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.

The numerous groupings and associations of women are especially
interesting in view of the fact that the men of the Hill have no
associations whatever, now that the stores are closed; and are assembled
in no fixed groupings. It has never been possible, so far as records go,
to maintain a society of men on the Hill. In the early part of the
period under study a literary and debating society was organized, with
social attractions; but it was feeble and short-lived. There are not
enough leaders among the men to make such group-life possible. They are
related by ties of labor, rather than of class-fraternity; and they have
never acquired any interest common to their sex to assemble them in
groups and companies; the discipline of the religion known to the Hill
has discouraged and outlawed it.

This contrast may have something to do with the departure of men from
the Hill. So long as the stores were in operation, at Toffey's, Akin's,
and Merritt's places, the men could meet there, and had in their
assembling a natural group-life, which satisfied many with life in the
country. But with the closing of the stores after the coming of the
railroad in 1849, this also failed, and the men having no capacity for
general association with one another, and few interests possessed in
common with the women, have been the more impelled to leave the Hill.
Economic advantage had only to be as good elsewhere, and the man
emigrated. I have not known those who have left the place, in my
knowledge of it, to give as a reason inability to make a good living
there; but always they have spoken most emphatically of the bareness and
lack of interest i