Produced by David Widger
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 incertain ways the adjoining Berkshire, has still a romantic beauty of itsown. In the former half of the nineteenth century its population waslargely given up to the pursuit of agriculture, though not underaltogether favorable conditions. Manufactures had not yet invaded theregion either to add to its wealth or to defile its streams. The villageswere small, the roads pretty generally wretched save in summer, and frommany of the fields the most abundant crop that could be gathered was thatof 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 whichthe petty places largely consisted, as well as the dwellings which dottedthe country, were the homes of men who possessed in fullness many of thefeatures, good and bad, that characterized the Puritan stock to whichthey belonged. There was a good deal of religion in these ruralcommunities and occasionally some culture. Still, as a rule, it must beconfessed, there would be found in them much more of plain living than ofhigh thinking. Broad thinking could hardly be said to exist at all. Bythe dwellers in that region Easter had scarcely even been heard of;Christmas was tolerated after a fashion, but was nevertheless looked uponwith a good deal of suspicion as a Popish invention. In the beliefs ofthese men several sins not mentioned in the decalogue took really, ifunconsciously, precedence of those which chanced to be found in thatlist. Dancing was distinctly immoral; card-playing led directly togambling with all its attendant evils; theatre-going characterized theconduct of the more disreputable denizens of great cities. Fiction wasnot absolutely forbidden; but the most lenient regarded it as a greatwaste of time, and the boy who desired its solace on any large scale wasunder the frequent necessity of seeking the seclusion of the haymow.
But however rigid and stern the beliefs of men might be, nature was therealways charming, not only in her summer beauty, but even in her wildestwinter moods. Narrow, too, as might be the views of the members of thesecommunities about the conduct of life, there was ever before the minds ofthe best of them an ideal of devotion to duty, an earnest all-pervadingmoral purpose which implanted the feeling that neither personal successnor pleasure of any sort could ever afford even remotely compensation forthe neglect of the least obligation which their situation imposed. It wasno misfortune for any one, who was later to be transported to a broaderhorizon and more genial air, to have struck the roots of his being in asoil where men felt the full sense of moral responsibility for everythingsaid or done, and where the conscience was almost as sensitive to thesuggestion of sin as to its actual accomplishment.
It was amidst such surroundings that Charles Dudley Warner was born onthe 12th of September, 1829. His birthplace was the hill town ofPlainfield, over two thousand feet above the level of the sea. Hisfather, a farmer, was a man of cultivation, though not college-bred. Hedied when his eldest son had reached the age of five, leaving to hiswidow the care of two children. Three years longer the family continuedto remain on the farm. But however delightful the scenery of the countrymight be, its aesthetic attractions did not s