250 THE TIM BUNKER PAPERS. 



pendently. In Boston they ask you if you know any 

 thing; in New York, how much money you have got; in 

 Philadelphia, who is your father? In Washington, they 

 take you upon trust, until they find you out. As we did 

 not calculate to stay long enough to be found out, it suited 

 us exactly. Your respectability does not depend upon 

 your keeping house, boarding at a hotel, or taking fur 

 nished rooms and having meals served to suit your con 

 venience. To people who have backbone and can attend 

 to their own marketing, living is not much dearer than in 

 ~New York. 



I kept my eyes opened while in the Capital, and was 

 astonished to see the enormous waste they make of hay 

 and provisions, and every thing else in this war. One 

 would think that when hay is $30 a ton, they could afford 

 to take care of it, but it is dumped down almost any 

 where, and has to take its chances with the weather. 

 Corn and oats fare pretty much in the same way. I judge 

 that musty grain and hay must be plenty in the army. 

 I saw a large herd of government cattle, perhaps fat when 

 they were bought, but they had got to be rather lean 

 looking specimens. Had the Potomac been the Nile, I 

 should have thought of the lean kine of Pharoah. It was 

 suggested by an observer that the purses of contractors 

 were not lean, if the cattle were. 



I attended to Jake Frink s business early; I went right 

 round to the White House and found a colored man at 

 the door, and says I, &quot; Is Mr. Lincoln home ?&quot; Says he, 

 &quot; The President don t receive calls to-day.&quot; &quot;Well,&quot; says I, 

 &quot; You jest tell him that Squire Bunker of Hookertown 

 wants to see him on a little business.&quot; I got in by that 

 trick. I expect he had seen my name in the Agricultur 

 ist, though I didn t know him from Adam. He received 

 me with a smile in one corner of his mouth, as if I had 

 been an old acquaintance. Says I, &quot; Mr. Lincoln, I hain t 

 got any ax to grind for myself, but one of my neighbors 



