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The Mill on the Floss
George Eliot
Table of Contents
Book I: Boy and Girl
Outside Dorlcote Mill
Mr. Tulliver, of Dorlcote Mill, Declares His Resolution about Tom
Mr. Riley Gives His Advice Concerning a School for Tom
Tom Is Expected
Tom Comes Home
The Aunts and Uncles Are Coming
Enter the Aunts and Uncles
Mr. Tulliver Shows His Weaker Side
To Garum Firs
Maggie Behaves Worse Than She Expected Maggie Tries to Run away from Her Shadow Mr. and Mrs. Glegg at Home
Mr. Tulliver Further Entangles the Skein of Life
Book II: School-Time
Tom's "First Half "
The Christmas Holidays The New Schoolfellow "The Young Idea" Maggie's Second Visit
A Love-Scene
The Golden Gates Are Passed
Book III: The Downfall
What Had Happened at Home
Mrs. Tulliver's Teraphim, or Household Gods
The Family Council
A Vanishing Gleam
Tom Applies His Knife to the Oyster
Tending to Refute the Popular Prejudice against the Present of a Pocket-Knife
How a Hen Takes to Stratagem
Daylight on the Wreck
An Item Added to the Family Register
Book IV: The Valley of Humiliation
A Variation of Protestantism Unknown to Bossuet
The Torn Nest Is Pierced by the Thorns
A Voice from the Past Book V: Wheat and Tares In the Red Deeps
Aunt Glegg Learns the Breadth of Bob's Thumb
The Wavering Balance Another Love-Scene The Cloven Tree
The Hard-Won Triumph
A Day of Reckoning
Book VI: The Great Temptation
A Duet in Paradise First Impressions Confidential Moments Brother and Sister
Showing That Tom Had Opened the Oyster
Illustrating the Laws of Attraction
1
Philip Re-enters
Wakem in a New Light Charity in Full-Dress The Spell Seems Broken In the Lane
A Family Party
Borne Along by the Tide
Waking
Book VII: The Final Rescue
The Return to the Mill
St. Ogg's Passes Judgment
Showing That Old Acquaintances Are Capable of Surprising Us
Maggie and Lucy The Last Conflict Book I
Boy and Girl
Chapter I
Outside Dorlcote Mill
A wide plain, where the broadening Floss hurries on between its green banks to the sea, and the loving tide, rushing to meet it, checks its passage with an impetuous embrace. On this mighty tide the black ships-laden with the fresh-scented fir-planks, with rounded sacks of oil-bearing seed, or with the dark glitter of coal-are borne along to the town of St. Ogg's, which shows its aged, fluted red roofs and the broad gables of its wharves between the low wooded hill and the river-brink, tingeing the water with a soft purple hue under the transient glance of this February sun. Far away on each hand stretch the rich pastures, and the patches of dark earth made ready for the seed of broad-leaved green crops, or touched already with the tint of the tender-bladed autumn-sown corn. There is a remnant still of last year's golden clusters of beehive-ricks rising at intervals beyond the hedgerows; and everywhere the hedgerows are studded with trees; the distant ships seem to be lifting their masts and stretching their red-brown sails close among
the branches of the spreading ash. Just by the red-roofed town the tributary Ripple flows with a lively current into the Floss. How
lovely the little river is, with its dark changing wavelets! It seems to me like a living companion while I wander along the bank, and listen to its low, placid voice, as to the voice of one who is deaf and loving. I remember those large dipping willows. I remember the stone bridge.
And this is Dorlcote Mill. I must stand a minute or two here on the bridge and look at it, though the clouds are threatening, and it is far on in the afternoon. Even in this leafless time of departing February it is pleasant to look at,-perhaps the chill, damp season adds a charm to the trimly kept, comfortable dwelling-house, as old as the elms and chestnuts that shelter it from the northern blast. The stream is brimful now, and lies high in this little withy plantation, and half drowns the grassy fringe of the croft in front of the house. As I look at the full stream, the vivid grass, the delicate bright-green powder softening the outline of the great trunks and branches that gleam from under the bare purple boughs, I am in love with moistness, and envy the white ducks that are dipping their heads far into the water here among the withes, unmindful of the awkward appearance they make in the drier world above.
The rush of the water and the booming of the mill bring a dreamy deafness, which seems to heighten the peacefulness of the scene. They are like a great curtain of sound, shutting one out from the world beyond. And now there is the thunder of the huge covered wagon coming home with sacks of grain. That honest wagoner is thinking of his dinner, getting sadly dry in the oven at this late hour; but he will not touch it till he has fed his horses,-the strong, submissive, meek-eyed beasts, who, I fancy, are looking mild reproach at him from between their blinkers, that he should crack his whip at them in that awful manner as if they needed that hint! See how they stretch their shoulders up the slope toward the bridge, with all the more energy because they are so near home. Look
at their grand shaggy feet that seem to grasp the firm earth, at the patient strength of their necks, bowed under the heavy collar, at
the mighty muscles of their struggling haunches! I should like well to hear them neigh over their hardly earned feed of corn, and see them, with their moist necks freed from the harness, dipping their eager nostrils into the muddy pond. Now they are on the bridge, and down they go again at a swifter pace, and the arch of the covered wagon disappears at the turning behind the trees.
Now I can turn my eyes toward the mill again, and watch the unresting wheel sending out its diamond jets of water. That little
