Quaker Hill Part 9

[33] Descriptive and Historical Sociology, p. 118.

CHAPTER II.

THE ECONOMY OF HOUSE AND FIELD.

The hospitality of the Quakers is worthy of a treatise, not of the critical order, but poetic and imaginative. It cannot be described in mere social a.n.a.lysis. It has grown out of their whole order of life, and expresses their religious view, as well as their economic habits. I showed in Chapter VII, Part I, that the hospitality of the Friends acquired religious importance from their belief that in every man is the Spirit of G.o.d. With the simplicity, and direct adherence to a few truths, which characterized the early Friends this belief was practiced, and became one of the religious customs of the Society. They entertained travellers, "especially such as were of the household of faith." They made it a religious tenet to house and welcome "Friends travelling on truth's account."

With equal directness they proceeded further to welcome every traveller, and to endure often the intrusions of those who would not be desired as guests, because they believed that such might be acting by the divine impulse.

The hospitality, therefore, of such a community is very beautiful. For they have their ways of a.s.serting themselves, in spite of non-resistance. They open their doors, they set their table, with a religious spirit. A thoroughness characterizes all their household arrangements, a grace is given to all their housekeeping, which infuses an indescribable content into the experiences of a guest in these homes.

Their hospitality to one another has been therefore a powerful enginery for continuing and for extending the domains of Quakerism.

On Quaker Hill the living generations have known this hospitality in two notable ways only, in the Quarterly Meetings, and in the transformed hospitality of the boarding-house. The Quarterly Meeting is now gone from the Hill. Both the Hicksite Meeting, which was "laid down" in 1885, and the Orthodox Meeting, which ceased to meet in 1905, brought in their day to the Hill, once in the year, an inundation of guests, who stayed through the latter days of a week, and then went their way, to meet quarterly throughout the year, but in other places, until the season came again for Quaker Hill.

The Quaker Hill Quarterly was in August, and "after haying." "The roads were full of the Quakers going up to the Meeting House." In every Quaker home they were welcomed, whether they had written to announce their coming, or whether they had not. All through the days of the Meeting, they would renew the old ties, and discuss the pa.s.sing of the Society, the interests of the Kingdom, as they saw it, "the things of the spirit."

They meet no more. In the Quarterly Meeting, which comprises the Monthly Meetings of an area comparable to Dutchess County, there are still some Friends, and some meetings which are not "laid down." But they come no more, at "Quarterly Meeting time" to Quaker Hill. Many of the older members are dead. Of the younger members many have only a pa.s.sive adherence to Quakerism, only sufficient to excuse them from undesirable worldliness, and from irksome responsibility in other religious bodies.

The hospitality of the old Quaker a.s.semblings has pa.s.sed over into the business of boarding city people. The same table is set, the same welcome given; but to the paid guest.

The pa.s.sing of the old hospitality of the Friends was ill.u.s.trated in the years of the writer's residence on the Hill, in the person of an old peddler, known as Charles Eagle. It had been the ancient custom to entertain any and every wayfarer; and Eagle journeyed from South to North about once a month in the warmer seasons, for many years. He had enjoyed the entertainment of the Quakers, following the ancient line of their settlements along the Oblong, and stopping overnight in their ample, kindly households. He carried a pack on his back and another large bundle in his hand. His pace was slow, like that of an ox, but untiring and unresting, hour after hour. His person, st.u.r.dy and short, was clothed in overall stuff, elaborately patched and mended. At first sight it seemed to be patched from use and age; but closer inspection showed that the patches were deliberately sewed on the new material. He wore a straw hat in summer, decorated with a bright ribbon, in which were flowers in season. He wore also a red wig, tied under his chin with a ribbon. His face was like that of an Indian, with broad cheek-bones and small shifting eyes.

Eagle was French, and professed to be a refugee, a person of interest to foreign monarchs. On the inner wrapping of his pack was written large, "Vive le Napoleon! Vive la France! Vive!" He had little hesitation about speaking of himself, though always with stilted courtesy, and always furtively.

He made a study of astronomy, and every night would ask his hostess, with much apology but firm insistence, for a pitcher of water, and for the privilege that he might retire early to his room, open the window and view the stars. Strange to say, in this he was not merely eccentric; for his reading was of the latest books on the science, and he exchanged with Akin Hall Library a Young's Astronomy for a Newcomb's, in 1898. He accompanied the presentation of the later book, in which was the author's name inscribed with a note to Mr. Eagle, with a demonstration of a theory of the Aurora Borealis.

