Authority, working along the lines of belief and dogma, has almost irresistible force for the Quaker Hill social mind. A visitor to the Hill said "These are an obedient people." Any barrenness of the Hill is to be attributed rather to the lack of leaders who could speak to the beliefs and in harmony with the dogmas, than to lack of willingness to obey authority. From the past the families on the Hill inherit their willingness respectively to command and to obey. This is true socially of certain families and religiously of others. That to-day some are not led is due solely to the decadence of initiative in the households which, by reason of wealth or dogmatic rectitude, inherit and claim the first place. It was said above that Quaker Hill has shown great power of assimilating foreign material, and of causing newcomers to be possessed of the communal spirit. The agency which from the first accomplished this was religious idealization, embodied in the meeting, the dress, language and manners of Friends. Generally the Meeting was recruited from births, and members were such by birthright. In former times the community and the Meeting were one. This assimilating of foreign material by social imitation to the Quaker type, and into organic subjection to the Quaker Hill community, was wrought by six agencies. They were language, manners, costume, amusements, worship, and morals. In each of these the Quakers were peculiar. In the use of the "plain language" the Quakers had a machinery of amazing and subtle fascination for holding the attention, purifying the speech, and disciplining the whole deportment of the young and the newcomer. No one has ever been addressed with the use of his first name by grave, sweet ladies and elderly saints, without its beginning an influence and exerting a charm he could not resist; the more so that the Quaker in so doing is guarding his own soul, rather than seeking to save his hearer. The grave manners of the Quakers, both in meeting and without, are framed upon their belief that all days are holy, and all places sacred. Their long and triumphant fight against amusements is a tribute to the gravity of life. The contest to which I have elsewhere referred for pure morals, in matters of sex, of property and of speech, was a victorious battle. In all these matters Quaker Hill was a population socialized by religion. Central to it all was the worship of the Meeting on First Day, and on other occasions; and the great solemnity of the annual Quarterly Meeting. Fascinated by that "silence that can be felt," men came from far. They would come as readily to-day. They went away under the domination of that idea of pure and spiritual faith, which kept a whole houseful of men silent for an hour in communion.