THE TIM BUNKER PAPERS. 43 



killer, and old Dr. Townsend s sarsaparilla. It was only 

 the other day, that I saw a lot of my sayings in the Times 

 about bad butter, that were never designed for the public 

 at all. It was a private talk between me and my old 

 friend Jones, and who in the world put them things in 

 that paper, is more than I can tell. It must be confessed, 

 however, that he got the substance of what we said across 

 the table, pretty near correct. I suspect Jones, the sly 

 dog, knows more about it than he would like to tell. 



I took my pen in hand to say a word about a class of 

 farmers we have up here in our neighborhood. You see, 

 in the church they have a kind of members that the min 

 ister calls &quot;the weaker brethren.&quot; They don t seem to 

 have faith enough in them to make their religion of any 

 account. They are always at the tail end of the heap, and 

 like the stragglers in a flock of sheep, under the wall, or 

 stuck fast in the mud. They are a disgrace to the cause. 



Now we have some Hookertown farmers, that make me 

 think of these weaker brethren fore all the world. They 

 don t read the papers, and don t believe in good farming 

 any more than such disciples believe the gospel. You 

 can not get them to take the agricultural journals, and 

 they laugh at all the new tools that have been invented 

 to help farmers in their work. Instead of cleaning up 

 their fields so as to use a mowing machine, they sweat over 

 the scythe at the rate of an acre a day. Instead of hav 

 ing a barn cellar to save manure, it is mostly wasted in 

 the yards and highways. Instead of sheltering cattle, in 

 the cold, snowy weather, they fodder them out at a stack 

 all winter. I do not know but I am wicked, but I wish 

 every one of them could have been out that cold night in 

 January, when the mercury froze. I think they would 

 have learned to pity dumb cattle. I find such farmers are 

 always complaining of hard times, and are never able to 

 pay their debts. They are always running down farming, 

 and talking about emigrating to the West, just as if a 



