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.

There is, of course, only one language spoken in Quaker Hill. Indeed only one or two persons have any other than English as their native tongue.[35] And very few have acquired any other as a matter of culture. The vocabulary used is limited. An intelligent observer says: "The vocabulary of the native community is the meagerest I have ever known, except that of the immigrant." There are, however, very few illiterates; none, indeed, in the literal meaning of the term.

Manners on the whole are uniform for the resident population. Of course the summer people have the conventional manners, or lack of manners, of the city. So far as religion has shaped the manners of the old Quaker group, they are often gentle and refined; but as often blunt and imperious. The Irish have the best manners, I observe, and the more transient summer people and farm-hands the worst. In both the last two classes there is too often a pride in rudeness and vulgarity which the native of mature years never exhibits. The Quaker and the Catholic are equally ceremonious in inclination. The latter always desires to please. The Quaker, when he desires to please, is capable of very fine courtesy; but he does not always desire, and he has less insight into the essence of a social situation.

The community has had a history, of course, in the matter of costume. The Meeting House law made costume a matter of ethics for a century. But to-day there is great diversity. Probably this is a sign of the transition from the Quaker to the broader human order. But all one can say upon costume is that there is now no dress prescribed for any occasion. At one extreme there are a few, in 1905 only three, in 1907 only one, who wear the Quaker garb. At the other extreme are outsiders who dress as the city tailor and milliner clothe them. And between these there is liberty.

The dispositions again are varied. One finds the aggressiveness of five stirring men and three capable women sufficient to give character to the place. Many functions of the community are still vigorously upheld, yet the number of aggressive spirits is diminishing. The instigative type is present in three, and its processes give pleasure to all who behold. The domineering type is present in eight members, especially in those families which claim by right of inheritance either social or religious leadership. And, as to others, as I quoted an observer above, "They are an obedient people." I do not know any creative minds, much less any class with original initiative. If there had been any such, Quaker Hill would have produced artists, great and small, and writers, not a few. There is a consciousness of material for creation, and in certain families the culture which creation presupposes; but something in Quakerism has quieted the muse and banked the fires.

As to types of character, there are forceful persons, a very few, nine at the utmost being of this type. Austere persons, who have in the past given to the Hill much of its character, have almost disappeared, not more than four being within that category, among the population under study in this part of the book.

The number of the rationally conscientious is as small as is that of the convivial. The Meeting, which was for over a century the organ of conscience for the community, denied to the convivial their license, and released the conscientious from any obligation to be rational. The Meeting has now but recently passed away, and its standards of character speak as loudly as ever. I find three women who may be called rationally conscientious, one a Quakeress, one a New Yorker, and one of Quaker birth and worldly breeding. I find also three who are truly convivial in type, one a son of Quakers, and two who are Irish Catholics; while to these might be added two whose designation ought to be Industrious-Convivial, hard-working men who are fond of social pleasure as an end of life.

A few in certain households, three in number, are intellectually aesthetic in a passive way, fond of art and books, but creating nothing. Two artists of note have in the past twelve years come to the Hill, bought places and made it at least a summer home.

It must not be inferred from the foregoing that there is not a wide range of mental difference among Quaker Hill men and women. In the matter of quickness and slowness of action this variation appears even among the members of any one group. In the same family are two brothers, both farmers, both tenants. One is able to farm a thousand acres more successfully than the other can cultivate two hundred. The one is instant in judgment, swift in action, able to compress into an hour heavy physical labor and also the control of many other men. The other is leisurely, indolent in movement, though a diligent man, and is as much burdened by increase of responsibilities as the former is stimulated. These two men are not exceptional, but typical. The extreme of slowness is indeed represented in one man whose tortoise pace in all matters dependent on the mind and will is oddly contrasted with his vigor and energy of manner. His movements are a provocation of delighted comments by his neighbors; I think partly because they are felt to be representative of what is latent in other men, and partly because he is surrounded by others more alert. Such men are the outcropping of a vein of degenerate will. It is not immoral degeneracy, but its weakness is incapacity for action of any kind, inability to see and do the specific task. This degenerate will does not extend to traditional morals, and does not always affect whole families. But its pervasive effects are seen in almost all the representatives of three large families of the old Quaker stock. Contrasted to these are some of the old stock, who though slow of thought and barren of mental initiative, are swift of action, sure in synthesis of a situation, and instant in performance of precisely the requisite deed.

One finds on the Hill many examples of native administrative ability of a high order—for a farm is as complicated a property as a railway is. There are fully as many others who would be burdened with the cares of a ticket-chopper.

Not a few on the Hill are like the farmer who, sent on an errand to bring some guests from a train to a certain house, spent half an hour after meeting the guests in conversation with them in the railway station before mentioning his errand; and would have made it an hour had they not inquired of him for a conveyance. Yet a neighbor of his, in the same social group, closely related, has unusual capacity for affairs.

The instincts of the people of the Hill are not, I think, so varied. They involuntarily respect religion, when expressed with sincerity, and incarnated in strength of character. It must have the authority, however, of strength, at least passive strength, to appeal to local instinct.