Just Sixteen.

by Susan Coolidge

  A BALSAM PILLOW.

  Now that fir-needles and hemlock-needles have become recognized articlesof commerce, and every other shop boasts its row of fragrant cushions,with their inevitable motto, "Give Me of Thy Balm, O Fir-tree," I amreminded of the first pillow of the sort that I ever saw, and of what itmeant to the girl who made it. I should like to tell you the littlestory, simple as it is. It belongs to the time, eight or nine yearssince, before pine pillows became popular. Perhaps Chateaubriand Dorsetmay be said, for once in her life, to have set a fashion.

  Yes, that was really her name! Her mother met with it in a newspaper,and, without the least idea as to whether it appertained to man orwoman, adopted it for her baby. The many syllables fascinated her, Isuppose, and there was, besides, that odd joy in a piece of extravagancethat costs nothing, which appeals to the thrifty New England nature,and is one of its wholesome outlets and indulgences.

  So the Methodist elder baptized the child "Chateaubriand Aramintha,"making very queer work of the unfamiliar accents; and then, so far aspractical purposes are concerned, the name ceased to be. How can a busyhousehold, with milk to set, and milk to skim, and pans to scald, andbutter to make, and pigs to feed, find time for a name like that?"Baby," the little girl was called till she was well settled on her feetand in the use of her little tongue. Then she became "Brie," and BrieDorset she remained to the end. Few people recollected that shepossessed any other name, unless the marriage, birth, and death pages ofthe family Bible happened to be under discussion.

  The Dorsets' was one of those picturesque, lonely, outlying farms, pastwhich people drive in the summer, saying, "How retired! how peaceful!"but past which almost no one drives in the winter. It stood, with itsenvironment of red barns and apple-orchards, at the foot of a lowgranite cliff whose top was crowned with a fir wood; and two enormouselm-trees met over its roof and made a checker-work of light and shadeon its closely blinded front. No sign of life appeared to the citypeople who drew their horses in to admire the situation, except,perhaps, a hen scratching in the vegetable-beds, or a lazy cat baskingon the doorstep; and they would drive on, unconscious that behind theslats of the green blinds above a pair of eyes watched them go, and ahungry young heart contrasted their lot with its own.

  Hungry! There never was anything like the starvation which goes onsometimes in those shut-up farmhouses. Boys and girls feel it alike; butthe boys are less to be pitied, for they can usually devise means to getaway.

  How could Brie get away? She was the only child. Her parents had notmarried young. When she was nineteen, they seemed almost elderly people,so badly does life on a bleak New England farm deal with human beings.Her mother, a frail little woman, grew year by year less fit for hardlabor. The farm was not productive. Poverty, pinch, the inevitablerecurrence of the same things to be done day after day, month aftermonth, the same needs followed by the same fatigues,--all these Brie hadto bear; and all the while the child had that love and longing for thebeautiful which is part of the artist's equipment, and the deprivationof which is keen suffering. Sweet sights, sounds, smells,--all these shecraved, and could get only in such measure as her daily work enabled herto get them from that world of nature which is the satisfaction of eagerhearts to whom all other pleasures are denied.

  The fir wood on the upper hill was the temple where she worshipped.There she went with her Bible on Sunday afternoons, with her patchingand stocking-mending on other days. There she dreamed her dreams andprayed her prayers, and while there she was content. But all too soonwould come the sound of the horn blown from below, or a call from thehouse, "Brie, Brie, the men are coming to supper; make haste!" and shewould be forced to hurry back to the workaday world.

  Harder times followed. When she was just twenty, her father fell fromhis loaded hay-wagon, and fractured his thigh. There was no cure for thehurt, and after six months of hopeless tendance, he died. Brie and hermother were left together on the lonely farm, with the added burden of alarge bill for doctoring and medicines, which pressed like a heavyweight on their honorable hearts.

  The hired man, Reuben Hall, was well disposed and honest, but before Mr.Dorset's death he had begun to talk of going to the West, and Brieforeboded that he might not be willing to stay with them. Mrs. Dorset,broken down by nursing and sorrow, had become an invalid, unable toassist save in the lightest ways. The burden was sore for one pair ofyoung shoulders to bear. Brie kept up a brave face by day, but at night,horrors of helplessness and apprehension seized her. The heavens seemedas brass, against which her feeble prayers beat in vain; the future wasbarred, as it were, with an impassable gate.

  What could they do? Sell the farm? That would take time; for no one inparticular wanted to buy it. If Reuben would stand by them, they mightbe able to fight it out for another year, and, what with butter and eggsand the corn-crop, make enough for his wages and a bare living. Butwould Reuben stay?

  Our virtues sometimes treat us as investments do, and return a dividendwhen we least expect it. It was at this hard crisis that certain gooddeeds of Brie's in the past stood her friend. She had always been goodto Reuben, and her sweet ways and consideration for his comfort hadgradually won a passage into his rather stolid affections. Now, seeingthe emergency she was in, and the courage with which she met it, hecould not quite find the heart to "leave the little gal to make out byherself." Fully purposing to go, he stayed, putting off the idea ofdeparture from month to month; and though, true to his idea of propercaution, he kept his good intentions to himself, so that the relief ofhaving him there was constantly tempered by the dread lest he might goat any time, still it _was_ relief.

  So April passed, and May and June. The crops were planted, thevegetables in. Brie strained every nerve. She petted her hens, andcoaxed every possible egg out of them, she studied the tastes of the twocows, she maintained a brave show of cheer for her ailing mother, butall the time she was sick at heart. Everything seemed closing in. Howlong could she keep it up?

