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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Brown Mouse, by Herbert Quick
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Brown Mouse
+
+Author: Herbert Quick
+
+Release Date: October 21, 2008 [EBook #26987]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BROWN MOUSE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE BROWN MOUSE
+
+By
+HERBERT QUICK
+
+Author of
+Aladdin & Company, The Broken Lance
+On Board the Good Ship Earth, Etc.
+
+INDIANAPOLIS
+THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY
+PUBLISHERS
+
+
+
+
+Copyright 1915
+The Bobbs-Merrill Company
+
+Printed in the United States of America
+
+PRESS OF
+BRAUNWORTH & CO.
+BOOK MANUFACTURERS
+BROOKLYN, N. Y.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+CHAPTER
+      I  A Maiden's "Humph"                   1
+     II  Reversed Unanimity                  24
+    III  What Is a Brown Mouse               38
+     IV  The First Day of School             48
+      V  The Promotion of Jennie             55
+     VI  Jim Talks the Weather Cold          65
+    VII  The New Wine                        75
+   VIII  And the Old Bottles                 89
+     IX  Jennie Arranges a Christmas Party   99
+      X  How Jim Was Lined Up               111
+     XI  The Mouse Escapes                  122
+    XII  Facing Trial                       132
+   XIII  Fame or Notoriety                  147
+    XIV  The Colonel Takes the Field        164
+     XV  A Minor Casts Half a Vote          188
+    XVI  The Glorious Fourth                203
+   XVII  A Trouble Shooter                  218
+  XVIII  Jim Goes to Ames                   235
+    XIX  Jim's World Widens                 242
+     XX  Think of It                        248
+    XXI  A School District Held Up          258
+   XXII  An Embassy From Dixie              277
+  XXIII  And So They Lived----              295
+
+
+
+
+THE BROWN MOUSE
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+A MAIDEN'S "HUMPH"
+
+
+A Farm-hand nodded in answer to a question asked him by Napoleon on the
+morning of Waterloo. The nod was false, or the emperor misunderstood--and
+Waterloo was lost. On the nod of a farm-hand rested the fate of Europe.
+
+This story may not be so important as the battle of Waterloo--and it may
+be. I think that Napoleon was sure to lose to Wellington sooner or later,
+and therefore the words "fate of Europe" in the last paragraph should be
+understood as modified by "for a while." But this story may change the
+world permanently. We will not discuss that, if you please. What I am
+endeavoring to make plain is that this history would never have been
+written if a farmer's daughter had not said "Humph!" to her father's hired
+man.
+
+Of course she never said it as it is printed. People never say "Humph!" in
+that way. She just closed her lips tight in the manner of people who have
+a great deal to say and prefer not to say it, and--I dislike to record
+this of a young lady who has been "off to school," but truthfulness
+compels--she grunted through her little nose the ordinary "Humph!" of
+conversational commerce, which was accepted at its face value by the
+farm-hand as an evidence of displeasure, disapproval, and even of
+contempt. Things then began to happen as they never would have done if the
+maiden hadn't "Humphed!" and this is a history of those happenings.
+
+As I have said, it may be more important than Waterloo. _Uncle Tom's
+Cabin_ was, and I hope--I am just beginning, you know--to make this a much
+greater book than _Uncle Tom's Cabin_. And it all rests on a "Humph!"
+Holmes says,
+
+                "Soft is the breath of a maiden's 'Yes,'
+                Not the light gossamer stirs with less."
+
+but what bard shall rightly sing the importance of a maiden's "Humph!"
+when I shall have finished telling what came of what Jennie Woodruff said
+to Jim Irwin, her father's hired man?
+
+Jim brought from his day's work all the fragrances of next year's meadows.
+He had been feeding the crops. All things have opposite poles, and the
+scents of the farm are no exception to the rule. Just now, Jim Irwin
+possessed in his clothes and person the olfactory pole opposite to the
+new-mown hay, the fragrant butter and the scented breath of the lowing
+kine--perspiration and top-dressing.
+
+He was not quite so keenly conscious of this as was Jennie Woodruff. Had
+he been so, the glimmer of her white piqué dress on the bench under the
+basswood would not have drawn him back from the gate. He had come to the
+house to ask Colonel Woodruff about the farm work, and having received
+instructions to take a team and join in the road work next day, he had
+gone down the walk between the beds of four o'clocks and petunias to the
+lane. Turning to latch the gate, he saw through the dusk the white dress
+under the tree and drawn by the greatest attraction known in nature, had
+re-entered the Woodruff grounds and strolled back.
+
+A brief hello betrayed old acquaintance, and that social equality which
+still persists in theory between the work people on the American farm and
+the family of the employer. A desultory murmur of voices ensued. Jim Irwin
+sat down on the bench--not too close, be it observed, to the piqué
+skirt.... There came into the voices a note of deeper earnestness,
+betokening something quite aside from the rippling of the course of true
+love running smoothly. In the man's voice was a tone of protest and
+pleading....
+
+"I know you are," said she; "but after all these years don't you think you
+should be at least preparing to be something more than that?"
+
+"What can I do?" he pleaded. "I'm tied hand and foot.... I might have
+..."
+
+"You might have," said she, "but, Jim, you haven't ... and I don't see any
+prospects...." "I have been writing for the farm papers," said Jim; "but
+..."
+
+"But that doesn't get you anywhere, you know.... You're a great deal more
+able and intelligent than Ed ---- and see what a fine position he has in
+Chicago...."
+
+"There's mother, you know," said Jim gently.
+
+"You can't do anything here," said Jennie. "You've been a farm-hand for
+fifteen years ... and you always will be unless you pull yourself loose.
+Even a girl can make a place for herself if she doesn't marry and leaves
+the farm. You're twenty-eight years old."
+
+"It's all wrong!" said Jim gently. "The farm ought to be the place for the
+best sort of career--I love the soil!"
+
+"I've been teaching for only two years, and they say I'll be nominated for
+county superintendent if I'll take it. Of course I won't--it seems
+silly--but if it were you, now, it would be a first step to a life that
+leads to something."
+
+"Mother and I can live on my wages--and the garden and chickens and the
+cow," said Jim. "After I received my teacher's certificate, I tried to
+work out some way of doing the same thing on a country teacher's wages. I
+couldn't. It doesn't seem right."
+
+Jim rose and after pacing back and forth sat down again, a little closer
+to Jennie. Jennie moved away to the extreme end of the bench, and the
+shrinking away of Jim as if he had been repelled by some sort of negative
+magnetism showed either sensitiveness or temper.
+
+"It seems as if it ought to be possible," said Jim, "for a man to do work
+on the farm, or in the rural schools, that would make him a livelihood. If
+he is only a field-hand, it ought to be possible for him to save money and
+buy a farm."
+
+"Pa's land is worth two hundred dollars an acre," said Jennie. "Six months
+of your wages for an acre--even if you lived on nothing."
+
+"No," he assented, "it can't be done. And the other thing can't, either.
+There ought to be such conditions that a teacher could make a living."
+
+"They do," said Jennie, "if they can live at home during vacations. _I_
+do."
+
+"But a man teaching in the country ought to be able to marry."
+
+"Marry!" said Jennie, rather unfeelingly, I think. "_You_ marry!" Then
+after remaining silent for nearly a minute, she uttered the
+syllable--without the utterance of which this narrative would not have
+been written. "_You_ marry! Humph!"
+
+Jim Irwin rose from the bench tingling with the insult he found in her
+tone. They had been boy-and-girl sweethearts in the old days at the
+Woodruff schoolhouse down the road, and before the fateful time when
+Jennie went "off to school" and Jim began to support his mother. They had
+even kissed--and on Jim's side, lonely as was his life, cut off as it
+necessarily was from all companionship save that of his tiny home and his
+fellow-workers of the field, the tender little love-story was the sole
+romance of his life. Jennie's "Humph!" retired this romance from
+circulation, he felt. It showed contempt for the idea of his marrying. It
+relegated him to a sexless category with other defectives, and badged him
+with the celibacy of a sort of twentieth-century monk, without the honor
+of the priestly vocation. From another girl it would have been bad enough,
+but from Jennie Woodruff--and especially on that quiet summer night under
+the linden--it was insupportable.
+
+"Good night," said Jim--simply because he could not trust himself to say
+more.
+
+"Good night," replied Jennie, and sat for a long time wondering just how
+deeply she had unintentionally wounded the feelings of her father's
+field-hand; deciding that if he was driven from her forever, it would
+solve the problem of terminating that old childish love affair which still
+persisted in occupying a suite of rooms all of its own in her memory; and
+finally repenting of the unpremeditated thrust which might easily have
+hurt too deeply so sensitive a man as Jim Irwin. But girls are not usually
+so made as to feel any very bitter remorse for their male victims, and so
+Jennie slept very well that night.
+
+Great events, I find myself repeating, sometimes hinge on trivial things.
+Considered deeply, all those matters which we are wont to call great
+events are only the outward and visible results of occurrences in the
+minds and souls of people. Sir Walter Raleigh thought of laying his cloak
+under the feet of Queen Elizabeth as she passed over a mud-puddle, and all
+the rest of his career followed, as the effect of Sir Walter's mental
+attitude. Elias Howe thought of a machine for sewing, Eli Whitney of a
+machine for ginning cotton, George Stephenson of a tubular boiler for his
+locomotive engine, and Cyrus McCormick of a sickle-bar, and the world was
+changed by those thoughts, rather than by the machines themselves. John D.
+Rockefeller thought strongly that he would be rich, and this thought, and
+not the Standard Oil Company, changed the commerce and finance of the
+world. As a man thinketh so is he; and as men think so is the world. Jim
+Irwin went home thinking of the "Humph!" of Jennie Woodruff--thinking with
+hot waves and cold waves running over his body, and swellings in his
+throat. Such thoughts centered upon his club foot made Lord Byron a great
+sardonic poet. That club foot set him apart from the world of boys and
+tortured him into a fury which lasted until he had lashed society with the
+whips of his scorn.
+
+Jim Irwin was not club-footed; far from it. He was bony and rugged and
+homely, with a big mouth, and wide ears, and a form stooped with labor. He
+had fine, lambent, gentle eyes which lighted up his face when he smiled,
+as Lincoln's illuminated his. He was not ugly. In fact, if that quality
+which fair ladies--if they are wise--prize far more than physical beauty,
+the quality called charm, can with propriety be ascribed to a field-hand
+who has just finished a day of the rather unfragrant labor to which I have
+referred, Jim Irwin possessed charm. That is why little Jennie Woodruff
+had asked him to help with her lessons, rather oftener than was necessary,
+in those old days in the Woodruff schoolhouse when Jennie wore her hair
+down her back.
+
+But in spite of this homely charm of personality, Jim Irwin was set off
+from his fellows of the Woodruff neighborhood in a manner quite as
+segregative as was Byron by his deformity. He was different. In local
+parlance, he was an off ox. He was as odd as Dick's hatband. He ran in a
+gang by himself, like Deacon Avery's celebrated bull. He failed to
+matriculate in the boy banditti which played cards in the haymows on rainy
+days, told stereotyped stories that smelled to heaven, raided melon
+patches and orchards, swore horribly like Sir Toby Belch, and played pool
+in the village saloon. He had always liked to read, and had piles of
+literature in his attic room which was good, because it was cheap. Very
+few people know that cheap literature is very likely to be good, because
+it is old and unprotected by copyright. He had Emerson, Thoreau, a John B.
+Alden edition of Chambers' _Encyclopedia of English Literature_, some
+Franklin Square editions of standard poets in paper covers, and a few
+Ruskins and Carlyles--all read to rags. He talked the book English of
+these authors, mispronouncing many of the hard words, because he had never
+heard them pronounced by any one except himself, and had no standards of
+comparison. You find this sort of thing in the utterances of self-educated
+recluses. And he had piles of reports of the secretary of agriculture,
+college bulletins from Ames, and publications of the various bureaus of
+the Department of Agriculture at Washington. In fact, he had a good
+library of publications which can be obtained gratis, or very cheaply--and
+he knew their contents. He had a personal philosophy, which while it had
+cost him the world in which his fellows lived, had given him one of his
+own, in which he moved as lonely as a cloud, and as untouched of the life
+about him.
+
+He seemed superior to the neighbor boys, and felt so; but this feeling was
+curiously mingled with a sense of degradation. By every test of common
+life, he was a failure. His family history was a badge of failure. People
+despised a man who was so incontestably smarter than they, and yet could
+do no better with himself than to work in the fields alongside the tramps
+and transients and hoboes who drifted back and forth as the casual market
+for labor and the lure of the cities swept them. Save for his mother and
+their cow and garden and flock of fowls and their wretched little rented
+house, he was a tramp himself.
