AUTUMN, 1948 ECONE Pcmotezma offflaim 25 Cents (A 'privately supported, state-wide, non-partisan, non-profit organization for the promotion and development of Maine's agricultural, industrial and recreational resources.) 19 4 n AUTUMN 1949 "Jlu £ c■ June: Page The State of Ma in e ...........Robert P. Tristram Coffin 3 “Had a Wonderful Time” ...............William A. Hatch 9 Town Managers in Ma in e ...........Charles E. Dawson 15 Doorways and Beyond : The Nordica Homestead .. Mabel Gould Demers 19 Outdoors in Ma in e ............................John C. Page, Jr. 22 Meet the “Duchess” ..................... William A. Hatch 26 “A W o m a n ’s W o r k ” ..................... Theresa I. Maxfield 28 Governors of Maine, 1900-1948 .. Reginald E. Carles 34 Minstrelsy of Maine ... Edited by Sheldon Christian 38 Around the Cracker Barrel .... Elizabeth A. Mason 40 Famous Maine Recipes.....................June L. Maxfield 43 Maine Recipe..............................Pearl LeBaron Libby Inside Back Cover A Maine Hill in Autum n.............Ruby G. Searway Back Cover THE PINE CONE AUTUMN, 1948 VOL. 4, NO. 3 Published Quarterly by THE STATE OF MAINE PUBLICITY BUREAU PORTLAND . KITTERY . BANGOR . NEW YORK Main Office: 3 St. John St., Portland, 4 Maine GUY P. BUTLER RICHARD A. HEBERT Executive Manager Editorial Manager PINE CONE SUBSCRIPTION: $1 A YEAR (Printed in Maine on Maine-made Paper) THE STATE OF MAINE By Robert P. Tristram Coffin Bowdoin’s Pulitzer Prize winner, poet and author of • more than 25 books here presents a classic defense of his native State in reply to Arnold Toynbee’s blithe dismissal of the Pine Tree State. This essay first appeared in the American Mercury and is reprinted with the kind permis­ sions of the publishers and author. It tops our list of profiles on Maine. he State of Maine has a rugged ment, reticences, and mistrust of T face towards the Atlantic. It has bandwagons, loud-speakers, and cam­ high cheek bones, shaggy eyebrows paigns for establishing righteousness and a prominent chin, being all moun­ by acts of legislature. Most of our tains, woods and deep bays. On the adages are ones calculated to caution map it looks gaunt. But gauntness is people, to take the wind out of big a good old American habit in faces. sails—our own included—and to look Rugged faces look good outdoors and at a horse at both ends. We have been in the weather. Maine looks very good slower than other states at buying in the weather and light. It has a lot gold bricks, subscribing to new deals, of both. And the state of Maine gets or improving our neighbors’ morals. the sun on its face first of all these We have had quite enough to do keep­ United States. ing our own morals shipshape and up My state wakes up first and wakes to scratch. all America up. It is the rooster that No wonder the British historian calls us Americans to the favorite Toynbee sets us down as not having American sport, hard work. Maine done so much as Massachusetts to­ people do a lot of hard work. But you wards our national culture. We are a seldom hear about it. It is so natural, “museum piece—a relic of seven­ so taken for granted, so much like teenth-century New England inhab­ play. ited by woodmen and watermen and Dirigo. “I lead.” But Maine’s motto hunters . Maine today is at once is modestly confined to geography. It one of the longest-settled regions of does not claim leadership in eco­ the least urbanized and sophisticated.” nomics, culture, crime or anything Arnold Toynbee blames it all on the else. Moderation is almost our only weather. It has been too much for us. unbroken state law. Our best people How is this contrast between are moderates—“mod’rits,” as they Maine and Massachusetts to be say it, saving their breath for the oars explained? It would appear that the hardness of the New Eng­ and the bucksaw. They have aspired land environment, which stands to lead the nation in nothing save at its optimum in Massachusetts, staying American according to the is accentuated in Maine to a de­ older rural and village patterns, and gree at which it brings in dimin­ preceding the United States, or Ver­ ishing returns of human response. mont, in going Republican in Presi­ To look at us, or to hear us talk, dential elections. you might think Toynbee is right. Older than Massachusetts in its first Lord knows our climate and soil are settlement, deeply New England in its hard enough and cold enough to keep virtues and vices, houses, barns, thrift, anybody busy just barely keeping and sharp-cornered individualism, alive. Maine cows run thin; they have Maine