Page:Rural Hours.djvu/444

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400
RURAL HOURS.

A beautiful ceremony, indeed. Thus we see how full of this acknowledgment of the mercies of God in feeding his people, was the Jewish ritual. The Christian, in the same spirit of constant dependence upon Almighty Providence for life of body and soul, has also been taught by Divine authority, whether rich or poor, humbly to pray for the boon of his daily bread.

Friday, 24th.—Evening; 9 o'clock. The lake has been very beautiful all day. In the morning, light gleaming blue; soft and still in the afternoon, sweetly colored by reflections of the hills and sky; and this evening it is quite illuminated by an unusual number of fishing lights, moving slowly under the shores and across the little bays.

Saturday, 25th.—Looking over the country from a height, now that the leaves have fallen, we found the fences attracting our attention. They are chiefly of wood in our neighborhood; zig-zag enclosures of rails, or worm-fences, as they are called. We have but few stone walls here; stump-fences are not uncommon. The rails used for the worm-fences are often of chestnut, which is considered the best wood for the purpose. Foreigners from the Continent of Europe usually quarrel with our fences, and perhaps they are right; they look upon this custom as a great and needless waste of wood. They say they are ugly in themselves, and that an open country, well cultivated, but free from these lines, gives the idea of a higher state of civilization, than lands where every half dozen acres are guarded by enclosures. General Lafayette, when sitting in his tower at Lagrange, in the midst of his fine farms of Brie, used to say that he could not like our fences, and thought we should yet learn to do without them; he believed the cost of the wood, and the trouble and expense of putting them up and