+
+His father had been no better. He had come into the neighborhood from
+nobody knows where, selling fruit trees, with a wife and baby in his old
+buggy--and had died suddenly, leaving the baby and widow, and nothing else
+save the horse and buggy. That horse and buggy were still on the Irwin
+books represented by Spot the cow--so persistent are the assets of
+cautious poverty. Mrs. Irwin had labored in kitchen and sewing room until
+Jim had been able to assume the breadwinner's burden--which he did about
+the time he finished the curriculum of the Woodruff District school. He
+was an off ox and odd as Dick's hatband, largely because his duties to his
+mother and his love of reading kept him from joining the gangs whereof I
+have spoken. His duties, his mother, and his father's status as an outcast
+were to him the equivalent of the Byronic club foot, because they took
+away his citizenship in Boyville, and drove him in upon himself, and, at
+first, upon his school books which he mastered so easily and quickly as to
+become the star pupil of the Woodruff District school, and later upon
+Emerson, Thoreau, Ruskin and the poets, and the agricultural reports and
+bulletins.
+
+All this degraded--or exalted--him to the position of an intellectual
+farm-hand, with a sense of superiority and a feeling of degradation. It
+made Jennie Woodruff's "Humph!" potent to keep him awake that night, and
+send him to the road work with Colonel Woodruff's team next morning with
+hot eyes and a hotter heart.
+
+What was he anyhow? And what could he ever be? What was the use of his
+studies in farming practise, if he was always to be an underling whose
+sole duty was to carry out the crude ideas of his employers? And what
+chance was there for a farm-hand to become a farm owner, or even a farm
+renter, especially if he had a mother to support out of the twenty-five or
+thirty dollars of his monthly wages? None.
+
+A man might rise in the spirit, but how about rising in the world?
+
+Colonel Woodruff's gray percherons seemed to feel the unrest of their
+driver, for they fretted and actually executed a clumsy prance as Jim
+Irwin pulled them up at the end of the turnpike across Bronson's Slew--the
+said slew being a peat-marsh which annually offered the men of the
+Woodruff District the opportunity to hold the male equivalent of a sewing
+circle while working out their road taxes, with much conversational gain,
+and no great damage to the road.
+
+In fact, Columbus Brown, the pathmaster, prided himself on the Bronson
+Slew Turnpike as his greatest triumph in road engineering. The work
+consisted in hauling, dragging and carrying gravel out on the low fill
+which carried the road across the marsh, and then watching it slowly
+settle until the next summer.
+
+"Haul gravel from the east gravel bed, Jim," called Columbus Brown from
+the lowest spot in the middle of the turnpike. "Take Newt here to help
+load."
+
+Jim smiled his habitual slow, gentle smile at Newton Bronson, his helper.
+Newton was seventeen, undersized, tobacco-stained, profane and proud of
+the fact that he had once beaten his way from Des Moines to Faribault on
+freight trains. A source of anxiety to his father, and the subject of many
+predictions that he would come to no good end, Newton was out on the road
+work because he was likely to be of little use on the farm. Clearly,
+Newton was on the downward road in a double sense--and yet, Jim Irwin
+rather liked him.
+
+"The fellers have put up a job on you, Jim," volunteered Newton, as they
+began filling the wagon with gravel.
+
+"What sort of job?" asked Jim.
+
+"They're nominating you for teacher," replied Newton.
+
+"Since when has the position of teacher been an elective office?" asked
+Jim.
+
+"Sure, it ain't elective," answered Newton. "But they say that with as
+many brains as you've got sloshing around loose in the neighborhood,
+you're a candidate that can break the deadlock in the school board."
+
+Jim shoveled on silently for a while, and by example urged Newton to earn
+the money credited to his father's assessment for the day's work.
+
+"Aw, what's the use of diggin' into it like this?" protested Newton, who
+was developing an unwonted perspiration. "None of the others are heatin'
+themselves up."
+
+"Don't you get any fun out of doing a good day's work?" asked Jim.
+
+"Fun!" exclaimed Newton. "You're crazy!"
+
+A slide of earth from the top of the pit threatened to bury Newton in
+gravel, sand and good top soil. A sweet-clover plant growing rankly beside
+the pit, and thinking itself perfectly safe, came down with it, its dark
+green foliage anchored by the long roots which penetrated to a depth below
+the gravel pit's bottom. Jim Irwin pulled it loose from its anchorage, and
+after looking attentively at the roots, laid the whole plant on the bank
+for safety.
+
+"What do you want of that weed?" asked Newton.
+
+Jim picked it up and showed him the nodules on its roots--little white
+knobs, smaller than pinheads.
+
+"Know what they are, Newt?"
+
+"Just white specks on the roots," replied Newton.
+
+"The most wonderful specks in the world," said Jim. "Ever hear of the use
+of nitrates to enrich the soil?"
+
+"Ain't that the stuff the old man used on the lawn last spring?"
+
+"Yes," said Jim, "your father used some on his lawn. We don't put it on
+our fields in Iowa--not yet; but if it weren't for those white specks on
+the clover-roots, we should be obliged to do so--as they do back east."
+
+"How do them white specks keep us from needin' nitrates?"
+
+"It's a long story," said Jim. "You see, before there were any plants big
+enough to be visible--if there had been any one to see them--the world was
+full of little plants so small that there may be billions of them in one
+of these little white specks. They knew how to take the nitrates from the
+air----"
+
+"Air!" ejaculated Newton. "Nitrates in the air! You're crazy!"
+
+"No," said Jim. "There are tons of nitrogen in the air that press down on
+your head--but the big plants can't get it through their leaves, or
+their roots. They never had to learn, because when the little
+plants--bacteria--found that the big plants had roots with sap in them,
+they located on those roots and tapped them for the sap they needed.
+They began to get their board and lodgings off the big plants. And in
+payment for their hotel bills, the little plants took nitrogen out of
+the air for both themselves and their hosts."
+
+"What d'ye mean by 'hosts'?"
+
+"Their hotel-keepers--the big plants. And now the plants that have the
+hotel roots for the bacteria furnish nitrogen not only for themselves but
+for the crops that follow. Corn can't get nitrogen out of the air; but
+clover can--and that's why we ought to plow down clover before a crop of
+corn."
+
+"Gee!" said Newt. "If you could get to teach our school, I'd go again."
+
+"It would interfere with your pool playing."
+
+"What business is that o' yours?" interrogated Newt defiantly.
+
+"Well, get busy with that shovel," suggested Jim, who had been working
+steadily, driving out upon the fill occasionally to unload. On his return
+from dumping the next load, Newton seemed, in a superior way, quite
+amiably disposed toward his workfellow--rather the habitual thing in the
+neighborhood.
+
+"I'll work my old man to vote for you for the job," said he.
+
+"What job?" asked Jim.
+
+"Teacher for our school," answered Newt.
+
+"Those school directors," replied Jim, "have become so bullheaded that
+they'll never vote for any one except the applicants they've been voting
+for."
+
+"The old man says he will have Prue Foster again, or he'll give the school
+a darned long vacation, unless Peterson and Bonner join on some one else.
+That would beat Prue, of course."
+
+"And Con Bonner won't vote for any one but Maggie Gilmartin," added Jim.
+
+"And," supplied Newton, "Haakon Peterson says he'll stick to Herman
+Paulson until the Hot Springs freeze over."
+
+"And there you are," said Jim. "You tell your father for me that I think
+he's a mere mule--and that the whole district thinks the same."
+
+"All right," said Newt. "I'll tell him that while I'm working him to vote
+for you."
+
+Jim smiled grimly. Such a position might have been his years ago, if he
+could have left his mother or earned enough in it to keep both alive. He
+had remained a peasant because the American rural teacher is placed
+economically lower than the peasant. He gave Newton's chatter no
+consideration. But when, in the afternoon, he hitched his team with others
+to the big road grader, and the gang became concentrated within talking
+distance, he found that the project of heckling and chaffing him about his
+eminent fitness for a scholastic position was to be the real entertainment
+of the occasion.
+
+"Jim's the candidate to bust the deadlock," said Columbus Brown, with a
+wink. "Just like Garfield in that Republican convention he was nominated
+in--eh, Con?"
+
+"Con" was Cornelius Bonner, an Irishman, one of the deadlocked school
+board, and the captain of the road grader. He winked back at the
+pathmaster.
+
+"Jim's the gray-eyed man o' destiny," he replied, "if he can get two votes
+in that board."
+
+"You'd vote for me, wouldn't you, Con?" asked Jim.
+
+"I'll try annything wance," replied Bonner.
+
+"Try voting with Ezra Bronson once, for Prue Foster," suggested Jim.
+"She's done good work here."
+
+"Opinions differ," said Bonner, "an' when you try annything just for
+wance, it shouldn't be an irrevocable shtip, me bye."
+
+"You're a reasonable board of public servants," said Jim ironically. "I'd
+like to tell the whole board what I think of them."
+
+"Come down to-night," said Bonner jeeringly. "We're going to have a board
+meeting at the schoolhouse and ballot a few more times. Come down, and be
+the Garfield of the convintion. We've lacked brains on the board, that's
+clear. They ain't a man on the board that iver studied algebra, 'r that
+knows more about farmin' than their impl'yers. Come down to the
+schoolhouse, and we'll have a field-hand addriss the school board--and
+begosh, I'll move yer illiction mesilf! Come, now, Jimmy, me bye, be game.
+It'll vary the program, anny-how."
+
+The entire gang grinned. Jim flushed, and then reconquered his calmness of
+spirit.
+
+"All right, Con," said he. "I'll come and tell you a few things--and you
+can do as you like about making the motion."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+REVERSED UNANIMITY
+
+
+The great blade of the grading machine, running diagonally across the road
+and pulling the earth toward its median line, had made several trips, and
+much persiflage about Jim Irwin's forthcoming appearance before the board
+had been addressed to Jim and exchanged by others for his benefit.
+
+To Newton Bronson was given the task of leveling and distributing the
+earth rolled into the road by the grader--a labor which in the interests
+of fitting a muzzle on his big mongrel dog he deserted whenever the
+machine moved away from him. No dog would have seemed less deserving of a
+muzzle, for he was a friendly animal, always wagging his tail, pressing
+his nose into people's palms, licking their clothing and otherwise making
+a nuisance of himself. That there was some mystery about the muzzle was
+evident from Newton's pains to make a secret of it. Its wires were curled
+into a ring directly over the dog's nose, and into this ring Newton had
+fitted a cork, through which he had thrust a large needle which protruded,
+an inch-long bayonet, in front of Ponto's nose. As the grader swept back,
+horses straining, harness creaking and a billow of dark earth rolling
+before the knife, Ponto, fully equipped with this stinger, raced madly
+alongside, a friend to every man, but not unlike some people, one whose
+friendship was of all things to be most dreaded.
+
+As the grader moved along one side of the highway, a high-powered
+automobile approached on the other. It was attempting to rush the swale
+for the hill opposite, and making rather bad weather of the newly repaired
+road. A pile of loose soil that Newton had allowed to lie just across the
+path made a certain maintenance of speed desirable. The knavish Newton
+planted himself in the path of the laboring car, and waved its driver a
+command to halt. The car came to a standstill with its front wheels in the
+edge of the loose earth, and the chauffeur fuming at the possibility of
+stalling--a contingency upon which Newton had confidently reckoned.
+
+"What d'ye want?" he demanded. "What d'ye mean by stopping me in this kind
+of place?"
+
+"I want to ask you," said Newton with mock politeness, "if you have the
+correct time."
+
+The chauffeur sought words appropriate to his feelings. Ponto and his
+muzzle saved him the trouble. A pretty pointer leaped from the car, and
+attracted by the evident friendliness of Ponto's greeting, pricked up its
+ears, and sought, in a spirit of canine brotherhood, to touch noses with
+him. The needle in Ponto's muzzle did its work to the agony and horror of
+the pointer, which leaped back with a yelp, and turned tail. Ponto, in an
+effort to apologize, followed, and finding itself bayonetted at every
+contact with this demon dog, the pointer definitely took flight, howling,
+leaving Ponto in a state of wonder and humiliation at the sudden end of
+what had promised to be a very friendly acquaintance. I have known
+instances not entirely dissimilar among human beings. The pointer's master
+watched its strange flight, and swore. His eye turned to the boy who had
+caused all this, and he alighted pale with anger.
+
+"I've got time," said he, remembering Newton's impudent question, "to give
+you what you deserve."
+
+Newton grinned and dodged, but the bank of loose earth was his undoing,
+and while he stumbled, the chauffeur caught and held him by the collar.
+And as he held the boy, the operation of flogging him in the presence of
+the grading gang grew less to his taste. Again Ponto intervened, for as
+the chauffeur stood holding Newton, the dog, evidently regarding the
+stranger as his master's friend, thrust his nose into the chauffeur's
+palm--the needle necessarily preceding the nose. The chauffeur behaved
+much as his pointer had done, saving and excepting that the pointer did
+not swear.
+
+It was funny--even the pain involved could not make it otherwise than
+funny. The grading gang laughed to a man. Newton grinned even while in the
+fell clutch of circumstance. Ponto tried to smell the chauffeur's
+trousers, and what had been a laugh became a roar, quite general save for
+the fact that the chauffeur did not join in it.
+
+Caution and mercy departed from the chauffeur's mood; and he drew back his
+fist to strike the boy--and found it caught by the hard hand of Jim
+Irwin.
