Page:Henry Ford's Own Story.djvu/63

 cooled in a basket in the well, and all the family sat on the back porch eating it.

Long after midnight, when every one else was sound asleep, the lamp was burning in the sitting-room, and Henry was reading that article about the horseless carriage. The idea fascinated him.

The new house was finished late in the fall. Clara had made a trip to Detroit to purchase furniture, and all summer she had been working on patchwork quilts and crocheted tidies. When everything was ready, the sitting-room bright with new carpet and shining varnished furniture, the new range installed in the kitchen, the cellar stocked with apples, vegetables, canned fruits, Henry and Clara moved into their own home. They were proud of it.

"It's a fine place yet, as good as anybody could want," Henry Ford says now. "We still have it, and we like to go down there in the summers and stay awhile. All the furniture is there, exactly as it was then. I wouldn't ask any better place to live."

It must have been a happy time for both of them. They had a comfortable home, plenty to eat and wear, they were surrounded by friends. There was a simple neighborly spirit, a true democracy, in that little country community. There were no very poor families there; no very rich ones; every one had plenty, and wanted no more.