twenty years at hull house

ately than I wanted my right thumb to be flattened, as my father's had

become, during his earlier years of a miller's life. Somewhat discouraged by the slow process of structural modification, I also took

measures to secure on the backs of my hands the tiny purple and red

spots which are always found on the hands of the miller who dresses

millstones. The marks on my father's hands had grown faint, but were

quite visible when looked for, and seemed to me so desirable that they

must be procured at all costs. Even when playing in our house or yard,

I could always tell when the millstones were being dressed, because the

rumbling of the mill then stopped, and there were few pleasures I would not instantly forego, rushing at once to the mill, that I might

spread out my hands near the millstones in the hope that the little

hard flints flying from the miller's chisel would light upon their backs

and make the longed-for marks. I used hotly to accuse the German

miller, my dear friend Ferdinand, "of trying not to hit my hands," but

he scornfully replied that he could not hit them if he did try, and that

they were too little to be of use in a mill anyway. Although I hated his

teasing, I never had the courage to confess my real purpose.

This sincere tribute of imitation, which affection offers to its adored

object, had later, I hope, subtler manifestations, but certainly these

first ones were altogether genuine. In this case, too, I doubtless contributed my share to that stream of admiration which our generation so

generously poured forth for the self-made man. I was consumed by a

wistful desire to apprehend the hardships of my father's earlier life in

that faraway time when he had been a miller's apprentice. I knew that he still woke up punctually at three o'clock because for so many years

he had taken his turn at the mill in the early morning, and if by

chance I awoke at the same hour, as curiously enough I often did, I imagined him in the early dawn in my uncle's old mill reading through

the entire village library, book after book, beginning with the lives of

the signers of the Declaration of Independence. Copies of the same

books, mostly bound in calfskin, were to be found in the library below,

and I courageously resolved that I too would read them all and try to

understand life as he did. I did in fact later begin a course of reading in

the early morning hours, but I was caught by some fantastic notion of

chronological order and early legendary form. Pope's translation of the

"Iliad," even followed by Dryden's "Virgil," did not leave behind the

residuum of wisdom for which I longed, and 1 finally gave them up for a