+
+"You're too angry to punish this boy," said Jim gently,--"even if you had
+the right to punish him at all!"
+
+"Oh, cut it out," said a fat man in the rear of the car, who had hitherto
+manifested no interest in anything save Ponto. "Get in, and let's be on
+our way!"
+
+The chauffeur, however, recognized in a man of mature years and full size,
+and a creature with no mysterious needle in his nose, a relief from his
+embarrassment. Unhesitatingly, he released Newton, and blindly, furiously
+and futilely, he delivered a blow meant for Jim's jaw, but which really
+miscarried by a foot. In reply, Jim countered with an awkward swinging
+uppercut, which was superior to the chauffeur's blow in one respect
+only--it landed fairly on the point of the jaw. The chauffeur staggered
+and slowly toppled over into the soft earth which had caused so much of
+the rumpus. Newton Bronson slipped behind a hedge, and took his infernally
+equipped dog with him. The grader gang formed a ring about the combatants
+and waited. Colonel Woodruff, driving toward home in his runabout, held up
+by the traffic blockade, asked what was going on here, and the chauffeur,
+rising groggily, picked up his goggles, climbed into the car; and the
+meeting dissolved, leaving Jim Irwin greatly embarrassed by the fact that
+for the first time in his life, he had struck a man in combat.
+
+"Good work, Jim," said Cornelius Bonner. "I didn't think 'twas in ye!"
+
+"It's beastly," said Jim, reddening. "I didn't know, either."
+
+Colonel Woodruff looked at his hired man sharply, gave him some
+instructions for the next day and drove on. The road gang dispersed for
+the afternoon. Newton Bronson carefully secreted the magic muzzle, and
+chuckled at what had been perhaps the most picturesquely successful bit of
+deviltry in his varied record. Jim Irwin put out his team, got his supper
+and went to the meeting of the school board.
+
+The deadlocked members of the board had been so long at loggerheads that
+their relations had swayed back to something like amity. Jim had scarcely
+entered when Con Bonner addressed the chair.
+
+"Mr. Prisidint," said he, "we have wid us t'night, a young man who nades
+no introduction to an audience in this place, Mr. Jim Irwin. He thinks
+we're bullheaded mules, and that all the schools are bad. At the proper
+time I shall move that we hire him f'r teacher; and pinding that motion, I
+move that he be given the floor. Ye've all heared of Mr. Irwin's ability
+as a white hope, and I know he'll be listened to wid respect!"
+
+Much laughter from the board and the spectators, as Jim arose. He looked
+upon it as ridicule of himself, while Con Bonner regarded it as a tribute
+to his successful speech.
+
+"Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Board," said Jim, "I'm not going to
+tell you anything that you don't know about yourselves. You are simply
+making a farce of the matter of hiring a teacher for this school. It is
+not as if any of you had a theory that the teaching methods of one of
+these teachers would be any better than or much different from those of
+the others. You know, and I know, that whichever is finally engaged, or
+even if your silly deadlock is broken by employing a new candidate, the
+school will be the same old story. It will still be the school it was when
+I came into it a little ragged boy"--here Jim's voice grew a little
+husky--"and when I left it, a bigger boy, but still as ragged as ever."
+
+There was a slight sensation in the audience, as if, as Con Bonner said
+about the knockdown, they hadn't thought Jim Irwin could do it.
+
+"Well," said Con, "you've done well to hold your own."
+
+"In all the years I attended this school," Jim went on, "I never did a bit
+of work in school which was economically useful. It was all dry stuff
+copied from the city schools. No other pupil ever did any real work of the
+sort farmers' boys and girls should do. We copied city schools--and the
+schools we copied are poor schools. We made bad copies of them, too. If
+any of you three men were making a fight for what Roosevelt's Country Life
+Commission called a 'new kind of rural school,' I'd say fight. But you
+aren't. You're just making individual fights for your favorite teachers."
+
+Jim Irwin made a somewhat lengthy speech after the awkwardness wore off,
+so long that his audience was nodding and yawning by the time he reached
+his peroration, in which he abjured Bronson, Bonner and Peterson to study
+his plan of a new kind of rural school,--in which the work of the school
+should be correlated with the life of the home and the farm--a school
+which would be in the highest degree cultural by being consciously useful
+and obviously practical. There sharp spats of applause from the useless
+hands of Newton Bronson gave the final touch of absurdity to a situation
+which Jim had felt to be ridiculous all through. Had it not been for
+Jennie Woodruff's "Humph!" stinging him to do something outside the round
+of duties into which he had fallen, had it not been for the absurd notion
+that perhaps, after they had heard his speech, they would place him in
+charge of the school, and that he might be able to do something really
+important in it, he would not have been there. As he sat down, he felt
+himself a silly clodhopper, filled with the east wind of his own conceit,
+out of touch with the real world of men. He knew himself a dreamer. The
+nodding board of directors, the secretary, actually snoring, and the bored
+audience restored the field-hand to a sense of his proper place.
+
+"We have had the privilege of list'nin'," said Con Bonner, rising, "to a
+great speech, Mr. Prisidint. We should be proud to have a borned orator
+like this in the agricultural pop'lation of the district. A reg'lar
+William Jennin's Bryan. I don't understand what he was trying to tell us,
+but sometimes I've had the same difficulty with the spaches of the Boy
+Orator of the Platte. Makin' a good spache is one thing, and teaching a
+good school is another, but in order to bring this matter before the
+board, I nominate Mr. James E. Irwin, the Boy Orator of the Woodruff
+District, and the new white hope, f'r the job of teacher of this school,
+and I move that when he shall have received a majority of the votes of
+this board, the secretary and prisidint be insthructed to enter into a
+contract with him f'r the comin' year."
+
+The seconding of motions on a board of three has its objectionable
+features, since it seems to commit a majority of the body to the motion in
+advance. The president, therefore, followed usage, when he said--"If
+there's no objection, it will be so ordered. The chair hears no
+objection--and it is so ordered. Prepare the ballots for a vote on the
+election of teacher, Mr. Secretary. Each votes his preference for teacher.
+A majority elects."
+
+For months, the ballots had come out of the box--an empty
+crayon-box--Herman Paulson, one; Prudence Foster, one; Margaret
+Gilmartin, one; and every one present expected the same result now.
+There was no surprise, however, in view of the nomination of Jim Irwin by
+the blarneying Bonner when the secretary smoothed out the first
+ballot, and read: "James E. Irwin, one." Clearly this was the Bonner
+vote; but when the next slip came forth, "James E. Irwin, two," the Board
+of Directors of the Woodruff Independent District were stunned at the
+slowly dawning knowledge that they had made an election! Before they had
+rallied, the secretary drew from the box the third and last ballot,
+and read, "James E. Irwin, three."
+
+President Bronson choked as he announced the result--choked and stammered,
+and made very hard weather of it, but he went through with the motion, as
+we all run in our grooves.
+
+"The ballot having shown the unanimous election of James E. Irwin, I
+declare him elected."
+
+He dropped into his chair, while the secretary, a very methodical man,
+drew from his portfolio a contract duly drawn up save for the signatures
+of the officers of the district, and the name and signature of the
+teacher-elect. This he calmly filled out, and passed over to the
+president, pointing to the dotted line. Mr. Bronson would have signed his
+own death-warrant at that moment, not to mention a perfectly legal
+document, and signed with Peterson and Bonner looking on stonily. The
+secretary signed and shoved the contract over to Jim Irwin.
+
+"Sign there," he said.
+
+Jim looked it over, saw the other signatures, and felt an impulse to dodge
+the whole thing. He could not feel that the action of the board was
+serious. He thought of the platform he had laid down for himself, and was
+daunted. He thought of the days in the open field, and of the untroubled
+evenings with his books, and he shrank from the work. Then he thought of
+Jennie Woodruff's "Humph!"--and he signed!
+
+"Move we adjourn," said Peterson.
+
+"No 'bjection 't's so ordered!" said Mr. Bronson.
+
+The secretary and Jim went out, while the directors waited.
+
+"What the Billy--" began Bonner, and finished lamely! "What for did you
+vote for the dub, Ez?"
+
+"I voted for him," replied Bronson, "because he fought for my boy this
+afternoon. I didn't want it stuck into him too hard. I wanted him to have
+_one_ vote."
+
+"An' I wanted him to have wan vote, too," said Bonner. "I thought mesilf
+the only dang fool on the board--an' he made a spache that airned wan
+vote--but f'r the love of hivin, that dub f'r a teacher! What come over
+you, Haakon--you voted f'r him, too!"
+
+"Ay vanted him to have one wote, too," said Peterson.
+
+And in this wise, Jim became the teacher in the Woodruff District--all on
+account of Jennie Woodruff's "Humph!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+WHAT IS A BROWN MOUSE
+
+
+Immediately upon the accidental election of Jim Irwin to the position of
+teacher of the Woodruff school, he developed habits somewhat like a
+ghost's or a bandit's. That is, he walked of nights and on rainy days.
+
+On fine days, he worked in Colonel Woodruff's fields as of yore. Had he
+been appointed to a position attached to a salary of fifty thousand
+dollars a year, he might have spent six months on a preliminary vacation
+in learning something about his new duties. But Jim's salary was to be
+three hundred and sixty dollars for nine months' work in the Woodruff
+school, and he was to find himself--and his mother. Therefore, he had to
+indulge in his loose habits of night walking and roaming about after hours
+only, or on holidays and in foul weather.
+
+The Simms family, being from the mountings of Tennessee, were rather
+startled one night, when Jim Irwin, homely, stooped and errandless,
+silently appeared in their family circle about the front door. They had
+lived where it was the custom to give a whoop from the big road before one
+passed through the palin's and up to the house. Otherwise, how was one to
+know whether the visitor was friend or foe?
+
+From force of habit, Old Man Simms started for his gun-rack at Jim's
+appearance, but the Lincolnian smile and the low slow speech, so much like
+his own in some respects, ended that part of the matter. Besides, Old Man
+Simms remembered that none of the Hobdays, whose hostilities somewhat
+stood in the way of the return of the Simmses to their native hills, could
+possibly be expected to appear thus in Iowa.
+
+"Stranger," said Mr. Simms, after greetings had been exchanged, "you're
+right welcome, but in my kentry you'd find it dangersome to walk in
+thisaway."
+
+"How so?" queried Jim Irwin.
+
+"You'd more'n likely git shot up some," replied Mr. Simms, "onless you
+whooped from the big road."
+
+"I didn't know that," replied Jim. "I'm ignorant of the customs of other
+countries. Would you rather I'd whoop from the big road--nobody else
+will."
+
+"I reckon," replied Mr. Simms, "that we-all will have to accommodate
+ourse'ves to the ways hyeh."
+
+Evidently Jim was the Simms' first caller since they had settled on the
+little brushy tract whose hills and trees reminded them of their
+mountains. Low hills, to be sure, with only a footing of rocks where the
+creek had cut through, and not many trees, but down in the creek bed, with
+the oaks, elms and box-elders arching overhead, the Simmses could imagine
+themselves beside some run falling into the French Broad, or the Holston.
+The creek bed was a withdrawing room in which to retire from the eternal
+black soil and level corn-fields of Iowa. What if the soil was so poor, in
+comparison with those black uplands, that the owner of the old wood-lot
+could find no renter? It was better than the soil in the mountains, and
+suited the lonesome Simmses much more than a better farm would have done.
+They were not of the Iowa people anyhow, not understood, not their
+equals--they were pore, and expected to stay pore--while the Iowa people
+all seemed to be either well-to-do, or expecting to become so. It was much
+more agreeable to the Simmses to retire to the back wood-lot farm with the
+creek bed running through it.
+
+Jim Irwin asked Old Man Simms about the fishing in the creek, and whether
+there was any duck shooting spring and fall.
+
+"We git right smart of these little panfish," said Mr. Simms, "an' Calista
+done shot two butterball ducks about 'tater-plantin' time."
+
+Calista blushed--but this stranger, so much like themselves, could not see
+the rosy suffusion. The allusion gave him a chance to look about him at
+the family. There was a boy of sixteen, a girl--the duck-shooting
+Calista--younger than Raymond--a girl of eleven, named Virginia, but
+called Jinnie--and a smaller lad who rejoiced in the name of McGeehee, but
+was mercifully called Buddy.
+
+Calista squirmed for something to say. "Raymond runs a line o' traps when
+the fur's prime," she volunteered.
+
+Then came a long talk on traps and trapping, shooting, hunting and the
+joys of the mountings--during which Jim noted the ignorance and poverty of
+the Simmses. The clothing of the girls was not decent according to local
+standards; for while Calista wore a skirt hurriedly slipped on, Jim was
+quite sure--and not without evidence to support his views--that she had
+been wearing when he arrived the same regimentals now displayed by
+Jinnie--a pair of ragged blue overalls. Evidently the Simmses were wearing
+what they had and not what they desired. The father was faded, patched,
+gray and earthy, and the boys looked better than the rest solely because
+we expect boys to be torn and patched. Mrs. Simms was invisible except as
+a gray blur beyond the rain-barrel, in the midst of which her pipe glowed
+with a regular ebb and flow of embers.
