THE TIM BUNKER PAPERS. 63 



exhibition. I hope you editors, who know how to write, 

 will stir up your readers on this subject. 



Yours to command, 



TIMOTHY BUNKER, ESQ. 

 Hookertown, Jan. 16, 1858. 



No. 22. TIM BUNKER ON A NEW ENTERPRISE. 



MR. EDITOR : I never was more astonished in my life, 

 than this morning, when on my way to mill down the 

 Shadtown road. I have been thinking a good deal about 

 miracles lately, and I declare they aren t a bit more strange 

 than some things I have lived to see. Jake Frink with a 

 watering trough in his barn-yard is a poser, and if you 

 only knew the man as well as I do you would say so. 

 But that aint a circumstance to what I am going to tell 

 you now. You see, I hadn t got more than a mile down 

 the Shadtown road, when I saw a lot of men looking over 

 the wall. At first I thought there must be a fight, and 

 that there would be occasion for me to exercise my office 

 as Justice of the Peace. It would be almost a miracle if 

 there should be such a thing in Hookertown, for we are 

 an uncommonly peaceable community. 



As I drove up, I saw Uncle Jotham Sparrowgrass, with 

 a team and three hands, busy digging a ditch, and about 

 a dozen Hookertown people looking on. There was 

 Deacon Smith and Seth Twiggs, Jake Frink, Tucker, 

 Dawson, Tinker, and Jones, and among the rest, the min 

 ister, Mr. Spooner. It seems Uncle Jotham had begun 

 the job the day before, and the thing had made such a 

 sensation, that a pretty strong delegation was out to see 

 Jotham Sparrowgrass to work on an improvement. 



There never was a prettier chance in the world to do a 



