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across to it & meet the Nortons who were coming across from Intervale. 
   Even in this southern end of Maine the country is made up of forests, lakes, & mountains.  The farm land is only in patches. The question is how, with such small farms the people can have such prosperous looking homes. Is it what is called the New England way of keeping up a good appearance?  There is no intensive farming. The pastures are delectable sweet fine fields, the orchards old grassy fields with unkempt trees.  Corn is the principal crop & only one outside silo was seen - there are some inside the barns. Corn factories - canning factories take a great deal of the crop.  We met wagon loads of corn on the way to the factories. They run only 2 - 3 weeks in the year & the farmer families go to do the work. 
   The road was being built up in one place - made into a broad automobile highway - and the farmers were doing the work, not in the old amoebic way but according to regulations, 1/2 the money being given by the state. The faces of the men were good to see, manly, straight forward, self-respecting for the most part.  They matched the houses.

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[[underline]] Auto to Naples [[/underline]]

The type of house seems to be a 2 - 3 story white straight front with dignified front doorway - sometimes with fan decoration over the door, the house leading back by lower levels to the barn which maybe in the same line or jagged to one side [[image - column]] or [[image - t shape]] but almost always connected, & painted white or left unpainted. Winter comfort vs. insurance premiums. When the whole structural extent is white, the effect is harmonious, but a white house attached to an unpainted barn jars on the sensibilities. The yards are scrupulously neat & the houses dignified - & reserved.  Piazzas, flowers, open windows - any sign of outside life is more enough to excite remark.  
   Our good natured farmer chauffeur lived in a large 3 story white house at the 'Harbor'. He had only had his machine this summer & said that there weren't many farmers who had them - reluctantly - that they didn't seem to get ahead much.  He had been an ice man at Intervale 20 yrs. ago - works in lumbering near home in the winter & now between getting in hay & corn crops takes summer people out in his machine at 15¢ a mile. He owns a good deal of land around the lake.  Bought Creeper for