  The balsam firs of the hill grove could have told tales in those days.They were Brie's sole confidants. The consolation they gave, the counselthey communicated, were mute, indeed, but none the less real to theanxious girl who sat beneath them, or laid her cheek on their roughstems. June passed, and with early July came the answer to Brie's manyprayers. It came, as answers to prayer often do, in a shape of which shehad never dreamed.

  Miss Mary Morgan, teacher in grammar school No. 3, Ward Nineteen, of thegood city of Boston, came, tired out from her winter's work, to spend afew days with Farmer Allen's wife, her second cousin, stopped one day atthe Dorset's door, while driving, to ask for a drink of water, took afancy to the old house and to Brie, and next day came over to proposeherself as a boarder for three months.

  "I can only afford to pay seven dollars a week," she said; "but, on theother hand, I will try not to make much trouble, if you will take me."

  "Seven dollars a week; only think!" cried Brie, gleefully, to her motherafter the bargain was completed, and Miss Morgan gone. "Doesn't it seemlike a fortune? It'll pay Reuben's wages, and leave ever so much over!And she doesn't eat much meat, she says, and she likes baked potatoesand cream and sweet baked apples better than anything. And there's thekeeping-room chamber all cleaned and ready. Doesn't it seem as if shewas sent to us, mother?"

  "Your poor father never felt like keepin' boarders," said Mrs. Dorset."I used to kind of fancy the idea of it, but he wasn't willin'. Ithought it would be company to have one in the house, if they was nicefolks. It does seem as if this was the Lord's will for us; her coming inso unexpected, and all."

  Two days later Miss Morgan, with a hammock and a folding canvas chairand a trunk full of light reading, arrived, and took possession of hernew quarters. For the first week or two she did little but rest,sleeping for hours at a time in the hammock swung beneath the shadowingelms. Then, as the color came back to her thin face and the light to hereyes, she began to walk a little, to sit with Brie in the fir grove, orread aloud to her on the doorstep while she mended, shell
ed peas, orpicked over berries; and all life seemed to grow easier and pleasanterfor the dwellers in the solitary farmhouse. The guest gave littletrouble, she paid her weekly due punctually, and the steady income,small as it was, made all the difference in the world to Brie.

  As the summer went by, and she grew at home with her new friend, shefound much relief in confiding to her the perplexities of her position.

  "I see," Miss Morgan said; "it is the winter that is the puzzle. I willengage to come back next summer as I have this, and that will helpalong; but the time between now and then is the difficulty."

  "Yes," replied Brie; "the winter is the puzzle, and Reuben's money. Wehave plenty of potatoes and corn and vegetables to take us through, andthere's the pig to kill, and the chickens will lay some; if only therewere any way in which I could make enough for Reuben's wages, we couldmanage."

  "I must think it over," said Miss Morgan.

  She pulled a long branch of the balsam fir nearer as she spoke, andburied her nose in it. It was the first week of September, and she andBrie were sitting in the hill grove.

  "I love this smell so," she said. "It is delicious. It makes me dream."

  Brie broke off a bough.

  "I shall hang it over your bed," she said, "and you will smell it allnight."

  So the fir bough hung upon the wall till it gradually yellowed, and theneedles began to drop.

  "Why, they are as sweet as ever,--sweeter," declared Brie, smelling ahandful which she had swept from the floor. Then an idea came into herhead.

  She gathered a great fagot of the branches, and laid them to dry in thesun on the floor of a little-used piazza. When partly dried, shestripped off the needles, stuffed with them a square cotton bag, andmade for that a cover of soft sage-green silk, with an odd shot patternover it. It was a piece of what had been her great-grandmother's weddinggown.

  _Voila!_ Do you realize the situation, reader? Brie had made the firstof all the many balsam pillows. It was meant for a good-by gift to MissMorgan.

  "Your cushion is the joy of my life," wrote that lady to her a monthafter she went home. "Every one who sees it, falls in love with it. Halfa dozen people have asked me how they could get one like it. And, Brie,this has given me an idea. Why should you not make them for sale? I willsend you up some pretty silk for the covers, and you might cross-stitcha little motto if you liked. I copy some for you. Two people have givenme an order already. They will pay four dollars apiece if you like totry."

  This suggestion was the small wedge of the new industry. Brie lost notime in making the two pillows, grandmother's gown fortunately holdingout for their covers. Then came some pretty red silk from Miss Morgan,with yellow _filoselle_ for the mottoes, and more orders. Brie workedbusily that winter, for her balsam pillows had to be made in sparemoments when other work permitted. The grove on the hill was herunfailing treasury of supply. The thick-set twigs bent them to her will;the upper branches seemed to her to rustle as with satisfaction at theaid they were giving. In the spring the old trees renewed their foliagewith vigorous purpose, as if resolved not to balk her in her purpose.

  The fir grove paid Reuben's wages that winter. Miss Morgan came back thefollowing June, and by that time balsam pillows were established asarticles of commerce, and Brie had a munificent offer from a recentlyestablished Decorative Art Society for a supply of the needles, atthree dollars the pound. It was hard, dirty work to prepare such aquantity, but she did not mind that.

  As I said, this was some years since. Brie no longer lives in her oldhome. Her mother died the third year after Miss Morgan came to them, thefarm is sold, and Brie married. She lives now on a ranch in Colorado,but she has never forgotten the fir-grove, and the memory of it is ahelp often in the desponding moments that come at times to all lives.

  "I could not be worse off than I was then," she says to herself. "Thereseemed no help or hope anywhere. I felt as if God didn't care and didn'thear my prayers; and yet, all the time, there was dear Miss Morgancoming to help us, and there were the trees, great beautiful things,nodding their heads, and trying to show me what could be made out ofthem. No, I never will be faithless again, nor let myself doubt, howeverdark things may look, but remember my balsam pillows, and trust inGod."