86 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
[Marcs, 
a little to the war and politics, can’t be expected to 
write much for the papers. 
But last month, ye see, I had a special hinder- 
ance, and the way it came about was jest this. 
Mrs. Bunker was sitting- by the fire one evening, 
reading the paper, when she stopped suddenly, took 
off those gold-bowed spectacles that Josiah gave 
her, and laid down the paper, and says she, “ Tim¬ 
othy, I want to go to Washington. Ton see I have 
been knitting and sewing, drying and brewing for 
the soldiers for over two years, and I should like 
to know where all the things that we have boxed 
up go to. Some say there is an awful waste of 
these things, that the shirts are used for wadding 
to the cannon, that the wines and cordials go to 
the well soldiers instead of the sick ones, and the 
stores of the Sanitary Commission never see the 
inside of a hospital. I should like to see for my¬ 
self, and while I am down there I should like to 
see John.” “ Agreed,” says I, “ We’ll start for 
Washington to-morrow.” 
You see we went down south five years ago, and 
came home so well satisfied with Hookertown 
that we have hardly been out of the place since, 
for more than a day or two at a time. Sally Bunk¬ 
er has been the most contented woman in all my 
experience from that day to this. I was rather 
glad when I saw that she had got her mind on a visit. 
It very soon got wind that we were bound to 
Washington, and almost all the neighbors brought 
in their axes to grind, as if I should have nothing 
to do while I was down there but to turn the grind¬ 
stone for’em. Among others, Jake Frink came, 
and said he would be much obliged if I would get 
him appointed keeper of the Hookertown light¬ 
house. He said he would take back all the uncivil 
things he had ever spoken against me, would forget 
the horse-pond lot, and would admit that I was the 
best farmer, and most straightforward justice in 
town. Says I, “No you don’t Jake Frink. That won’t 
go down. But I am willing to lay your case before 
the President and give him my honest opinion.” 
It took Mrs. Bunker a week to get started, for 
she had to go down to Shadtown to see Sally and 
the grandchildren, as if she wasn’t going to see 
’em again in a year. We went round outside so as 
to see the Potomac river, Mount Vernon, and as 
much of the rebel country as was possible in so 
short a time. The valley of the Potomac surpassed 
all our expectations. It is a magnificent region, 
with every natural facility for agriculture and com¬ 
merce, and the trades connected with them. We 
sailed all day up that river without seeing any 
thing like a village until we reached Alexandria. 
There were beaut iful farming lands, still well wood¬ 
ed, and occasionally a fine planter’s mansion, with 
its group of slave cabins. But for the most part 
the houses are dilapidated and look forsaken. How 
vapidly will a change come over this scene, when 
energetic men take possession, and villages spring- 
up like magic along the banks of this noble river. 
There ought to have been a half million of people 
here instead of a handful of planters. 
Mrs. Bunker had heard awful stories about the 
steep prices for board in Washington, six dollars a 
day at Willard’s and hard to get in at that, and was 
a good deal worried lest the money should give out 
before we finished our visit. How you see these 
high prices are only for the rich ones who don’t 
care, and the green ones who don’t know any bet¬ 
ter. We soon found that Washington is about the 
best place in the country for people to live indepen¬ 
dently. 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 Wash¬ 
ington 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 furnished 
rooms and having meals served to suit your conve¬ 
nience. To people who have backbone and can at¬ 
tend 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 anywhere, and has to take its 
chances with the weather. Corn and oats fare pret¬ 
ty 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 
Pharaoh. 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, “Is Mr. Lincoln home?” 
Says he, I 1 The President don’t receive calls to-day.” 
Well says I, “You jest tell him that ’Squire Bunk¬ 
er of Hookertown wants to see him on a little bus¬ 
iness.” I got in by that trick. I expect he had 
seen my name in the Agriculturist, 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 “ Mr. Lincoln I ha’nt 
got any ax to grind for myself, but one of my 
neighbors has—wants a lighthouse, and I promis¬ 
ed him w-lien I left home to see you about it.” 
“ Well,” says the President, “ that hardly comes 
under my direction, I shall have to refer you to the 
Light House Department.” “Well,” says I, “I 
don’t care what you do with it. I want to say that 
Jake Frink is rather a poor farmer, don’t manage 
his own business well, and I don’t think he would 
manage yours any better. His light don’t shine on 
the farm, and I don’t think he would make it shine 
in a Light House.”—“’Squire Bunker, yon are a 
brick, but yon don’t understand the way they do 
business. If a man can't do any thing for himself, 
he thinks he is just fit to manage Uncle Sam's business. 
I will give you ’Squire Bunker, the Light House in 
Hookertown, with great pleasure.” I assured the 
President that I was still acting as Justice of the 
Peace and should have to decline the honor. 
Hookertown, Conn., j Yours to command, 
Feb. 10th, 1864. j Timothy Bunker Esq. 
Power of the Human Body. 
