The Page Begins Here
Little Old Mills,
by Marion Nicholl Rawson, 1935.
LITTLE OLD MILLS
CHAPTER 1. THE COMING OF MILLS
No man shall take the nether or the upper millstone to pledge, for he taketh a man's life to pledge.
Deuteronomy 24:6
Ready for the Taking
NO tree in the forest had ever heard of a saw pit, no cornstalk raised its silken plume above its brother stalks to gaze upon a turning mill wheel, no bear or raccoon had glimpsed, even in his wildest dreams, his day of becoming a shaped hat balanced upon a human head; nor did the blue-blossomed flax plant guess that after flowering and reseeding through the centuries for no apparent reason, strange white folk would suddenly find its tenuous stand good, and cover their naked bodies with it and go skirted and frilled about their rich, new land. Waiting, waiting through eons of time was the wealth of North America, which should make possible a new civilization up the earth and determine, beyond all other circumstance, its type and success. Just gifts of the earth was this wealth, destined in the 1600's and 1700's of time to call forth on this continent crude querns, or hand mills, to hook a critter to a twenty-foot wooden sweep, set a wheel against a stream or a sail against the sky, and then to pound or turn over miles and years until it had become so completely man's food and raiment, that its various powers should be forgotten in the importance of the result. From the old countries came some of the divest, but from that new realm came more.
Landing as Pilgrim, Cavalier, Puritan, jailbird, promoter, missionary or warrior, the best equipped of our forefathers carried with them but a scant armful of simple tools as working outfit, but, ready for the taking and using were all of the raw materials and the power with which to convert them into need articles. Our little old mills began to turn as soon as the miller-mind had erected a shelter for the family and had time to turn itself about and find a falls upon a stream, or a dammable brook, or, upon a highland, a place of winds. The Meeting-house had arisen in its own right, the miller and the mill were ready to grind or pump or saw.
The first Americans mills were no "by concernment" of a settlement, but rather an essential to its existence. Back in the days when the Book of Deuteronomy was written, this bit of sage advice was given: "No man shall take the nether or the upper millstone to pledge, for he taketh a man's life to pledge." While all mills did not need the actual millstone for their work, the millstone has always been the central theme and symbol of the millering trade. Whatever form the symbolic "millstone" might take, whether wooden pestle, staff, or crank, that which brought food and covering to man was something to be cherished and not pledged away.
It is not so much the mill itself, - for all its usefulness and charm, - as its reason for being and its growth in spite of a great sparsity of knowledge, which calls for our real interest and study. It is a pleasant thought that all over out Easter coast the miller-mind was working, even back in those pioneer days when a large part of man's thought must be upon blockhouse and tomahawk. There was always a leader in every group and this leader was very apt to turn out to be the miller of that particular neck of the woods. His mill became a grist or a sawmill according to local need, his building was nothing but a roof on posts, or an enclosure of stone or wood or shell according to local geographic contributions; his success as a builder and turner of stones depended upon his talent and push, while the toll, or rate of charge, and his ability to be the traditional "jolly miller" and host to the entire countryside, depended upon his heritage and digestion. It is safe to say that the prolonged centuries of using primitive methods in out little mills was due, not to a lack of brainpower in out millers, but to the fact that isolation made it impossible for the millers to gather in annual conventions and thrash out the latest milling methods and improvements. Some of us have no regrets upon this point, because the little old mills did so much for the country by their very uniqueness and meeting of local needs. They were the center and head of the manufacturing of their day and yet they stood along quiet waters or abreast of returning tides, where the father of the family could put all of his time and heart into his work and yet live to a happy old age because it was a joy and not a nerve-racking grind.
Mere Trifles
With water as clear as a pure heart, the brook flows along under overwaying branches, sparkling in the gold of sunlight or hushing to bell tones in quiet pools. With utter good nature it suits its course to whatever may arise. It matters not that it must turn now east about a root, or south for a mossy hummock, or break its flow to encircle a stubborn rock. The floating leaf and dropping bird note are the mosaics of this gentlest of all earth's moods.
It was in such places that old mills grew.
At "noontide" or perhaps before sunrise, the sea begins to send back its flow to the shore. After the hush of the last moment of ebb tide, the water once more turns to its inland trails. Content at first to caress the shore only for a few inches above low-water mark it seems like a lover daring his fingers only upon the ankles of his beloved. With the thrill of this touch the sea seeks slowly to enfold the whole glowing shore of rock and sedge and sand. With the strength of each succeeding hour allotted for his wooing, the restless water adds to its passion until it has run into each little course way and slender stream bead, met and mingles with the out rushing waters of rivers, sought out each low place in marsh and dune and slid at least into some haven of loveliness, some tiny man-made sluice way far back from the now surging beach, where for a few hours it will dwell with quietness.
It was here also that one found old mills.
The wind is like the brook and the tides, a something beyond the futile word of man. It plays with peace or with strife according to its mood and hour, is impotent or majestic in its strength, but, among the intangibles it is the most intangible. We cannot touch or hold it, although we feel it in the breeze and in the hurricane - and we catch it in our sails.
Here again is the place of old mills.
Subtly unapproachable, free to come and go, yielding as fuller's earth, these three playmates of the world have been for centuries the slaves of our forebears. They have ground their grains, sawed their house timbers, crunched their sweet-cane crops, turned their fruits into their wines, and done, besides, those untold numbers of things which the restless inventive mind of man has, by hook or by crook, been able to conceive. So if there is one glint of philosophy to be snatched from the lulling drip, drip of a wet, turning mill wheel, it is that within the gentle and the yielding -a breath of air, a drop in the bucket - lies the essence of real power. We find that it is the gradual flow of breeze upon breeze which grinds the corn, and not the rushing hurricane which wrecks by its monstrous one-piece force. The keeper of the tide mill watches his power coming into the creek through slow and deliberate undercurrents, and knows that all is well. It is only when the moon wields its occasional debauching power and sends the floods in great tumultuous rushes, that the miller stands upon the bank and knows fear. " A little wind kindles, much puts out the fire."
Literature is liberally sprinkled with references to the mill, its attributes and habits, and in thinking of the old mills the old sayings and saws spring into the mind with remarkable aptness. This is not strange. If the millstone be the symbol of the mill, then the mill is the symbol of man's life, for the measure of this in his work. A man might tramp many miles to mill and keep crossing and recrossing the same brook on his way, but not until he saw it sweep in under the miller's bridge or go rushing over dam or turning wheel would he see and hear it as the voice of the ages, the portent of his own future or the revelation of his past, telling him suddenly that "much water goeth by the mill that the miller knoweth not of," and that "men may come and men may go but I go on forever," and other similar soul-searchings. Yes, this little dancing brook, yielding, capricious and yet indomitable, has a way with it especially when it tarries near an old mill.
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