ense atmosphere of communal interaction. He who
raised hogs was to sell them, not to a distant market, but to Daniel
Merritt, or John Toffey, the storekeepers. He who made shoes went from
house to house, full of news, always talking, always hearing. He who
wove heard not his creaking loom, but the voice of the storekeeper or of
the neighbor to whom he would sell. The cheeses a woman pressed and
wiped in a morning were to be sold, not far away to persons unseen, but
to neighbors known, whose tastes were nicely ascertained and regarded.

The result was that meetings on First Day and Fourth Day were times of
intense pleasure, occasions of all-around interest: not mere business
interest, but incidentally a large satisfaction of the play instinct,
especially for the working and mature persons. The young, too, had their
happiness and enjoyment of one another in a multitude of ways, in
addition to those boisterous games described above by Mr. James Wood.
Their intense friendships and lively enterprises were probably not so
easy to confine to the bounds of sober, staid meetings, but no less did
their merry good spirits fill those assemblies. The galleries of the old
Meeting House were built in 1800 for the young, who were expected to sit
there during meeting. The wooden curtains between the "men's part" and
the "women's part" are especially thorough in their exclusion of even an
eyeshot from one side to the other.

CHAPTER VI.

THE IDEALS OF THE QUAKERS.

In the Introduction to Professor Carver's "Sociology and Social
Progress" is a passage of great significance to one who would understand
Quaker Hill, or indeed any community, especially if it be religiously
organized. The writer refers to: "a most important psychic factor,
namely the power of idealization. This may be defined, not very
accurately, as the power of _making believe_, a factor which
sociologists have scarcely appreciated as yet. We have such popular
expressions as 'making a virtue of necessity,' which indicates that
there is a certain popular appreciation of the real significance of this
power, but we have very little in the way of a scientific appreciation
of it.

"One of the greatest resources of the human mind is its ability to
persuade itself that what is necessary is noble or dignified or
honorable or pleasant. For example, the greater part of the human race
has been found to live under conditions of almost incessant warfare. War
being a necessi