THE TIM BUNKER PAPERS. 29 



Hookertown in fish time. You see the Deacon will not 

 be caught in such a scrape agin. 



Now I don t suppose there is any objection to having a 

 track upon the fair grounds, and to driving horses around 

 on a pretty good jog, but I can t see how it is going to 

 make us breed any better horses to have a regular racing 

 match, and to have all the gamblers and fancy men in the 

 country drawn together to see the sport. It strikes me 

 that gamblers would be made much faster than good 

 horses by such brutal exhibitions. 



Just to show you how the thing works, I will tell you 

 about my John. You see the boy has been at work hard 

 all summer, and I thought I would let him go down to 

 Boston with the Deacon, to see the fine horses. When 

 the boy came home, I found he had been making a bet on 

 Ethan Allen, and was cracking about the horse as raging 

 as an old gamester. You see the boy was young, and his 

 father was not with him. It won t be safe for a man to 

 take his family to the fairs, if they are going to be turned 

 into race-courses. Good people will be dead set agin them, 

 and the first thing we shall know, all the pulpits in Con 

 necticut will be blowing away at the fairs for horse-racing 

 and gambling. Now, you see, I don t belong to the meet 

 ing myself, and am not so good as I ought to be, but I can 

 see the bearing of horse-racing on the morals of the com 

 munity. When a man s boy gets to betting at a fair, you 

 see, it brings the matter straight home, and there is no 

 blinding a man s eyes to the facts in the case. If the min 

 isters come out agin this kind of agricultural exhibitions, 

 they will have the right on their side and will be certain 

 to carry the day. It is no kind of use to approve a thing 

 that is not right. So you see I was mighty glad to see 

 that picture in your paper showing up the folly of horse- 

 racing at the fairs. Mrs. Bunker put on her spectacles, and 

 looked at it, and wanted to know of John if that looked 

 anything like the Boston show. John rather blushed, and 



