Afghanistan and the Anglo-Russian Dispute | Page 5

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 her sorrow, when she learned the
whole of the dreadful truth. She was in fainting fits for hours, one
succeeding another, and then her grief found tongue. There was no term
of endearment that the heart of woman could dictate to her speech, that
was not lavished on the lifeless clay. She called the dead "her Miles,"

"her beloved Miles," "her husband," "her own darling husband," and by
such other endearing epithets. Once she seemed as if resolute to arouse
the sleeper from his endless trance, and she said, solemnly,
"_Father_--dear, dearest father!" appealing as it might be to the parent
of her children, the tenderest and most comprehensive of all woman's
terms of endearment--"Father--dear, dearest father! open your eyes and
look upon your babes--your precious girl, and noble boy! Do not thus
shut out their sight for ever!"
But it was in vain. There lay the lifeless corpse, as insensible as if the
spirit of God had never had a dwelling within it. The principal injury
had been received on that much-prized scar; and again and again did
my poor mother kiss both, as if her caresses might yet restore her
husband to life. All would not do. The same evening, the body was
carried to the dwelling, and three days later it was laid in the
church-yard, by the side of three generations of