Millrace

“ A mill—a fine new wheat-mill!
7. 'We do not need now to go to the miller!' said mother, looking very glad. 'We are going to have a miller in our own house—no, two millers, I ought to say!'
8. 'Two millers!' cried Harry.
'Do you mean Harry and me?' asked Dora.
'Yes, my dear children, I mean you. You are going to be my dusty millers!
9. 'I will show you how much you [Pg 25] are to grind, just a little every day. You must put it into this big red pan, and cover it up, and when I want to bake I shall always have plenty of flour ready. ”

“ The miller was a little Gnome who lived in the mill with his wife and daughter. The mother had once been beautiful, but hard work had made her old before her time. Her face was wrinkled; there were crow’s feet in the corners of her eyes; her steps were slow and feeble and her hair was growing gray.
The daughter was a very beautiful and charming girl; she was happy-hearted. She moved around quickly, helping her mother wash the dishes, sweep the floor, put wood on the fire, take up the ashes, milk the cow and feed the pigs and chickens. ”

“ The miller, who was a greedy man in his way, and never forewent an opportunity of honest profit, turned the mill-house into a little wayside inn, and, several pieces of good fortune falling in opportunely, built stables and got the position of postmaster on the road. It now became Will's duty to wait upon people, as they sat to break their fasts in the little arbor at the top of the mill garden; and you may be sure that he kept his ears open, and learned many new things about the outside world as he brought the omelette or the wine. ”

“ 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. ”

“ One day he is allowed to go to the mill with his father, and it is an event in his life he never forgets. The old brown mill with its big wheel35 splashing in the clear water; the millstones that rumble so swiftly; the dusty miller who takes the bags of grain—all interest him, and especially so does the pond above the mill that is dotted with white lilies and where there is a boat fastened to a willow by a chain. ”

“ Sweet William will be all mine when you are sunk beneath the bonny mill-stream of Binnorie.” And she turned and went home to the king's castle.
And the princess floated down the mill-stream, sometimes swimming and sometimes sinking, till she came near the mill. Now the miller's daughter was cooking that day, and needed water for her cooking. And as she went to draw it from the stream, she saw something floating towards the mill-dam, and she called out, “Father! father! draw your dam. There's something white—a merry maid or a milk-white swan—coming down the stream.” ”

“ It is the mill preparing the flour for the daily baking, for seldom—at least in the country—will a Greek grind flour long in advance of the time of use. There the round upper millstone is being revolved upon an iron pivot against its lower mate and turned by a long wooden handle. Two nearly naked slave boys are turning this wearily—far pleasanter they consider the work of the harvesters, and very likely this task is set them as a punishment. As the mill revolves a slave girl pours the grain into a hole in the center of the upper millstone. ”

“ At the distance of about a huundred yards, in a direct line from the pit, there was a water mill; the miller’s house was nearer to me, and the road to the mill was still nearer: so that I could frequently hear the horses going on the road to and from the mill. Frequently I heard human voices; and I could distinctly hear the ducks and hens about the mill. I made the best use of my voice on every occasion; but it was to no manner of purpose; for the wind, which was constantly high, blew in a line from the mill to the pit, which easily accounts for what I heard ”

“ I spent in the elevator room, where the doffers also came for a rest.
I had occasion to get very well acquainted with two of the doffers that first day. Their names were “Mallet” and “Curley,” two French Canadians. Mallet was a lithe, sallow-faced, black-haired depreciator of morals, who fed on doughnuts, and spent most of his wages in helping out his good looks with the aid of the tailor, the boot-maker, and the barber. He came to the mill dressed in the extreme of fashion, and always with his upper lip curled, as if he despised every person he passed—save the good-looking girls. ”

“ One worthy man, whose business lay beyond the mill, was afraid to pass it alone; and his wife, who was less fearful of supernatural annoyance, used to accompany him. The little old white-coated miller, who there ground corn and wheat for his neighbors, whenever he made a particularly early visit to his mill, used to hear it in full operation,—the water-wheel dashing bravely, and the old rickety building clattering to the jar of the stones. ”

“ They have corn-mills, consisting of a large horizontal wooden wheel, moved by a horse, and having a band passed round its periphery to communicate motion to the stone. These are called band-mills, and are the most simple and economical of those in which the power of horses is employed. The solitary planter, who has chosen his place remote from the habitation of any other family, has sometimes a mill of a more primitive character, called a hand-mill, probably differing little from those used among the ancient Egyptians. ”

“ The consequence was that not a dozen words passed between us, and I had the satisfaction of seeing him draw near the old mill in almost complete forgetfulness of my proximity. This was what I wanted, for in the few minutes I had to think, many curious surmises had risen in my mind, and I wished to perform my little part in this adventure without hindrance from his watchfulness or care. ”

“ A miller fell slowly but surely into poverty, until finally he had nothing more than his mill and a large apple tree which stood behind it. One day he had gone into the forest to gather wood, where he was approached by an old man, whom he had never seen before, and who said, "Why do you torment yourself with chopping wood? I will make you rich if you will promise me that which is standing behind your mill." ”

“ CHAPTER I THE HUT ON THE CLIFF No well informed resident of Millsburgh, when referring to the principal industry of his little manufacturing city, ever says "the mills"—it is always "the Mill."
The reason for this common habit of mind is that one mill so overshadows all others, and so dominates the industrial and civic life of this community, that in the people's thought it stands for all. ”

