36 THE TIM BUNKER PAPERS. 



rule, though they are made to apologize for pretty much 

 all sorts of shortcomings. I am now going to bring out 

 this old proverb, &quot;Penny wise, and pound foolish,&quot; and 

 putting it at one end of the plank, I mean to give some of 

 the Hookertown people an airing on the other. 



I wish some of our folks up here could look at them 

 selves and their farming in a looking-glass, and just see 

 what sort of work they are making. You see, every man 

 thinks every man penny wise but himself. The looking- 

 glass would often bring em right. 



Uncle Jotham Sparrowgrass I s pose never spent the 

 value of fifty cents in his life for seeds of any kind before 

 he went in for that China . potato last year. He could not 

 see, for the life of him, but what one kind of seed was about 

 as good as another. The onion seed, and carrot and par 

 snip seed, that Mrs. Sparrowgrass always saved and stored 

 away in an old basket in the pantry, always came up and 

 bore something, though the onions might have been mis 

 taken for leeks, they were so little, and the other roots 

 were hardly big enough to make a spile for the cider barrel. 

 Everything else in his garden was just so. The parsnips, 

 cabbage, and beets, were all crossed, and run out as they 

 call it, and there was hardly a decent vegetable in his 

 garden for want of good seed. He could not afford to 

 buy it when he had it in the house used to talk about 

 hurting his wife s feelings if he should not use the seed 

 she had saved. That would have been less of a joke, you 

 see, if he had always been careful of her feelings on other 

 occasions. Well, you see, when he read those advertise 

 ments in that yellow-covered literature last spring, he 

 altered his mind some about potato seed, and thought he 

 would put in for a dozen at ten dollars. He was going to 

 be a pound wise man, and show his neighbors some pota 

 toes that were potatoes. Didn t he catch it, though ! The 

 Sparrowgrass family have hardly had potatoes on the table 

 since. It is said they set bad on Uncle Jotham s stomach. 



