Moreover, between the sexes there is no camaraderie, no companionship of an intellectual sort between husband and wife, no free exchange of ideas except in circles made up of the members of one sex. In any public meeting the men habitually sit apart from their wives and from the women members of their families, even though the audiences be not bilaterally halved.
The orbits of man's and woman's lives are separate, though each ascribes to the individuals of the other sex an ethical and religious parity. The effect is seen in the diminishing of the numbers of men on the Hill, in the group-life of the women, and in the type of woman. It may be well to consider these in reverse order.
The individual Quaker Hill woman, so far as she differs from women generally, may be described as a woman almost perfectly conformed to type, presenting fewer variations than elsewhere, either in the form of youthful prettinesses and follies, or in the strenuous opinion of mature years. She is neither a flirt as a girl, nor a radical as a woman. Color has not yet come into her maidenly days, nor violence of opinion into her womanly years. She affects neither fashion nor intellectual eccentricity. Yet she attains to a better average of reasonable, sensible action than she could otherwise do. She knows less of the impulsive, emotional prettiness of adolescence than women of other country communities, and in later years gives herself less to intellectual vagaries. Women's rights are established on the Hill; it is impossible to be strenuous about them.
The numerous groupings and associations of women are especially interesting in view of the fact that the men of the Hill have no associations whatever, now that the stores are closed; and are assembled in no fixed groupings. It has never been possible, so far as records go, to maintain a society of men on the Hill. In the early part of the period under study a literary and debating society was organized, with social attractions; but it was feeble and short-lived. There are not enough leaders among the men to make such group-life possible. They are related by ties of labor, rather than of class-fraternity; and they have never acquired any interest common to their sex to assemble them in groups and companies; the discipline of the religion known to the Hill has discouraged and outlawed it.
This contrast may have something to do with the departure of men from the Hill. So long as the stores were in operation, at Toffey's, Akin's, and Merritt's places, the men could meet there, and had in their assembling a natural group-life, which satisfied many with life in the country. But with the closing of the stores after the coming of the railroad in 1849, this also failed, and the men having no capacity for general association with one another, and few interests possessed in common with the women, have been the more impelled to leave the Hill. Economic advantage had only to be as good elsewhere, and the man emigrated. I have not known those who have left the place, in my knowledge of it, to give as a reason inability to make a good living there; but always they have spoken most emphatically of the bareness and lack of interest in the social life of the Hill as their reason for emigrating to the city or large town.