240 THE TIM BUNKEK PAPERS. 



making as among the things that were destined for Hook- 

 ertown. We expected always to get our sweetening by 

 barter, just as our fathers and mothers did before us a 

 pound of cheese for a pound of sugar, and brown sugar at 

 that. We expected, too, to eat a slava^rown article be 

 cause we could not get any other. But they say they are 

 getting off the notion of forced labor on the sugar planta 

 tions in Louisiana, and I suppose when the Fates got to 

 making a change, they thought they might as well make 

 a change all around, and have free sugar North and South. 

 At any rate it is a settled fact that we have a sugar mill, 

 where they are going to make molasses this fall, and 

 where they may make sugar by and by. I suppose half 

 the farmers in town won t pay a dollar for sweetening 

 next year, and some will have a few barrels of syrup to 

 sell. The world moves, notwithstanding the war, and I 

 am not sure but the war has given a good many enter 

 prises a new hoist. You see, it has made sugar and molas 

 ses dear, and that has set Yankee wit at work to get these 

 things out of our own soil. In raising sugar at the North, 

 it makes a great deal of difference whether that article is 

 eight cents or sixteen cents a pound. 



We have been getting ready for this business some 

 years. The seed sent out from the Agriculturist office 

 introduced the plant, and taught us that we could grow it 

 as well as corn. Jake Frink could see that it looked 

 like broom-corn, and was no humbug. It would pay to 

 raise it for fodder for cattle, and hogs ate it greedily, and 

 would thrive upon it wonderfully well. There was no 

 chance to lose much. Some made syrup from it, the first 

 year, and put it up in bottles, and exhibited it at the 

 county fair. It looked like syrup, tasted like it, and went 

 well on buckwheat cakes. But we had no mill to grind 

 the cane, and no conveniences for boiling down the juice, 

 and that was the great objection to going into the busi 

 ness. 



