A Maine Hamlet describes the village of Marshfield, near Machias, Maine, at the turn of the century. Lura Beam, who was born in 1887, lived in Marshfield for twelve years with her grandparents, spent summers there another five, and visited off and on thereafter. A graduate of Barnard with a master's from Columbia, Beam had taught black children in the South for the American Missionary Association, worked for the Interchurch World Movement and the Association of American Colleges, wrote numerous articles and co-authored two books, and then, in the 1950s, turned a gentle sociologist's eye on a village she remembered quite clearly, where, for the most part, the inhabitants were closer to their Revolutionary forebears in