200 THE TIM BUNKER PAPERS. 



picking in a cow pasture. They had brought their bask 

 ets with them, and had got them nearly filled, when I had 

 to lay down the law to them. They had at least a dollar s 

 worth of my property, and were about to walk off with it. 



Now I don t want to say a word agin Hookertown, or 

 damage the reputation of the place. I suppose it is a full 

 average of Connecticut towns, and .in some respects a 

 good deal better. But to speak the plain truth, there is 

 a good deal of stealing among us in this small way. And 

 it can t be laid to the door of the pulpit neither. Mr. 

 Spooner is faithful preaches total depravity just. as hard 

 as if people did not illustrate that doctrine themselves 

 warns, entreats, and expostulates with all long-suffering 

 and patience. But, you see, the most of these people don t 

 come to meeting, and the preaching that is going to reach 

 them, I guess, will have to be in men s lives rather than 

 in meeting-houses. 



The notion that nothing is of any value unless it will 

 sell, seems, to lie at the bottom of a good deal of this 

 wickedness, and I think a word or two ought to be said 

 upon it. Now this may be true with a great many peo 

 ple. They are so mean that they would skin flints to 

 make money. But among decent Christian people this 

 can t be so. A man prizes a good many things that have 

 no money value, far more than if he could turn them into 

 gold. There is an old lapstone, such as shoemakers use, 

 in my garret, that belonged to Sally s grandfather. He 

 used to use it, and when she was a little child she remem 

 bers seeing the old man pound leather on it. Now I don t 

 suppose the stone would sell for a red cent, but Sally says 

 she would not part with it for the Kohinoor diamond, and 

 all the crown jewels of Victoria. She is an honest woman, 

 and I am bound to believe her. Anything that our affec 

 tions enter into has a value that can not be measured by 

 dollars and cents; and to rob us of these things is to do 

 us a greater injury than to steal sheep and horses. I can t 



