Quaker Hill Part 11

I do not think that Quaker Hill people have much expectation of benefit from social life. They are habitually skeptical of its advantages, though eager to avail themselves of those advantages when proven. Almost every person on the Hill, however, is a member of some secret society, to which he is drawn by antic.i.p.ations of economic advantage, or of moral culture.

Nor can I say that there is prompt or general reaction to wrongdoing, either of one or of many. I might ill.u.s.trate with two cases. In one a rich man perverted a public trust, openly, to his own advantage; and a conspiracy of silence hedged his wrong about. In the other, a youth entered in one winter every house on the Hill in succession, and there was no one to detect or to punish him.

The Hill does not exhibit the highest type of social response in the recognition of impersonal evil, in the quest of knowledge, or in free discussion. Almost two centuries of dogma-worship, with its contemplation of selected facts, has made it now impossible to secure from one thoroughly socialized in the spirit of the place the exact truth upon any matter. It seems to be reserve which conceals it, but it is rather the effect of continued perversion of the sense of right and wrong, and indifference to knowledge for its own sake.

The ideal of the common mind of Quaker Hill is the practice of inner and immaterial religion. It looks for the effects of certain dogmas, effects expressed in emotions, convictions, experiences. The ideal contains no thought of the community or of its welfare. It is purely individual, 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 cla.s.s 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 acc.u.mulate 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 American, have in this conformed to the better type; so that gentle manners, placidity of character and restraint of emotion may be said to prevail among them.

As for judgment, on economic questions and matters of benevolence the judgment of Quaker Hill people is sound. They use money sanely and with wisdom. They act wisely in matters of poverty and need, or appeal on behalf of the dependent. On other matters, outside the range of the social discipline in which the community has been to school, not so much can be said.

The judgment of the community is not determined by evidence in any other matters than economic. The Quaker Hill mind works subjectively on the lines of instincts and habits inherited and inbred. Auto-suggestion has been a great force in this community. Men and women have had an impression, "a leading," believed to come from the Divine Spirit, and have acted upon it and have led others with them. So that the prevailing determination of the social judgment has been by personal suggestion, and the appeal of inner convictions, fortified by alleged divine influence. It must be said that this is a disappearing habit. Even those born Quakers, now that the Hicksite Meeting has been discontinued since 1885, and the Orthodox since 1903, and the Quarterly Meetings of both societies have ceased to come to the Hill, do not so often see visions or act upon "leadings." The influence of non-Quakers in the place has been of late to quarantine such "leadings" and prevent social contagion.

Frugality is universal. Almost every resident laboring man has a bank account. Indeed, these laborers have done more in saving than have the farmers. But the tastes of all are simple. Clothing is never showy or expensive, and housekeeping is carried on with the most sparing use of purchased articles.

Cleanly most of the people of the Hill are, in person and in their care of house and grounds, of carriages, horses and other properties. The houses and barns are always freshly painted, and an appearance of neatness pervades the community.

For reasons which I will mention in a later paragraph the men and women trained under Quakerism are not orderly, either in the use of their time or in the management of their labor, or in anything, save in the discipline of their religion and in the economic system to which they give themselves.

The community has grown in compa.s.sion since the days when Surgeon Fallon's soldiers were starved and neglected in the Meeting House.

To-day I am sure no cla.s.s of men in real need could appeal to the community, or to any const.i.tuent group of it, in vain. The growth has been along lines which, beginning in a group-compa.s.sion that has from earliest days recompensed any poor member of the Meeting in his sudden losses of property, have widened first to Quakers of other places, then to other Christians, then to other men, and last of all to Quakers of the other Quaker sect; and from Protestant to Catholic and Catholic to Protestant.

Property seems to be sacred. Doors of houses and barns do not require locks, but one winter there was a series of house-breakings, in which almost every summer residence on the Hill was entered. Contents were inspected, but nothing was stolen. But the honesty here is a pa.s.sive honesty. It is not the aggressively just fulfilment of obligation which one finds in New England.

The Hill is a community with a high level of chast.i.ty. This may be said of all cla.s.ses, though not uniformly of all. Yet it was not always so.

The first century of the life of the Quakers here is recorded in the minutes of Oblong Meeting as one long struggle of Quaker discipline against unchast.i.ty. There is an amazing frankness about these records, and a persistence in the exercise of discipline, a frequency of accusation, proof, conviction, expulsion from the Meeting, which is astonishing to the twentieth century reader. The best families furnished the culprits almost as often as they supplied the accusers and prosecuting committees. So many are the cases and so frequent the expulsions, often for matters which might better have been ignored, but generally for substantial offences, that one wonders who was left in the Meeting. But men often confessed and were received again, and the Meeting held its ground. In general it may be said that often in the eighteenth century there were more cases of unchast.i.ty dealt with in a year by the Meeting, in a population no larger than the present, than have come to public knowledge in the past ten years in this community.

The change shows also in a reserve of speech upon these matters.

The characteristic pleasures of the community, as a whole, are few.

There is a group of women of leisure, of course, devoted to bridge-whist, who come in the summer and do not go far from the Hotel.

Young men go hunting, and a few grown men are fond of fishing. The typical person provides himself with no pleasures outside of his family and home. Men and women are too busy to play, and the Quakers educated themselves out of a playful mind.

There are a few pleasures which are native and general. One of these is public a.s.sembly, with an entertaining speaker as a central pleasure.

Quaker Hill audiences are alert and keen hearers, and indulgent critics of a public speaker. There are only two other forms of public entertainment more pleasing to them. The first is a dramatic presentation. Many of the Quakers are excellent actors, and the Irish are quite their equals, while the other newcomers are equally appreciative. The Christmas play in Akin Hall is a great annual event, a.s.sembling all the people on the Hill of all cla.s.ses and groups, for it embodies very many of the appeals to characteristic pleasure. Only one other attraction is more generally responded to; I refer to a dinner.

