ISO THE TIM BUNKER PAPERS. 



the best we can with the houses we have. There is one 

 good thing about it, we can change the color of our houses 

 as often as we please, and come out in a new fashion, 

 while the stone house maintains the same aspect. &quot; What 

 color are you going to put on ? &quot; asked Seth Twiggs, as 

 he looked over the gate, and mingled the smoke of his 

 pipe with the steam of the boiling oil. 



&quot; It won t be blue, I ll warrant you,&quot; snid Jotham 

 Sparrowgrass, without waiting for me to give neighbor 

 Twiggs a civil reply. 



&quot; &quot;Guess it ll be horse color,&quot; observed Jake Frink, who 

 still remembers the cured horse-pond, and thinks every 

 thing I do must have a shade of horse in it. 



When I was a boy, it wasn t much of a question as to 

 what color a man would paint his house. I don t think 

 there were a dozen houses in Hookertown of any other 

 color than white. It was claimed that white was the 

 natural color of the lead, it was the least trouble to make, 

 and looked best in the country, where it was so easy to 

 surround the house with trees and shrubs. I have always 

 noticed in journeying, that the more green you have 

 around a white house the better it looks. In the last 

 twenty years a great change has come over the taste of 

 the people, and somehow they seem to paint other colors 

 a good deal more than white yellow, drab, light brown, 

 lilac, and gray. This may be owing somewhat to an im 

 provement in taste, but I guess fashion has got quite as 

 much to do with it. A man paints his house to please his 

 neighbors rather than himself, and if brown is the rage 

 he paints brown. I am saved all trouble about the color, 

 for Mrs. Bunker likes white and nothing else, so white it 

 shall be. Our trees and shrubs have got so well grown, 

 that white makes an agreeable contrast, and then it has 

 always been white, and some of my friends might not 

 know the house if it was any other color. The artists 

 and architects make a good deal of fuss about blinds upon 



