THE TIM BUNKER PAPERS. 91 



of creation. That is rather a strong statement, but as I 

 never dispute a woman s word, I shall have to let it go. 



Now I can t tell you anything about what I see down 

 South, cause, you see, folks that have not been there would 

 not believe me, it is so unlike any thing at home. But I 

 jest want to say, that if anybody or his wife gets rest 

 less and uneasy, that is the country to go to, to get cured 

 up. It is better than Perry Davis s Pain Killer, or the 

 Springs ; I haven t seen so contented a woman in ten years 

 as Mrs. Bunker, since she got home. She says she never 

 will say another word about company as long as she lives ; 

 and as to her neighbors, they are the handsomest people 

 in the country. 



I guess she is about right. It does New England peo 

 ple good to go away from home once in a while, jest to 

 see how the rest of the world live. They generally come 

 home wiser and better. Every thing has gone on well in 

 Hookertown, since I have been gone just as well, for 

 aught I can see, as if I had been at home. There are 

 some people who think the world will come to an end 

 when they die. Let them step out of the traces a few 

 months, and then come back and see how smoothly the 

 world spins on without them, and they will be cured of 

 that folly. 



There is only one thing that shocks me on coming home, 

 and that is the blue window shutters of my neighbor 

 Seth Twiggs. What upon earth possessed the man to 

 have em painted that color, I don t see. Shutters, indigo 

 blue, in this nineteenth century, and in Hookertown, too ! 

 It is an atrocity. Just as if there was not blue enough in 

 the heavens without a man s putting patches of it on to 

 his house ! I asked Seth about this, the first thing when I 

 got home. Says he, &quot; Tim Bunker, you don t know every 

 thing, tho I admit you are a knowing man. You see I 

 smoke a good deal, and blue is the handsomest color in the 

 universe. It is blue inside very often, and I thought I 



