THE RELATION OF LITERATURE TO LIFE

By Charles Dudley Warner




CONTENTS:

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH BY THOMAS R. LOUNSBURY.
THE RELATION OF LITERATURE TO LIFE




BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

The county of Franklin in Northwestern Massachusetts, if not rivaling in
certain ways the adjoining Berkshire, has still a romantic beauty of its
own. In the former half of the nineteenth century its population was
largely given up to the pursuit of agriculture, though not under
altogether favorable conditions. Manufactures had not yet invaded the
region either to add to its wealth or to defile its streams. The villages
were small, the roads pretty generally wretched save in summer, and from
many of the fields the most abundant crop that could be gathered was that
of stones.

The character of the people conformed in many ways to that of the soil.
The houses which lined the opposite sides of the single street, of which
the petty places largely consisted, as well as the dwellings which dotted