400 
RURAL HOURS. 
A beautiful ceremony, indeed. Thus \vc see bow full of tins 
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, 
hu,nbly to pray for the boon of his daily bread. 
Friday, 2ith . — Evening ; 9 o’clock. The lake has been very 
beautiful all da}^ 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 consider- 
ed 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 e.\pense of putting them up and 
