38 THE TIM BUNKER PAPERS. 



my wife good-natured for a week. As her butter is tip 

 top, and I bring home the news once a week, she passes 

 for a very amiable woman the year round. Now I sup 

 pose an editor may have some human nature about him, 

 and may like to know how his wares suit the market, and 

 what sort of influence they have upon the world. 



There has been a great change up here in Hookertown, 

 and all through Connecticut, during the last four or five 

 years. Since then we have got our State society a going, 

 and new county societies have been started, and I guess 

 I speak within bounds when I say that ten times as many 

 agricultural papers are taken as there were five years ago. 

 These things have had a mighty influence upon farming, 

 and I should think in our town the garden crops had been 

 doubled, and full twenty per cent, has been added to the 

 crops in the field. Some folks have got to taking the 

 papers, and reading them, that I should as soon have ex 

 pected to see reading Latin. Seth Twiggs was in at our 

 house last evening, and he was telling how he come to 

 take the Agriculturist. I give you the story as he told it 

 to me. 



&quot; I tell you what it is, Squire Bunker, that lot o garden 

 sass I see d you putting into the cellar last fall did the 

 work for me. You see, I d always thought that this book- 

 farming was the worst kind of humbug, leading folks to 

 spend a heap of money, and to get nothing back agin. 

 I d heard the Parson and Deacon Smith, and the young 

 Spouter from Shadtown, (there was a twinkle in Seth s 

 eye here, and a very grave look at Sally,) talking about 

 guano, and what tremendous crops it would fetch, and 

 then agin about phosphates and superphosphates, which 

 was all as dark as fate to me. You see I thought them big 

 words was all nonsense, and the stuff itself no better than 

 so much moonshine on the land. The Deacon s crops, you 

 know, have been amazing for some years, and then the 

 strawberries last spring, and that lot of sass, convinced 



