leths as well as orthodoxy.
"Business is business" on Quaker Hill. Not "to save money" is an
unforgiven sin--and a rare one!
Much has been done in forming the common mind of Quaker Hill by
antipathies and sympathies, chiefly again of a religious order modified
by the economic. The community is markedly divided into rich and poor,
and into orthodox and not-orthodox. These have no inclination one to
another. Each group has its symbols and pass-words, and while
neighborly, and answering to certain appeals to which the community has
always responded, each resident of the Hill lives and dwells in his own
group and has no expectation of moving out of it. So long as a man stays
in his group he is, by a balancing of antipathy and sympathy, respected
and valued. If he venture to be other than what he was born to be, he
suffers all the social penalties of a highly organized community.
Authority, working along the lines of belief and dogma, has almost
irresistible force for the Quaker Hill social mind. A visitor to the
Hill said "These are an obedient people." Any barrenness of the Hill is
to be attributed rather to the lack of leaders who could speak to the
beliefs and in harmony with the dogmas, than to lack of willingness to
obey authority. From the past the families on the Hill inherit their
willingness respectively to command and to obey. This is true socially
of certain families and religiously of others. That to-day some are not
led is due solely to the decadence of initiative in the households
which, by reason of wealth or dogmatic rectitude, inherit and claim the
first place.
It was said above that Quaker Hill has shown great power of assimilating
foreign material, and of causing newcomers to be possessed of the
communal spirit. The agency which from the first accomplished this was
religious idealization, embodied in the meeting, the dress, language and
manners of Friends. Generally the Meeting was recruited from births, and
members were such by birthright. In former times the community and the
Meeting were one. This assimilating of foreign material by social
imitation to the Quaker type, and into organic subjection to the Quaker
Hill community, was wrought by six agencies. They were language,
manners, costume, amusements, worship, and morals. In each of these the
Quakers were peculiar. In the use of the "plain language" the Quakers
had a machinery of amazing and subtle fascination for holding the
attention, purifyi
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