Hill are very unequal. The smallest owner
of real estate has an acre, and the largest about six hundred acres.
Contrasts here are sharp and permanent. The same families have possessed
certain properties for many decades, often for two centuries; and
generally Quaker Hill families do not sell till they all die or move
away.

Wealth is increasing on Quaker Hill in the slow course of years, and
probably along the lines of present growth, will increase. It is
distributed with marked inequality. The tendency, especially in central
territory, is toward increasing inequality. There is "a small group at a
high degree."

Yet the community is generally prosperous and well-to-do. There are none
poor. Indeed, the wealthy women who began to come to Mizzen-Top Hotel in
1880, looking about for some poor to assist, were obliged to go off the
Hill to the south, and lay hold of a lonely female with a curious
nervous malady but self-respecting withal, and deliberately pauperize
her. To this process, after some initial struggles, she has submitted
through these intervening years. She has now for years been pensioned by
the church in Akin Hall through the year, visited in summer by people in
carriages, has maintained an extensive begging correspondence through
the mails all winter, and has been generally despised by her neighbors.
But she has represented to interested clergymen and charity workers on
their summer vacations the fascinating and mysterious problem of
poverty.[38]

Very few indeed have been the defectives. I know of none in ten years.
The prevailing vitality of the community is high. There were living two
years ago five persons past ninety; and one of them died in his
hundredth year. Octogenarians drive the roads every day, and manage
their estates with ripe discretion and unabated interest in affairs. The
religious revival referred to (see Chapter VI) brought into the church
an active man of great wealth of ninety-five years of age.

There are no blind persons. One old man, who suffered from cataract,
lost an eye in an operation at eighty-five years of age; and refused to
submit the other eye-ball to the surgeon. There are no deaf and dumb.

People on Quaker Hill are well-born. I suppose this may be in part due
to the high morality of their fathers. I attribute it, in view of the
contrast in this respect to the contiguous population in Sherman, Conn.,
to the highly organic communal life of Quaker Hill. Connecticut people,