+
+On the next rainy day Jim called again and secured the services of Raymond
+to help him select seed corn. He was going to teach the school next
+winter, and he wanted to have a seed-corn frolic the first day, instead of
+waiting until the last--and you had to get seed corn while it was on the
+stalk, if you got the best. No Simms could refuse a favor to the fellow
+who was so much like themselves, and who was so greatly interested in
+trapping, hunting and the Tennessee mountains--so Raymond went with Jim,
+and with Newt Bronson and five more they selected Colonel Woodruff's seed
+corn for the next year, under the colonel's personal superintendence.
+
+In the evening they looked the grain over on the Woodruff lawn, and the
+colonel talked about corn and corn selection. They had supper at half past
+six, and Jennie waited on them--having assisted her mother in the cooking.
+It was quite a festival. Jim Irwin was the least conspicuous person in the
+gathering, but the colonel, who was a seasoned politician, observed that
+the farm-hand had become a fisher of men, and was angling for the souls of
+these boys, and their interest in the school. Jim was careful not to flush
+the covey, but every boy received from the next winter's teacher some
+confidential hint as to plans, and some suggestion that Jim was relying on
+the aid and comfort of that particular boy. Newt Bronson, especially, was
+leaned on as a strong staff and a very present help in time of trouble. As
+for Raymond Simms, it was clearly best to leave him alone. All this talk
+of corn selection and related things was new to him, and he drank it in
+thirstily. He had an inestimable advantage over Newt in that he was
+starved, while Newt was surfeited with "advantages" for which he had no
+use.
+
+"Jennie," said Colonel Woodruff, after the party had broken up, "I'm
+losing the best hand I ever had, and I've been sorry."
+
+"I'm glad he's leaving you," said Jennie. "He ought to do something except
+work in the field for wages."
+
+"I've had no idea he could make good as a teacher--and what is there in it
+if he does?"
+
+"What has he lost if he doesn't?" rejoined Jennie. "And why can't he make
+good?"
+
+"The school board's against him, for one thing," replied the colonel.
+"They'll fire him if they get a chance. They're the laughing-stock of the
+country for hiring him by mistake, and they're irritated. But after seeing
+him perform to-night, I wonder if he can't make good."
+
+"If he could _feel_ like anything but an underling he'd succeed," said
+Jennie.
+
+"That's his heredity," stated the colonel, whose live-stock operations
+were based on heredity. "Jim's a scrub, I suppose; but he acts as if he
+might turn out to be a Brown Mouse."
+
+"What do you mean, pa," scoffed Jennie--"a Brown Mouse!"
+
+"A fellow in Edinburgh," said the colonel, "crossed the Japanese waltzing
+mouse with the common white mouse. Jim's pedling father was a waltzing
+mouse, no good except to jump from one spot to another for no good reason.
+Jim's mother is an albino of a woman, with all the color washed out in one
+way or another. Jim ought to be a mongrel, and I've always considered him
+one. But the Edinburgh fellow every once in a while got out of his
+variously-colored, waltzing and albino hybrids, a brown mouse. It wasn't a
+common house mouse, either, but a wild mouse unlike any he had ever seen.
+It ran away, and bit and gnawed, and raised hob. It was what we breeders
+call a Mendelian segregation of genetic factors that had been in the
+waltzers and albinos all the time--their original wild ancestor of the
+woods and fields. If Jim turns out to be a Brown Mouse, he may be a bigger
+man than any of us. Anyhow, I'm for him."
+
+"He'll have to be a big man to make anything out of the job of a country
+school-teacher," said Jennie.
+
+"Any job's as big as the man who holds it down," said her father.
+
+Next day, Jim received a letter from Jennie.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Dear Jim," it ran. "Father says you are sure to have a hard time--the
+school board's against you, and all that. But he added, 'I'm for Jim,
+anyhow!' I thought you'd like to know this. Also he said, 'Any job's as
+big as the man who holds it down,' And I believe this also, _and I'm for
+you, too!_ You are doing wonders even before the school starts in getting
+the pupils interested in a lot of things, which, while they don't belong
+to school work, will make them friends of yours. I don't see how this will
+help you much, but it's a fine thing, and shows your interest in them.
+Don't be too original. The wheel runs easiest in the beaten track. Yours.
+Jennie."
+
+Jennie's caution made no impression on Jim--but he put the letter away,
+and every evening took it out and read the italicized words, _"I'm for
+you, too!"_ The colonel's dictum, "Any job's as big as the man who holds
+it down," was an Emersonian truism to Jim. It reduced all jobs to an
+equality, and it meant equality in intellectual and spiritual development.
+It didn't mean, for instance, that any job was as good as another in
+making it possible for a man to marry--and Jennie Woodruff's "Humph!"
+returned to kill and drag off her "I'm for you, too!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL
+
+
+I suppose every reader will say that genius consists very largely in
+seeing Opportunity in the set of circumstances or thoughts or impressions
+that constitute Opportunity, and making the best of them.
+
+Jim Irwin would have said so, anyhow. He was full of his Emerson's
+_Representative Men_, and his Carlyle's _French Revolution_, and the other
+old-fashioned, excellent good literature which did not cost over
+twenty-five cents a volume; and he had pored long and with many thrills
+over the pages of Matthews' _Getting on in the World_--which is the best
+book of purely conventional helpfulness in the language. And his view of
+efficiency was that it is the capacity to see opportunity where others
+overlook it, and make the most of it.
+
+All through his life he had had his own plans for becoming great. He was
+to be a general, hurling back the foes of his country; he was to be the
+nation's master in literature; a successful drawing on his slate had
+filled him with ambition, confidently entertained, of becoming a
+Rubens--and the story of Benjamin West in his school reader fanned this
+spark to a flame; science, too, had at times been his chosen field; and
+when he had built a mousetrap which actually caught mice, he saw himself a
+millionaire inventor. As for being president, that was a commonplace in
+his dreams. And all the time, he was barefooted, ill-clad and dreamed his
+dreams to the accompaniment of the growl of the plow cutting the roots
+under the brown furrow-slice, or the wooshing of the milk in the pail. At
+twenty-eight, he considered these dreams over.
+
+As for this new employment, he saw no great opportunity in it. Of any
+spark of genius he was to show in it, of anything he was to suffer in it,
+of those pains and penalties wherewith the world pays its geniuses, Jim
+Irwin anticipated nothing. He went into the small, mean, ill-paid task as
+a part of the day's work, with no knowledge of the stirring of the nation
+for a different sort of rural school, and no suspicion that there lay in
+it any highway to success in life. He was not a college man or even a
+high-school man. All his other dreams had found rude awakening in the fact
+that he had not been able to secure the schooling which geniuses need in
+these days. He was unfitted for the work geniuses do. All he was to be was
+a rural teacher, accidentally elected by a stupid school board, and with a
+hard tussle before him to stay on the job for the term of his contract. He
+could have accepted positions quite as good years ago, save for the fact
+that they would have taken him away from his mother, their cheap little
+home, their garden and their fowls. He rather wondered why he had allowed
+Jennie's sneer to sting him into the course of action which put him in
+this new relation to his neighbors.
+
+But, true to his belief in honest thorough work, like a general preparing
+for battle, he examined his field of operations. His manner of doing this
+seemed to prove to Colonel Woodruff, who watched it with keen interest as
+something new in the world, that Jim Irwin was possibly a Brown Mouse. But
+the colonel knew only a part of Jim's performances. He saw Jim clothed in
+slickers, walking through rainstorms to the houses in the Woodruff
+District, as greedy for every moment of rain as a haymaker for shine; and
+he knew that Jim made a great many evening calls.
+
+But he did not know that Jim was making what our sociologists call a
+survey. For that matter, neither did Jim; for books on sociology cost more
+than twenty-five cents a volume, and Jim had never seen one. However, it
+was a survey. To be sure, he had long known everybody in the district,
+save the Simmses--and he was now a friend of all that exotic race; but
+there is knowing and knowing. He now had note-books full of facts about
+people and their farms. He knew how many acres each family possessed, and
+what sort of farming each husband was doing--live stock, grain or mixed.
+He knew about the mortgages, and the debts. He knew whether the family
+atmosphere was happy and contented, or the reverse. He knew which boys and
+girls were wayward and insubordinate. He made a record of the advancement
+in their studies of all the children, and what they liked to read. He knew
+their favorite amusements. He talked with their mothers and sisters--not
+about the school, to any extent, but on the weather, the horses, the
+automobiles, the silo-filling machinery and the profits of farming.
+
+I suppose that no person who has undertaken the management of the young
+people of any school in all the history of education, ever did so much
+work of this sort before his school opened. Really, though Jennie Woodruff
+did not see how such doings related to school work, Jim Irwin's school was
+running full blast in the homes of the district and the minds of many
+pupils, weeks and weeks before that day when he called them to order on
+the Monday specified in his contract as the first day of school.
+
+Con Bonner, who came to see the opening, voiced the sentiments of the
+older people when he condemned the school as disorderly. To be sure, there
+were more pupils enrolled than had ever entered on a first day in the
+whole history of the school, and it was hard to accommodate them all. But
+the director's criticism was leveled against the free-and-easy air of the
+children. Most of them had brought seed corn and a good-sized corn show
+was on view. There was much argument as to the merits of the various
+entries. Instead of a language lesson from the text-book, Jim had given
+them an exercise based on an examination of the ears of corn.
+
+The number exercises of the little chaps had been worked out with ears and
+kernels of corn. One class in arithmetic calculated the percentage of
+inferior kernels at tip and butt to the full-sized grains in the middle of
+the ear.
+
+All the time, Jim Irwin, awkward and uncouth, clad in his none-too-good
+Sunday suit and trying to hide behind his Lincolnian smile the fact that
+he was pretty badly frightened and much embarrassed, passed among them,
+getting them enrolled, setting them to work, wasting much time and
+laboring like a heavy-laden barge in a seaway.
+
+"That feller'll never do," said Bonner to Bronson next day. "Looks like a
+tramp in the schoolroom."
+
+"Wearin' his best, I guess," said Bronson.
+
+"Half the kids call him 'Jim,'" said Bonner.
+
+"That's all right with me," replied Bronson.
+
+"The room was as noisy as a caucus," was Bonner's next indictment, "and
+the flure was all over corn like a hog-pin."
+
+"Oh! I don't suppose he can get away with it," assented Bronson
+disgustedly, "but that boy of mine is as tickled as a colt with the whole
+thing. Says he's goin' reg'lar this winter."
+
+"That's because Jim don't keep no order," said Bonner. "He lets Newt do as
+he dam pleases."
+
+"First time he's ever pleased to do anything but deviltry," protested
+Bronson. "Oh, I suppose Jim'll fall down, and we'll have to fire him--but
+I wish we could git a _good_ teacher that would git hold of Newt the way
+he seems to!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE PROMOTION OF JENNIE
+
+
+If Jennie Woodruff was the cause of Jim Irwin's sudden irruption into the
+educational field by her scoffing "Humph!" at the idea of a farm-hand's
+ever being able to marry, she also gave him the opportunity to knock down
+the driver of the big motor-car, and perceptibly elevate himself in the
+opinion of the neighborhood, while filling his own heart with something
+like shame.
+
+The fat man who had said "Cut it out" to his driver, was Mr. Charles
+Dilly, a business man in the village at the extreme opposite corner of the
+county. His choice of the Woodruff District as a place for motoring had a
+secret explanation. I am under no obligation to preserve the secret. He
+came to see Colonel Woodruff and Jennie. Mr. Dilly was a candidate for
+county treasurer, and wished to be nominated at the approaching county
+convention. In his part of the county lived the county superintendent--a
+candidate for renomination. He was just a plain garden or field county
+superintendent of schools, no better and no worse than the general
+political run of them, but he had local pride enlisted in his cause, and
+was a good politician.
+
+Mr. Dilly was in the Woodruff District to build a backfire against this
+conflagration of the county superintendent. He expected to use Jennie
+Woodruff to light it withal. That is, while denying that he wished to make
+any deal or trade--every candidate in every convention always says
+that--he wished to say to Miss Woodruff and her father, that if Miss
+Woodruff would permit her name to be used for the office of county
+superintendent of schools, a goodly group of delegates could be selected
+in the other corner of the county who would be glad to reciprocate any
+favors Mr. Charles J. Dilly might receive in the way of votes for county
+treasurer with ballots for Miss Jennie Woodruff for superintendent of
+schools.
+
+Mr. Dilly never inquired as to Miss Woodruff's abilities as an educator.
+That would have been eccentric. Miss Woodruff never asked herself if she
+knew anything about rural education which especially fitted her for the
+task; for was she not a popular and successful teacher--and was not that
+enough? Mr. Dilly merely asked himself if Miss Woodruff's name could
+command strength enough to eliminate the embarrassing candidate in his
+part of the county and leave the field to himself. Miss Woodruff asked
+herself whether the work would not give her a pleasanter life than did
+teaching, a better salary, and more chances to settle herself in life. So
+are the officials chosen who supervise and control the education of the
+farm children of America.
+
+This secret mission to effect a political trade accounted for Mr. Dilly's
+desire that his driver should "cut out" the controversy with Newton
+Bronson, and the personal encounter with Jim Irwin--and it may account for
+Jim's easy victory in his first and only physical encounter. An office
+seeker could scarcely afford to let his friend or employee lick a member
+of a farmers' road gang. It certainly explains the fact that when Jim
+Irwin started home from putting out his team the day after his first call
+on the Simms family, Jennie was waiting at the gate to be congratulated on
+her nomination.
+
+"I congratulate you," said Jim.
+
+"Thanks," said Jennie, extending her hand.
+
+"I hope you're elected," Jim went on, holding the hand; "but there's no
+doubt of that."
+
+"They say not," replied Jennie; "but father says I must go about and let
+the people see me. He believes in working just as if we didn't have a big
+majority for the ticket."
+
+"A woman has an advantage of a man in such a contest," said Jim; "she can
+work just as hard as he can, and at the same time profit by the fact that
+it's supposed she can't."
+
+"I need all the advantage I possess," said Jennie, "and all the votes. Say
+a word for me when on your pastoral rounds."
+
+"All right," said Jim, "what shall I say you'll do for the schools?"
+
+"Why," said Jennie, rather perplexed, "I'll be fair in my examinations of
+teachers, try to keep the unfit teachers out of the schools, visit schools
+as often as I can, and--why, what does any good superintendent do?"
+
+"I never heard of a good county superintendent," said Jim.
+
+"Never heard of one--why, Jim Irwin!"
+
+"I don't believe there is any such thing," persisted Jim, "and if you do
+no more than you say, you'll be off the same piece as the rest. Your
+system won't give us any better schools than we have--of the old sort--and
+we need a new kind."
+
+"Oh, Jim, Jim! Dreaming as of yore! Why can't you be practical! What do
+you mean by a new kind of rural school?"
+
+"A truly-rural rural school," said Jim.
+
+"I can't pronounce it," smiled Jennie, "to say nothing of understanding
+it. What would your tralalooral rural school do?"
+
+"It would be correlated with rural life," said Jim.
+
+"How?"
+
+"It would get education out of the things the farmers and farmers' wives
+are interested in as a part of their lives."
+
+"What, for instance?"
+
+"Dairying, for instance, in this district; and soil management; and
+corn-growing; and farm manual training for boys; and sewing, cooking and
+housekeeping for the girls--and caring for babies!"
+
+Jennie looked serious, after smothering a laugh.
+
+"Jim," said she, "you're going to have a hard enough time to succeed in
+the Woodruff school, if you confine yourself to methods that have been
+tested, and found good."
+
+"But the old methods," urged Jim, "have been tested and found bad. Shall I
+keep to them?"
+
+"They have made the American people what they are," said Jennie. "Don't be
+unpatriotic, Jim."
+
+"They have educated our farm children for the cities," said Jim. "This
+county is losing population--and it's the best county in the world."
+
+"Pessimism never wins," said Jennie.
+
+"Neither does blindness," answered Jim. "It is losing the farms their
+dwellers, and swelling the cities with a proletariat."
+
+For some time, now, Jim had ceased to hold Jennie's hand; and their
+sweetheart days had never seemed farther away.
+
+"Jim," said Jennie, "I may be elected to a position in which I shall be
+obliged to pass on your acts as teacher--in an official way, I mean. I
+hope they will be justifiable."
+
+Jim smiled his slowest and saddest smile.
+
+"If they're not, I'll not ask you to condone them," said he. "But first,
+they must be justifiable to me, Jennie."
+
+"Good night," said Jennie curtly, and left him.
+
+Jennie, I am obliged to admit, gave scant attention to the new career upon
+which her old sweetheart seemed to be entering. She was in politics, and
+was playing the game as became the daughter of a local politician. The
+reader must not by this term get the impression that Colonel Woodruff was
+a man of the grafting tricky sort of which we are prone to think when the
+term is used. The West has been ruled by just such men as he, and the West
+has done rather well, all things considered. Colonel Albert Woodruff went
+south with the army as a corporal in 1861, and came back a lieutenant. His
+title of colonel was conferred by appointment as a member of the staff of
+the governor, long years ago, when he was county auditor. He was not a
+rich man, as I may have suggested, but a well-to-do farmer, whose wife did
+her own work much of the time, not because the colonel could not afford to
+hire "help," but for the reason that "hired girls" were hard to get.
+
+The colonel, having seen the glory of the coming of the Lord in the
+triumph of his side in the great war, was inclined to think that all
+reform had ceased, and was a political stand-patter--a very honest and
+sincere one. Moreover, he was influential enough so that when Mr. Cummins
+or Mr. Dolliver came into the county on political errands, Colonel
+Woodruff had always been called into conference. He was of the old New
+England type, believed very much in heredity, very much in the theory that
+whatever is is right, in so far as it has secured money or power.
+
+He had hated General Weaver and his forces; and had sometimes wondered how
+a man of Horace Boies' opinions had succeeded in being so good a governor.
+He broke with Governor Larrabee when that excellent man had turned against
+the great men who had developed Iowa by building the railroads. He was
+always in the county convention, and preferred to serve on the committee
+on credentials, and leave to others the more showy work of membership in
+the committee on resolutions. He believed in education, provided it did
+not unsettle things. He had a good deal of Latin and some Greek, and lived
+on a farm rather than in a fine house in the county seat because of his
+lack of financial ability. As a matter of fact, he had been too strictly
+scrupulous to do the things--such as dealing in lands belonging to eastern
+speculators who were not advised as to their values, speculating in county
+warrants, buying up tax titles with county money, and the like--by which
+his fellow-politicians who held office in the early years of the county
+had founded their fortunes. A very respectable, honest, American tory was
+the colonel, fond of his political sway, and rather soured by the fact
+that it was passing from him. He had now broken with Cummins and Dolliver
+as he had done years ago with Weaver and later with Larrabee--and this
+breach was very important to him, whether they were greatly concerned
+about it or not.
+
+Such being her family history, Jennie was something of a politician
+herself. She was in no way surprised when approached by party managers on
+the subject of accepting the nomination for county superintendent of
+schools. Colonel Woodruff could deliver some delegates to his daughter,
+though he rather shied at the proposal at first, but on thinking it over,
+warmed somewhat to the notion of having a Woodruff on the county pay-roll
+once more.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+JIM TALKS THE WEATHER COLD
+
+
+"Going to the rally, James?"
+
+Jim had finished his supper, and yearned for a long evening in his attic
+den with his cheap literature. But as the district schoolmaster he was to
+some extent responsible for the protection of the school property, and
+felt some sense of duty as to exhibiting an interest in public affairs.
+
+"I guess I'll have to go, mother," he replied regretfully. "I want to see
+Mr. Woodruff about borrowing his Babcock milk tester, and I'll go that
+way. I guess I'll go on to the meeting."
+
+He kissed his mother when he went--a habit from which he never deviated,
+and another of those personal peculiarities which had marked him as
+different from the other boys of the neighborhood. His mother urged his
+overcoat upon him in vain--for Jim's overcoat was distinctly a bad one,
+while his best suit, now worn every day as a concession to his scholastic
+position, still looked passably well after several weeks of schoolroom
+duty. She pressed him to wear a muffler about his neck, but he declined
+that also. He didn't need it, he said; but he was thinking of the
+incongruity of a muffler with no overcoat. It seemed more logical to
+assume that the weather was milder than it really was, on that sharp
+October evening, and appear at his best, albeit rather aware of the cold.
+Jennie was at home, and he was likely to see and be seen of her.
+
+"You can borrow that tester," said the colonel, "and the cows that go with
+it, if you can use 'em. They ain't earning their keep here. But how does
+the milk tester fit into the curriculum of the school? A decoration?"
+
+"We want to make a few tests of the cows in the neighborhood," answered
+Jim. "Just another of my fool notions."
+
+"All right," said the colonel. "Take it along. Going to the speakin'?"
+
+"Certainly, he's going," said Jennie, entering. "This is my meeting,
+Jim."
+
+"Surely, I'm going," assented Jim. "And I think I'll run along."
+
+"I wish we had room for you in the car," said the colonel. "But I'm going
+around by Bronson's to pick up the speaker, and I'll have a chuck-up
+load."
+
+"Not so much of a load as you think," said Jennie. "I'm going with Jim.
+The walk will do me good."
+
+Any candidate warms to her voting population just before election; but
+Jennie had a special kindness for Jim. He was no longer a farm-hand. The
+fact that he was coming to be a center of disturbance in the district, and
+that she quite failed to understand how his eccentric behavior could be
+harmonized with those principles of teaching which she had imbibed at the
+state normal school in itself lifted him nearer to equality with her. A
+public nuisance is really more respectable than a nonentity.
+
+She gave Jim a thrill as she passed through the gate that he opened for
+her. White moonlight on her white furs suggested purity, exaltation, the
+essence of womanhood--things far finer in the woman of twenty-seven than
+the glamour thrown over him by the schoolgirl of sixteen.
+
+Jim gave her no thrill; for he looked gaunt and angular in his skimpy,
+ready-made suit, too short in legs and sleeves, and too thin for the
+season. Yet, as they walked along, Jim grew upon her. He strode on with
+immense strides, made slow to accommodate her shorter steps, and
+embarrassing her by his entire absence of effort to keep step. For all
+that, he lifted his face to the stars, and he kept silence, save for
+certain fragments of his thoughts, in dropping which he assumed that she,
+like himself, was filled with the grandeur of the sparkling sky, its vast
+moon, plowing like an astronomical liner through the cloudlets of a
+wool-pack. He pointed out the great open spaces in the Milky Way,
+wondering at their emptiness, and at the fact that no telescope can find
+stars in them.
+
+They stopped and looked. Jim laid his hard hands on the shoulders of her
+white fur collarette.
+
+"What's the use of political meetings," said Jim, "when you and I can
+stand here and think our way out, even beyond the limits of our
+Universe?"
+
+"A wonderful journey," said she, not quite understanding his mood, but
+very respectful to it.
+
+"And together," said Jim. "I'd like to go on a long, long journey with you
+to-night, Jennie, to make up for the years since we went anywhere
+together."
+
+"And we shouldn't have come together to-night," said Jennie, getting back
+to earth, "if I hadn't exercised my leap-year privilege."
+
+She slipped her arm in his, and they went on in a rather intimate way.
+
+"I'm not to blame, Jennie," said he. "You know that at any time I'd have
+given anything--anything--"
+
+"And even now," said Jennie, taking advantage of his depleted stock of
+words, "while we roam beyond the Milky Way, we aren't getting any votes
+for me for county superintendent."
+
+Jim said nothing. He was quite, quite reestablished on the earth.
+
+"Don't you want me to be elected, Jim?"
+
+Jim seemed to ponder this for some time--a period of taking the matter
+under advisement which caused Jennie to drop his arm and busy herself with
+her skirts.
+
+"Yes," said Jim, at last; "of course I do."
+
+Nothing more was said until they reached the schoolhouse door.
+
+"Well," said Jennie rather indignantly, "I'm glad there are plenty of
+voters who are more enthusiastic about me than you seem to be!"
+
+More interesting to a keen observer than the speeches, were the unusual
+things in the room itself. To be sure, there were on the blackboards
+exercises and outlines, of lessons in language, history, mathematics,
+geography and the like. But these were not the usual things taken from
+text-books. The problems in arithmetic were calculations as to the feeding
+value of various rations for live stock, records of laying hens and
+computation as to the excess of value in eggs produced over the cost of
+feed. Pinned to the wall were market reports on all sorts of farm
+products, and especially numerous were the statistics on the prices of
+cream and butter. There were files of farm papers piled about, and racks
+of agricultural bulletins. In one corner of the room was a typewriting
+machine, and in another a sewing machine. Parts of an old telephone were
+scattered about on the teacher's desk. A model of a piggery stood on a
+shelf, done in cardboard. Instead of the usual collection of text-books in
+the desk, there were hectograph copies of exercises, reading lessons,
+arithmetical tables and essays on various matters relating to agriculture,
+all of which were accounted for by two or three hand-made hectographs--a
+very fair sort of printing plant--lying on a table. The members of the
+school board were there, looking on these evidences of innovation with
+wonder and more or less disfavor. Things were disorderly. The text-books
+recently adopted by the board against some popular protest had evidently
+been pitched, neck and crop, out of the school by the man whom Bonner had
+termed a dub. It was a sort of contempt for the powers that be.
+
+Colonel Woodruff was in the chair. After the speechifying was over, and
+the stereotyped, though rather illogical, appeal had been made for voters
+of the one party to cast the straight ticket, and for those of the other
+faction to scratch, the colonel rose to adjourn the meeting.
+
+Newton Bronson, safely concealed behind taller people, called out, "Jim
+Irwin! speech!"
+
+There was a giggle, a slight sensation, and many voices joined in the call
+for the new schoolmaster.
