The stories told by old Quaker Hill residents of the gatherings about the meeting house, even on First Day, or Sunday, confirm the above quotation. The field opposite the meeting house, for years after 1769, when the earliest meeting house was moved away from that site, was used as a burial ground, and later, no headstones being placed in those early days, as a space for tethering horses. An old resident tells me that crowds of men were always about the meeting house before and after meeting, and even during meeting, and that in later years the resident of Site No. 32, who owned valuable horses, used to exhibit a blooded stallion on a tether, leading him up and down to the admiration of the horse-owners present, and to their probable interest. These conditions seem to have continued through that whole century. The play spirit had no permitted or authorized occasions. It had to exercise itself with the other instincts, in the common gatherings. It was, as far as we can see, a time of asceticism. Men were forbidden rather than invited, in those days. The Meeting not only provided no play opportunities, but it forbade the attendance of its members upon the "frollicks," which then were held, as nowadays they are held, in the country side. A gathering with plenty to eat, and in those days a free indulgence in drink on the part of the men, with music of the fiddler, and dancing, this was a "frollick"--that horror of the meeting house elders. Indeed, it was of incidental moral detriment; for it was outlawed amusement, and being under the ban, was controlled by men beyond the influence or control of the meeting. The young people of the Quaker families, and sometimes their elders, yielded to the fascinations of these gatherings. The unwonted excitement of meeting, the sound of music, playing upon the capacity for motor reactions in a people living and laboring outdoors, inflamed beyond control by rum and hard cider, soon led to lively, impulsive activities and physical exertions, both in immoderate excess and in disregard of all the inhibitions of tradition and of conscience. That there was a close relation of these "frollicks" with the sexual immorality of the period is probable. Of more concern to us here is the observation, which is made with caution, that the attitude of the community to amusements was not conducive to moral betterment, because amusement was not specialized. The repression of the play spirit, offering it no occasions, recognizing no times and places as appropriate for it, disturbed the equilibrium of life, forced the normal animal spirits of the population to impulsive and explosive expressions and deprived them of the regulative control of the community.