Democratic Sentinel, Volume 4, Number 39, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 November 1880 — A Water-Wheel Story. [ARTICLE]

A Water-Wheel Story.

Some one tells the following story, which serves to point a moral: “ There were two men (in about 1838), Stickpenny and Whewell, who owned a sawmill near Old Town, Maine, in common The arrangement under which the mill was operated was that each had the mill all to himself during alternate weeks. Stickpenny was a mean, rusty old chap. Whewell was a shrewd, investigating young man. The mill was run by a crude, rough kind of an undershot wheel, that gave very little power for the amount of water used, so that the water was often short. Whewell wanted to put in a new iron spiral-vent wheel, then just coming out, but Stickpenny would have nothing to do with it. He wasn’t going to lay out money for any ‘such a job as that.’ Finally, Whewell said he would pay all the bills, to which Stickpenny at last agreed, ‘but provided you put the wheel in in your week.’ So the new wheel was put in, and Whewell, being of a mechanical turn of mind, experimented with it, and soon found that by plugging up some of the orifices the saw went through the log faster than when they were all open. So he plugged them up during his week, and always pulled the plugs all out again for Stickpenny to operate with. Soon it began to be noticed that somehow or other Whewell always managed to saw a couple of thousand feet more of lumber in his week than ever Stickpenny could, no matter how the pond was. “Finally Stickpenny went down to see Wlieewell about it. Says he, ‘Whewell, how is it that you manage to saw more lumber in a given time than I can when my turn comes round? ’ Says Whewell, ‘Don’t you know how that is? Waal, I’ll tell you. It’s because you ain’t been treatin’ of me fairly in this matter. It’s ag’in nature. You can’t expect the mill to saw as well for you as it does for them as do the square thing all around.’ Stickpenny wouldn’t believe that, and went away. But still the mill went on turning out regularly more lumber for Whewell than Stickpenny managed to get out of it; so, finally, tlie latter came round, and said, ‘What’s your bill? I’ll pay my share.’ “He paid it, and thereafter Stickpenny managed to saw lumber just as lively as Whewell did. ‘Well,’ said the old fellow, ‘I always knew that the folks around here were all ag’in me, but I never thought that the Almighty was ;’ and he died without finding out the explanation of it at all.”