A Handbook of New England: An Annual Publication (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from A Handbook of New England: An Annual Publication

In defense of this book the editor wishes to make it clear that this is a first edition - a beginning, not an end. The present book is frankly an inadequate treatment of a great and worthy theme. Revised editions must appear before an adequate result 15 attained.

This Handbook of New England has not been made primarily for the intellectual divertissement of New Englanders. The visitor, on the other hand, the stranger from without our gates, the Man from Missouri, has been kept constantly In mind. The desire has been to divulge In a large way to the possible or actual visitor What New England holds for him.

To attempt to enlighten the intelligent New Englander in regard to the history, antiquities, or modern developments of his own town is wholly beyond the limitations of this volume. we have sought only to bring together What the casual visitor or tourist most wants to know, What the well-informed resident knows, about a town - why it is on the map, who made it, and what it now makes.

The tests of What should be included, what omitted, have been frankly journalistic. The desire has been to select human interest information of contemporary value. While the publisher has had every desire to tell of the 'live' things of today rather than to dwell upon the past, he has not always been able to Share the enthusiasm of the local citizen for our new gas plant or the new model concrete shoe factory, to the featuring this rather than some really great citizen or event of economic importance in the past.

One purpose steadily kept in mind has been to present New Eng land in an all-round way with a critical eye and a sense of proportion and with something of vision. For vision is perhaps what we most lack, and the accumulated and coordinated facts on which to base it.

The New England of today, the New England that is really new, has been kept in the foreground. What a community is doing today, its industries, the people who live there, have been regarded as of first importance. What there is to say of antiquities, old houses, modern buildings, natural features, and the story connected there with has been proportionately treated.

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