As I recall it, the Mill School was a department of the common schools, in which were placed all boys and girls who had reached thirteen and were planning to enter the mill as soon as the law permitted. If you please, it was my “finishing school.” I have always considered it as the last desperate effort of the school authorities to polish us off as well as they could before we slipped out of their care forever. I am not aware of any other reason for the existence of the Mill School, as I knew it. However, it was a very appropriate and suggestive name. It coupled the mill with the school very definitely. It made me fix my mind more than ever on the mill. Everybody in it was planning for the mill. We talked mill on the play-ground, drew pictures of mills at our desks, dreamed of it when we should have been studying why one half of a quarter is one fourth, or some similar exercise. We had a recess of our own, after the other floors had gone back into their classrooms, and we had every reason to feel a trifle more dignified than the usual run of thirteen-year-old pupils who plan to go through the grammar, the high, and the technical schools! After school, when we mixed with our less fortunate companions, who had years and years of school before them, we could not avoid having a supercilious twang in our speech when we said, “Ah, don’t you wish _you_ could go into the mill in a few months and earn money like _we’re_ going to do, eh?” or, “Just think, Herb, I’m going to wear overalls rolled up to the knees and go barefooted all day!” If the thumbscrew of the Inquisition were placed on me, I could not state the exact curriculum I passed through during the few months in the Mill School. I did not take it very seriously, because my whole mind was taken up with anticipations of working in the mill. But the coming of June roses brought to an end my stay there. The teacher gave me a card which certified that I had fulfilled the requirements of the law in regard to final school attendance. I went home that afternoon with a consciousness that I had grown aged suddenly. When my aunt saw the card, her enjoyment knew no bounds. “Good for you, Al!” she exclaimed, “We’ll make short work of having you in the mill now.”