travagance
in dress. A proper Quaker hat for man or woman costs twice or thrice
what plain people of the same station in life would pay. But be it so.
In its day, which is now gone--for only one person now wears "plain
dress" on Quaker Hill--it was a true expression of the "make believe" of
sanctity in plainness. The quiet colors, the prescribed unworldliness
involved a daily discipline, and infused into the wearer an emotional
experience which mere economy and real commonness would never so
continuously have effected.

The "plain speech" has the same effect. It is part of the same dramatic
celebration of an ideal. It is a use of quaint and antique forms, not
grammatically correct nor scriptural, in which "thee" takes the place of
"thou" and you in the singular, both in the nominative and objective
cases. It is not used with the forms of the verb of solemn style, but
with common forms, as "thee has" instead of "thou hast." Another element
of the "plain speech" is the use of such terms as "farewell" for "good
day"--which is declared to be untruthful on bad days! The Quakers also
address one another by their first names, and the old-fashioned Friends
addressed everybody so, refusing to use such titles as "Mr.," "Mrs.," or
"Miss."

Of late years the younger members of the Meeting, while maintaining
their standing there, have used with persons not in the Meeting the
ordinary forms of speech, as they have refused to assume the Quaker
plain garb. With fellow-Quakers and with members of their own families
they say "thee."

Before the period of the mixed community this power of idealization, of
"making believe," had wrought its greatest effects, but it still has
full course and power without the highest direction. The minds of the
residents of the Hill are very suggestible; but the persons who have the
power to implant the suggestion are no longer inspired as of old, with a
sublime and unearthly ideal. They are only animated with an economic
one. But the result is the same. It is social, rather than religious. It
was one thing for the early Friends to cement together a community
through the feeling that in every man was the Spirit of God. A wonderful
appetite was that for the assimilation of new members coming into the
community. It was a doctrine that made all the children birthright
members of the Meeting and so of the community.

But in our later time, between 1895 and 1905, this power of "making
believe" had suffered t