+
+Colonel Woodruff felt the unwisdom of ignoring the demand. Probably he
+relied upon Jim's discretion and expected a declination.
+
+Jim arose, seedy and lank, and the voices ceased, save for another
+suppressed titter.
+
+"I don't know," said Jim, "whether this call upon me is a joke or not. If
+it is, it isn't a practical one, for I can't talk. I don't care much about
+parties or politics. I don't know whether I'm a Democrat, a Republican or
+a Populist."
+
+This caused a real sensation. The nerve of the fellow! Really, it must in
+justice be said, Jim was losing himself in a desire to tell his true
+feelings. He forgot all about Jennie and her candidacy--about everything
+except his real, true feelings. This proves that he was no politician.
+
+"I don't see much in this county campaign that interests me," he went
+on--and Jennie Woodruff reddened, while her seasoned father covered his
+mouth with his hand to conceal a smile. "The politicians come out into the
+farming districts every campaign and get us hayseeds for anything they
+want. They always have got us. They've got us again! They give us
+clodhoppers the glad hand, a cheap cigar, and a cheaper smile after
+election;--and that's all. I know it, you all know it, they know it. I
+don't blame them so very much. The trouble is we don't ask them to do
+anything better. I want a new kind of rural school; but I don't see any
+prospect, no matter how this election goes, for any change in them. We in
+the Woodruff District will have to work out our own salvation. Our
+political ring never'll do anything but the old things. They don't want
+to, and they haven't sense enough to do it if they did. That's all--and I
+don't suppose I should have said as much as I have!"
+
+There was stark silence for a moment when he sat down, and then as many
+cheers for Jim as for the principal speaker of the evening, cheers mingled
+with titters and catcalls. Jim felt a good deal as he had done when he
+knocked down Mr. Billy's chauffeur--rather degraded and humiliated, as if
+he had made an ass of himself. And as he walked out of the door, the
+future county superintendent passed by him in high displeasure, and walked
+home with some one else.
+
+Jim found the weather much colder than it had been while coming. He really
+needed an Eskimo's fur suit.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE NEW WINE
+
+
+In the little strip of forest which divided the sown from the Iowa sown
+wandered two boys in earnest converse. They seemed to be Boy Trappers, and
+from their backloads of steel-traps one of them might have been Frank
+Merriwell, and the other Dead-Shot Dick. However, though it was only
+mid-December, and the fur of all wild varmints was at its primest, they
+were bringing their traps into the settlements, instead of taking them
+afield. "The settlements" were represented by the ruinous dwelling of the
+Simmses, and the boy who resembled Frank Merriwell was Raymond Simms. The
+other, who was much more barbarously accoutered, whose overalls were
+fringed, who wore a cartridge belt about his person, and carried hatchet,
+revolver, and a long knife with a deerfoot handle, and who so studiously
+looked like Dead-Shot Dick, was our old friend of the road gang, Newton
+Bronson. On the right, on the left, a few rods would have brought the boys
+out upon the levels of rich corn-fields, and in sight of the long rows of
+cottonwoods, willows, box-elders and soft maples along the straight roads,
+and of the huge red barns, each of which possessed a numerous progeny of
+outbuildings, among which the dwelling held a dubious headship. But here,
+they could be the Boy Trappers--a thin fringe of bushes and trees made of
+the little valley a forest to the imagination of the boys. Newton put down
+his load, and sat upon a stump to rest.
+
+Raymond Simms was dimly conscious of a change in Newton since the day when
+they met and helped select Colonel Woodruff's next year's seed corn.
+Newton's mother had a mother's confidence that Newton was now a good boy,
+who had been led astray by other boys, but had reformed. Jim Irwin had a
+distinct feeling of optimism. Newton had quit tobacco and beer, casually
+stating to Jim that he was "in training." Since Jim had shown his ability
+to administer a knockout to that angry chauffeur, he seemed to this
+hobbledehoy peculiarly a proper person for athletic confidences. Newton's
+mind seemed gradually filling up with interests that displaced the
+psychological complex out of which oozed the bad stories and filthy
+allusion. Jim attributed much of this to the clear mountain atmosphere
+which surrounded Raymond Simms, the ignorant barbarian driven out of his
+native hills by a feud. Raymond was of the open spaces, and refused to
+hear fetid things that seemed out of place in them. There was a dignity
+which impressed Newton, in the blank gaze with which Raymond greeted
+Newton's sallies that were wont to set the village pool room in a roar;
+but how could you have a fuss with a feller who knew all about trapping,
+who had seen a man shot, who had shot a bear, who had killed wild turkeys,
+who had trapped a hundred dollars' worth of furs in one winter, who knew
+the proper "sets" for all fur-bearing animals, and whom you liked, and who
+liked you?
+
+As the reason for Newton's improvement in manner of living, Raymond, out
+of his own experience, would have had no hesitation in naming the school
+and the schoolmaster.
+
+"I wouldn't go back on a friend," said Newton, seated on the stump with
+his traps on the ground at his feet, "the way you're going back on me."
+
+"You got no call to talk thataway," replied the mountain boy. "How'm I
+goin' back on you?"
+
+"We was goin' to trap all winter," asseverated Newton, "and next winter we
+were goin' up in the north woods together."
+
+"You know," said Raymond somberly, "that we cain't run any trap line and
+do whut we got to do to he'p Mr. Jim."
+
+Newton sat mute as one having no rejoinder.
+
+"Mr. Jim," went on Raymond, "needs all the he'p every kid in this
+settlement kin give him. He's the best friend I ever had. I'm a pore
+ignerant boy, an' he teaches me how to do things that will make me
+something."
+
+"Darn it all!" said Newton.
+
+"You know," said Raymond, "that you'd think mahgty small of me, if I'd
+desert Mr. Jim Irwin."
+
+"Well, then," replied Newton, seizing his traps and throwing them across
+his shoulder, "come on with the traps, and shut up! What'll we do when the
+school board gets Jennie Woodruff to revoke his certificate and make him
+quit teachin', hey?"
+
+"Nobody'll eveh do that," said Raymond. "I'd set in the schoolhouse do'
+with my rifle and shoot anybody that'd come to th'ow Mr. Jim outen the
+school."
+
+"Not in this country," said Newton. "This ain't a gun country."
+
+"But it orto be either a justice kentry, or a gun kentry," replied the
+mountain boy. "It stands to reason it must be one 'r the otheh, Newton."
+
+"No, it don't, neither," said Newton dogmatically.
+
+"Why should they th'ow Mr. Jim outen the school?" inquired Raymond. "Ain't
+he teachin' us right?"
+
+Newton explained for the tenth time that his father, Mr. Con Bonner and
+Mr. Haakon Peterson had not meant to hire Jim Irwin at all, but each had
+voted for him so that he might have one vote. They were all against him
+from the first, but they had not known how to get rid of him. Now,
+however, Jim had done so many things that no teacher was supposed to do,
+and had left undone so many things that teachers were bound by custom to
+perform, that Newton's father and Mr. Bonner and Mr. Peterson had made up
+up their minds that they would call upon him to resign, and if he
+wouldn't, they would "turn him out" in some way. And the best way if they
+could do it, would be to induce County Superintendent Woodruff, who didn't
+like Jim since the speech he made at the political meeting, to revoke his
+certificate.
+
+"What wrong's he done committed?" asked Raymond. "I don't know what
+teachers air supposed to do in this kentry, but Mr. Jim seems to be the
+only shore-enough teacher I ever see!"
+
+"He don't teach out of the books the school board adopted," replied
+Newton.
+
+"But he makes up better lessons," urged Raymond. "An' all the things we do
+in school, he'ps us make a livin'."
+
+"He begins at eight in the mornin'," said Newton, "an' he has some of us
+there till half past five, and comes back in the evening. And every
+Saturday, some of the kids are doin' something at the schoolhouse."
+
+"They don't pay him for overtime, do they?" queried Raymond. "Well, then,
+they orto, instid of turnin' him out!"
+
+"Well, they'll turn him out!" prophesied Newton. "I'm havin' more fun in
+school than I ever--an' that's why I'm with you on this quittin'
+trapping--but they'll get Jim, all right!"
+
+"I'm having something betteh'n fun," replied Raymond. "My pap has never
+understood this kentry, an' we-all has had bad times hyeh; but Mr. Jim an'
+I have studied out how I can make a betteh livin' next year--and pap says
+we kin go on the way Mr. Jim says. I'll work for Colonel Woodruff a part
+of the time, an' pap kin make corn in the biggest field. It seems we
+didn't do our work right last year--an' in a couple of years, with the
+increase of the hawgs, an' the land we kin get under plow...."
+
+Raymond was off on his pet dream of becoming something better than the
+oldest of the Simms tribe of outcasts, and Newton was subconsciously
+impressed by the fact that never for a moment did Raymond's plans fail to
+include the elevation with him of Calista and Jinnie and Buddy and Pap and
+Mam. It was taken for granted that the Simmses sank or swam together,
+whether their antagonists were poverty and ignorance, or their ancient
+foes, the Hobdays. Newton drew closer to Raymond's side.
+
+It was still an hour before nine--when the rural school traditionally
+"takes up"--when the boys had stored their traps in a shed at the Bronson
+home, and walked on to the schoolhouse. That rather scabby and weathered
+edifice was already humming with industry of a sort. In spite of the
+hostility of the school board, and the aloofness of the patrons of the
+school, the pupils were clearly interested in Jim Irwin's system of rural
+education. Never had the attendance been so large or regular; and one of
+the reasons for sessions before nine and after four was the inability of
+the teacher to attend to the needs of his charges in the five and a half
+hours called "school hours."
+
+This, however, was not the sole reason. It was the new sort of work which
+commanded the attention of Raymond and Newton as they entered. This
+morning, Jim had arranged in various sorts of dishes specimens of grain
+and grass seeds. By each was a card bearing the name of the farm from
+which one of the older boys or girls had brought it. "Wheat, Scotch Fife,
+from the farm of Columbus Smith." "Timothy, or Herd's Grass, from the farm
+of A. B. Talcott." "Alsike Clover, from the farm of B. B. Hamm." Each lot
+was in a small cloth bag which had been made by one of the little girls as
+a sewing exercise; and each card had been written as a lesson in
+penmanship by one of the younger pupils, and contained, in addition to the
+data above mentioned, heads under which to enter the number of grains of
+the seed examined, the number which grew, the percentage of viability, the
+number of alien seeds of weeds and other sorts, the names of these
+adulterants, the weight of true and vitalized, and of foul and alien and
+dead seeds, the value per bushel in the local market of the seeds under
+test, and the real market values of the samples, after dead seeds and
+alien matter had been subtracted.
+
+"Now get busy, here," cried Jim Irwin. "We're late! Raymond, you've a
+quick eye--you count seeds--and you, Calista, and Mary Smith--and mind,
+next year's crop may depend on making no mistakes!"
+
+"Mistakes!" scoffed Mary Smith, a dumpy girl of fourteen. "We don't make
+mistakes any more, teacher."
+
+It was a frolic, rather than a task. All had come with a perfect
+understanding that this early attendance was quite illegal, and not to be
+required of them--but they came.
+
+"Newt," suggested Jim, "get busy on the percentage problems for that
+second class in arithmetic."
+
+"Sure," said Newt. "Let's see.... Good seed is the base, and bad seed and
+dead seed the percentage--find the rate...."
+
+"Oh, you know!" said Jim. "Make them easy and plain and as many as you can
+get out--and be sure that you name the farm every pop!"
+
+"Got you!" answered Newton, and in a fine frenzy went at the job of
+creating a text-book in arithmetic.
+
+"Buddy," said Jim, patting the youngest Simms on the head, "you and
+Virginia can print the reading lessons this morning, can't you?"
+
+"Yes, Mr. Jim," answered both McGeehee Simms and his sister cheerily.
+"Where's the copy?"
+
+"Here," answered the teacher, handing each a typewritten sheet for use as
+the original from which the young mountaineers were to make hectograph
+copies, "and mind you make good copies! Bettina Hansen pretty nearly cried
+last night because she had to write them over so many times on the
+typewriter before she got them all right."
+
+The reading lesson was an article on corn condensed from a farm paper, and
+a selection from _Hiawatha_--the Indian-corn myth.
+
+"We'll be careful, Mr. Jim," said Buddy.
+
+Half past eight, and only half an hour until school would officially be
+"called."
+
+Newton Bronson was writing in aniline ink for the hectographs, such
+problems as these:
+
+"If Mr. Ezra Bronson's seed wheat carries in each 250 grains, ten cockle
+grains, fifteen rye grains, twenty fox-tail seeds, three iron-weed seeds,
+two wild oats grains, twenty-seven wild buckwheat seeds, one wild
+morning-glory seed, and eighteen lamb's quarter seeds, what percentage of
+the seeds sown is wheat, and what foul seed?"
+
+"If in each 250 grains of wheat in Mr. Bronson's bins, 30 are cracked,
+dead or otherwise not capable of sprouting, what per cent, of the seed
+sown will grow?"
