gray skeletons, as you look
upward, are strikingly prominent amid the green foliage. Likewise, there
are chestnuts, growing up in a more regular and pyramidal shape; white
pines, also; and a shrubbery composed of the shoots of all these trees,
overspreading and softening the bank on which the parent stems are
growing, these latter being intermingled with coarse grass. Observe the
pathway; it is strewn over with little bits of dry twigs and decayed
branches, and the sear and brown oak-leaves of last year, that have been
moistened by snow and rain, and whirled about by harsh and gentle winds,
since their verdure has departed. The needle-like leaves of the pine
that are never noticed in falling--that fall, yet never leave the tree
bare--are likewise on the path; and with these are pebbles, the remains
of what was onc