THE TIM BUNKER PAPERS. 205 



is a good business, and pays all decent demands upon it, 

 but it will not support much pride. A fence that costs a 

 dollar a rod will turn cattle just as well as a faced wall of 

 hewn stone, costing twenty times as much. The nineteen 

 dollars extra goes to the support of pride, and farming 

 ought not to be expecte d to foot the bills. A barn that 

 will shelter hay and cattle is just as good as one costing 

 four times as much, finished as elegantly as a dwelling. 

 Farming will not pay for the clapboards, the lath and 

 plastering, the ceiling and varnish. If a man has made a 

 fortune in trade, there is no objection to his building a 

 country seat, and living like a prince. His profits will 

 support his pride. But the profits of ordinary farming 

 will not justify a like expenditure. He may keep, if he 

 will, a servant to each member of his family, but a farmer 

 must serve himself. When he gets above his business he 

 had better leave it. It strikes me that a farmer s pride 

 ought to run to his business, rather than to his walls and 

 buildings. Other folks have to have dwellings, barns, and 

 fences, and it is no great shakes to own good lumber and 

 paint. But farmers only have a deep, rich soil, fine wheat 

 and corn fields, and luxuriant meadows. It will pay for 

 a farmer to cure a horse-pond, to drain a swale, or to turn 

 a barren pasture into a meadow that will cut three tuns 

 of hay to the acre. It will pay for him to raise fine horses 

 and cattle, pigs and sheep. He ought to gratify his pride 

 in the line of his calling, and not undertake to rival mer 

 chants and nabobs. If he fixes up his fields and breeds 

 good points in his stock, people will not trouble them 

 selves very much whether he says cow or Jceow, or attends 

 spelling school late in life. 



Yours to command, 



TIMOTHY BUNKER, ESQ. 



HooJcertown, July 15, 1862. 



[Squire Bunker s, like the rest of our correspondence, 

 has to go through the mill. ED.] 