+
+"If the foul seed and dead wheat amount to one-eighth by weight of the
+mass, what did Mr. Bronson pay per bushel for the good wheat, if it cost
+him $1.10 in the bin, and what per cent, did he lose by the adulterations
+and the poor wheat?"
+
+Jim ran over these rapidly. "Your mathematics is good, Newton," said the
+schoolmaster, "but if you expect to pass in penmanship, you'll have to
+take more pains."
+
+"How about the grammar?" asked Newton. "The writing is pretty bad, I'll
+own up."
+
+"The grammar is good this morning. You're gradually mastering the art of
+stating a problem in arithmetic in English--and that's improvement."
+
+The hands of Jim Irwin's dollar watch gradually approached the position
+indicating nine o'clock--at which time the schoolmaster rapped on his desk
+and the school came to order. Then, for a while, it became like other
+schools. A glance over the room enabled him to enter the names of the
+absentees, and those tardy. There was a song by the school, the recitation
+in concert of _Little Brown Hands_, some general remarks and directions by
+the teacher, and the primary pupils came forward for their reading
+exercises. A few classes began poring over their text-books, but most of
+the pupils had their work passed out to them in the form of hectograph
+copies of exercises prepared in the school itself.
+
+As the little ones finished their recitations, they passed to the dishes
+of wheat, and began aiding Raymond's squad in the counting and classifying
+of the various seeds. They counted to five, and they counted the fives.
+They laughed in a subdued way, and whispered constantly, but nobody seemed
+disturbed.
+
+"Do they help much, Calista?" asked the teacher, as the oldest Simms girl
+came to his desk for more wheat.
+
+"No, seh, not much," replied Calista, beaming, "but they don't hold us
+back any--and maybe they do he'p a little."
+
+"That's good," said Jim, "and they enjoy it, don't they?"
+
+"Oh, yes, Mr. Jim," assented Calista, "and the way Buddy is learnin' to
+count is fine! They-all will soon know all the addition they is, and a lot
+of multiplication. Angie Talcott knows the kinds of seeds better'n what I
+do!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+AND THE OLD BOTTLES
+
+
+The day passed. Four o'clock came. In order that all might reach home for
+supper, there was no staying, except that Newt Bronson and Raymond Simms
+remained to sweep and dust the schoolroom, and prepare kindling for the
+next morning's fire--a work they had taken upon themselves, so as to
+enable the teacher to put on the blackboards such outlines for the
+morrow's class work as might be required. Jim was writing on the board a
+list of words constituting a spelling exercise. They were not from the
+text-book, but grew naturally out of the study of the seed
+wheat--"cockle," "morning-glory," "convolvulus," "viable," "viability,"
+"sprouting," "iron-weed" and the like. A tap was heard at the door, and
+Raymond Simms opened it.
+
+In filed three women--and Jim Irwin knew as he looked at them that he was
+greeting a deputation, and felt that it meant a struggle. For they were
+the wives of the members of the school board. He placed for them the three
+available chairs, and in the absence of any for himself remained standing
+before them, a gaunt shabby-looking revolutionist at the bar of settled
+usage and fixed public opinion.
+
+Mrs. Haakon Peterson was a tall blonde woman who, when she spoke betrayed
+her Scandinavian origin by the northern burr to her "r's," and a slight
+difficulty with her "j's," her "y's" and long "a's." She was slow-spoken
+and dignified, and Jim felt an instinctive respect for her personality.
+Mrs. Bronson was a good motherly woman, noted for her housekeeping, and
+for her church activities. She looked oftener at her son, and his friend
+Raymond than at the schoolmaster. Mrs. Bonner was the most voluble of the
+three, and was the only one who shook hands with Jim; but in spite of her
+rather offhand manner, Jim sensed in the little, black-eyed Irishwoman the
+real commander of the expedition against him--for such he knew it to be.
+
+"You may think it strange of us coming after hours," said she, "but we
+wanted to speak to you, teacher, without the children here."
+
+"I wish more of the parents would call," said Jim. "At any hour of the
+day."
+
+"Or night either, I dare say," suggested Mrs. Bonner. "I hear you've the
+scholars here at all hours, Jim."
+
+Jim smiled his slow patient smile.
+
+"We do break the union rules, I guess, Mrs. Bonner," said he; "there seems
+to be more to do than we can get done during school hours."
+
+"What right have ye," struck in Mrs. Bonner, "to be burning the district's
+fuel, and wearing out the school's property out of hours like that--not
+that it's anny of my business," she interposed, hastily, as if she had
+been diverted from her chosen point of attack. "I just thought of it,
+that's all. What we came for, Mr. Irwin, is to object to the way the
+teachin's being done--corn and wheat, and hogs and the like, instead of
+the learnin' schools was made to teach."
+
+"Schools were made to prepare children for life, weren't they, Mrs.
+Bonner?"
+
+"To be sure," went on Mrs. Bonner, "I can see an' the whole district can
+see that it's easier for a man that's been a farm-hand to teach farm-hand
+knowledge, than the learnin' schools was set up to teach; but if so be he
+hasn't the book education to do the right thing, we think he should get
+out and give a real teacher a chance."
+
+"What am I neglecting?" asked Jim mildly.
+
+Mrs. Bonner seemed unprepared for the question, and sat for an instant
+mute. Mrs. Peterson interposed her attack while Mrs. Bonner might be
+recovering her wind.
+
+"We people that have had a hard time," she said in a precise way which
+seemed to show that she knew exactly what she wanted, "want to give our
+boys and girls a chance to live easier lives than we lived. We don't want
+our children taught about nothing but work. We want higher things."
+
+"Mrs. Peterson," said Jim earnestly, "we must have first things first.
+Making a living is the first thing--and the highest."
+
+"Haakon and I will look after making a living for our family," said she.
+"We want our children to learn nice things, and go to high school, and
+after a while to the Juniwersity."
+
+"And I," declared Jim, "will send out from this school, if you will let
+me, pupils better prepared for higher schools than have ever gone from
+it--because they will be trained to think in terms of action. They will go
+knowing that thoughts must always be linked with things. Aren't your
+children happy in school, Mrs. Peterson?"
+
+"I don't send them to school to be happy, Yim," replied Mrs. Peterson,
+calling him by the name most familiarly known to all of them; "I send them
+to learn to be higher people than their father and mother. That's what
+America means!"
+
+"They'll be higher people--higher than their parents--higher than their
+teacher--they'll be efficient farmers, and efficient farmers' wives.
+They'll be happy, because they will know how to use more brains in farming
+than any lawyer or doctor or merchant can possibly use in his business.
+I'm educating them to find an outlet for genius in farming!"
+
+"It's a fine thing," said Mrs. Bonner, coming to the aid of her fellow
+soldiers, "to work hard for a lifetime, an' raise nothing but a family of
+farmers! A fine thing!"
+
+"They will be farmers anyhow," cried Jim, "in spite of your
+efforts--ninety out of every hundred of them! And of the other ten, nine
+will be wage-earners in the cities, and wish to God they were back on the
+farm; and the hundredth one will succeed in the city. Shall we educate the
+ninety-and-nine to fail, that the hundredth, instead of enriching the
+rural life with his talents, may steal them away to make the city
+stronger? It is already too strong for us farmers. Shall we drive our best
+away to make it stronger?"
+
+The guns of Mrs. Bonner and Mrs. Peterson were silenced for a moment, and
+Mrs. Bronson, after gazing about at the typewriter, the hectograph, the
+exhibits of weed seeds, the Babcock milk tester, and the other
+unscholastic equipment, pointed to the list of words, and the arithmetic
+problems on the board.
+
+"Do you get them words from the speller?" she asked.
+
+"No," said he, "we got them from a lesson on seed wheat."
+
+"Did them examples come out of an arithmetic book?" cross-examined she.
+
+"No," said Jim, "we used problems we made ourselves. We were figuring
+profits and losses on your cows, Mrs. Bronson!"
+
+"Ezra Bronson," said Mrs. Bronson loftily, "don't need any help in telling
+what's a good cow. He was farming before you was born!"
+
+"Like fun, he don't need help! He's going to dry old Cherry off and fatten
+her for beef; and he can make more money on the cream by beefing about
+three more of 'em. The Babcock test shows they're just boarding on us
+without paying their board!"
+
+The delegation of matrons ruffled like a group of startled hens at this
+interposition, which was Newton Bronson's effective seizing of the
+opportunity to issue a progress bulletin in the research work on the
+Bronson dairy herd.
+
+"Newton!" said his mother, "don't interrupt me when I'm talking to the
+teacher!"
+
+"Well, then," said Newton, "don't tell the teacher that pa knew which cows
+were good and which were poor. If any one in this district wants to know
+about their cows they'll have to come to this shop. And I can tell you
+that it'll pay 'em to come too, if they're going to make anything selling
+cream. Wait until we get out our reports on the herds, ma!"
+
+The women were rather stampeded by this onslaught of the irregular
+troops--especially Mrs. Bronson. She was placed in the position of a woman
+taking a man's wisdom from her ne'er-do-well son for the first time in her
+life. Like any other mother in this position, she felt a flutter of
+pride--but it was strongly mingled with a motherly desire to spank him.
+The deputation rose, with a unanimous feeling that they had been scored
+upon.
+
+"Cows!" scoffed Mrs. Peterson. "If we leave you in this yob, Mr. Irwin,
+our children will know nothing but cows and hens and soils and grains--and
+where will the culture come in? How will our boys and girls appear when we
+get fixed so we can move to town? We won't have no culture at all, Yim!"
+
+"Culture!" exclaimed Jim. "Why--why, after ten years of the sort of school
+I would give you if I were a better teacher, and could have my way, the
+people of the cities would be begging to have their children admitted so
+that they might obtain real culture--culture fitting them for life in the
+twentieth century--"
+
+"Don't bother to get ready for the city children, Jim," said Mrs. Bonner
+sneeringly, "you won't be teaching the Woodruff school that long."
+
+All this time, the dark-faced Cracker had been glooming from a corner,
+earnestly seeking to fathom the wrongness he sensed in the gathering. Now
+he came forward.
+
+"I reckon I may be making a mistake to say anything," said he, "f'r we-all
+is strangers hyeh, an' we're pore; but I must speak out for Mr. Jim--I
+must! Don't turn him out, folks, f'r he's done mo' f'r us than eveh any
+one done in the world!"
+
+"What do you mean?" asked Mrs. Peterson.
+
+"I mean," said Raymond, "that when Mr. Jim began talking school to us, we
+was a pore no-'count lot without any learnin', with nothin' to talk about
+except our wrongs, an' our enemies, and the meanness of the Iowa folks.
+You see we didn't understand you-all. An' now, we have hope. We done got
+hope from this school. We're goin' to make good in the world. We're
+getting education. We're all learnin' to use books. My little sister will
+be as good as anybody, if you'll just let Mr. Jim alone in this school--as
+good as any one. An' I'll he'p pap get a farm, and we'll work and think at
+the same time, an' be happy!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+JENNIE ARRANGES A CHRISTMAS PARTY
+
+
+The great party magnates who made up the tickets from governor down to the
+lowest county office, doubtless regarded the little political plum shaken
+off into the apron of Miss Jennie Woodruff of the Woodruff District, as
+the very smallest and least bloomy of all the plums on the tree; but there
+is something which tends to puff one up in the mere fact of having
+received the votes of the people for any office, especially in a region of
+high average civilization, covering six hundred or seven hundred square
+miles of good American domain. Jennie was a sensible country girl. Being
+sensible, she tried to avoid uppishness. But she did feel some little
+sense of increased importance as she drove her father's little
+one-cylinder runabout over the smooth earth roads, in the crisp December
+weather, just before Christmas.
+
+The weather itself was stimulating, and she was making rapid progress in
+the management of the little car which her father had offered to lend her
+for use in visiting the one hundred or more rural schools soon to come
+under her supervision. She rather fancied the picture of herself, clothed
+in more or less authority and queening it over her little army of
+teachers.
+
+Mr. Haakon Peterson was phlegmatically conscious that she made rather an
+agreeable picture, as she stopped her car alongside his top buggy to talk
+with him. She had bright blue eyes, fluffy brown hair, a complexion
+whipped pink by the breeze, and she smiled at him ingratiatingly.
+
+"Don't you think father is lovely?" said she. "He is going to let me use
+the runabout when I visit the schools."
+
+"That will be good," said Haakon. "It will save you lots of time. I hope
+you make the county pay for the gasoline."
+
+"I haven't thought about that," said Jennie. "Everybody's been so nice to
+me--I want to give as well as receive."
+
+"Why," said Haakon, "you will yust begin to receive when your salary
+begins in Yanuary."
+
+"Oh, no!" said Jennie. "I've received much more than that now! You don't
+know how proud I feel. So many nice men I never knew before, and all my
+old friends like you working for me in the convention and at the polls,
+just as if I amounted to something."
+
+"And you don't know how proud I feel," said Haakon, "to have in county
+office a little girl I used to hold on my lap."
