So also the miller's daughter forms a topic for many a story, play and song, never with a sneer, always spoken of with admiration, not only because she is goodly, but a type of neatness, and "cleanliness comes next to goodliness." The new machinery and steam are fast displacing the old mills that were turned by water, and the old dusty miller is giving place to the trim gentleman who does most of the work in the office, without whitening his coat. I know an aged miller and his wife who had been for years occupying a quaint old-fashioned mill of the simplest construction, and which answered all purposes required in the village. But a few years ago a new venture was started--a great mill worked by steam, and with electric lighting through it, and now no corn is sent to the ancient mill that is crumbling and rotting away, and the old people are decaying within it. "Thomas," said I one evening over the fire to this miller, "how long have you been married?" "Fifty years next Michaelmas." "And when did you court your wife? When did you find the right one?" "Lor bless y', sir, I can't mind the time when we weren't courting each other. I b'lieve us began as babbies. Us knowed each other as long as us knowed anything at all. Us went to school together--us larned our letters together, us was vaccinated together, her was took from my arm; and us growed up together." "And when did you first think of making her yours?" "Bless y', sir, I never first thought on it at all; I never thought other from the time I began to think but that it must be--it wor ordained so." "Have you children?" "Yes; they be all out in the world and doing well. We haven't to blush for any of them--men and maids all alike--respectable." "Then you ought to be very happy." "I reckon us ought, and us should be but for that new mill." "It is spoiling your custom?"