Eagle never tried to sell his goods on the Hill, and indeed it is doubtful if he carried them for any other purpose than to conceal his real commodities, which were watches. Of these he carried a good selection of the better and of the cheaper sorts, all concealed in the center of his pack, among impossible dry goods and varied fancy wares.

An attempt was made to rob him, or at least to annoy him, by some young men; and he shot one of his a.s.sailants. For this offence he was, after trial, sent to the Asylum for the Criminal Insane.

His earlier journeys over the Hill found him a welcome guest at the Quaker homes. But the subst.i.tution of boarding for the ancient hospitality made the peddler unwelcome; and he pa.s.sed through without stopping in his later years.

The Quarterly Meeting of the Society of Friends was the annual culmination of the hospitality of the Hill population. Coming in August, "after haying," it was for a century and a half the great a.s.sembly of the people of the Hill, and of their kindred and friends; and until the Orthodox Meeting ceased to meet, in 1905, there was Quarterly Meeting in the smaller Meeting House. The old hospitality was never diminished by the Quakers as long as their meetings continued. Even though the same house were filled with paying boarders, the family retreated to the attic, the best rooms were devoted to the "Friends travelling on truth's account;" and the same house saw hospitality of the old sort extended for one week to the religious guests, and of the new sort faithfully set forth for the guests who paid for it by the week.

The Quakeress and daughter of Quakers has produced the summer boarding-house; which is no more than the ample Quaker home, organized to extend the thrifty hospitality continuously for four months, for good payment in return, which has always been extended to Friends and visiting relatives for longer or shorter periods in the past, as an act of household grace.

The Quaker Hill woman is a good housekeeper. The substantial farmhouses on the Hill are outward signs of excellent homes within. The table is well spread, with a measured abundance, which satisfies but does not waste. The rooms are each furnished forth in spare and righteous daintiness, over which nowadays is poured, in occasional instances, a pretty modern color, timidly laid on, which does not remove the prim Quakerness. Ventures in the use of decoration, however, have been crude in most cases, and the results, so far as they have been effected by the taste of the woman of the Hill, are incongruous in color, and ill-a.s.sorted in design. It is in house-furnishing that the tendency of the daughter of the Quakers shows the most frequent variation.

Occasionally one sees the outcropping of a really artistic spirit--peculiarly refreshing because so rare--which has only in a woman's mature years ventured to indulge in a bit of happy color; but the venture if successful is always reserved and simple; and the most of such ventures are of unhappy result.

The housekeeping arts have reached a high degree of perfection on the Hill. Cooking is there done with a precision, economy and tastefulness in sharp contrast to the non-aesthetic manner in which the Quakers conduct most occupations. It is, moreover, a kind of cooking after the Quaker manner, at once frugal and abundant. For of all people, the Quakers have learned to manage generously and economically.

The outcome of this housekeeping is the diversion of much of the business energy of the Hill to the "keeping of boarders." Seven of the old Quaker families, and one Irish Catholic household are devoted to the keeping of boarders; five of them being supported in the main by this business. Of these five families, however, four reside upon farms of more than one hundred and fifty acres apiece. These families sell at certain times in the year, a certain quant.i.ty of milk, or make b.u.t.ter, or fatten calves, but not as their central means of support.

To these farmhouses come year after year the same paying guests, each house having its own const.i.tuency, built up through thirty years of patient and unbroken service. The charm of the Quaker character, the excellence of the cooking and the enjoyable character of the other factors of the household, bring patrons back; while the benefits of the elevation and pure air are, to city dwellers, material returns for the moneys expended. For this board, the price charged is, in the Irish Catholic household, five dollars per week; in one of the oldtime Quaker houses, six dollars, and in the others from eight to ten or twelve dollars per week.

The season in which boarders can be secured in paying numbers is a period extending from June fifteenth to October first, with the houses filled only in the months of July and August. For this period, which is one continued strain upon the housekeepers and their aids, preparation begins as early as the month of March. The housework is generally done by the women of the family, with some employed help, of an inferior sort. The horses and carriages on the farm must be used for the transportation of guests, and for hire to those who drive for pleasure.

On one farm sheep are kept; though most of the boarding-houses buy their meat supplies of the dealers mentioned below.

