Millville is only a name or rather a reminiscence. There was once a village here, but now its population has all gone with the tide down the river, even its ghost appears to have departed. The ruins have all fallen, except the mill, which we propose to revivify. I had built a summer cottage on the shore of the lake, about one mile from the mill. The absolute stillness of the place charmed me when worn out by the noise and heat and dirt and smell of the city. Here even the owl twittered softly as if afraid to disturb the silence. The silence which was such a boon to me seemed to be oppressive to the younger members of the family. To prevent therefore their becoming dissatisfied with the place and wishing to go to other resorts, I planned to have some of their best friends spend much of the summer with us, and I encouraged their plans for making use of the mill. I will not offer this as an excuse for introducing electricity into a sleeping valley. Indeed, electricity has always disported itself there in the lightning, jumping from cloud to mountain peak as I have seen it nowhere else on earth. The next time I saw the boys they had ambitious plans indeed. The penstock at the mill was to be repaired. The water-wheel was to drive an alternating current dynamo. The voltage of this current was to be stepped up by a transformer. It was to be transmitted to the cottage and there the e. m. f. was to be stepped down again by another transformer. My wife suggested that if it interfered with the simple life it would have to step down and out. Harold, however, assured his mother that they were going to simplify everything--even the subject of electricity. Their plans were: To light the cottage by electricity; introduce a number of electric back logs, with coloured glass bottles; heat the fireless cooker by electricity; pump the water for the house by electricity; run mother's sewing machine by electricity; run the washing machine and wringer by electricity; heat sad irons by electricity; percolate coffee, wash dishes and run the vacuum cleaner by electricity; operate the door bell and the telephone and wind the clock by electricity. I was sure that if they carried out these plans they would stay in Millville at least that summer, so I said go ahead. We fixed the penstock. The boys estimated that 10 cubic feet of water per second would pass through it. They said that a cubic foot of water weighed 62.5 pounds and 10 cubic feet weighed 625 pounds. They said it fell at the rate of 7 vertical feet a second, making 4375 foot-pounds per second. But 550 foot-pounds per second is one horse-power, hence this is about 8 horse-power. Since one horse-power is equivalent to 746 watts of electricity, we have, if we could generate it without loss, said the boys, nearly the equivalent of 6 kilowatts of electricity, or about 54 amperes at 110 volts. There were several things they wanted to know before they could go further with their plans.