THE TIM BUNKER PAPERS. 119 



Frink, you will remember, beat me on carrots at the fair, 

 in a way that was not fair. I have always felt bound to 

 keep up a decent kind of resentment ever since, and to beat 

 him in as many honorable ways as possible. 



Well now, there was that old bridge, the work of Jake 

 Frink, and looking just like him in a good many respects. 

 It answered its purpose well enough, but it cost just about 

 four times as much as it need to. A four-inch pipe would 

 carry all the water that ever run in the ditch, even in time 

 of a spring thaw. But Jake had built a stone culvert two 

 feet square, and covered it with heavy stone slabs, as if a 

 large brook was always running through. It must have 

 cost him twelve or fifteen dollars, reckoning labor at any 

 thing like a fair price. 



And here is a point I think of a good deal of importance 

 to farmers. There are not more than half of them that 

 do a thing in the best and cheapest way. They don t 

 save a sixpence where they might just as well as not. 

 What is the use of walling off land into two-acre lots, 

 when ten and twenty-acre lots are a good deal more con 

 venient ? Why, some men up here in Connecticut have 

 kept themselves cramped for money all their days, by 

 building stone-fences where they wefe not wanted. What 

 is the use of burning out twenty cords of wood to keep 

 warm, when you can do it a great deal better with half 

 the quantity ? Good stoves in a house save fifty dollars 

 a year mighty easy. What is the use of taking four acres 

 to grow a hundred bushels of corn, when you can grow it 

 cheaper upon one ? What is the use of paying fifteen dol 

 lars for a bridge across a ditch, when you can have one 

 just as good and durable for three ? 



It was curious to hear my neighbors speculate, when I 

 got the things together to make the bridge. 



&quot; Going to set up a crockery-shop, Esq. Bunker ?&quot; said 

 Uncle Jotham, as he struck the tiles with his staff. 