Of late years the help employed in these boarding-houses, in addition to members of the family, has come to be negroes from Culpepper County, Virginia. These employees come each spring and return in the fall.

The one Irish Catholic boarding-house is for the entertainment of the hired men on the lower part of the Hill, near the Hotel. It is maintained throughout the year, with a varying number of guests, by a woman ninety years of age, who in addition to the management, does much of the hard work herself.

The conservatism of the Hill families is shown in the fact that the boarding-house business has never been extended. No house has ever been erected for that purpose alone; but the present business of that sort is carried on in the old Quaker homes, each receiving only as many paid guests as it was used to receive of its hospitable duty, when the Quarterly Meeting brought Friends from afar, once in the year.

Mizzen-Top Hotel is perhaps an exception, if, indeed, a large hotel, with quarters for two hundred and fifty guests, and at prices ranging from three dollars per day up, be an exception. It has grown out of the same conditions which transformed the farmhouses into boarding-houses, save that it has never been managed at a profit, and they never at a loss. It is, however, an inst.i.tution by itself, and will be treated in another place.

The Mizzen-Top Hotel has always been a sober inst.i.tution, influenced thereto by the pleasureless spirit of the Hill. Baseball, tennis, and golf in their times have had vogue there, but under every management it has been hard to arouse and maintain active interest in outdoor or indoor sports. The direct road to Hammersley Lake, formerly called Quaker Hill Pond, has made possible a moderate indulgence in carriage-driving. The laying out of the golf links in 1897 set going that dignified sport, just as the Wayside Path in 1880 occasioned some mild pedestrianism. But the Hotel diminishes rather than increases in its play-activities; and only games of cards retain a hold upon the guests, who prefer the piazza, the croquet ground, the tennis court, and the golf links in rapidly diminishing proportion.

Intemperance was common in earlier times, and drinking was universal.

Every household made and stored for winter many barrels of cider. Rum and wine were freely bought at the store. Their use in the harvest field was essential to the habits of agriculture which preceded the times of the mower and reaper. This free use of cider, with accompanying intemperance, survives in only two houses on Quaker Hill.

Miss Taber's account, in "Some Glimpses of the Past," describes the drinking habits of the older period: "It was customary to have cider on the table at every meal, the ladies would have their tea, but most of the men drank cider largely, many to excess, consequently there were great quant.i.ties made in the fall and stored in the cellars during the winter. A large farmer would lay out a great deal of work, gathering from ten to twenty cartloads of apples, hooping and cleaning barrels, and many ground and pressed their own cider, then the large casks were drawn to and placed in the cellars. This usually occupied a large part of the month of October. In the spring a portion of the hard cider would be taken to a distiller, and made into cider brandy to be used in the haying and harvest field, at sheep washings, butchering, raisings, shearings and on many occasions. Some was always on the sideboard and often on the table. In most households there were sideboards well furnished with spirits, brandy, homemade wine, metheglin, etc., which were offered to guests. It was a fashion or custom to offer a drink of some kind whenever a neighbor called.

"My grandfather being obliged to have so many men at least two months each year became disgusted with the custom of furnishing so much cider and spirits to the men in the field, as many of them would come to the house at supper time without any appet.i.te and in a quarrelsome mood.

There would be wrestlings and fighting during the evening and the chain in the well could be heard rattling all night long. So one year, probably about 1835 or '36, he decided that he would do it no longer.

His brother and many of his neighbors tried to dissuade him and prophesied that he would not be able to get sufficient help to secure his crops, but he declared he would give up farming before he would endure it any longer, and announced when securing his extra help for that summer that he would furnish no cider or spirits in the field, but that coffee and other drinks would be carried out and that every man should have a ration of spirits at each meal. Most of the men he had had in past years came back and seemed to be glad to be out of the way of temptation. The next year he dispensed with the ration at meal times, and the custom grew among his neighbors with surprising rapidity; it was but a few years when it became general, with a few exceptions, where the farmer himself was fond of it, until to-day such a thing is not heard of, and in fact, the farmer, like the railroads and other large corporations, do not care to employ a man that is in the habit of using spirits at all."

In the years 1890-1905 there were only two families on the Hill which followed primitive custom in "putting in cider" into the cellar in quant.i.ty for the winter. In five more a very small quant.i.ty was kept. In the other cases it was regarded as immoral to use the beverage. The writer was only once offered a drink of alcoholic beverage in six years'

residence on the Hill.

