72 History of Gutta-Percha Willie,

 

If he had been a seaside boy, his first job would’
have been a boat ; if he had lived in a flat country,
it would very likely have been a windmill; but.
the most noticeable thing in that neighbourhood
was a mill for grinding corn driven by a water-
wheel.

When Willie was a tiny boy, he had gone once
with Farmer Thomson’s man and a load of corn to
see the mill; and the miller had taken him all over
it. He saw the corn go in by the hopper into the
trough which was the real hopper, for it kept con-
stantly hopping to shake the corn down through
a hole in the middle of the upper stone, which
went round and round against the lower, so that
between them they ground the corn to meal, which,
in the story beneath, he saw pouring, a solid stream
like an avalanche, from a wooden spout. But the
best of it all was the wheel outside, and the busy
rush of the water that made it go. So Willie
would now make a water-wheel. 2

The carpenter having given him a short lecture
on the different kinds of water-wheels, he decided
on an undershot, and with Sandy’s help proceeded
to construct it—with its nave of mahogany, its
spokes of birch, its floats of deal, and its axle of
stout iron-wire, which, as the friction would not be
great, was to run in. gudgeon-blocks of some hard
wood, well oiled. These blocks were fixed in a
frame so devised that, with the help of a few stones