THE TIM BUNKER PAPERS. 115 



that fellow has any kind of hankering to see a real country 

 wedding, let him come up and see Kier Frink married next 

 week. Hookertown has got a good deal corrupted by 

 city folks coming in among us, especially since I begun to 

 write for the paper, and I guess half of the people dress 

 about as smart as the common run of folks in the city. 

 But there is a region up around Smithville, where- they do 

 up things just as they did when I was a boy. Kier has 

 been a courting ever since the eighteen-year-old-fever came 

 on him, and they say he had been out a sparking when he 

 let the cattle into my corn field last summer. At any rate, 

 things have come to a crisis, and he has just told John that 

 he was &quot; going to be tied next week,&quot; and given him an 

 invite to the wedding. John will take your man over if 

 he comes. 



Yours to command, 



TIMOTHY BUNKER, ESQ. 



We looked after the matter, and here follows a 



CONDENSED REPORT OF &quot; OUR OWN REPORTER.&quot; 

 &quot;FRINK, FAGINS. At the Whiteoaks, Ct., on Thursday, Nov. 17th, 

 by the Rev. Jacob Spooner, Hezekiah Frink, of Hookertown, to Widow 

 Jerusha Fagins, of the former place.&quot; 



The above announcement in the Hookertown Gazette, 

 of this week, will attest that the joyful event, which called 

 your reporter away from the city, has transpired. The 

 &quot; Whiteoaks,&quot; you must know, is not a distinct township, 

 but a neighborhood name, attached to one of the school 

 districts in Smithtown, whereof Smithville is the com 

 mercial centre the grocery being located there, where the 

 good housewives barter butter and eggs, for sugar, tea, 

 and molasses. The Whiteoaks being remote from the 

 social centre of the town, and without religious privileges, 

 has always been a hard neighborhood, and never seemed 

 to belong to Connecticut. Men of broken down fortune, 

 and men who never had any fortune of any kind, gravitat 

 ed thither as naturally as crows toward a dead carcass. It 



