THE TIM BUNKER PAPEES. loT 



ing the horse-pond, and Uncle Jotham made dry land 

 where the muskrats built their nests. But Fred Olm- 

 stead has got things turned tother end foremost, and gone 

 and filled up a valley of well-nigh twenty acres with wa 

 ter, and made all the shores of the pond as crooked as a 

 ram s horn. I should n t think there was a rod of it any 

 where in a straight line. Then, in the country, we plow 

 up huckleberry brush, sweet fern, alders, hardback, and 

 all such stuff, glad enough to get rid of them. But down 

 there, we saw lots of huckleberries, blackberries, brakes, 

 and things of that kind, put round into the shy places, as 

 if they were something very nice. 



In one spot, I remember, we came upon a sluggish little 

 pond hole, with rushes, lily pads, pickerel weed, and other 

 water plants, and on the banks a rank patch of skunk cab 

 bage. At the sight of this last plant, Mrs. Bunker put on 

 her spectacles to see if she wa n t mistaken, and then burst 

 into such a fit of laughter, that, one spell, I thought I 

 should have to call a policeman to stop her. The idea of 

 cultivating that savory article in a flower garden seemed 

 to upset all her notions of propriety. 



Up here, in the country, we take a great deal of pains 

 to bury the rocks, and get them out of sight. In the 

 Park, we saw a good many places where the dirt had 

 been removed to bring the rocks into view, and in one 

 place they had dug a great ditch, clear from the pond away 

 under a great boulder, as big as a small meeting-house. 

 They were fixing it up for a grotto, I believe they called 

 it, and they said it would cost* five thousand dollars. It 

 looked pretty much like Dick Sanders saw-mill flume, or 

 Mrs. Bunker said she thought it would, when the moss got 

 grown upon the rocks around. I thought it was a smash 

 ing price for a big rock. In another place they had tum 

 bled a great lot of smaller rocks into a swale, and turned 

 on a spout of Croton water to make it look like a brook. 

 Now it run down under the stones out of sight, and 



