THE TIM BUNKER PAPERS. 81 



public sentiment upon all secular topics, as well as upon 

 religion. He is a good sample of a Puritan pastor of the 

 present generation. He is regarded as timid by many of 

 his juniors in the ministry, and altogether too cautious in 

 the positions he takes in regard to the novelties of the day. 

 But this reserve is the result of experience and age. He 

 has seen the breakers, and knows more of the perils of a 

 minister s life than his younger brethren. He is undoubt 

 edly conservative, but not from any lack of moral courage. 

 He has sometimes gone before public opinion in his parish, 

 and knows something of the difficulties of bringing over a 

 community to new opinions and customs. He always 

 means to move in the right direction himself, and in his 

 later years has thought it best, on the whole, to work in 

 private for any new measure on which he had set his heart, 

 before he committed himself to it in public. His shadow 

 fills the place pretty well, and he is sometimes a little 

 afraid of it, but nobody ever knew him to hold back from 

 a thing that was really good and praiseworthy. When 

 public sentiment is prepared by his &quot; in-door work,&quot; as he 

 calls it, the measure is pushed with a good deal of vigor. 



A Farmers Club in Hookertown was a fixed fact in this 

 man s mind a year ago, and the delay was only a wise 

 way of making haste slowly. He wanted to say the right 

 thing to Timothy Bunker, Esq., and his wife Sally, in his 

 pastoral visits, and speak of the Club as a thing likely to 

 turn up another season, if the farmers would take hold of 

 it. He also had a few words to say to Seth Twiggs, John 

 Tinker, and Tom Jones, and their neighbors, which would 

 prove as good seed in good soil for his purposes. 



These private talks of the minister, together with the 

 fairs and the agricultural papers, had stirred up a good 

 deal of interest in the community, so that everybody was 

 prepared to see the notice stuck up on the sign post in 

 Hookertown, in front of the meeting-house, that the farm 

 ers and cultivators would hold a Club meeting at the 



