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The garden, growing more and more open, till it became definitely a meadow, sloped down to the river, which was overgrown with green weeds and osiers. Near the milldam was the millpond, deep and full of fish; a little mill with a thatched roof was working away with a wrathful sound, and frogs croaked furiously.
Nevertheless, even with its depressing and exhausting influence upon him, he not only contrived to carry out the project upon which he had adventured, triumphantly to its appointed close, but even upon one of the most inclement days of an unusually inclement season, namely, on Saturday, the 29th of February, 1868, he actually took part as one of the umpires in the good-humoured frolic of a twelve-mile walking match, up hill and down dale, through the snow, on the Milldam road, between Boston and Newton, doing every inch of the way, heel and toe, as though he had been himself one of the competitors.
The town itself has suffered comparatively few changes. True there is a trolley line through the main street oddly called "The Milldam," and in Walden wood I met an automobile not far from the cairn, or stone pile, which marks the site of Thoreau's cabin. But the woods themselves were intact and the limpid waters of the pond had not been tapped to furnish power for any electric light company.
"My dear boy," said Edward, "after getting a certain amount of knowledge, other knowledge comes very fast; it gathers like a snowball or perhaps it would be better to illustrate the fact by a milldam. You know, when the water is low in the milldam, the miller cannot drive his wheel; but the moment the water comes up to a certain level it has force to work the mill.
But we're anchored here at Millville, so I've been wondering what I could do to improve the place and keep myself busy. It has seemed to me that the same rush of water in Little Bill Creek that runs the dynamos at Royal is in evidence to a lesser extent at the old milldam.
This is the milldam, and the pond above is no natural one, but the enforced repose and outspreading of a merry brown brook, which now shows its true nature, and escaping from the gloomy pool, runs scolding and foaming down through a wilderness of rocks and trees. You cannot follow it there, though I have often done so in my barefoot days, so come back to the path again.
Miles to the north they could see a big square white building that they knew as Carter's Mills, really only a grain storage elevator. Almost due west of that was the milldam, which was about the only place they could hope to be able to cross Plum Run and Watertown lay on the other side.
"Well," said his wife; and while they were making their way across the city to the Milldam she answered certain questions he asked about some points in the new house. "I should have liked to have you stop there," he began; but she answered so quickly, "Not to-day," that he gave it up and turned his horse's head westward when they struck Beacon Street.
Whether it was throwing quoits in the middle of the road, playing foot-ball in the river pastures below the mill, swimming in the milldam or walking the logs on the pond, he was the leader. He was a favourite with all classes. Mr. Watson, who was rumoured to have loose notions on religion, was his constant companion.
And so it is with knowledge; when once you get it up to a certain level, you can 'work your mill, with this great advantage over the milldam, that the stream of knowledge, once reaching the working level, never runs dry." "Oh, I wish I knew as much as you do," exclaimed Gusty. "And so you can if you wish it," said Edward. Gusty sighed heavily, and admitted he had been very idle.
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