My life : a record of events and opinions - Wallace-online.org

22 MY LIFEwe often saw him standing at the mill doors in hisdusty miller's clothes as we passed on our way fromschool. He was a cousin of my mother's by marriage,and we children sometimes went to tea at his house,and then, as a great treat, were shown all over themill with all its strange wheels and whirling millstones,its queer little pockets, on moving leatherbelts, carrying the wheat up to the stones in acontinual stream, the ever-rattling sieves and clothswhich sifted out the bran and pollard, and the weirdpeep into the dark cavern where the great drippingwater-wheel went on its perpetual round.Where theriver passed under the bridge close by, we couldclamber up and look over the parapet into the deep,clear water rushing over a dam, and also see wherethe stream that turned the wheel passed swiftly undera low arch, and this was a sight that never palledupon us, so that almost every fine day, as we passedthis way home from school, we gave a few momentsto gazing into this dark, deep water, almost always inshadow owing to high buildings on both sides of it,but affording a pleasant peep to fields and gardensbeyond.Here, too, in the river Beane, which had a gentlestream with alternate deep holes and sandy shallows,suitable for boys of all ages, was our favourite bathingplace,where, not long after our coming to Hertford,I was very nearly drowned. It was at a place calledWillowhole, where those who could swim a littlewould jump in, and in a few strokes in any directionreach shallower water. I and my brother John andseveral schoolfellows were going to bathe, and I, whohad undressed first,was standing on the brink, whenone of my companions gave me a sudden push frombehind, £tnd I tumbled in and went under water