FERMAN HENRY
It was when I began to go to the district school that I first heard of
Ferman Henry and his house. Just after we had waded through the little
stream that ran across the road, we came in full sight of the place. The
house stood about half-way up the hill that rose gently from the little
creek, and in front of it was a large oak-tree that spread its branches
out over the porch and almost to the road. There were alder-bushes and
burdocks along the fence,—or, rather, where the fence was meant to be;
for when I first knew the place almost half of it was gone, and the
remaining half was never in repair. On one side of the house was a well,
and in this was a wooden pump. We used often to stop here to get a
drink,—for there never yet was a boy that could pass by water without
stopping for a drink. I remember that the pump always had to be primed,
the valves were so old and worn; and when we poured water in at the top
to start it, we had to work the handle very hard and fast, until we got
quite red in the face, before the water came, and then we had to keep
the handle going, for if we stopped a single moment the water would run
down again and leave the pump quite dry. I never knew the time when the
pump was in repair, and I do not know why it was that we boys spent our
breath in priming it and getting water from the well. Perhaps it was
because we had always heard that the water was so very cold; and
perhaps, too, because we liked to stop a moment at the house,—for Ferman
Henry and his family were the “cleverest” people we knew. City people
may not know that in Farmington we used the word “clever” to mean kind
or obliging,—as when we spoke of a boy who would give us a part of his
apple, or a neighbor who would lend us his tools or do an errand for us
when he went to town.
I had always been told that Ferman Henry was a very shiftless man. The
neighbors knew that he would leave his buggy or his harness out of doors
under the apple-trees all summer long, exposed to sun and rain; and that
he did not like to work. Our people thought that everyone should not
only work, but also like to work simply for the pleasure it brought. I
recall that our copy-books and readers said something of this sort when
I went to school; and I know that the people of Farmington believed, or
thought they believed, that this was true.
Ferman Henry was a carpenter, and a good one, everybody said, although
it was not easy to get him to undertake a job of work; and if he began
to build something, he would never finish it, but leave it for someone
else when it was partly done. He was a large, fat man, and when I first
knew him he wore a colored shirt, and trousers made of blue drilling
with wide suspenders passing over his great shoulders; sometimes one of
these was broken, and he often fastened the end to his trousers with a
nail that slipped through a hole in the suspender and in the cloth,
where a button was torn off. He often wore cowhide boots, with his
trousers legs sometimes inside and sometimes outside; but generally he
was barefoot when we went past the house. I do not remember seeing him
in winter-time, perhaps because then he was not out of doors under the
big oak-tree. At any rate, my memory pictures him only as I have
described him.
When I first heard of Ferman Henry, I was told about his house. This was
begun before the war, and he was building it himself. He began it so
that he might be busy when he had no other work to do; and then too his
family was always getting larger, and he needed a new home. He had
worked occasionally upon the house for six or seven years, and then he
went out as a soldier with the three-months’ men. This absence hindered
him seriously with his work; but before he went away he managed to
inclose enough of the house so that he was able to move his family in,
intending to finish the building as soon as he got back.
The house was not a large affair,—an upright part with three rooms above
and three below, and a one-story kitchen in the shape of an L running
from the side. But it was really to be a good house, for Ferman Henry
was a good carpenter and was building it for a home.
After he got back from the war he would take little jobs of work from
the neighbors now and then, but still tinkered at his house. When any
work of special importance or profit came along, he refused it, saying
he must first “finish up” his house.
I can just remember the building as it appeared when I commenced going
to the district school. The clapboards had begun to brown with age and
wind and rain. The front room was done, excepting as to paint. The back
room below and the rooms upstairs were still unfinished, and the L was
little more than a skeleton waiting for its bones to be covered up. The
front doors and windows had been put in, but the side and back windows
were boarded up, and no shutters had appeared. Back of the house was a
little barn with a hen-house on one side, and on the other was a pen
full of grunting pigs, drinking swill, growing fat, climbing into the
trough, and running their long snouts up through the pen to see what we
children had brought for them to eat.
I remember Ferman Henry from the time when I first began to go to
school. He was fat and “clever,” and always ready to talk with any of
the boys; and he would tell us to come into the yard and take the dipper
and prime the pump, whenever we stopped to get a drink. He generally sat
outside, under the big oak-tree, on the bench that stood by the fence,
where he could see all who passed his door.
