36 MY LIFE 



was a great attraction to me. It was an old-fashioned mill 

 for grinding linseed, expressing the oil, and making oil-cake. 

 The mill stood close by the roadside, and there were small low 

 windows always open, through which we could look in at the 

 fascinating processes as long as we liked. First, there were 

 two great vertical millstones of very smooth red granite, 

 which shone beautifully from the oil of the ground seeds. 

 These were fixed on each side of a massive vertical wooden 

 axis on a central iron axle, revolving slowly and silently, and 

 crushing the linseed into a fine oily meal. A curved fender or 

 scoop continually swept the meal back under the rollers with 

 an eccentric motion, which was itself altogether new to us, 

 and very fascinating ; and, combined with the two-fold motion 

 of the huge revolving stones, and their beautiful glossy sur- 

 faces, had an irresistible attraction for us which never palled. 

 But this was only one part of this delightful kind of peep- 

 show. A little way off an equally novel and still more com- 

 plex operation was always going on, accompanied by strange 

 noises always dear to the young. Looking in at other windows 

 we saw numbers of workmen engaged in strange operations 

 amid strange machinery, with its hum and whirl and reverber- 

 ating noises. Close before us were long erections like shop 

 counters, but not quite so high. Immediately above these, 

 at a height of perhaps ten or twelve feet, a long cylindrical 

 beam was continually revolving with fixed beams on each 

 side of it, both higher up and lower down. At regular inter- 

 vals along the counter were great upright wooden stampers 

 shod with iron at the bottom. When not in action these were 

 supported so that they were about two feet above the counter, 

 and just below them was a square hole. As we looked on a 

 man would take a small canvas sack about two feet long, fill 

 it quite full of linseed meal from a large box by his side, 

 place this bag in a strong cover of a kind of floorcloth with 

 flaps going over the top and down each side. The sack of 

 meal thus prepared would be then dropped into the hole, which 

 it entered easily. Then a thin board of hard wood, tapered to 

 the lower edge, was pushed down on one side of it, and out- 

 side this again another wedge-shaped piece was inserted. 



