The Lesson of the Water-Mill
under a picture of a water-mill. The words were these: ‘The mill cannot grind with the water that is past.’
“For a long time,” Miss Doudney concludes, “I believed my claim was firmly established, but two or three years ago I had to defend myself against a spiteful attack in Mr. O’Connor’s paper—the charge of being a deceiver was brought against me quite unexpectedly, in a most insulting manner. With respect to Mr. McCallum, I think it is likely that he did not intend the verses he wrote as an improved version of mine to appear in public. However, in literary matters some people appear to have no conscience at all.”
There is a legend that Miss Doudney, who was born in 1843, wrote the poem at the age of fifteen; however this is probably just an invention, since it was not until 1864 that the poem appeared in the Churchman’s Family Magazine. The editor of that paper, Mr. J. A. Kensit, was asked if he could refer to the files and get the exact date, but answered that this was impossible. However, even in the absence of all other proof, the presumption would be altogether in favor of Miss Doudney. She passed the early years of her life in a remote village in Hampshire, England, to which it is altogether unlikely that any copy of General McCallum’s privately printed volume
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