Millerstown

“ David had been carefully inspecting his orchards and farms, had visited again the land on the mountain-side with its double treasure. David had brought his riding-horse to Millerstown and Millerstown flew once more to [pg 323] doors and windows to see him pass. David consulted with his farmers; David asked a thousand questions of the squire; David was busy from morning till night.
"And David is nice and common," boasted Bevy Schnepp, who behaved as though she were David's mother and grandmother and maiden aunt in one. "He is never proud; you would never know he was so rich and educated." ”

“ THE BELSNICKEL On the afternoon of the entertainment there was an air of excitement, both within and without the schoolroom. Outside the clouds hung low; the winter wheat in the Weygandt fields seemed to have yielded up some of its brilliant green; there was no color on the mountain-side which had been warm brown and purple in the morning sunshine. A snowstorm was brewing, the first of the season, and Millerstown rejoiced, believing that a green Christmas makes a fat graveyard. But in spite of the threatening storm nearly all Millerstown moved toward the schoolhouse. ”

“ The squire knew all the gossip of Millerstown, and he knew many things which Millerstown did not know. He had known Caleb Stemmel for fifty years. But it was incredible that Caleb Stemmel with all his wickedness should have any hand in this.
The squire bent forward.
'Sula, look at me. You are Adam’s wife. You must live with him. Won’t you go back?'
Sula looked about the room once more. Sula would do nothing wrong—yet. It was with Caleb Stemmel that her mother advised, it was Caleb Stemmel who came evening after evening to sit on the porch. ”

“ Caleb Stemmel was a rich man even if he was old enough to be her father, and it was many months since any one else had told Sula that her hat was pretty or her dress becoming.
Now, with Caleb’s eyes upon her, she said the little speech which had been taught her, the speech which set Millerstown gasping, and sent the squire leaping to his feet, furious anger on his face. Neither Millerstown nor the squire, English as they had become, was yet entirely of the world.
'I will not go back,' said pretty Sula lightly. 'If he wants to apply for a divorce, he can.'
'Sula!' cried the squire. ”

“ Her reputation has been largely won by her sympathetic portrayal of the Pennsylvania Dutch character.
How adequately, how finally, a person can be characterized by his own conversations, all the principals in this little Millerstown drama demonstrate. Weakness, crudeness, selfishness, speak out their own existence. And, to shine by contrast in the midst of all this pettiness, is the figure of a man who makes the title 'Squire' mean what it has meant to certain English townships, and whatever more comes from responsibility assumed without force of precedent or hope of recompense. ”

“ Katy leaned over the pillow. Cassie could not know what it was to die, to go away forever; Cassie could not know how one wept and mourned when those whom one loved had died; could not know how one remembered every word, cherished every caress. David had no one else, and David was young; David could not be so hard of heart as he seemed or Cassie so stony. There was hardly a person in Millerstown who would have ventured to oppose Cassie, or to persuade her against her will. ”

“ So soon does the soul outgrow its mansions that after once seeing Milltown her fancy ran out to the future sight of Portland; for that, having islands and a harbor and two public monuments, must be far more beautiful than Milltown, which would, she felt, take its proud place among the cities of the earth, by reason of its tremendous business activity rather than by any irresistible appeal to the imagination.
It would be impossible for two children to see more, do more, walk more, talk more, eat more, or ask more questions than Rebecca and Emma Jane did on that eventful Wednesday. ”

“ Year by year Millsborough increased in numbers and in wealth. On the slopes above the town new, fine houses were being built. Her mill owners and her manufacturers, her coal-masters and her traders, with all their followers and their retainers, waxed richer and more prosperous. And along the low-lying land, beside the foul, black Wyndbeck, spread year by year new miles of mean, drab streets; and the life of her poor grew viler and more cursed.
St. Aldys’ Grammar School stood on the northern edge of the old town. Anthony’s way home led him through Hill Terrace. ”

