Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 1, 2025
When Robert came to the top of the garret stairs, he saw a handmill, which was at a little distance, whirled about very swiftly.... When he was in bed, he heard as it were the gobbling of a turkey cock close to the bedside; and soon after, the sound of one stumbling over his shoes and boots; but there were none there, he had left them below.... The next evening, between five and six o'clock, my sister Molly, then about twenty years of age, sitting in the dining-room reading, heard as if it were the door that led into the hall open, and a person walking in, that seemed to have on a silk nightgown, rustling and trailing along.
La Perouse, the French scientist who visited the coast in 1786 and gave to the padres of San Carlos a handmill for grinding grain, said that it would enable four Indian women to do the work of a hundred by the old way.
Tucker, Johnson, Richey and others, who, being anxious to assist in the good work, had killed, and were fire-drying, beef to take up the mountains. Here two days were spent making pack-saddles, driving in horses, and getting supplies in shape. Indians were kept at the handmill grinding wheat. Part of the flour was sacked, and part converted into bread by the women in the vicinity.
Here they are of three kinds: coarse and rough basaltic lava for the first and rudest work; red granite and syenitic granite for the next stage; and, lastly, an admirable handmill of the compactest grey granite, smooth as glass and hard as iron.
Jesting had never been the old woman's strong point, and to-day it was less easy than ever; for, if the worst befell, and she were sent in her old age to a strange house and Argutis, no doubt, to another she would have to turn the handmill for the rest of her days. But it was a hard task which the motherless and now fatherless girl had set herself, and she must try to cheer her darling.
"Quite at the last a blind woman was led forward, and a withered-looking woman who was dumb, as the auctioneer, who generally praised up the merits of the prisoners, informed the buyers. The blind woman had strong hands, and was bought by a tavern-keeper, for whom she turns the handmill to this day; the dumb woman held a child in her arms, and no one could tell whether she was young or old.
No friend or servant have I except my dwarf Corner, who comes to me at the end of harvest with his handmill, his basket, and his axe. With these he grinds the nuts, and gathers the berries, and splits the firewood; and cheerily we live all the winter.
In the kitchen the godless cook had spoiled the temper of several swords by sticking them into the oven instead of spits; with a Turkish horsetail, captured at Vienna, she dusted her handmill. In a word, housewifely Ceres had banished Mars and ruled along with Pomona, Flora, and Vertumnus over Dobrzynski’s house, stable, and barn. But to-day the goddesses must yield anew; Mars returns.
True enough, it was one of the stones of an ancient handmill, such as was used in remote antiquity, chiefly by women, for grinding corn. It must have been as nearly as possible after the pattern of the first implement invented by man for this purpose.
Better die than become for gods and men a puppet that obeys every jerk of visible and invisible hands. Starting up in violent excitement, he tore the bandage from his face and eyes, declaring, as Thyone seriously reprimanded him, that he would go away, no matter where, and earn his daily bread at the handmill, like the blind Ethiopian slave whom he had seen in the cabinetmaker's house at Tennis.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking