THE TIM BUNKER PAPERS. 41 



little too much of a good thing. (You see I have learned 

 to say &quot; lawns &quot; since I commenced reading the papers.) 



Now, I don t like to say a word against my neighbors 

 in general, or the Hookertovvn people in particular. But 

 this turning cattle into the street is a piece of bad morals 

 that is a disgrace to any community. It is against the 

 law, and every man has a right to put stray animals in the 

 pound, and make the owners pay damages. But if one 

 enforces the law, it always makes trouble, and the man 

 who finds his cattle impounded, always feels aggrieved, 

 and lays up a grudge against his complaining neighbor. 

 He does not consider that he has himself been an offender 

 first, and violated the law. It is a clear case, that when 

 streets were laid out they ceased to be private property, 

 and were henceforth to be held for the public good, to 

 serve simply the purposes of travel. If a man turns his 

 cattle into the highways to feed, he violates the rights of 

 his neighbor as much as if he turned them into his neigh 

 bor s pasture. He appropriates to his own use what be 

 longs to another. He not only trespasses upon the public 

 domain, but his cattle become a nuisance to the whole 

 neighborhood. They enter every open gate and yard, and 

 frequently become unruly, leap fences, and destroy crops 

 at this season of the year. The loss of temper from these 

 constantly recurring provocations is very great. I think 

 Job himself would have fretted some, to have waked up 

 in the morning and found a dozen cows in his corn-field. 



It is a barbarous practice, and costs the community a 

 hundred-fold more than all the grass in the road is worth. 

 &quot;We have to make a great deal more fence than we should 

 need if everybody confined their cattle to their own pas 

 tures. Now, every man has to fence all his lands by the 

 road, not for his own convenience, but to keep other 

 folks cattle from trespassing upon him. I have been in 

 Communities without fences by the road-side for miles, 

 and rode through the standing corn, rye and oats, without 



