title: Reading Rural Landscapes: A Field Guide to New England's Past
author:  Robert M. Sanford 
description: Ever wonder why that old tumbledown stonewall is in the woods behind your house? Or why some old cleared forestland has different growth now than its older surroundings? Sanford answers these questions and more. This reads like an amateur archaeologist's detective manual looking for clues and evidence to determine what happened on the land years ago...Learn why sugar maples were known as "marriage trees" and "coffin trees," why farmers preferred hillsides to valleys, why single large trees stood in the middle of pastures, and the difference between a turnpike and a "shunpike." --Bill Bushnell, Kennebec Journal Morning Sentinel. 10/22/2015
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  Relation of Literature to Life
  
  
    
    
  [BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH BY THOMAS R. LOUNSBURY.  
    
  ](Relation%20of%20Literature%20to%20Life_split_001.html#filepos1301)[THE
  RELATION OF LITERATURE TO LIFE
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
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  # Relation of Literature to Life
  
  
  ### Charles Dudley Warner
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### 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 field