By "paraira" you must understand prairie. "It is a most splendid song,"
continued the singer. "It touches off one state after another.
Connecticut, for example:"

"Connecticut has blue laws,
And when the beer, on Sunday,
Gets working in the barrel,
They flog it well on Monday."

At Benson, in Vermont, we emerged upon a smoother country, a country of
rich pastures, fields heavy with grass almost ready for the scythe, and
thick-leaved groves of the sugar-maple and the birch. Benson is a small,
but rather neat little village, with three white churches, all of which
appear to be newly built. The surrounding country is chiefly fitted for
the grazing of flocks, whose fleeces, however, just at present, hardly pay
for the shearing.




Letter XVII.

An Excursion to Vermont and New Hampshire.



Keene, New Hampshire, _July_ 13, 1843.