dust, millers and hodmen

July 27th.—We have had the pleasure of marching to-day 22 miles over a baked white clay surface, accompanied under the broiling sun by a breeze which very gently enveloped us, as in a secondary atmosphere with dust which gave to all a semblance, not strictly defined, whether of millers or hodmen. This charming promenade was adorned solely by a dry and repulsive sort of bush, which served to remind us that any comfortable vegetation could by no possibility there exist.  (August 1853; and Scenes and Adventures in the Army)

 They went about huskily muttering the Kantian Categories through teeth and lips dry and dusty as any miller's, with the crumbs of Graham crackers."  (Pierre)

What are you doing there, My Beloved, among the bricks & cobble-stone boulders?  Are you making mortar?  Surely , My Beloved, you are not carrying a hod?  —That were a quizzical sight, to see any godly man, with a pen behind his ear, and a hod on his shoulder.—  … For heaven’s sake, come out from among those Hittites & Hodites—give up mortar forever.  (Letter to Evert Duyckinck, August 16, 1850)

 "...disgusted with the heat and dust of the babylonish brick-kiln of New York...."
1851 Letter to Hawthorne

A dusty book he spied, whose coat,
Like the Scotch miller's powdered twill, 
The mealy owner might denote.  (Clarel 1.17)