A CHAT WITH A MILLER my life. Oh yes, she's very old-fashioned and slow, but for all that she can grind corn better nor your modern mills, in spite of what people talk. We grinds the wheat and makes honest meal; the modern mills with their rollers make simply flour, which is not half as wholesome or nourishing. Wheat-meal and flour are not the same, though they both make bread: wheat-meal possesses nourishing qualities that ordinary flour does not." So one drives about country and learns!
The miller looked an oldish man, but his face and beard (I think he had a beard, but my memory may be at fault) were white from dusty meal, and may have made him appear older than he really was. Anyhow, we ventured to ask him if he thought times had altered for the better or for the worse since he was young. Like the rest of the world, merry miller though he was, he complained of the severe competition that had cut down profits to a minimum, whilst the work was harder. In "the good old days" of milling, when he began the trade, the price for grinding corn used to be 1s. a strike or 8s. a quarter for wheat, and 8d. a strike or 5s. 4d. a quarter for barley; now the charge is 5s. 4d. a quarter for wheat, and 2s. 6d. a quarter for barley. "Moreover, nowadays, though we gets less money for the work, we have to fetch the corn and take the meal back again; whereas in past times the corn was carted to the mill, and taken away when ground." So that, we were given to understand, besides the lowering of prices there was the cost of cartage to and fro to be taken into con-
