Peripatetic Meditations 



find a button and so too of an arrow when we 

 find its head, and just as the arrow indicates a 

 bow and this in turn a man to use it, so the but- 

 ton leads to the coat and a man to wear it. So 

 far safely; but this pleasant May sunshine 

 makes me venturesome and I go a step farther 

 and say to myself, perhaps this button belonged 

 to the coat of the man who built the mill. When 

 we say "perhaps," we are always safe. The 

 word is a breastwork through which no critic 

 can shoot. At all events, there was a miller, once 

 upon a time — ^blessed words these, once upon a 

 time — and tradition has it, he was a man of 

 many parts ; — ^miUer, sawyer, cabinet-maker and 

 cordwainer. His grandson, whom I remember, 

 was a sawyer only and all his talk was of tim- 

 ber. He bore much resemblance to a gnarly oak 

 and his words crackled like dead leaves in win- 

 ter. If his faults were many, he had a few vir- 

 tues and these, like oaks among brambles, over- 

 shadowed the undergrowth of his make-up. He 

 was proud of his grandfather and in justifica- 

 tion of his own inferiority, asserted that the 

 world had "tamed down" since the old man's 

 day, and so had he. 

 Soon, as I said, there is to be a new mill-pond, 

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