separated from one another.

It was the custom for women to have delegated to them certain religious
functions, at Monthly Meeting and Quarterly and Yearly Meetings, on
which they deliberated, before submitting them to the whole meeting.
This old Oblong Meeting House is a mute record and symbol of the
century-old contest of the Puritan spirit among the old Quakers,
striving for an inflexibly right relation between the sexes. They
attained their ends through the creation of a community, but not until
the community dissolved.

The position of woman among Friends is another eloquent tribute to the
two-fold "dealing" of Quakerism with women. She is man's equal, but she
is man's greatest source of danger. She must be on a par with him, but
she must be apart from him. The relations of men and women are therefore
very interesting. In doctrinal matters, in discussion, in preaching and
"testifying," men and women are equal, and the respect that a man has
for his wife or sister or neighbor woman, in these functions of a devout
sort is like that he has for another man. Generally the men of the
Quaker school of influence believe as a matter of course in the
intellectual and juristic equality of women with men; and in the
religious equality of the individual woman with the individual man. But
in the practical arts and in business a woman is a woman and a man is a
man. Here the women are restricted by convention to housekeeping, which
on large farms is quite enough for them; and the men have the outdoor
life, the "trading," and the gainful occupations--except the boarding of
city people. There is no especial respect for the "managing woman" who
"runs a farm"; the community expects such a woman to fail.

Moreover, between the sexes there is no camaraderie, no companionship of
an intellectual sort between husband and wife, no free exchange of ideas
except in circles made up of the members of one sex. In any public
meeting the men habitually sit apart from their wives and from the women
members of their families, even though the audiences be not bilaterally
halved.

The orbits of man's and woman's lives are separate, though each ascribes
to the individuals of the other sex an ethical and religious parity. The
effect is seen in the diminishing of the numbers of men on the Hill, in
the group-life of the women, and in the type of woman. It may be well to
consider these in reverse order.

The individual Quaker Hill woman, so far as she