““To many people who have bought land on Masons Island in the last generation, it is just another nice place to live. To me, looking back over sixty years, it is still the old Mason Farm. There are the rolling fields and gray stone walls, the great gnarled oaks, the groves of cedars, the acres of marsh. Today, much of this still remains, but the fields are neatly divided into house lots with trim little shrubs from the nursery. Instead of the few old houses, stark and plain but always with the dignity and unpretentiousness of their early builders, there are the variety of houses and cottages, each expressing its owner’s attempt to define his position in this modern world. Life in the old days really was more satisfying, in spite of the heavy drudgery, the deaths of babies and mothers and the young people who wasted away. There was the tremendous exhiliration of building a new life in a new land. The future stretched on forever.””