Flowers of Mystery 



445 



steps. He told with pride that his grandmother 

 planted it, and "it was the flowering variety that no 

 one else had in Rhode Island, not even in green- 

 houses in Newport." Miller Ross ground corn meal 

 and flour with ancient millstones, and infinitely better 

 were his grindings than " store meal." He could tell 

 you, with prolonged detail, of the new-fangled roller 

 he bought and used 

 one week, and not a 

 decent Johnny-cake 

 could be made from 

 the meal, and it 

 shamed him. So he 

 threw away all the 

 meal he hadn't sold ; 

 and then the new 

 machinery was pulled 

 out and the millstones 

 replaced, " to await the 

 Lord's coming," he 

 added, being a Second 

 Adventist or by his 

 own title a "Christa- 

 delphian and an Old 

 Bachelor." He was a 

 famous preacher, hav- 

 ing a pulpit built of heavy stones, in the woods near 

 his mill. A little trying it was to hear the outpour- 

 ings of his long sermons on summer afternoons, 

 while you waited for him to come down from his 

 pulpit and his prophesyings to give you your bag 

 of meal. A tithing of time he gave each day to the 



London Pride. 



