al,
internal and emotional.
It was expressed in the comment of one excellent representative citizen
upon another, "He does not seem to me to be the man he once was. He does
not say in meetings the things he used to say. He used to be very
helpful in his remarks." This was said at a time when the citizen
commented on was laboring heroically for a public improvement by which
the citizen speaking would chiefly be benefited.
The Quaker Hill man and woman desire to make money. They instinctively
love money, though not for any other purpose than saving. They cherish
no illusions of an unworldly sort about it. This is true of Quaker and
Catholic, laborer and summer resident. It is true of the small class of
cultivated intellectual-aesthetes, who might be expected to be less
mercenary. They all value money; but not for display, not for luxury,
scarcely for travel; not for books or the education of children. Quaker
Hill men and women would accumulate money, invest and manage it wisely
and live in respectable "plainness." This characteristic is written
largely over the whole social area. It is an instinct.
The emotional nature of this population has been by long-continued
application of an accepted discipline, economic and religious,
restrained and schooled. More beautiful personalities than some of the
Quaker and Irish women of the Hill, schooled in a discipline which
produces the most charming manners, the gentlest kindness, one may never
see. There is no cloud in the sky of these women's justice,
truthfulness, goodness. One may remember, even with them, a day of
anger, of indignation; but it was a storm restrained; the lightnings
were held in sure hands, and the attack was eminently just.
But this very discipline has resulted, in other persons, in an explosive
emotionality. One person suffers this explosion in a periodic lawsuit--a
rare action for the Hill; another in an almost insane family quarrel,
another in an occasional fury of futile violence, another in periods,
increasing in frequency as he grows older, of causeless and uncontrolled
anger, or extravagant grief; and when weightier occasion is lacking, in
torrents of language poured forth from the treasuries of an exhaustless
memory. The very serenity and placidity which Quaker worship and
industry produce in the true Quaker have resulted in the emotional ruin
of some, and in the subconscious volcanic state in others.
Strange to say, the immigrants, Irish and A
|