370 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
flection on his part, and the manifestation of a bet¬ 
ter temper, perhaps not until his return from 
school, to bestow the token of favor with kind 
words and acts which should make him feel that 
he enjoys her love and confidence. How diffi¬ 
cult a task it is for us, as parents, to know how 
tightly to draw the reins of government upon 
those committed to our care, and to act out our 
better judgments. Reasoning from what we have 
observed of the effect of discipline in various 
families, we should say at once: “Better rule 
with a rod of iron than not to rule at all.” As a 
general result, children brought up under strict 
family government, turn out better in the world, 
and make better citizens,than those suffered to run 
wild. Yet, those parents who maintain a firm 
discipline, too often fail to develop the senti¬ 
ments of kindness and love. It is not well to 
say to our children that we restrain them through 
love—this they can not appreciate—but the 
greatest care should be taken to inspire them 
with a consciousness that they are loved. We can 
not better express the idea we would inculcate, 
than by repeating a paragraph from a former ar¬ 
ticle on this topic : How many parents make a 
sad mistake in considering their duty done if they 
reprove or correct their children when in fault. 
They go upon the principle that to do right is no 
more than the child’s duty, needing no praise. 
A word of approval for a good act, often does 
more to encourage its repetition than a thou¬ 
sand reproofs for a contrary course. The dis¬ 
tinguished painter, Benjamin West, referring to 
the fact that his mother kissed him eagerly w’hen 
he showed her a likeness he had sketched of his 
baby sister, remarked : “ That kiss made me a 
painter.” We knew a little farmer hoy, whose 
impulses were good, but he had been accustom¬ 
ed to hear his trivial faults spoken of, and he fi¬ 
nally came to consider that the only acts he could 
do worthy of notice were bad ones, and he lost 
all ambition to try to do well. But on one occa¬ 
sion the boy overheard a conversation in an ad¬ 
joining room, between his mother and the family 
physician. The physician, partly in flattery to the 
mother it is true, remarked that “her boy was 
a bright lad, with good sympathies, and would 
doubtless make a good and great man,” or words 
to that effect. The expression sunk deep into 
the child’s heart. The fact that one, for whose 
opinions he had great respect, thought it possi¬ 
ble for him to accomplish anything worthy, stirred 
his ambition, and he made a new resolve to be 
not only great but also good. He has since filled 
many stations of usefulness in society and in the 
church, and we have often heard him attribute all 
efforts he had made to do right, to those simple 
words of the physician. 
To Fasten Knife Handles. 
In well made table cutlery the handles are 
riveted to the shank of the blade, and will re¬ 
main fixed with ordinary care. These, though 
costing more at first, will prove cheapest, and we 
would purchase no other. When knives or forks 
have come off the handle from being carelessly 
put in hot water or otherwise, a cement made as 
follows will be useful to refasten them : Take of 
Gum Shellac two parts, and prepared chalk one 
part; reduce them to powder and mix thoroughly. 
Fill the opening in the handle with the mixture, 
heat the shank of the knife and press it in. Then 
keep the handle out of hot water. So says the 
Chemical Gazette. 
Every man that is capable of doing a secret in¬ 
jury is a coward. 
A Wedding among Tim Bunker’s Neigh¬ 
bors. 
The connection between city and country is 
getting to be so intimate, by means of railways and 
steamers, that the change of customs is almost 
as complete in the rural districts, as in the me¬ 
tropolis. All along the great thoroughfares, the 
Paris fashions are as omnipotent as in this good¬ 
ly city of Gotham. Marriage ceremonies arc cel¬ 
ebrated with about as much pomp and show, and 
as little good sense, as in the higher circles of 
city life. There are, however, quiet nooks in 
the older States, remote from the sound of steam¬ 
er and locomotive, where the stream of life flows 
on with hardly a ripple upon its surface. There, 
people by scores boast that they have never 
seen a steamer, and have never been inside of 
a rail car. They have come little in contact with 
the outside world, and maintain a freshness and 
individuality of character, rarely met with in our 
times. There, the social parties all have utility 
as their basis, and the flowers of the heart come 
up blooming around the edges of quiltings, apple- 
parings, and Dorcas sewing societies. There, the 
“meeting-house” is the orthodox name for the 
church edifice, and the social as well as the re¬ 
ligious center of the parish. There, the rural pop¬ 
ulation gather on Sundays, in costume, not 
squared to the fashionable cut, and hats and bon¬ 
nets of the venerable age of ten years and up¬ 
wards are still visible. There, sparks lit up be¬ 
tween services, or even during sermon, are pro¬ 
longed into Sunday night sparking, and the nine 
o’clock bell reminds lovers, as well as more 
sleepy people, that it is time to be at home. 
There, courtship makes haste slowly, and a love 
affair is not suffered to blossom into marriage, un¬ 
til it is fully discussed by all the gossips in town. 
