Through the mill: The life of a mill-boy

by Frederic Kenyon Brown

I have read that in the midst of the rough ocean there are quiet, calm places where a storm-driven ship may ride at peaceful anchor. That dingy room, with its pathetic row of dingy, obsolete books, its bedroom chair and small desk, with the accumulated dust on the bare floor, was such a place for me.

My first duty after supper was to insert a comment in my diary. Many times I would leave the table with aunt and uncle in violent controversy, with one or another of them intoxicated and helpless, and the line would be, in significant red ink, “Dark To-day!” It was “Dark To-day,” and “Dark To-day” for weeks and months. There were few occasions to ever write, “Had a good day, to-day” which, being interpreted, always meant, “Aunt and uncle are not drinking now and are living together without rows!” For I always condensed my diary record, for I thought, “It might be read—some day. Who knows? You’d better not be too definite!”

I ceased to go out at night now, for I was determined “to make something of myself,” now that I had read “Poor Boys who became Famous.” What they had done, I might do. They had gone through hardships. I could go through mine, if only I was not so weak in body.

One night my aunt severely arraigned me for something I had not said. She heaped her significant phrases on my head, taunted me, and aroused in me the murderer’s passion. I immediately ran to my “study,” closed the door, and received consolation from “Poor Boys who became Famous” by finding that they had attained fame through patience. I resolved to bear with fortitude the things that were set in my way.

It was a very elaborate, systematic, and commendable system of self-improvement that I laid out for myself, chiefly at the suggestion of a writer in “Success Magazine,” which I was reading with avidity. “A few minutes a day, on a street-car, at a spare moment, indulged in some good book, have been sufficient to broadly train many men who otherwise would NEVER have reached the pinnacle of fame,” it read, and, acting on that hint, I resolved to get at least a few minutes a day with my own great books. I would not be narrow, but would read in them all every evening! I would read law, theology, history, biography, and study grammar and arithmetic!

So my procedure would be this: After my entry in the diary, I would read a page from “The Life of Calvin,” then one of the romantic legends from the appendix to the Koran, always, of course, after I had dutifully read one of the chapters on “The Ant,” “Al Hejr,” “Thunder,” “The Troops,” “The Genii” or an equally exciting title like the “Cleaving Asunder,” the context of which, however, was generally very dull and undramatic. After the Koran I would pass to “The History of The Ancient World” and try to memorize a list of the islands of the Grecian group before the power of Hellas waned. By this time, though, I was usually unfit to proceed, save as I went into the kitchen and sprinkled water on my burning forehead; dizzy spells and weakness of the eyes would seize hold of me, and I would have to pause in utter dejection and think how grand it must be to be in college where one did not have to work ten and a half hours in a vitiated atmosphere, doing hard labor, before one sat down to study. Sometimes I would say: “No wonder college people get ahead so well—they have the chance. What’s the use of trying?” And at that dangerous moment of doubt, “Poor Boys who became Famous” would loom so large that I would renew my ambitions, and sit down once more to finish my study.

The grammar and the arithmetic I studied in the mill during any minute that I could snatch from my work. I needed help on those subjects, and I could ask questions of the College Graduate Scrubber. Sometimes I would vary the order, and read the theological definitions from “Cruden’s Concordance,” or the scriptural proofs of great doctrines in “The Biblical Theology,” with a page or two from the law trial in which “Paul Revere” had a part.

Whenever I managed to get in a good night of study without suffering in doing it, I would try to astonish the College Graduate Scrubber with a parade of what I had memorized. I would get him at a moment when he was especially indulgent with his time and say:

“Did you ever read in the Koran about that legend of Abraham, when he saw the stars for the first time and thought about there being one God?” And the Scrubber would look at me in astonishment and confess, “I never read that book. What is it?” “Why, didn’t you have it to read in college?” I would ask in amaze. “It’s the Turk’s Bible, and has the word ‘God’ in it the most times you ever saw!”

“They don’t read that in college,” he would answer. One day, when I was asking him to name over the islands of Greece, with their ancient names—to memorize which I had been working for some time—he lifted up his mop, made a dab at my bare legs, and stormed, “Sonny, you’re too fresh. Get away from here.” Seeing that he did not seem especially sympathetic towards my ambitious effort to be “learned,” I let him alone, consoling myself with the thought, “Well, how can you expect a college graduate to bother with you? Mind your own affairs, and some day you might get to college.”