money honestly, to bring up his grandchildren virtuously and
comfortably, to enjoy his daily work and his evening leisure. He is
never idle, never preoccupied. He enjoys getting the mill started,
seeing the flour stream into the sacks, he enjoys going to market,
he enjoys going prosperously to church on Sundays, he enjoys his
paper and his pipe. He has no exalted ideas, and he could not put a
single emotion into words, but he is thoroughly honest, upright,
manly, kind, sensible. A perfect life in many ways; and yet it is
inconceivable to me that a man should live thus, without an aim,
without a hope, without an object. He would think my own life even
more inconceivable--that a man could deliberately sit down day
after day to construct a story about imaginary people; and such
respect as he feels for me, is mainly due to the fact that my
writings bring me in a larger income than he could ever make from
his mill. But of course he is a man who is normally healthy, and
such men as he are the props of rural life. He is a good master, he
sees that his men do their work, and are well housed. He is not
generous exactly, but he is neighbourly. The question is whether
such as he is the proper type of humanity. He represents the simple
virtues at their high-water mark. He is entirely contented, and his
desires are perfectly proportioned to their surroundings. He seems
indeed to be exactly what the human creature ought to be. And yet
his very virtues, his sense of justice and honesty, his sensible
kindliness, are the outcome of civilisation, and bear the stamp, in
reality, of the dreams of saints and sages and idealists--the men
who felt that things could be better, and who were made miserable
by the imperfections of the world. I cannot help wondering, in a
whimsical moment, what would have been the miller's thoughts of
Christ, if he had been confronted with Him in the flesh. He would
have thought of Him rather contemptuously, I think, as a