The position of woman among Friends is another eloquent tribute to the two-fold "dealing" of Quakerism with women. She is man's equal, but she is man's greatest source of danger. She must be on a par with him, but she must be apart from him. The relations of men and women are therefore very interesting. In doctrinal matters, in discussion, in preaching and "testifying," men and women are equal, and the respect that a man has for his wife or sister or neighbor woman, in these functions of a devout sort is like that he has for another man. Generally the men of the Quaker school of influence believe as a matter of course in the intellectual and juristic equality of women with men; and in the religious equality of the individual woman with the individual man. But in the practical arts and in business a woman is a woman and a man is a man. Here the women are restricted by convention to housekeeping, which on large farms is quite enough for them; and the men have the outdoor life, the "trading," and the gainful occupations--except the boarding of city people. There is no especial respect for the "managing woman" who "runs a farm"; the community expects such a woman to fail. 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.