of milk, or make butter,
or fatten calves, but not as their central means of support.

To these farmhouses come year after year the same paying guests, each
house having its own constituency, built up through thirty years of
patient and unbroken service. The charm of the Quaker character, the
excellence of the cooking and the enjoyable character of the other
factors of the household, bring patrons back; while the benefits of the
elevation and pure air are, to city dwellers, material returns for the
moneys expended. For this board, the price charged is, in the Irish
Catholic household, five dollars per week; in one of the oldtime Quaker
houses, six dollars, and in the others from eight to ten or twelve
dollars per week.

The season in which boarders can be secured in paying numbers is a
period extending from June fifteenth to October first, with the houses
filled only in the months of July and August. For this period, which is
one continued strain upon the housekeepers and their aids, preparation
begins as early as the month of March. The housework is generally done
by the women of the family, with some employed help, of an inferior
sort. The horses and carriages on the farm must be used for the
transportation of guests, and for hire to those who drive for pleasure.
On one farm sheep are kept; though most of the boarding-houses buy their
meat supplies of the dealers mentioned below.

Of late years the help employed in these boarding-houses, in addition to
members of the family, has come to be negroes from Culpepper County,
Virginia. These employees come each spring and return in the fall.

The one Irish Catholic boarding-house is for the entertainment of the
hired men on the lower part of the Hill, near the Hotel. It is
maintained throughout the year, with a varying number of guests, by a
woman ninety years of age, who in addition to the management, does much
of the hard work herself.

The conservatism of the Hill families is shown in the fact that the
boarding-house business has never been extended. No house has ever been
erected for that purpose alone; but the present business of that sort
is carried on in the old Quaker homes, each receiving only as many paid
guests as it was used to receive of its hospitable duty, when the
Quarterly Meeting brought Friends from afar, once in the year.

Mizzen-Top Hotel is perhaps an exception, if, indeed, a large hotel,
with quarters for two hundred and fifty guests, and at pr