Relation of Literature to Life

Excerpt

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.