Mrs. Henry was almost as large and fat as he, and she too was “clever”
to the boys. She wore a gray dress that was alike from head to foot, and
she never seemed to change it or get anything new. They had a number of
children, though I cannot tell now how many. The boys were always
falling out of the big oak-tree and breaking their arms and carrying
them in a sling. Two or three of those I knew went to school, and I
believe that some were large enough to work out. The children who went
to school never seemed to learn anything from their books, but they were
pleasant and “clever” with their dinners or their marbles, or anything
they had. We boys managed to have more or less sport at their expense.
The fact that they were “clever” and cheerful never seemed to make the
least difference to us, unless to give the chance to make more fun of
them on that account. They never seemed to bring much dinner to school,
excepting bread-and-butter, and the bread was cut in great thick slices,
and the butter never seemed very nice. I know it was none of Aunt
Mary’s.
We boys could tell whether folks were rich or poor by the dinners the
children brought to school. If they had pie and cheese and cake and
frosted cookies, with now and then a nice ripe apple, we knew that they
were rich. We thought bread-and-butter the poorest kind of a lunch; and
sometimes we would stop on the way and open our dinner-pails and throw
it out.
We always knew the Henrys were poor. They had no farm, only a bit of
land along the road that ran a little way up the hill. They kept one
cow, and sometimes a horse, and two or three long-eared hounds that used
to hunt at night, their deep howls filling the valley with doleful
sounds.
Everyone said that Ferman Henry would work only when his money was all
gone, and that when he had enough ahead for a few weeks he would give up
his job. Sometimes he would work at the saw-mill and get a few more
boards for his house, or at the country store and get nails or glass.
After he came back from his three-months’ service he was given a small
pension, and for a few days after every quarterly payment the family
lived as well as the best, and sometimes even bought a little more
material for the house.
Year after year, as the family grew, he added to the building, sometimes
plastering a room, sometimes putting in a window or a door; and he
always said it would be finished soon.
But however poor they were, every time a circus came near the town the
whole family would go. The richest people in the village had never been
to as many circuses as the Henry boys; and even if they knew nothing
about the Romans or the Greeks, they could tell all about the latest
feats of skill and strength.
I often saw Ferman Henry tinkering around the mill, where he came to do
some odd job to get a sack of meal or flour. Once I well remember that
the water-wheel had broken down and we had to stop the mill for several
days; my father tried to get him to come and fix the wheel, but he said
he really had not the time,—that he must finish up his house before cold
weather set in.
As long as I went up and down the country road to school, I saw Ferman
Henry’s unfinished house. We boys used to speculate and wonder as to
when it would be done, and how it would look when it finally should be
finished. Our elders always told us that Ferman Henry was too shiftless
and lazy ever to complete his house, and warned us by his example. When
we left our task undone, or made excuses for our idleness, they asked us
if we wanted to grow up as shiftless and lazy as Ferman Henry.
After I left the district school, and went the other way to the Academy
in the town, I still used to hear about Ferman Henry’s house. The people
at the stores would ask him how the work was coming on; and he always
answered that he would plaster his house in the fall, or paint it in the
spring, or finish it next year.
Before I left Farmington, the growing Henry family seemed to fill every
crack and crevice of the house. The kitchen had been inclosed, but the
porch was not yet done. The shutters were still wanting, the plastering
was not complete, and the outside was yet unpainted; but he always said
that he would go at it in a few days and get it done.
The last time I went to Farmington I drove past the house. Ferman Henry
sat upon the little bench under the big oak-tree. A pail of water, with
a dipper in it, stood by the pump. Mrs. Henry came out to see if I had
grown. A group of children were grubbing dirt in the front yard. I drew
up for a moment under the old tree, in the spot where I had so often
rested when a child. Ferman Henry seemed little changed. The years had
slipped over him like days or weeks, and scarcely left a furrow on his
face or whitened a single hair. At my questioning surprise, he told me
that the small children in the yard belonged to his sons who lived
upstairs. I looked at the house, now falling to decay. The roof was
badly patched, the weather-boards were loose; the porch had not been
finished, and the building had never seen a coat of paint. I asked after
his health and prosperity. He told me that all the family were well, and
that he was getting on all right, and expected to finish his house that
fall and paint it in the spring. Out in the back yard I heard the hogs
grunting in the pen, as in the old-time days. I saw the laughing
children playing in the dirt. Mrs. Henry stood on the porch outside, and
Ferman sat on the old bench and smiled benignly on me as I drove away.
Then I fell to musing as to who was the wiser,—he or I.