Hookertown is on the borders of such a quiet 
region, and there may be seen occasionally in the 
street of that somewhat noted village, natives of 
the unsophisticated rural districts—men and 
women who preserve the freshness and simplicity 
of fifty years ago, who insist upon marrying their 
daughters very much as themselves were wedded 
in the good old times. Esquire Bunker has giv¬ 
en us occasional glimpses of this past age, in his 
letters, and it is with a view to furnish us another 
sample of this Arcadian life, we presume, that he 
sent us the following note a few days ago. 
Hookertown, Nov. 10th, 1859. 
Mr. Editor. —When your reporter was up here 
in Hookertown, last year, to take notes on clover 
fields, and stumbled on a wedding at my house, 
he was considerable tickled with the way they do 
up such things in the country, and thought he 
should like to come again. Now, if that fellow 
has any kind of hankering to see a real country 
wedding, let him come up and see Kier Frink 
married next week. Hookertown has got a good 
deal corrupted by city folks cqming in among us, 
especially since I begun to write for the paper, 
and I guess half of the people dress about as 
smart as the common run of folks in the city. But 
there is a region up around Smithville, where 
they do up things just as they did when I was a 
boy. Kier has been a courting ever since the 
eighteen-year-old-fever came on him, and they 
say he had been out a sparking when he let the 
cattle into my corn field last Summer. At any 
rate, things have come to a crisis, and he has just 
told John that he was “going to be tied next 
week,” and given him an invite to the wedding. 
John will take your man over if he comes. 
Yours to command, 
Timothy Bunker, Esq. 
We looked after the matter, and here follows a 
CONDENSED REPORT OF “ OUR OWN REPORTER.” 
“Frink, Faqins.— At th® Whiteoaks, Ct., on Thurs¬ 
day, Nov. 17th, by the Rev. Jacob Spooner, Hezekiah 
Frink, of Hookertown, to Widow Jerusha Fagius, of the 
former place.” 
The above announcement in the Hookertown 
Gazette, of this week, will attest that the joyful 
event, which called your reporter away from the 
city, has transpired. The “ White oaks,” you 
must know, is not a distinct township, but a neigh¬ 
borhood name, attached to one of the school dis¬ 
tricts in Smithtown, whereof Smithville is the 
commercial center; the grocery being located 
there, where the good housewives barter butter 
and eggs, for sugar, tea and molasses. The 
Whiteoaks being remote from the social center 
of the town, and without religious privileges, has 
always been a hard neighborhood, and never 
seemed t'o belong to Connecticut. Men ofbroken 
down fortune, and men who never had any for¬ 
tune of any kind, gravitated thither as naturally 
as crows toward a dead carcass. It was the par¬ 
adise of horse jockeys, loafers, gamblers, and 
drunkards. The people lived partly by farming, 
partly by burning charcoal, and partly by their 
wits. They were always ready to swap horses 
and oxen when they had any, and the juvenility 
of the breed of cattle raised in these parts, was 
always a marvel. A horse was never owned 
among the Whiteoakers, acknowledged to be 
over eight years of age, but always sound and well 
broken to both harness and saddle, whether he 
had ever been inside of thills or not. In this in¬ 
teresting region, where law and morals take care 
of themselves, lived a year since Theophilus 
Fagins and his wife Jerusha, with about a fair 
average of the happiness allotted to the White- 
oak community. Between coaling, horse trading, 
and drinking in the neighboring village, Theo¬ 
philus came to an untimely end last Winter, leav¬ 
ing a disconsolate widow and six children. She 
had reached the mature age of fifty, but had not 
outlived the tender passion as the sequel shows. 
While her love lay a bleeding, in the suscepti¬ 
ble days of Spring, Kier Frink was introduced to 
her by one of the coal-men returning from Hook¬ 
ertown, Kier was charmed with Whiteoak so¬ 
ciety, and particularly with the blandishments of 
the widow, who did every thing to make his visits 
agreeable. There was no rigid Sabbath keeping, 
and not much going to meeting, but plenty of to¬ 
bacco and cheap rum, with an occasional shooting 
match, or horse race, in the neighborhood. The 
widow had a house and small farm left her, and 
it seemed to Kier, that his fortune would be easily 
made, if he could step into the shoes of the de¬ 
parted Theophilus. 
This he essayed to do, and notwithstanding his 
youth and bashfulness, he was accepted by the 
widow, and the nuptials were appointed at an early 
day. I learned from John Bunker, who took me 
over to the Whiteoaks, that Jake Frink had no 
objections to the match, though the woman was 
old enough to be Kier’s mother. Jake was accus¬ 
tomed to say, “ Tain’t every young man that can 
marry a ’spectable widder with a farm of 50 
acres, well watered and timbered. I allers 
knew Kier would come to suthing, and now ye 
see.” 
A short horse is soon curried, and this wedding, 
being the briefest we ever attended, is soon de¬ 
spatched. It appeared to excite about as much 
attention in the neighborhood as a horse trade, 
and the parties themselves manifestly looked upon 
it as an every day business. We shall leave to 
your imagination, to picture Kier, with the down 
of youth upon his chin, leading the widow with 
her blooming charms to the altar, clasping of un¬ 
gloved hands after a ludicrous fumbling for the 
dexter digits, the few words of the minister that 
