HIDDEN CORNERS OF THE MID-ATLANTIC STATES

Further meanderings (Hidden Corners of New England, 1976) along less-traveled roads--to be found, in the highly developed mid-Atlantic states, mostly by the shore or in the highlands. Targeted here are the Methodist enclave of Ocean Grove, an oasis of rectitude on the New Jersey coast, and extravagantly Victorian Cape May; numerous fishing communities, from forlorn Bivalve and Shell Pile, N.J., where oyster schooners were once so thick ""you could walk from one side o t'river to t'other,"" to contented Smith Island in the middle of Chesapeake Bay, famous for its softshell crabs. Inland and up, there's Doylestown, Pa., where the architectural fancies of one singular man house a pottery works, a haunted-by-design mansion, and a vast collection of agricultural and craft implements. Also: Pennsylvania's Endless Mountains for solitaries, the Virginia Hunt country for voyeurs, an Appalachian coal town and the bright-tobacco belt for work-study tourists. With the author's pencil sketches, a suggestive allround itinerary.