Recurrently would pop up the old thought of self-destruction. There was some consolation in it too. I used to feel as if a great weight rested on my bent back: that it would weigh me down, as Christian’s sin had weighed him down, only mine was not the weight of sin, but the burden of social injustice. I seemed to be carrying the burden on a road that sloped upward, higher and higher, a road dark and haunted with chilly mists, growing darker, covering it. There was nothing but a climbing, a struggling ahead, nothing to walk into but gloom! What was the use of turning a finger to change it? I was branded from the first for the mill. You could turn back my scalp and find that my brain was a mill. You could turn back my brain, and find that my thoughts were a mill. I could never get out--away from the far-reaching touch of it. The pleasantest thing I enjoyed--an excursion to Cuttyhunk on a steamer, or a holiday at the ball game--had to be backgrounded against the mill. After everything, excursion, holiday, Sunday rest, a night of freedom on the street, an _enjoyable illness_ of a day, a half day’s shut-down--the _Mill_! The _Mill_! What difference did it make that I took question-and-answer grammar to the mill, and hid myself every now and then, to get it in my mind, or hurried my dinner that I might read it? After all, the mill, the toil, and the weakness. What difference did it make if I read good books, on my uncle’s recommendation? After I had gone through romance, there was the muddy prose of my life in the mill and at home! Just then Fate, who served me so ungenerously as I thought, worked one more mortal into her wheel, brought one more from dreams and high purposes into the ring with me. He was a stout, pudgy-faced, lazy man of thirty, who came in to mop the floor, oil some of the pulleys, and keep some of the spare alleys cleaned. But he was a college graduate! He was the first college graduate I had ever had the honor to work near. The overseers, our superintendent, were not graduates of a college. I was thrilled! That man, working at the end of my alley, scrubbing suds into the floor with a soggy broom, mopping them dry, pushing his pail of hot water before him, carrying a shaft pole or mopping along with a pail of grease in his hands--that man was a _COLLEGE GRADUATE_! All the dreams that I had indulged relative to classic halls, ivy-covered walls, the college fence, a dormitory, football field--all those dreams centered around that lumpish head, for the Scrubber had been to college! He represented to me the unattainable, the Mount Olympus top of ambitious effort. Suds, pail, soggy mop, grease pail, and lazy fat were transformed before me, for _HE HAD BEEN TO COLLEGE_! What college had he graduated from? I do not know to this day. How had he stood in college? Another shrug of the shoulders must suffice. _WHY_ was _HE_ in _THE MILL_? I never paused in my hero adoration to ask that. Sufficient for me that he had been to college!