“ Adam Miller took out his naturalization papers a few years later and today, the visitor may read the quaint document hanging on the walls of the Miller home, near Elkton, Virginia.
His log cabin was soon outgrown. He was a good farmer and his wife and sister helped him. His crops were larger each year. Besides, Adam was a business man. He secured a large land grant and he soon was selling off farms to other Germans who came from Pennsylvania and from Germany.
The Millers built a larger home and they bought some good sturdy furniture to replace the crude tables and chairs which were home-made. ”

“ If you like the story you can think it true, and if you don’t we’ll say it isn’t.”
“Have you ever been in that town?” the miller asked Janet.
“Never,” said she.
“Well, just where you see the steeple rising and the glint of the sun on the weathercock is the High Street. It’s a wide road, with windows looking down on it from either side; and at the end, as you go to the docks, is an old house with carved gable-ends, and in a niche of its wall is the statue of a man.”
“And is that the man the story is about?” inquired little Peter. ”

“ I can see Paris as plain as day by just shutting my eyes. The beautiful ladies are always gayly dancing around with pink sunshades and bead purses, and the grand gentlemen are politely dancing and drinking ginger pop. But you can see Milltown most every day with your eyes wide open," Rebecca said wistfully.
"Milltown ain't no great, neither," replied Mr. Cobb, with the air of having visited all the cities of the earth and found them as naught. ”

“ Dick Pearson's farm house is scarcely a quarter of a mile up the highway, but it isn't in Millville, for all that. There's a cross lane just beyond Pearson's, leading east and west, and a mile to westward is the Wegg Farm, in the wildest part of the foothills.
It is a poor farming country around Millville. Strangers often wonder how the little shops of the town earn a living for their proprietors; but it doesn't require a great deal to enable these simple folk to live. The tourist seldom penetrates these inaccessible foothills; the roads are too rough and primitive for automobiles ”

“ From the highest point one looks down on two worlds: old Millsborough, small and picturesque, with its pleasant ways and its green spaces, and beyond its fine new houses with their gardens and its tree-lined roads winding upward to the moor; on the other hand, new Millsborough, vast, hideous, deathlike in its awful monotony. ”

“ They watched him pass the pool and disappear into the white cottage.
“Oh, how delightful!” shouted little Peter, turning head over heels.
In a few minutes the miller returned. The old woman had promised everything he wanted. It is a funny thing how often young men can manage witches. They all went into the mill.
“So now to business,” said he, as he sat down and took up his book.
In a kingdom far from this everyday earth a great city sat royally in its surrounding plain. ”

“ Closing around Winchester on the 14th, Ewell, by a bold and well-planned flank movement of Early to the left, drove Milroy, late in the day, from his strong intrenchments, captured a large portion of his army and his military stores, and scattered the troops that escaped, following them on the 15th to Harper's Ferry, thus again relieving the lower valley and the patriotic city of Winchester from a detested and tyrannical foe, such as Milroy had proved himself to be in waging war on defenseless women and children. ”

“ Then another baby came; and as the years went by more little brothers blessed the Miller's cottage, each with the same wonderful lung-power, the same puffy cheeks, the same fondness for blowing. Till before the Miller fairly had counted them all, he found himself sitting at the head of a table around which ten little Blowers kicked their heels and blew on their porridge to cool it.
Now ten little Blowers, each blowing all day long for dear life, have ten big appetites; and the Miller had hard work to supply them with food. The children were not helping him by earning money. ”

“ Setting sail in the Leith smack running between Cromarty and that port, he entered the Firth of Forth four days after losing sight of the Sutors. He saw with interest Dunottar Castle and the Bass Rock chronicled in the well-known lines of his friend, Dr. Longmuir of Aberdeen. Indeed the latter had for him peculiar associations through one of the Ross-shire worthies in the times of Charles II.—James Fraser of Brea;—for, when the sun set on the upland farm on which he had been born, Miller knew that it was time to collect his tools at the end of his day's labour. ”