Something good to eat, in common with one's neighbors, in a place hallowed by historic a.s.sociations, under religious auspices--here you have the call that brings Quaker Hill all together. On such a day there will be none left behind.

Of all these sorts is the attraction the Quaker Hill Conference has for the people of the neighborhood. It is a universal appeal to the capacity for pleasure in the community. It presents famous and eloquent speakers through the days of the week. Matters of religion, farming, morals, literature, are discussed, by men of taste and culture; and the closing day is Quaker Hill Day. On this day, after an a.s.sembly in the old Oblong Meeting House, erected in 1764, at which the neighborhood has listened to papers descriptive of the past of the Hill, all adjourn for a generous dinner under the trees of Akin Hall, or latterly under a tent beside the Meeting House, partaken of by four hundred people, of all groups and cla.s.ses, and followed by brisk, happy speeches by visitors present. This, after almost two centuries of keen interest in the question of amus.e.m.e.nts, is the last and most perfect expression of the capacity for amus.e.m.e.nt in the community.

[Ill.u.s.tration: OBLONG MEETING HOUSE]

[Ill.u.s.tration: MEMORIAL STONE]

Of active pleasure-taking, Quaker Hill, purely considered, is incapable.

It should be said that the Roman Catholic Church in Pawling provides its people with a yearly feast, parallel with the Conference, which was for years held in a grove on the borders of Quaker Hill.

Traits of character which are general or even common among Quaker Hill people are worthy of mention under the heads of regular industry, frugality, cleanliness, temperance, chast.i.ty, honesty as to property, and compa.s.sion.

Politically the Hill was until the year 1896 inclined to be Democratic.

For years a number of the Protestants on the Hill have been Prohibitionists.

Primitive notions of morals survive in spite of what has been said earlier, in isolated instances, or tend to recur in certain families.

Until twelve years ago members of certain families maintained the right to catch fish with a net in Hammersley Lake. Over the line in Connecticut this practice, and that of taking fish with a spear, survive in spite of law. But this primitive method was forcibly ended by the attempt to arrest the chief offender. He made his escape from the officers, but has never returned, and the practice has not till this date, 1905, been resumed on Quaker Hill.

Primitive moralities of s.e.x appear in certain families, in which in each generation there appears one illegitimate child, at least; as it were a reminder of their disorderly past. The chari-vari survives among the better cla.s.s of working people, a strange, noisy outbreak for a Quaker community, with which a newly married pair are usually serenaded.

I find also no animistic ideas, or practices; no folk-lore and no magic.

The Quaker Hill imagination has been disciplined.

The preferred attainment in this community is neither power, splendor, pleasure, nor ceremonial purity; nor yet justice, liberty or enlightenment; but rather, first of all, prosperity, a well-being in which one's good fortune sheds its favors on others; secondly, righteousness, to be enjoyed in religious complacency; and thirdly, equality. This last is one of the few elements of a social ideal actually realized. Even among the women of the place there is a simple and unaffected democracy in the religious and communal societies, which is quite unusual in such a place.

Of sacred places there are avowedly none. But the historic sense of the community is reverent, almost religious, in its regard for the past; so that the Oblong Meeting House, cradle of the community, and for over a century its home and house of government, is chief in the affections of all. In the summer of 1904 this place was marked for all time by the placing there of a boulder of white feldspar, bearing a bronze tablet inscribed with the important facts of the history of that spot.

Quaker Hill does not desire to expand. The type of community preferred is the simple, small, and exclusive. In this all agree, whether they confess it or not. No expansion will ever come by native forces or conscious purpose.

Quaker Hill reveres leaders, not heroes; and not saints, for men have been cherished for their leadership in dogmatic activities, rather than for their abstract goodness or human value. The type of the social mind that has been most esteemed is the dogmatic-emotional. Even Albert J.

Akin, whose dogma was the union of all Christians, had no patience with any divergence in religious experience from this, his dogma.

The forms of complex activity that are chiefly cherished are, first, the economic arts; second, religion; third, morals; and fourth, things pertaining to costume. The inst.i.tutions chiefly prized are the family and marriage, the economic system and the cultural system, especially the church.

Social welfare is conceived of under forms of peace, the increase and diffusion of wealth, industry, and by a minority, culture. High morality is most valued as an element in the social personality. Next after it is a highly developed sociality. Social policies would be favored on the Hill as they represented authority and individualism. Conversion is the accepted means of modifying type.

Practical politics may be said to be foreign to Quaker Hill, for reasons drawn from its isolation and religious offishness. An exception was in the early part of the nineteenth century, when Daniel Akin, apparently in consequence of mercantile position, was elected County Judge. After him, his brother Albro was appointed to the office.

The consciousness of kind on Quaker Hill is stronger in the group than in the community. Yet the general sense of "unity" is very strong and it often comes into play.

The chief social bonds which unite the whole community are, first of all, imitation, in which process it seems to me the Quakers are a peculiarly subtle people. Second, a good-will which pervades the Hill like a genial atmosphere. Third, kindness, which on certain occasions draws the whole community together in unusual acts of helpfulness to some member in need.

CHAPTER V.

PRACTICAL DIFFERENCES AND RESEMBLANCES.

The prevailing type of mind among Quaker Hill folk is the Ideo-Emotional; for these folk are a gentle, social sort of persons, ready of affection, imaginative and a.n.a.logical in mental process, weak and complacent in emotionality, with motor reaction rather inconstant, and of slow response. Of these I find thirty-seven families.