Is It Eleazar's Millstone?

A FALL SOLILOQUY ON A CONTROVERSIAL SUBJECTWHICH FUTURE GENERATIONS WILL ANSWER

HANOVER, aside from offering for the observance of the world- New England's most beautiful scenery, and Dartmouth College, also provides an instance of a natural and historical phenomenon that gives the imagination an excellent opportunity to run amuck among its ancient hills. All this opportunity is wound up in one exceedingly innocent-looking millstone, in the center of which grows a young poplar tree.

The tree, with an adornment of Lebanon granite at its base, grows quietly with the seasons, about ten yards due east of South Fayerweather Hall, oblivious to the threatening social revolution centering around it.

There are three schools of thought about the problem. One school of thought, and I may add, the most aggressive and the most annoying of the three, claims that the millstone is a relic of Eleazar Wheelock's mill that was destroyed on that or some other controversial spot. The second school of thought claims that Eleazar never had a mill on that spot, and therefore, never had a millstone to leave after the destruction of the mill. And besides, they further reason with dogged determination, that if Eleazar had a millstone, it wouldn't do anything so foolish as to let a tree grow out of the middle of it to start all this rumpus, because Eleazar was a peace-loving soul deep down in his heart. The third school of thought doesn't even know that there is such a tree with a silly looking millstone around its toes, so we can dispense with this class without further ado, because I doubt very seriously if the members will offer any constructive suggestions about this most provoking situation.

The millstone is level with the ground, and if you aren't looking for it, as is no doubt the case, you won't find it. It is weathered considerably and has on the face of it a series of definite grooves giving the stone the appearance of the western hemisphere of an orange. Several geologists have suggested to me that the striations are the result of the receding glacier in the Connecticut Valley, but I merely laughed quite superciliously in their learned faces. Who ever heard of a glacier taking time out from its helter-skelter mad dash to the north to carve grooves in a millstone? Incidentally, these geologists were all members of the second school of thought, as one might expect from this hypothesis.

The first school of thought became so enraged at this suggestion that it immediately began delving into mousy manuscripts to prove their point about Eleazar. Let us leave them at their travail inhaling the dust from Page 376 of Ozmanski's Dartmouth's Unsolvable and Inconsequential Mysteries, and turn to the tree itself, which, I warrant, is getting pretty sick of the whole business. You'd be sick too if you had to grow for hundreds of years with a millstone blissfully wrapped around your torso.

After a most enjoyable interview with the parties involved I discovered that the tree is just as surprised about the whole thing as you are. However, I did manage to glean one gem of information about the situation that I daresay will astound you. It nearly floored me! I never dreamed of it!

In a rather perturbed tone, I was told by the now famous example of shrubbery that one lone seed is the cause of all the embarrassment. This sly little devil wafted itself down from its papa (or mamma) tree one balmy spring afternoon, years ago, before you or I ever heard of Eleazar, and fell with a sickening thud, right plop in the middle of the millstone. Now what have you? A tree with a millstone around it!

Further sneaking observation led me to the conclusion that the tree is progressing admirably in spite of the accursed millstone and all indications make me adamant in my belief that someday yonder tree will wreak a heinous vengeance on its millstone by splitting it to smithereens, thus ending all the controversy.

By this time, I was pretty cold standing out there chatting with the tree and wondering what happened to the first school of thought, so, after sneezing three times, and successfully smothering a fourth, I said farewell with a frozen tear in one eye, and stumbled off into the night to get a milk-shake at Allen's.

MILLSTONE AND THE TREE