From New England Magazine
March, 1899 The Old Granville and the New.By Francis Wayland Shepardson
"As I am now writing, my father, at the age of eighty-five, is talking with my children, aged six, four, two and one respectively, telling them of things happening when he was a boy, which were it possible for them to remember and tell at the age of eighty-five to their grandchildren, would indeed be a collating of the family book of life almost in century pages." The scene deserves reproduction not alone because of its charm as a representation of domestic happiness, not alone because of its suggestion of the possibilities accompanying the life of hardy American families,
Sometimes there is mourning over the abandoned farms of New England and wondering for the families which once peopled the declining towns; but regret is changed to rejoicing when the families are traced backward from the orange groves and the mines, from the prairies and the bustling cities of the West; and the record of achievement of American pioneers is found dull of certificates of indebtedness to the powerful influences of New England environment and New England blood. The student of American social life knows well that it is in the smaller towns and not in the cities that he
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