American fiction -- 20th century; Short stories, American
A quarter of a mile from the Eagle House was what would have been
described to its guests as “an object of interest” in the catalogue,
had the Eagle House issued a catalogue. This was an old, old mill that
was no longer a mill. In the words of Josiah Rankin, it was “the only
church in the United States, sah, with an overshot-wheel; and the only
mill in the world, sah, with pews and a pipe organ.” The guests of the
Eagle House attended the old mill church each Sabbath, and heard the
preacher liken the purified Christian to bolted flour ground to
usefulness between the millstones of experience and suffering.
Every year about the beginning of autumn there came to the Eagle House
one Abram Strong, who remained for a time an honoured and beloved
guest. In Lakelands he was called “Father Abram,” because his hair was
so white, his face so strong and kind and florid, his laugh so merry,
and his black clothes and broad hat so priestly in appearance. Even new
guests after three or four days’ acquaintance gave him this familiar
title.
Father Abram came a long way to Lakelands. He lived in a big, roaring
town in the Northwest where he owned mills, not little mills with pews
and an organ in them, but great, ugly, mountain-like mills that the
freight trains crawled around all day like ants around an ant-heap. And
now you must be told about Father Abram and the mill that was a church,
for their stories run together.
In the days when the church was a mill, Mr. Strong was the miller.
There was no jollier, dustier, busier, happier miller in all the land
than he. He lived in a little cottage across the road from the mill.
His hand was heavy, but his toll was light, and the mountaineers
brought their grain to him across many weary miles of rocky roads.
The delight of the miller’s life was his little daughter, Aglaia. That
was a brave name, truly, for a flaxen-haired toddler; but the
mountaineers love sonorous and stately names. The mother had
encountered it somewhere in a book, and the deed was done. In her
babyhood Aglaia herself repudiated the name, as far as common use went,
and persisted in calling herself “Dums.” The miller and his wife often
tried to coax from Aglaia the source of this mysterious name, but
without results. At last they arrived at a theory. In the little garden
behind the cottage was a bed of rhododendrons in which the child took a
peculiar delight and interest. It may have been that she perceived in
“Dums” a kinship to the formidable name of her favourite flowers.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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