The Romance of Gilbert Holmes: An Historical NovelKirkman, Marshall M. (Marshall Monroe)
General
The Romance of Gilbert Holmes: An Historical Novel
Kirkman, Marshall M. (Marshall Monroe)
Black Hawk War, 1832 -- Fiction
To further our industry, we also made bolsters and pillows from husks
and a species of lichen, which latter was found in great abundance in
the neighborhood. Separating this with care, and afterward heating it,
Mr. Hayward maintained that a pillow thus manufactured was the equal of
the best.
"Not only that, but it will be found to possess aromatic qualities
highly curative of influenzas and catarrhal afflictions prevalent here.
As regards comfort nothing can excel it, unless it may be the selected
feathers of tame geese, and these being rare and high-priced, none but
the rich can afford them."
However, notwithstanding the excellence of our goods, trade lagged, and
this despite all that could be said.
"The trouble is," Mr. Hayward was in the habit of saying, "a pillow
being open to the view of visitors, something plump and fluffy must be
exhibited by every good housewife. Because of that we must content
ourselves with making pillows for rooms that the critical eyes of
neighbors do not reach. Our mattresses being hid away, people buy them
and save money, but they must have fat pillows made of feathers for the
effect on visitors and other peepers. Pillows ought not to be used,
anyway," he always maintained, "for they give people stringy necks, like
turkeys; but if used at all, they should be of moderate thickness, such
as we make."
The forms of industry I have enumerated, however productive, were only a
part of Mr. Hayward’s means of piecing out our profit-and-loss account,
and among other things a way of utilizing the forests that lay about our
house soon suggested itself to his practical mind. There, if it were
mild, our cattle found nourishment to carry them through the winter,
with little of the help other and less provident farmers were required
to furnish. Protected by the trees, the soft grasses grew far into the
winter, and with the first disappearance of snow sprung again into
luxuriant life. The cows, thus fed with little or no expense, afforded
us butter and milk, and a margin for sale; but as this last required
some measure of attention upon the part of Mrs. Hayward, he did not
press it. For in all things he was very tender of her, shielding her in
every way from the hardships he himself so unflinchingly faced. Of this
I thought much and gratefully at the time and in after years, and the
more because of his boundless ambition and great activity of life.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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