The groups in which the women of the Hill are associated are of great interest. The Roman Catholic women have only their kinship associations, and no voluntary associations, being generally in the employ of Protestants, and having their church center away from the Hill in Pawling village.
The King's Daughters is the largest association, and most representative of the Hill, both in its numbers, frequency of meetings and variety of interests; though it is not the oldest. It has a membership of forty, and is actively devotional, charitable and benevolent. It serves also a useful purpose in providing social meetings, bazaars, sales and other occasions throughout the year which bring neighbors together; and uses their assembling for the assisting of the poor, ignorant or needy.
This society, as well as the one to be mentioned next, exemplifies the real democracy in which the women of the Hill meet and plan for common local interests; a fine spirit and practical efficiency characterizing their meetings, and each woman, however, humble, having a part with the best in the general result.
The Wayside Path Association is smaller in number of members, as well as older than the King's Daughters; indeed, it has perhaps no fixed membership, but is an assembling of the women of the place about a small group as a working center for a yearly duty. Its purpose is to maintain a dirt sidewalk, over three miles in length, which follows the road northward and southward, from the Glen to the Post Office, with branches. Once a year the Association meets, gathers funds by a "sale" or by subscription, hires a laborer to repair the Wayside Path; then for a year lies dormant. In 1898 there was a general effort made to transform this association into a general Village Improvement Society, with diversified interests, into which men would come, but it failed, and no such society exists.
The West Mountain Mission is an association of ladies of the Hill, who through sales and bazaars, supplemented by gifts, contribute to the support of a chapel of the Protestant Episcopal Church, two miles west of Pawling. This association draws its membership from the hotel guests and from residents in the cottages; and but little from the essential Quaker Hill households.
The same may be said of whist clubs maintained in the summer at the hotel and cottages.
ROBY OSBORNRICHARD OSBORN