Many of these rules are
excellent, and the whole of them might well be added to the children's
catechisms in use in the churches. Piety, orderly habits, obedience,
politeness, cleanliness, kindness to others, truthfulness, cheerfulness,
etc., are all inculcated in considerable detail, with great plainness of
speech, and in sixty-six short paragraphs, easily comprehended by the
youngest children. The fifty-fourth rule shows the care with which they
guard the intercourse of the sexes: "Have no pleasure in violent games
or plays; do not wait on the road to look at quarrels or fights; do not
keep company with bad children, for there you will learn only
wickedness. Also, _do not play with children of the other sex_."
THE HARMONY SOCIETY,
AT
ECONOMY, PA.
THE HARMONY SOCIETY.
I.--ECONOMY IN 1874.
Traveling from Cleveland to Pittsburgh by rail, you strike the Ohio
River at Wellsville; and the railroad runs thence, for forty-eight
miles, to Pittsburgh, along the river bank, and through the edge of a
country rich in coal, oil, potters' clay, limestone, and iron, and
supporting a number of important manufactures.
To a traveler in search of the Rappist or Harmony settlement at Economy,
the names of the towns along here seem to tell of the overshadowing
influence of these communists; for, passing Liverpool, you come to
Freedom, Jethro (whose houses are both heated and lighted with gas from
a natural spring near by), Industry, and Beaver; you smile at the sign
of the "Golden Rule Distillery;" and you wonder at the broken fences,
unpainted houses, and tangled and weed-covered grounds, and that general
air of dilapidation which curses a country producing petroleum and
bituminous coal.
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