figures less than any of the hard work getting enough to eat be­ other New England states in national tween junipers and ledges. Our far­ publicity and in the history textbooks. mers live, mostly, on one-horse farms, It* is the state of litotes, understate- where a tractor would break its back. AUTUMN, 1948 3 Yet Toynbee, like so many histori­ ten on the seas of the globe. In the ans, Americans among them, who Civil War, Maine led all the Union count noses and statistics and state states in per capita attendance on that papers, is wrong. Historians who fight for survival. It was hardest hit stick to acts of assembly, wars, state of all northern states. One in every and institutional archives often do five males in Portland was in uniform. miss the intangibles that mean more Whole towns disappeared. The Presi­ to culture than any programs of civic dent of Bowdoin College took the col­ enlargement. lege en masse to war. In the last two It is true that Maine has never got global wars, Maine men fought in as much into the history books. We did high a proportion as any state on not run true to the Puritan ecclesias­ land, on sea, in the air. But we were tical pattern from our beginnings. So, so small we had no regiments or divi­ when all history was church history, sions with our Pine Tree emblem. we got left out in the cold. The first Maine’s population, not much larger New England church was an Angli­ now than in 1860, is about that of can one, at the Kennebec’s mouth, es­ Cleveland, Ohio. The statistics are al­ tablished in 1608. We had some good ways bound to be against us, there­ early settlers, but they weren’t always fore. At any moment, we seem to be of the right politics. Some of our first small potatoes and few in a hill. But families did not leave calling-cards, we do raise potatoes. And it is partly they were no better than they should our fault that our achievements es­ be—often not even that!—they left cape Mr. Toynbee. We have never their European home towns without gone in for historical monuments or leaving a forwarding address. They for societies for the preservation or came over here for good reasons, but publicizing of antiquities or civic not the churchly ones. Hence histori­ righteousnesses. We have been more ans overlook the fact that the model interested in making the present chim­ for all later American commonwealths ney draw, digging today’s mess of founded on the principles of religious clams, or giving our children a good toleration and minority rights was Sir education than in advertising our an­ Ferdinando Gorges’ colonial experi­ cestors. We have trusted in monu­ ment in Maine. It was too free for ments too little and in little boys and Puritan Massachusetts, and so it died girls too much to bulk large histori­ a sudden death when King Charles cally. was beheaded. The first graveyard But we have got along pretty well with Roman Catholics and Protestants without getting into the history books. buried side by side is on an island in History books have a way of going Maine. out of date and gathering dust; and men who work hard and mind their II own business, make their own boats Most of our Maine history is mar­ and lobster traps, have a way of out­ ginal. There are no good records kept lasting the statistics and contributing of it, no archives of deeds and char­ to the national life even if unmen­ ters. It supplements Massachusetts or tioned in the newspapers. America at large. A good deal of our A lot of Maine history is in forms civic strength has been used up in Mr. Toynbee and other historians minding our own business and letting have no yardstick to measure. For in­ other people alone. Yet when the na­ stance, Maine’s history is in Ohio, In­ tion needed our aid, it was usually diana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, there. In the French and Indian wars, Minnesota, Oregon and Washington. Maine men cracked the Gibraltar of the western hemisphere at Louisburg. Maine helped many states to get on But Maine history was Massachusetts their feet and make a good start. history then. In the Revolution, Maine Every third or so of the pioneer fam­ furnished as many men in propoi’tion ilies in those states hailed from Maine. to its population as Massachusetts. Maine lumbermen, farmers, humorists In proportion to its population Maine (we have had to breed them or die!), was the most maritime of all the dairymen, boat-builders, engineers and states when American history, be­ men of gadgets have been, for 150 tween 1815 and 1880, was being writ­ years, the standard for all America.