Farmington

by Clarence Darrow

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.