THE TIM BUNKER PAPERS. 161 



patch of onions, and if he can not get a dozen of the bulbs 

 to set out, he wants just a pinch of the seed to plant. 

 With his hat under his arm, and that deferential air which 

 marks the well-bred servant, he is pretty sure to get what 

 he wants. &quot; Nebber could see, Massa Bunker, what s the 

 use planting poor seed. Sartin to git jest what you plant.&quot; 



Jim s philosophy and Jake Frink s do not belong to 

 the same school. Jake thinks a seed is a seed, just as a 

 cow is a cow, whether she is a skeleton, or has five hun 

 dred weight of beef laid in between her skin and bones. 

 Jake has no idea but what old seeds are just as good as 

 any, and so he keeps his old stock on hand from year to 

 year. He has an old basket in his pantry for this purpose, 

 and there you will find seeds of the cucumber, squash, 

 pepper, corn, beans, onion, cabbage, turnip, nasturtium, 

 and a little of every thing else that ever grew in his gar 

 den. They have no labels, and there is no means of as 

 certaining the age of any package in the basket. Some 

 he has begged, a few he has bought, but the most he has 

 raised upon his own premises in that slipshod way that 

 marks every thing about the establishment, and which has 

 long since passed into a proverb. If you were to say a 

 thing looked frinky, every man in Hookertown would 

 know just what you meant. 



The last three or four cabbage stumps, or turnips, he 

 happens to have left in the spring, are set out without any 

 regard to quality or variety. So his cabbage is neither 

 Early York, nor Drumhead, Red Dutch, nor Savoy, but a 

 mongrel stock, showing streaks of every thing he has 

 raised. His turnips and other tap-roots follow the same 

 law, for they have all been cultivated upon the same sys 

 tem. Jake has no idea of the mixing of varieties in the 

 blossom, or of their running down by bad cultivation. - 



With Jim Baker, a seed is not a seed. &quot; Tell you what, 

 Massa Bunker, every ting pends on what you plant. In 

 iquities of de fUders visited on de children, and no mis- 



