Project Gutenberg's The Road and the Roadside, by Burton Willis Potter

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Title: The Road and the Roadside

Author: Burton Willis Potter

Release Date: April 25, 2009 [EBook #28607]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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THE ROAD

AND

THE ROADSIDE.

By

BURTON WILLIS POTTER.

BOSTON:
LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY.
1886.

_Copyright, 1886_,
BY BURTON WILLIS POTTER.

UNIVERSITY PRESS:
JOHN WILSON AND SON, CAMBRIDGE.

TO

THE HONORABLE JOHN E. RUSSELL,

SECRETARY OF
THE MASSACHUSETTS BOARD OF AGRICULTURE,

These Pages are Respectfully Inscribed,

AS A TOKEN OF MY LOVE AND ESTEEM FOR HIM AS A TRUE FRIEND,
A CLASSICAL SCHOLAR, AND AN ELOQUENT ORATOR,
WHOSE SPEECHES AND WRITINGS HAVE AIDED POWERFULLY
IN BRINGING ABOUT A REVIVAL OF AGRICULTURE,
AND IN CREATING AMONG THE PEOPLE
A LOVE OF AGRICULTURE AND
RURAL LIFE.

Transcriber's Note: The asterisks in footnotes 89 and 92 have do not
have corresponding references in the text.

PREFACE.

The chapters of this book relating to the laws of public and private
ways were written and read as a lecture at the Country Meeting of the
Massachusetts Board of Agriculture, in December, 1885, at Framingham,
and have since been published in the "Report on the Agriculture of
Massachusetts for the Year 1885."

The laws as herein stated are, as I believe, the present laws of
Massachusetts relative to public and private ways, and therefore they
may not all be applicable to the ways in other States; but inasmuch as
the common law is the basis of the road law in all the States, it will
be found that the general principles herein laid down are as applicable
in one State as in another.

Believing that good roads and the love of rural life are essential to
the true happiness and lasting prosperity of any people, these pages
have been written with the sincere desire to do something to improve
our roads and to