THE TIM BUNKER PAPERS. 199 



put to such a use. If there is any justice, you shall go to 

 Har ford jail.&quot; 



There, you see, was the rub. Seth Twiggs got angry 

 to very little purpose. There is no law that touches these 

 vexatious trespasses upon flowers and fruit ; or if there 

 is, we have no public sentiment to enforce it. The ma 

 jority of the public, even in this Commonwealth, which I 

 am bound to believe is head and shoulders above any 

 other in this respect, have no taste for flowers and the 

 finer kinds of fruit, and they look upon the people who 

 cultivate these things as lawful prey. Their own flower 

 gardens are limited to a patch of bouncing bet and tansy 

 in the back yard, with may-weed and catnip in front ; and 

 as they do not attach any particular value to these things, 

 they think their amiable neighbors who cultivate roses and 

 flowering shrubs prize these just as little. They would as 

 soon break down a moss rose in a neighbor s yard, as a 

 sweetbrier growing by the road-side. They admire gay 

 colors and sweet odors, as most savages do, and that is the 

 extent of their taste for flowers. They have no other 

 measure of value than money, and as flowers in the coun 

 try do not sell in market, they have no value. A pound 

 of butter brings twenty cents, and is worth the money. 

 A rose, though it affords pleasure to the eye and to the 

 smell, and gratifies our love of the beautiful, brings no 

 price, and is therefore worth nothing. 



It is pretty much so with fruits, though there is a little 

 more conscience about stealing them, for fruit has a money 

 value, though it be small. Apples are common, even 

 among these rude people ; but they are of the un grafted 

 sorts, and hardly pay to carry to market where the better 

 sorts are known. But they think their neighbors prize 

 fine pears, grapes, and the smaller fruits, as little as they 

 do their seedling apples. It was only yesterday that I 

 found a woman and her two children in my strawberry 

 beds, helping themselves as leisurely as if they had been 



