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The Mill on the Floss

✒ Author
📖 Pages792
⏰ Reading time 35 hours 45 minutes
💡 Originally published1860
🌏 Original language English
📌 Type Novels
📌 Genre Prose

Table of contents

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Book I: Boy and Girl1
Chapter 1. Outside Dorlcote Mill1
Chapter 2. Mr. Tulliver, of Dorlcote Mill, Declares His Resolution about Tom4
Chapter 3. Mr. Riley Gives His Advice Concerning a School for Tom14
Chapter 4. Tom Is Expected35
Chapter 5. Tom Comes Home43
Chapter 6. The Aunts and Uncles Are Coming59
Chapter 7. Enter the Aunts and Uncles77
Chapter 8. Mr. Tulliver Shows His Weaker Side114
Chapter 9. To Garum Firs127
Chapter 10. Maggie Behaves Worse Than She Expected150
Chapter 11. Maggie Tries to Run away from Her Shadow160
Chapter 12. Mr. and Mrs. Glegg at Home176
Chapter 13. Mr. Tulliver Further Entangles the Skein of Life189
Book II: School-Time194
Chapter 1. Tom's "First Half"194
Chapter 2. The Christmas Holidays221
Chapter 3. The New Schoolfellow232
Chapter 4. "The Young Idea"242
Chapter 5. Maggie's Second Visit257
Chapter 6. A Love-Scene264
Chapter 7. The Golden Gates Are Passed272
Book III: The Downfall283
Chapter 1. What Had Happened at Home283
Chapter 2. Mrs. Tulliver's Teraphim, or Household Gods291
Chapter 3. The Family Council299
Chapter 4. A Vanishing Gleam327
Chapter 5. Tom Applies His Knife to the Oyster334
Chapter 6. Tending to Refute the Popular Prejudice against the Present of a Pocket-Knife352
Chapter 7. How a Hen Takes to Stratagem363
Chapter 8. Daylight on the Wreck380
Chapter 9. An Item Added to the Family Register393
Book IV: The Valley of Humiliation402
Chapter 1. A Variation of Protestantism Unknown to Bossuet402
Chapter 2. The Torn Nest Is Pierced by the Thorns408
Chapter 3. A Voice from the Past413
Book V: Wheat and Tares431
Chapter 1. In the Red Deeps431
Chapter 2. Aunt Glegg Learns the Breadth of Bob's Thumb450
Chapter 3. The Wavering Balance478
Chapter 4. Another Love-Scene488
Chapter 5. The Cloven Tree499
Chapter 6. The Hard-Won Triumph520
Chapter 7. A Day of Reckoning529
Book VI: The Great Temptation540
Chapter 1. A Duet in Paradise540
Chapter 2. First Impressions552
Chapter 3. Confidential Moments575
Chapter 4. Brother and Sister583
Chapter 5. Showing That Tom Had Opened the Oyster596
Chapter 6. Illustrating the Laws of Attraction603
Chapter 7. Philip Re-enters615
Chapter 8. Wakem in a New Light636
Chapter 9. Charity in Full-Dress648
Chapter 10. The Spell Seems Broken661
Chapter 11. In the Lane671
Chapter 12. A Family Party683
Chapter 13. Borne Along by the Tide695
Chapter 14. Waking715
Book VII: The Final Rescue730
Chapter 1. The Return to the Mill730
Chapter 2. St. Ogg's Passes Judgment742
Chapter 3. Showing That Old Acquaintances Are Capable of Surprising Us755
Chapter 4. Maggie and Lucy764
Chapter 5. The Last Conflict773

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Book I: Boy and Girl

Chapter 1. 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.
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