The Church with an Overshot-Wheel

"The Church with an Overshot-Wheel" is a short story by O. Henry that explores themes of love, sacrifice, and redemption. Set in a small town, the narrative centers around the character of a young woman who faces a moral dilemma regarding her family and her own desires. As the story unfolds, O. Henry's trademark twist reveals the complexities of human relationships and the impact of choices made in the name of love. Through his signature wit and keen observations, the author captures the essence of small-town life and the struggles of its inhabitants, ultimately delivering a poignant message about the nature of true devotion.

• Short story

								
Lakelands is not to be found in the catalogues of fashionable summer
resorts. It lies on a low spur of the Cumberland range of mountains on
a little tributary of the Clinch River. Lakelands proper is a contented
village of two dozen houses situated on a forlorn, narrow-gauge
railroad line. You wonder whether the railroad lost itself in the pine
woods and ran into Lakelands from fright and loneliness, or whether
Lakelands got lost and huddled itself along the railroad to wait for
the cars to carry it home.

You wonder again why it was named Lakelands. There are no lakes, and
the lands about are too poor to be worth mentioning.

Half a mile from the village stands the Eagle House, a big, roomy old
mansion run by Josiah Rankin for the accommodation of visitors who
desire the mountain air at inexpensive rates. The Eagle House is
delightfully mismanaged. It is full of ancient instead of modern
improvements, and it is altogether as comfortably neglected and
pleasingly disarranged as your own home. But you are furnished with
clean rooms and good and abundant fare: yourself and the piny woods
must do the rest. Nature has provided a mineral spring, grape-vine
swings, and croquet—even the wickets are wooden. You have Art to thank
only for the fiddle-and-guitar music twice a week at the hop in the
rustic pavilion.

The patrons of the Eagle House are those who seek recreation as a
necessity, as well as a pleasure. They are busy people, who may be
likened to clocks that need a fortnight’s winding to insure a year’s
running of their wheels. You will find students there from the lower
towns, now and then an artist, or a geologist absorbed in construing
the ancient strata of the hills. A few quiet families spend the summers
there; and often one or two tired members of that patient sisterhood
known to Lakelands as “schoolmarms.”

A quarter of a mile from the Eagle House was what would have been
described to its guests as “an object of interest” in the catalogue,
had the Eagle House issued a catalogue. This was an old, old mill that
was no longer a mill. In the words of Josiah Rankin, it was “the only
church in the United States, sah, with an overshot-wheel; and the only
mill in the world, sah, with pews and a pipe organ.” The guests of the
Eagle House attended the old mill church each Sabbath, and heard the
preacher liken the purified Christian to bolted flour ground to
usefulness between the millstones of experience and suffering.

Every year about the beginning of autumn there came to the Eagle House
one Abram Strong, who remained for a time an honoured and beloved
guest. In Lakelands he was called “Father Abram,” because his hair was
so white, his face so strong and kind and florid, his laugh so merry,
and his black clothes and broad hat so priestly in appearance. Even new
guests after three or four days’ acquaintance gave him this familiar
title.

Father Abram came a long way to Lakelands. He lived in a big, roaring
town in the Northwest where he owned mills, not little mills with pews
and an organ in them, but great, ugly, mountain-like mills that the
freight trains crawled around all day like ants around an ant-heap. And
now you must be told about Father Abram and the mill that was a church,
for their stories run together.

In the days when the church was a mill, Mr. Strong was the miller.
There was no jollier, dustier, busier, happier miller in all the land
than he. He lived in a little cottage across the road from the mill.
His hand was heavy, but his toll was light, and the mountaineers
brought their grain to him across many weary miles of rocky roads.

The delight of the miller’s life was his little daughter, Aglaia. That
was a brave name, truly, for a flaxen-haired toddler; but the
mountaineers love sonorous and stately names. The mother had
encountered it somewhere in a book, and the deed was done. In her
babyhood Aglaia herself repudiated the name, as far as common use went,
and persisted in calling herself “Dums.” The miller and his wife often
tried to coax from Aglaia the source of this mysterious name, but
without results. At last they arrived at a theory. In the little garden
behind the cottage was a bed of rhododendrons in which the child took a
peculiar delight and interest. It may have been that she perceived in
“Dums” a kinship to the formidable name of her favourite flowers.

When Aglaia was four years old she and her father used to go through a
little performance in the mill every afternoon, that never failed to
come off, the weather permitting. When supper was ready her mother
would brush her hair and put on a clean apron and send her across to
the mill to bring her father home. When the miller saw her coming in
the mill door he would come forward, all white with the flour dust, and
wave his hand and sing an old miller’s song that was familiar in those
parts and ran something like this:

“The wheel goes round,
The grist is ground,
    The dusty miller’s merry.
He sings all day,
His work is play,
    While thinking of his dearie.”

Then Aglaia would run to him laughing, and call:

“Da-da, come take Dums home;” and the miller would swing her to his
shoulder and march over to supper, singing the miller’s song. Every
evening this would take place.

One day, only a week after her fourth birthday, Aglaia disappeared.
When last seen she was plucking wild flowers by the side of the road in
front of the cottage. A little while later her mother went out to see
that she did not stray too far away, and she was already gone.

Of course every effort was made to find her. The neighbours gathered
and searched the woods and the mountains for miles around. They dragged
every foot of the mill race and the creek for a long distance below the
dam. Never a trace of her did they find. A night or two before there
had been a family of wanderers camped in a grove near by. It was
conjectured that they might have stolen the child; but when their wagon
was overtaken and searched she could not be found.

The miller remained at the mill for nearly two years; and then his hope
of finding her died out. He and his wife moved to the Northwest. In a
few years he was the owner of a modern mill in one of the important
milling cities in that region. Mrs. Strong never recovered from the
shock caused by the loss of Aglaia, and two years after they moved away
the miller was left to bear his sorrow alone.

When Abram Strong became prosperous he paid a visit to Lakelands and
the old mill. The scene was a sad one for him, but he was a strong man,
and always appeared cheery and kindly. It was then that he was inspired
to convert the old mill into a church. Lakelands was too poor to build
one; and the still poorer mountaineers could not assist. There was no
place of worship nearer than twenty miles.

The miller altered the appearance of the mill as little as possible.
The big overshot-wheel was left in its place. The young people who came
to the church used to cut their initials in its soft and slowly
decaying wood. The dam was partly destroyed, and the clear mountain

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