Harper's Round Table, December 22, 1896

Copyright, 1896, by Harper & Brothers. All Rights Reserved.

Two days before Christmas John Henry sat on the top rail of the fence which separated the seven-acre lot from the oat-field. There were five rails in the fence, on account of two cows addicted to jumping being kept in the seven-acre lot, and consequently John Henry was perched at quite a dizzy height from the ground. His mother would have been exceedingly nervous had she seen him there. He was her only child; his two older brothers had died in infancy; he had himself been very delicate, and it had been hard work to rear him. The neighbors said that Martha Anne Lewis had brought up John Henry wrapped in cotton-wool under a glass shade, and that she believed him to be both sugar and salt as far as sun and rain were concerned. Never lets him go out in the hot sun without an umbrella, said they, and never lets him out at all on a rainy day—always keeps him at home, flattening his nose against the window-pane.
Poor John Henry's mother was afraid to have him climb trees or coast down hill, and he might never have enjoyed these boyish sports had it not been for his father. When he was quite small, his father took him out in the pine woods and taught him how to climb a tall tree.
Don't you be afraid, sonny. A boy can't live in this world and not be picked on unless he can climb.

John Henry went to the top of the tree in triumph, and when his mother turned pale at the recital, his father only laughed.
I'd have caught him if he'd fallen, Martha Anne, he said; and John Henry has got to climb a tree, unless you want to set him up for a girl and done with it.
However, Mrs. Lewis stipulated that John Henry should not climb unless his father was with him, and also that he should not go coasting without him. The result was that until John Henry was twelve he had had very few boy-mates. He went to the district school, but that was only a quarter of a mile from his home, and he did not have to carry his dinner, and he always came straight home, because his mother was so anxious if he was late.