“ They were a dour, hard-headed, enterprising lot—a blend from the upland braes of Drumtochty and the stiff carse of Gowrie and the Celts of Lock Tay, with some good south country stuff—and there are not many big cities on either side of the Atlantic where two or three Muirtown men cannot this day be found. They always carry in their hearts the "Fair City"—which lieth in a basin among the hills, beside the clean, swift-running river, like a Scots Florence ”

“ For a time the railroad station now known as Miller was called Deschutes. For the history of the name Deschutes as applied to places in Oregon, see under the heading Deschutes and also under Ainsworth.
Miller Butte, Marion County. This butte, elevation 556 feet, is about two miles west of Marion. It was named for a family of pioneer settlers. The head of the family was Charles Miller. At the exposition at Philadelphia in 1876, a sample of flax sent by "Uncle Charley," beat the whole world. ”

“ He served in the army during the Rebellion, and was postmaster at Luck for eighteen years. His father, Daniel Foster, came with him to the St. Croix valley in 1844 and died in 1876. His native place was New Hampshire.
MILLTOWN.
Milltown includes township 35, range 17. It is a good agricultural and stock growing town. It is watered by the small streams flowing into Balsam, Half Moon and other lakes. The [Pg 131] timber is mostly hardwood. There is pine in the eastern part. The Patterson post office is located in section 7, Milltown in section 36. Milltown was set off from St. Croix Falls Dec. ”

“ After the close of the war, General Miller retired to his estate at Peterborough, New Hampshire, where he resided for some time, enjoying the sweets of quietude and the pleasures of agricultural pursuits; subsequently he received the appointment of collector of the port at Salem, Massachusetts, where he is now living in the bosom of his family. Although nearly deprived of the powers of articulation by paralysis, he enjoys his other faculties with comfort to himself and happiness to all around him. ”

“ I ordered some tea, and then, in the course of a chat with the stout, cheery old publican I casually inquired after some friends of mine named Miller.
“Oh! yes,” he said. “Old Miss Miller lives ’ere still—at the Manor ’Ouse just beyond the village. You passed it just before you came down the hill from Swanage way. They’re one of the oldest families ’ere in Studland. One of the Millers—Sir Roger ’e was called—was governor of Corfe Castle under Queen Elizabeth, so I’ve ’eard say.” ”

“ Preparatory to the trial the miller invited one of his neighbours, the young farmer of Eathie, that they might pass the early part of the evening with Tam; but when, after an hour’s hard drinking, they rose to leave the cottage, the farmer, a kind-hearted lad, who was besides warmly attached to the jockey’s only sister, would fain have dissuaded him from the undertaking. “I’ve been thinking, Tam,” he said, “that flyte wi’ the miller as ye may, ye would better let the good people alone;—or stay, sin’ ye are sae bent on playing the fule, I’ll e’en play it wi’ you;—rax me my plaid ”

“ I was born in a covered wagon, I am told, at or about the time it crossed the line dividing Indiana from Ohio.” His father was born of Scotch immigrant stock—a natural frontiersman, but a man with a love of books and a teacher among his fellow-wanderers. In 1852, moved by the same restlessness that had taken the Clemens family to Missouri seventeen years earlier, the Millers started on the three-thousand-mile roundabout journey to Oregon, finding their way without roads over the plains and mountains in a trip lasting more than seven months. ”

“ When the Miller the bond in his pocket had got,
Took leave of his Landlord, & homeward did trot,
He whistled and sung, and laugh'd in his sleeve,
To think how his Landlord he meant to deceive,
The bond is secure, the bargain is fast,
Instead of my wife he shall have my she ass,
Fal lal de ral, etc.
The Gentleman he was as brisk as an eel,
And soon the next morning some courage did feel;
He call'd to his man, and he gave him a glass,
Saying, Go to the Miller and fetch his she ass,
Now mind that you get your story quite pat,
He'll know what you mean, but-mum for ill that. ”