the community. Even these
regard the sisters' house as their principal place of association at
leisure hours. Industrious habits are here inculcated in the same way. In
the communities of the United Brethren in America, the facilities of
supporting families, and the consequent early marriages, have superseded
the necessity of single brethren's houses; but they all have sisters'
houses of the above description, which afford a comfortable asylum to aged
unmarried females, while they furnish an opportunity of attending to the
further education and improvement of the female youth after they have left
school. In the larger communities, similar houses afford the same
advantages to such widows as desire to live retired, and are called
_widows' houses_. The individuals residing in these establishments pay a
small rent, by which, and by the sums paid for their board, the expenses
of these houses are defrayed, assisted occasionally by the profits on the
sale of ornamental needle-work, &c., on which some of the inmates subsist.
The aged and needy are supported by the same means. Each division of sex
and station just alluded to, viz., widows, single men and youths, single
women and girls past the age of childhood, is placed under the special
guidance of elders of their own description, whose province it is to
assist them with good advice and admonition, and to attend, as much as may
be, to the spiritual and temporal welfare of each individual. The children
of each sex are under the immediate care of the superintendent of the
single choirs, as these divisions are termed. Their instruction in
religion, and in all the necessary branches of human knowledge, in good
schools, carried on separately for each sex, is under the special
superintendence of the stated minister of each community, and of the board
of elders. Similar special elders are charged to attend to the spiritual
welfare of the married people. All these elders, of both sexes, together
with the stated minister, to whom the preaching of the gospel is chiefly
committed, (although all other elders who may be qualified participate
therein,) and with the persons to whom the economical concerns of the
community are intrusted, form together the board of elders, in which rests
the government of the community, with the concurrence of the committee
elected by the inhabitants for all temporal concerns. This committee
superintends the observance of all regulations, has charge of the police