The Mill on the Floss

The Mill on the Floss

The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Mill on the Floss, by George Eliot #6 in our series by George Eliot
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Title: The Mill on the Floss
Author: George Eliot
Release Date: October, 2004 [EBook #6688] [Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on January 13, 2003]
Edition: 10
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MILL ON THE FLOSS ***

Produced by Curtis Weyant and David Maddock

The Mill on the Floss
George Eliot

Table of Contents

Book I: Boy and Girl
1. Outside Dorlcote Mill 2. Mr. Tulliver, of Dorlcote Mill, Declares His Resolution about Tom 3. Mr. Riley Gives His Advice Concerning a School for Tom 4. Tom Is Expected 5. Tom Comes Home 6. The Aunts and Uncles Are Coming 7. Enter the Aunts and Uncles 8. Mr. Tulliver Shows His Weaker Side 9. To Garum Firs 10. Maggie Behaves Worse Than She Expected 11. Maggie Tries to Run away from Her Shadow 12. Mr. and Mrs. Glegg at Home 13. Mr. Tulliver Further Entangles the Skein of Life
Book II: School-Time
1. Tom's "First Half" 2. The Christmas Holidays 3. The New Schoolfellow 4. "The Young Idea" 5. Maggie's Second Visit 6. A Love-Scene 7. The Golden Gates Are Passed
Book III: The Downfall
1. What Had Happened at Home 2. Mrs. Tulliver's Teraphim, or Household Gods 3. The Family Council 4. A Vanishing Gleam 5. Tom Applies His Knife to the Oyster 6. Tending to Refute the Popular Prejudice against the Present of a Pocket-Knife 7. How a Hen Takes to Stratagem 8. Daylight on the Wreck 9. An Item Added to the Family Register
Book IV: The Valley of Humiliation
1. A Variation of Protestantism Unknown to Bossuet 2. The Torn Nest Is Pierced by the Thorns 3. A Voice from the Past
Book V: Wheat and Tares
1. In the Red Deeps 2. Aunt Glegg Learns the Breadth of Bob's Thumb 3. The Wavering Balance 4. Another Love-Scene 5. The Cloven Tree 6. The Hard-Won Triumph 7. A Day of Reckoning
Book VI: The Great Temptation
1. A Duet in Paradise 2. First Impressions 3. Confidential Moments 4. Brother and Sister 5. Showing That Tom Had Opened the Oyster 6. Illustrating the Laws of Attraction 7. Philip Re-enters 8. Wakem in a New Light 9. Charity in Full-Dress 10. The Spell Seems Broken 11. In the Lane 12. A Family Party 13. Borne Along by the Tide 14. Waking
Book VII: The Final Rescue
1. The Return to the Mill 2. St. Ogg's Passes Judgment 3. Showing That Old Acquaintances Are Capable of Surprising Us 4. Maggie and Lucy 5. 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