According to Youmans, the amount of heat gen¬ 
erated annually, in the body of a man, is sufficient to 
raise from 25,000 to 30,000 lbs. of water from the 
freezing to the boiling point. Part of this passes 
off, but most of it is consumed in the working of 
the various organs. All the acts of the body, every 
motion, utterance, breath, or thought expends 
force, which is only another form of heat. We 
make about 9,000,000 separate motions of breathing 
in a year, thereby inhaling and expelling 700,000 
gallons of air. At the same time the heart contracts 
and dilates 40,000,000 times—each time with an es¬ 
timated force of 13 lbs, while the blood annually 
driven through the heart, if a fresh supply were 
furnished at each pulsation, would amount to 
thousands of tons. Besides these involuntary acts, 
the organism generates force for almost innumer¬ 
able forms of voluntary physical action. A healthy 
laborer is assumed to be able to exert a force 
equal to raising the weight of his body through 
10,000 feet in a day. Supposing him to weigh 150 
lbs., all the force emanating within his body in one 
day, would, if combined, be sufficient to move 
15,000 lbs. the distance of 100 feet. 
How to Treat Frozen Limbs. 
The N. Y. Evening Post thus discusses the philoso¬ 
phy of freezing, and the mode of treating frozen 
parts. The juices of the fleshy tissues when frozen 
in their minute sacs or cells, at once become in 
each of these enclosures, crystals, having a large 
number of angles and sharp points; and hence 
rubbing the flesh causes them to cut or tear their 
way through the tissues, so that when it is thawed, 
the structure of the muscle is more or less destroy¬ 
ed. The proper mode of treatment is this : “When 
any part of the body is frozen, it should be kept 
perfectly quiet until it is thawed out, which should 
be done as promptly as possible. As freezing takes 
place from the surface inwardly, so the thawing 
should be in the inverse order, from the inside out¬ 
wardly. The thawing out of a portion of the flesh, 
without at the same time putting the blood from 
the heart into circulation through it, produces mor¬ 
tification ; but by keeping the more external parts 
still congealed until the internal heat and the exter¬ 
nal blood gradually soften the more interior parts, 
and produce circulation of the blood as fast as the 
thawing takes place, most of these dangers are ob¬ 
viated. If the snow which is applied be colder than 
the frozen flesh, it will still further abstract the 
heat and freeze it worse than before. But if the 
snow is of the same temperature it will keep the 
flesh from thawing until the heat from the rest of 
the body shall have effected it, thus preventing 
gangrene. Water, in which snow or ice has been 
placed, so as to keep its temperature at 32° Fah¬ 
renheit, is probably better than snow.” 
Making Cheese in Winter- 
Mrs. M. J. Stephenson writes to the American 
Agriculturist: “Farmers’ wives knowhow difficult it 
is to get butter from frozen milk. You may churn 
and churn for hours sometimes, and then after 
all the work it will be nothing but froth. I was at 
onetime in trouble, what to do with frozen milk, 
when the thought struck me to run it up in a curd. 
So I took my little tin vat and put it on top of the 
stove and then brought pan after pan of ‘ ice 
cream’ until the vat was full. After a while it 
thawed out, and when it got to blood heat, I put in 
the usual quantity of rennet, and the curd came as 
nicely as though it had never been frozen. I ran 
off the whey in the old fashioned way, cutting up 
the curd a couple of times, and pressing out the 
whey with a weight on top of the cloth; then tied 
up the curd, and hung it in the cellar. After three 
or four days I had accumulated another vat full of 
milk. I then made another curd, and while it was 
getting ready, I brought up the curd from the cel¬ 
lar, cut it up in small pieces like kernels of corn, 
and put it in warm water. It was very little sour¬ 
ed, but yet I scalded and salted it by itself, as sweet 
and sour curd are so apt to “run together.” Then 
as I put them in the cheese hoop, I mixed them 
thoroughly. I felt a little nervous all the time I 
was about it, lest the curd would not unite, and 
finally lest the cheese would not -taste well when 
cured, but I could perceive no difference between 
it and other cheese made from milk not frozen. 
There are no flies in winter time and the curing of 
the cheese is not so troublesome. The milk being 
much richer then, is I suppose, the reason of the 
cheese being more delicious. If the cheese wkept 
in the kitchen, or in a room with fire in—which is 
indispensable—it cures nearly as quick as in sum¬ 
mer, and after the first week or two, it need not be 
turned, save every second day. It should be rub¬ 
bed well with butter or oil every time it is turned 
Hints on Cooking, etc. 
Wliolcsome Bread-Poison, etc. -D. 
M. Allen, Geauga Co., O., writes to the American Ag¬ 
riculturist, that economical, nutritious, and whole¬ 
some bread can be made by simply mixing unbolt¬ 
ed wheat meal with cold water or milk, to a stiff 
batter. Dip it with a spoon upon a pan, and bake 
twenty to thirty minutes in a hot oven. He thinks 
salt, soda, saleratus, and other minerals, poisonous. 
He does not inform us how the mineral constitu¬ 
ents of grain are to be disposed of, for there are 
more than two pounds of minerals in every hun¬ 
dred pounds of flour, put there by nature. He might 
also be reminded that no man’s stomach is a safe 
guide for another’s diet. Thousands live and thrive 
on bread made in the ordinary method—those who 
can not, are free to suit th^ir own cases. 
Oysters.— “ Aunt Sue,” so well 
known to the long-time readers of the American 
Agriculturist, furnishes by request, the following di- 
