204 THE TIM BUNKER PAPERS. 



ideas have to go through about as much grinding and fix 

 ing before they come to light, as a bag of wheat does be 

 fore it comes on to the table in the shape of bread. Sally 

 must have her say, and the editor his, and the printer puts 

 in the stops and pauses ; so that by the time my ideas 

 get back to me in the paper, I don t hardly know them. 

 Some of them look as if they had been to college, and 

 some to boarding school, and some brought up on a farm. 

 But I take it the sense is understood, which is the chief 

 tiling. 



There is one thing I don t exactly understand, why they 

 should put in what Jake Frink says, and Uncle Jotham, 

 and the rest of them, just as I write it, and practice their 

 fixing up on me. I talk for all the world just like Seth 

 Twiggs, but Sally says that is the vernacular, and don t 

 look well in print. Perhaps it don t. Tastes differ. 

 I don t think it pays for altering. In my opinion Sally 

 had better mind her babies than to be tinkering with my 

 spelling, and I guess the public would understand my 

 writings quite as well if the printer didn t spend so much 

 time on the commas and exclamation points. Why, any 

 fool would know when a question was asked, without the 

 sign. They say they keep a fellow in the printing office 

 at about $3 a day, just to tend to this kind of tinkering. 

 I don t think it pays ; but that is none of my business. 



This pride shows itself everywhere, and is about as 

 troublesome on the farm as in the city. I am afraid it will 

 be the ruin of the nation yet. It seems to grow worse 

 the longer I live. It costs me a great deal more to live 

 than it did my father, and if John ever gets back alive 

 from war, he will never be able to live in the simple way 

 I have done. Pride costs more than all other necessary 

 family expenses. It has made many a man a bankrupt, 

 and it keeps a good many of my neighbors poor. Every 

 thing they earn is spent upon their backs, or upon orna 

 menting and fixing up their houses and farms. Farming 



