The stones were originally enclosed and covered with a wooden casing, half of which we found in the mill, but the other half we had to build ourselves and make them, of course, exactly as the first half. As usual the boards that were available at any lumber yard were not the same thickness, so again we had to have proper boards milled out to match up with the old. Finally, George found an old blade adequate to make the same beading on the edge of these new boards as the original beading, and it was not too difficult to do with the aid of this old fashioned plane. About this time we received in the express from Mr. Mattson, the genial gentleman from Connecticut, who had sharpened the stones, a cradle and a shoe. The cradle is to hold the hopper and the shoe is for support, as I said before, underneath the spout of the hopper. The cradle was practically a perfect fit on the top of the wooden casing, and the hopper fitted the cradle perfectly. This was one time something really did fit. And so - - - - just before the Christmas Holidays of 1961 everything seemed to be about finished. We procured a bag of whole corn, part of which we dropped into the hopper, opened up the pen gate, and lo and behold, yellow gold came flowing out of the chute. To be sure, at first the meal was a bit coarse, but after George maneuvered the “tenterer,” we obtained about the correct texture of meal. It has been said that the end of something is better than the beginning, but I think I felt a little sad that we were finished and somewhat surprised that the mill actually worked. Sad, perhaps, because we had no more to do to complete the mill project. We were constantly uncovering new sights in the ancient mill. The actual work, the research, the conversations with new people, the reading of stories of old mills, seeing the old mills, some of which were restored and others abandoned, and being able to finally rebuild this old mill and to renew a small part of life now long forgotten, has been most fascinating. George just called me on the phone, saying, “Harold ... you know what?” “No, what?” “I think I have found an old tide mill - - - -” Transcriber’s Notes Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a predominant preference was found in the original book; otherwise they were not changed. Simple typographical errors were corrected; unbalanced quotation marks were remedied when the change was obvious, and otherwise left unbalanced. Two typographical errors in quoted text on page 37 were corrected after consulting a copy of the book from which the quotation was taken. The illustrations at the ends of chapters I, II, VI, VIII, and X are simple decorative tailpieces.