eeting in 1828, the
building of turnpikes, and the coming of the railroad in 1849. A
cultured daughter of Quaker Hill, whose life has extended through some
of those years, has called them "the dark ages." It was the middle age
of the community. The economic life of the place was undergoing change,
under the penetrating influence of the railroad; the population was
undergoing radical renovation, the ambitious sons of the old stock
moving away, and their places being filled at the bottom of the social
ladder by foreigners, and by immigration of residents and "summer
boarders" of the "world's people." Above all, the powerful ideal of
Quakerism was shattered. The community had lost the "make-believe" at
which it had played for a century in perfect unity. With it went the
moral and social authority of the Meeting. Two Meetings mutually
contradicting could never express the ideal of Quakerism, that asserted
the inspiration of all and every man with the one divine spirit. This
schism, too, was not local, but the Monthly Meeting on the Hill was
divided in the same year as the Yearly Meeting in New York, the
Quarterly Meetings in the various sections, and the local Monthly
Meetings throughout the United States.

The Period of the Mixed Community, from the building of Akin Hall and
the Mizzen-Top Hotel in 1880 to the year 1905 has been studied
personally by the present writer; and it is his belief that during this
short period, especially from 1890 to 1900, the Hill enjoyed as perfect
a communal life as in the Period of the Quaker Community. The same
social influence was at work. An exceptionally strong principle of
assimilation, to be studied in detail in this book, which made of the
original population a century and a half earlier a perfect community,
now made a mixed population of Quakers, Irish Catholics and New York
City residents, into a community unified, no less obedient to a
modified ideal, having its leaders, its mode of association, its
peculiar local integrity and a certain moral distinction.

This period appears at the time of this writing, in 1907, to be coming
slowly to an end, owing to the death of many of the older members of the
Quaker families, and the swift diminution--with their authority
removed--of the Quaker influence, which was the chief factor in the
community's power of assimilation.

If one may state in condensed form what this study discovers in Quaker
Hill that is uncommon and exceptional, one wou