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 analogical in mental process, weak and complacent in emotionality, with motor reaction rather inconstant, and of slow response. Of these I find thirty-seven families.
The next category is that of the Dogmatic-Emotional, in which I observe twenty-two families. These are composed of persons in whom austere and domineering character proceeds from a dogmatic fixity of mind, and expresses itself in the same inconstant application shown by the former class.
A few of the more notable of the personalities produced by Quaker birth and breeding belong, I think, in the Ideo-Motor class. I find only seven families of that type, but the forceful character, of aggressive bent, moderate intellect and strong but well-controlled emotion, is distinctly present; and this class has furnished some of the most successful of the sons of Quaker Hill.
I have known only six persons resident on the Hill in the twelve years under study who could be described as Critically-Intellectual. Of these, four have been bred in the larger school of the city, and only two have lived their lives upon the Hill. Of these six, five are women.