36 



MY LIFE 



[Chap. 



About three-quarters of a mile from the centre of the town, 

 going along West Street, was a mill called Horn's Mill, which 

 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 

 excentric 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 surfaces, 

 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 re- 

 verberating 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 

 intervals 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 