“ As we have seen, the primitive miller gradually learned that the pestle did better work when it fell with a twirling motion. This little bit of experience led to important results in the development of the mill. If the grinding were done better with a twirling [100] motion, why not have as much of the twirling motion as possible? Why not make the upper stone go round and round? This was what was done. The upper stone was caused to turn round and round. The wheel-mill, the mill of the upper and nether millstone (Fig. 5) , was invented. ”

“ It is so that there is a subtile mean found now of late, by reason of a Fullyng Mille, whereby more cappes may be fulled and thickked in one day than by the might and strength of four score men by hand and foot may be fulled and thickked in the same day: the which huers, bonnets, and cappes, so fulled and thickked by such mill, are bruised, broken, and deceivably wrought, and cannot by the mean of any mill be truly made. ”

“ For a while we felt that Milly was on the verge of being lost to us.
It was our love of the Unerring Artistic Adjustment of Nature that inspired us. We could not give her over to a lumberman, doubly accursed by wealth and provincialism. We shuddered to think of Milly, with her voice modulated and her elbows covered, pouring tea in the marble teepee of a tree murderer. No! In Cypher’s she belonged—in the bacon smoke, the cabbage perfume, the grand, Wagnerian chorus of hurled ironstone china and rattling casters. ”

“ She was, moreover, very shrewd and clever; and the miller was so proud of her that he one day told the King of the land, who used to come and hunt in the wood, that his daughter could spin gold out of straw. Now this King was very fond of money, and when he heard the miller's boast his greediness was roused, and he sent for the girl to be brought before him. Then he led her to a chamber in his palace where there was a great heap of straw, and gave her a spinning wheel, and said: "All this must be spun into gold before morning, as you love your life." ”

“ The miller at Aikwood-mill had a whole [118] hill of kiln-seeds, or shealings of oats, thrown out in a heap adjoining to the mill. Ere ever our yeomen knew what they were doing from the time they mounted, they were all lying in this immense heap of kiln-seeds, perfectly dizzy and dumfoundered, and setting up their heads from among them with the same sort of staring stupid attempt at consideration as the heads of so many frogs which may be seen newly popped up out of a marsh. ”

“ So the millers hung it as they were asked; and when the song was finished, the bird spread its wide white wings and, with the millstone round its neck and the little rose-red shoes in one foot, the golden chain in the other, it flew back to the rose tree. But the little playmate was not there; he was inside the house eating his dinner.
Then the bird flew to the house, and rattled the millstone about the eaves until the stepmother cried, "Hearken! How it thunders!" ”

“ Philosopher," said Jack. "Come, tell us, do you know how to build a mill?"
"A mill?" answered Ernest; "of what description? There are many sorts. I was just looking in my dictionary for it. There are corn-mills, and powder-mill, oil-mills, wind-mills, water-mills, hand-mills, and saw-mills; which do you want?"
Fritz would have liked them all.
"You remind me," said I, "that we brought from the vessel a hand-mill and a saw-mill, taken to pieces, to be sure, but numbered and labelled, so that they could be easily united: they should be in the magazine, where you found the anvil and iron bars ”

“ Not,” he added, with polite significance,—“not that a man can’t be an excellent miller and farmer, and a shrewd, sensible fellow into the bargain, without much help from the schoolmaster.”
“I believe you,” said Mr Tulliver, winking, and turning his head on one side; “but that’s where it is. I don’t mean Tom to be a miller and farmer. I see no fun i’ that. Why, if I made him a miller an’ farmer, he’d be expectin’ to take to the mill an’ the land, an’ a-hinting at me as it was time for me to lay by an’ think o’ my latter end. ”

“ The charm of Millais’s nature, with its swift alternation between absolute confidence in his own powers—in the form of its expression sometimes verging upon harmless arrogance—and those rarer moods of discouragement and self-abasement, was aptly imaged in his person and bearing. ”

“ When we recognise that by this contrast of light and darkness, Millet sought to express the dreary routine, day in day out, early and late, of the peasant’s lot in a world where nature is so beautiful, and there can be so much beauty in life, we may imagine to ourselves what would be the effect of raising or lowering the diagonal line. ”

“ In their more recent prototype—Millet—the same profound and sympathetic rendering of the everyday life of the simple peasant is to be found, tinged with the melancholy fervour of his temperament. Their temperament bears the same relation to his as the seventeenth century does to the nineteenth. A more subdued temper had come over all classes of the community, a less boisterous attitude towards life, but the struggle for existence was none the less strenuous or unending. ”

“ This poignantly human note is observable in almost every work Millet wrought; his passionate sympathy with his fellow-man is the keynote of his art. The wood-cutter in his arduous toil, the shepherd in his solitariness, the labourer turning the soil with unvarying and laborious monotony, the mother caring for her children—all carry the same message for him of that strange and incomprehensible mingling of joy and sadness we call life. ”

“ THE MILLER’S TENTH. A YOUNG miller who had succeeded to his father’s business, made flour for the people of his native village, and also for the farmers of the country around, receiving for his pay, or toll, one-tenth of the grain that he ground. He measured this out in a round box—called a “toll-dish”—which contained just one-tenth of a bushel.
Among his customers was an old farmer who, having his farm all paid for and well stocked, with some money out at interest beside, was looked upon by his neighbors as a rich man. ”

“ Such proving to be the case, he turned round to confront Milly—Milly true to type, wearing a grimy matutinal apron, an expression half sleepy, half sullen, and a horrid soot smudge on her ripe, red, right cheek.
In this guise (so sedulously does life itself ape the conventions of its literature and drama) Milly looked as lifelike as though viewed through the illusion of footlights. Otherwise, as Staff never failed to be gratified to observe, she differed radically from the stock article of our stage. ”