In respect to the standard of living which is regarded as necessary to the maintenance of respect and social position, the Hill exhibits two strata of the population. The city people, and the farmers and laborers.

The former cla.s.s, besides the Hotel and its cottages, comprise seven households, who have formed their ways of living upon the city standard.

The others, resident all the year round upon the Hill, live after a standard common to American country-people generally of the better cla.s.s.

The economic ideas and habits are in no way peculiar to the Hill. There survive in a few old persons some primitive industrial habits. One old lady, now about ninety, amuses herself with spinning, knitting and weaving; keeping alive all the primitive processes from the shearing of sheep in her son's field to the completed garment. Axe-helves are still made by hand in the neighborhood.

The practical arts of the community are agriculture, especially the cultivation of gra.s.s for hay, cooking and general housekeeping, and the entertainment of paid guests, as "boarders" in farmhouse and hotel.

There is in addition on one farm, at Site No. 3, a slaughter-house, at which beef and mutton and pork are prepared for market, the animals being bought, pastured, fattened and killed on the place, and the meat delivered to customers, especially in the summer months, by means of a wagon, which makes its journey twice a week, over the length of the Hill and in the country eastward.

There is also a fish-wagon owned and maintained by the resident at Site No. 15, which buys fish during the year and maintains by means of a wagon a similar trade. These two are the only food supply businesses maintained on the Hill.

Economic opportunity has always appealed strongly to the Quaker Hill man and woman. In 1740 John Toffey settled at the crossing of ways which is called "Toffey's Corners," and began to make hats. Other industries followed.

In recent years, in almost every Quaker house boarders have been taken, and a better profit has been made than from the sale of milk. For twenty-five years the Mizzen-Top Hotel, accommodating two hundred and fifty guests, has represented notably this response to opportunity. The beautiful scenery, which the Quaker himself does not appreciate, because he has educated himself out of the appreciation of color and form, has offered him an opportunity of profit which he has been prompt and diligent to seize. All through the summer every one of the six largest Quaker homesteads is filled with guests. The fact cited above that in the summer there comes to the Hill a greater transient population than dwells there through the year, a population of guests, ill.u.s.trates this lively economic alertness.

The emigration from the Hill since 1840 of so many persons, notably the younger and more ambitious, is in itself a token of this response. The railroad brought the opportunity; the ambitious accepted it; many whole families have disappeared. Their strong members emigrated; the weaker stock died out. The Merritt, Vanderburgh, Irish, Wing, Sherman, Akin, and other families offer examples. In the place of those who departed have come others, to fill the total population. There were in 1905 on the Hill twenty-five old families with seventy-five persons, and twenty-five Irish Catholic families with one hundred persons.

The response to economic opportunity has often been too keen, and the attempt too grasping. In 1891 wealthy New Yorkers offered for certain farms so located as to command beautiful views, prices almost double what they are worth for farming. The reply was a demand in every case of one thousand dollars more than was offered; and the result was--no sale.

Land is valued, though few sales are made, at $1,000 per acre, near the Hotel. The acre numbered 42, one mile from Mizzen-Top, on Map II, was sold in 1893 to a laboring man for $250. At 53, land was sold in 1903 for $700 per acre. At 52, three acres were sold by sisters to a brother in 1895, the asking-price being $1,000 per acre, and the price paid $800 per acre. For farming, this land is worth $50 and $75 per acre. Four miles further inland as good recently sold for $10 per acre. Quaker Hill has not neglected its economic opportunities.

Nearness to the soil has, under the influences of Quaker ethics and economic ambition, cultivated in this population a patient and steadfast industry, which expresses itself in the milk dairy, a form of farming by its nature requiring early hours and late, with all the day between filled by various duties. I have shown above that this industry is losing its hold on the farmers of the Hill, but for two generations it has been the distinctive type of labor on the Hill. To rise at four or even earlier in the morning and to prepare the milk, to deliver it at the station, four to eight miles away, to attend to the wants of cows from twenty to one hundred in number; to prepare the various food-products, either by raising from the soil, or by carting from the railroad,--these activities filled, ten years ago, the lives of one hundred and four of the adult males of the community; and these activities at present fill the time of sixty of the adult males of the community.[34]

While "the milk business" is a declining industry, other things are not less engrossing. The land must be tilled, and is tilled. Hay is the greatest crop, and the mere round of the seasons brings for a community used to agriculture a discipline and a course of labor, which make life regular and industrious.