ution of literature or art in any period, in
relation to the literature and art of the world, cannot be accurately
judged by contemporaries and participants, nor can it be predicted. But I
have great expectations of the product of both in this country, and I am
sure that both will be affected by the conduct of persons now living. It
is for this reason that I have spoken.

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
the country, were the homes of men who possessed in fullness many of the
features, good and bad, that characterized the Puritan stock to which
they belonged. There was a good deal of religion in these rural
communities and occasionally some culture. Still, as a rule, it must be
confessed, there would be found in them much more of plain living than of
high thinking. Broad thinking could hardly be said to exist at all. By
the dwellers in that region Easter had scarcely even been heard of;
Christmas was tolerated after a fashion, but was nevertheless looked upon
with a good deal of suspicion as a Popish invention. In the beliefs of
these men several sins not mentioned in the decalogue took really, if
unconsciously, precedence of those which chanced to be found in that
list. Dancing was distinctly immoral; card-playing led directly to
gambling with all its attendant evils; theatre-going characterized the
conduct of the more disreputable denizens of great cities. Fiction was
not absolutely forbidden; but the most lenient regarded it as a great
waste of time, and the boy who