Afloat and Ashore Read Free

our
property, and was a source of great convenience and of some profit to
my father. There he ground all the grain that was consumed for
domestic purposes, for several miles around; and the tolls enabled him
to fatten his porkers and beeves, in a way to give both a sort of
established character. In a word, the mill was the concentrating point
for all the products of the farm, there being a little landing on the
margin of the creek that put up from the Hudson, whence a sloop sailed
weekly for town. My father passed half his time about the mill and
landing, superintending his workmen, and particularly giving
directions about the fitting of the sloop, which was his property
also, and about the gear of the mill. He was clever, certainly, and
had made several useful suggestions to the millwright who occasionally
came to examine and repair the works; but he was by no means so
accurate a mechanic as he fancied himself to be. He had invented some
new mode of arresting the movement, and of setting the machinery in
motion when necessary; what it was, I never knew, for it was not named
at Clawbonny after the fatal accident occurred. One day, however, in
order to convince the millwright of the excellence of this
improvement, my father caused the machinery to be stopped, and then
placed his own weight upon the large wheel, in order to manifest the
sense he felt in the security of his invention. He was in the very act
of laughing exultingly at the manner in which the millwright shook his
head at the risk he ran, when the arresting power lost its control of
the machinery, the heavy head of water burst into the buckets, and the
wheel whirled round carrying my unfortunate father with it. I was an
eye-witness of the whole, and saw the face of my parent, as the wheel
turned it from me, still expanded in mirth. There was but one
revolution made, when the wright succeeded in stopping the works. This
brought the great wheel back nearly to its original position, and I
fairly shouted with hysterical delight when I saw my father standing
in his tracks, as it might be, seemingly unhurt. Unhurt he would have
been, though he must have passed a fearful keel-hauling, but for one
circumstance. He had held on to the wheel with the tenacity of a
seaman, since letting go his hold would have thrown him down a cliff
of near a hundred feet in depth, and he actually passed between the
wheel and the planking beneath it unharmed, although there was only an
inch or two to spare; but in rising from this fearful strait, his head
had been driven between a projecting beam and one of the buckets, in a
way to crush one temple in upon the brain. So swift and sudden had
been the whole thing, that, on turning the wheel, his lifeless body
was still inclining on its periphery, retained erect, I believe, in
consequence of some part of his coat getting attached, to the head of
a nail. This was the first serious sorrow of my life. I had always
regarded my father as one of the fixtures of the world; as a part of
the great system of the universe; and had never contemplated his death
as a possible thing. That another revolution might occur, and carry
the country back under the dominion of the British crown, would have
seemed to me far more possible than that my father could die. Bitter
truth now convinced me of the fallacy of such notions.
    It was months and months before I ceased to dream of this frightful
scene. At my age, all the feelings were fresh and plastic, and grief
took strong hold of my heart. Grace and I used to look at each other
without speaking, long after the event, the tears starting to my eyes,
and rolling down her cheeks, our emotions being the only
communications between us, but communications that no uttered words
could have made so plain. Even now, I allude to my mother's anguish
with trembling. She was sent for to the house of the miller, where the
body lay, and arrived unapprised of the extent of the evil. Never can
I—never shall I forget the outbreakings of