+
+In early times, when Haakon was a flat-capped immigrant boy, he had earned
+the initial payment on his first eighty acres of prairie land as a hired
+man on Colonel Woodruff's farm. Now he was a rather richer man than the
+colonel, and not a little proud of his ascent to affluence. He was a
+mild-spoken, soft-voiced Scandinavian, quite completely Americanized, and
+possessed of that aptitude for local politics which makes so good a
+citizen of the Norwegian and Swede. His influence was always worth fifty
+to sixty Scandinavian votes in any county election. He was a good party
+man and conscious of being entitled to his voice in party matters. This
+seemed to him an opportunity for exerting a bit of political influence.
+
+"Yennie," said he, "this man Yim Irwin needs to be lined up."
+
+"Lined up! What do you mean?"
+
+"The way he is doing in the school," said Haakon, "is all wrong. If you
+can't line him up, he will make you trouble. We must look ahead. Everybody
+has his friends, and Yim Irwin has his friends. If you have trouble with
+him, his friends will be against you when we want to nominate you for a
+second term. The county is getting close. If we go to conwention without
+your home delegation it would weaken you, and if we nominate you, every
+piece of trouble like this cuts down your wote. You ought to line him up
+and have him do right."
+
+"But he is so funny," said Jennie.
+
+"He likes you," said Haakon. "You can line him up."
+
+Jennie blushed, and to conceal her slight embarrassment, got out for the
+purpose of cranking her machine.
+
+"But if I can not line him up?" said she.
+
+"I tank," said Haakon, "if you can't line him up, you will have a chance
+to rewoke his certificate when you take office."
+
+So Jim Irwin was to be crushed like an insect. The little local gearing of
+the big party machine was to crush him. Jennie dimly sensed the tragedy of
+it, but very dimly. Mainly she thought of Mr. Peterson's suggestion as to
+"lining up" Jim Irwin as so thoroughly sensible that she gave it a good
+deal of thought that day. She could not help feeling a little resentment
+at Jim for following his own fads and fancies so far. We always resent the
+necessity of crushing any weak creature which must needs be wiped out. The
+idea that there could be anything fundamentally sane in his overturning of
+the old and tried school methods under which both he and she had been
+educated, was absurd to Jennie. To be sure, everybody had always favored
+"more practical education," and Jim's farm arithmetic, farm physiology,
+farm reading and writing, cow-testing exercises, seed analysis, corn clubs
+and the tomato, poultry and pig clubs he proposed to have in operation the
+next summer, seemed highly practical; but to Jennie's mind, the fact that
+they introduced dissension in the neighborhood and promised to make her
+official life vexatious, seemed ample proof that Jim's work was visionary
+and impractical. Poor Jennie was not aware of the fact that new truth
+always comes bringing, not peace to mankind, but a sword.
+
+"Father," said she that night, "let's have a little Christmas party."
+
+"All right," said the colonel. "Whom shall we invite?"
+
+"Don't laugh," said she. "I want to invite Jim Irwin and his mother, and
+nobody else."
+
+"All right," reiterated the colonel. "But why?"
+
+"Oh," said Jennie, "I want to see whether I can talk Jim out of some of
+his foolishness."
+
+"You want to line him up, do you?" said the colonel. "Well, that's good
+politics, and incidentally, you may get some good ideas out of Jim."
+
+"Rather unlikely," said Jennie.
+
+"I don't know about that," said the colonel, smiling. "I begin to think
+that Jim's a Brown Mouse. I've told you about the Brown Mouse, haven't
+I?"
+
+"Yes," said Jennie. "You've told me. But Professor Darbishire's brown mice
+were simply wild and incorrigible creatures. Just because it happens to
+emerge suddenly from the forests of heredity, it doesn't prove that the
+Brown Mouse is any good."
+
+"Justin Morgan was a Brown Mouse," said the colonel. "And he founded the
+greatest breed of horses in the world."
+
+"You say that," said Jennie, "because you're a lover of the Morgan
+horse."
+
+"Napoleon Bonaparte was a Brown Mouse," said the colonel. "So was George
+Washington, and so was Peter the Great. Whenever a Brown Mouse appears he
+changes things in a little way or a big way."
+
+"For the better, always?" asked Jennie.
+
+"No," said the colonel. "The Brown Mouse may throw back to slant-headed
+savagery. But Jim ... sometimes I think Jim is the kind of Mendelian
+segregation out of which we get Franklins and Edisons and their sort. You
+may get some good ideas out of Jim. Let us have them here for Christmas,
+by all means."
+
+In due time Jennie's invitation reached Jim and his mother, like an
+explosive shell fired from a distance into their humble dwelling--quite
+upsetting things. Twenty-five years constitute rather a long wait for
+social recognition, and Mrs. Irwin had long since regarded herself as
+quite outside society. To be sure, for something like half of this period,
+she had been of society if not in it. She had done the family washings,
+scrubbings and cleanings, had made the family clothes and been a woman of
+all work, passing from household to household, in an orbit determined by
+the exigencies of threshing, harvesting, illness and child-bearing. At
+such times she sat at the family table and participated in the
+neighborhood gossip, in quite the manner of a visiting aunt or other
+female relative; but in spite of the democracy of rural life, there is and
+always has been a social difference between a hired woman and an invited
+guest. And when Jim, having absorbed everything which the Woodruff school
+could give him in the way of education, found his first job at "making a
+hand," Mrs. Irwin, at her son's urgent request, ceased going out to work
+for a while, until she could get back her strength. This she had never
+succeeded in doing, and for a dozen years or more had never entered a
+single one of the houses in which she had formerly served.
+
+"I can't go, James," said she; "I can't possibly go."
+
+"Oh, yes, you can! Why not?" said Jim. "Why not?"
+
+"You know I don't go anywhere," urged Mrs. Irwin.
+
+"That's no reason," said her son.
+
+"I haven't a thing to wear," said Mrs. Irwin.
+
+"Nothing to wear!"
+
+I wonder if any ordinary person can understand the shock with which Jim
+Irwin heard those words from his mother's lips. He was approaching thirty,
+and the association of the ideas of Mother and Costume was foreign to his
+mind. Other women had surfaces different from hers, to be sure--but his
+mother was not as other women. She was just Mother, always at work in the
+house or in the garden, always doing for him those inevitable things which
+made up her part in life, always clothed in the browns, grays, gray-blues,
+neutral stripes and checks which were cheap and common and easily made.
+Clothes! They were in the Irwin family no more than things by which the
+rules of decency were complied with, and the cold of winter turned
+back--but as for their appearance! Jim had never given the thing a thought
+further than to wear out his Sunday best in the schoolroom, to wonder
+where the next suit of Sunday best was to come from, and to buy for his
+mother the cheap and common fabrics which she fashioned into the garments
+in which alone, it seemed to him, she would seem like Mother. A boy who
+lives until he is nearly thirty in intimate companionship with Carlyle,
+Thoreau, Wordsworth, Shakespeare, Emerson, Professor Henry, Liberty H.
+Bailey, Cyril Hopkins, Dean Davenport and the great obscurities of the
+experiment stations, may be excused if his views regarding clothes are
+derived in a transcendental manner from _Sartor Resartus_ and the
+agricultural college tests as to the relation between Shelter and
+Feeding.
+
+"Why, mother," said he, "I think it would be pretty hard to explain to the
+Woodruffs that you stayed away because of clothes. They have seen you in
+the clothes you wear pretty often for the last thirty years!"
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+Was a woman ever quite without a costume?
+
+Mrs. Irwin gazed at vacancy for a while, and went to the old bureau. From
+the bottom drawer she took an old, old black alpaca dress--a dress which
+Jim had never seen. She spread it out on her bed in the alcove off the
+combined kitchen, parlor and dining-room in which they lived, and smoothed
+out the wrinkles. It was almost whole, save for the places where her body,
+once so much fuller than now, had drawn the threads apart--under the arms,
+and at some of the seams--and she handled it as one deals with something
+very precious.
+
+"I never thought I'd wear it again," said she, "but once. I've been saving
+it for my last dress. But I guess it won't hurt to wear it once for the
+benefit of the living."
+
+Jim kissed his mother--a rare thing, save as the caress was called for by
+the established custom between them.
+
+"Don't think of that, mother," said he, "for years and years yet!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+HOW JIM WAS LINED UP
+
+
+There is no doubt that Jennie Woodruff was justified in thinking that they
+were a queer couple. They weren't like the Woodruffs, at all. They were of
+a different pattern. To be sure, Jim's clothes were not especially
+noteworthy, being just shiny, and frayed at cuff and instep, and short of
+sleeve and leg, and ill-fitting and cheap. They betrayed poverty, and the
+inability of a New York sweatshop to anticipate the prodigality of Nature
+in the matter of length of leg and arm, and wealth of bones and joints
+which she had lavished upon Jim Irwin. But the Woodruff table had often
+enjoyed Jim's presence, and the standards prevailing there as to clothes
+were only those of plain people who eat with their hired men, buy their
+clothes at a county seat town, and live simply and sensibly on the fat of
+the land. Jim's queerness lay not so much in his clothes as in his
+personality.
+
+On the other hand, Jennie could not help thinking that Mrs. Irwin's
+queerness was to be found almost solely in her clothes. The black alpaca
+looked undeniably respectable, especially when it was helped out by a
+curious old brooch of goldstone, bordered with flowers in blue and white
+and red and green--tiny blossoms of little stones which looked like the
+flowers which grow at the snow line on Pike's Peak. Jennie felt that it
+must be a cheap affair, but it was decorative, and she wondered where Mrs.
+Irwin got it. She guessed it must have a story--a story in which the
+stooped, rusty, somber old lady looked like a character drawn to harmonize
+with the period just after the war. For the black alpaca dress looked more
+like a costume for a masquerade than a present-day garment, and Mrs. Irwin
+was so oppressed with doubt as to whether she was presentable, with
+knowledge that her dress didn't fit, and with the difficulty of behaving
+naturally--like a convict just discharged from prison after a ten years'
+term--that she took on a stiffness of deportment quite in keeping with the
+idea that she was a female Rip Van Winkle not yet quite awake. But Jennie
+had the keenness to see that if Mrs. Irwin could have had an up-to-date
+costume she would have become a rather ordinary and not bad-looking old
+lady. What Jennie failed to divine was that if Jim could have invested a
+hundred dollars in the services of tailors, haberdashers, barbers and
+other specialists in personal appearance, and could for this hour or so
+have blotted out his record as her father's field-hand, he would have
+seemed to her a distinguished-looking young man. Not handsome, of course,
+but the sort people look after--and follow.
+
+"Come to dinner," said Mrs. Woodruff, who at this juncture had a hired
+girl, but was yoked to the oar nevertheless when it came to turkey and the
+other fixings of a Christmas dinner. "It's good enough, what there is of
+it, and there's enough of it such as it is--but the dressing in the turkey
+would be better for a little more sage!"
+
+The bountiful meal piled mountain high for guest and hired help and family
+melted away in a manner to delight the hearts of Mrs. Woodruff and Jennie.
+The colonel, in stiff starched shirt, black tie and frock coat, carved
+with much empressement, and Jim felt almost for the first time a sense of
+the value of manner.
+
+"I had bigger turkeys," said Mrs. Woodruff to Mrs. Irwin, "but I thought
+it would be better to cook two turkey-hens instead of one great big
+gobbler with meat as tough as tripe and stuffed full of fat."
+
+"One of the hens would 'a' been plenty," replied Mrs. Irwin. "How much did
+they weigh?"
+
+"About fifteen pounds apiece," was the answer. "The gobbler would 'a'
+weighed thirty, I guess. He's pure Mammoth Bronze."
+
+"I wish," said Jim, "that we could get a few breeding birds of the wild
+bronze turkeys from Mexico."
+
+"Why?" asked the colonel.
+
+"They're the original blood of the domestic bronze turkeys," said Jim,
+"and they're bigger and handsomer than the pure-bred bronzes, even.
+They're a better stock than the northern wild turkeys from which our
+common birds originated."
+
+"Where do you learn all these things, Jim?" asked Mrs. Woodruff. "I
+declare, I often tell Woodruff that it's as good as a lecture to have Jim
+Irwin at table. My intelligence has fallen since you quit working here,
+Jim."
+
+There came into Jim's eyes the gleam of the man devoted to a Cause--and
+the dinner tended to develop into a lecture. Jennie saw a little more
+plainly wherein his queerness lay.
+
+"There's an education in any meal, if we would just use the things on the
+table as materials for study, and follow their trails back to their
+starting-points. This turkey takes us back to the chaparral of
+Mexico----"
+
+"What's chaparral?" asked Jennie, as a diversion. "It's one of the words I
+have seen so often and know perfectly to speak it and read it--but after
+all it's just a word, and nothing more."
+
+"Ain't that the trouble with our education, Jim?" queried the colonel,
+cleverly steering Jim back into the track of his discourse.
+
+"They are not even living words," answered Jim, "unless we have clothed
+them in flesh and blood through some sort of concrete notion. 'Chaparral'
+to Jennie is just the ghost of a word. Our civilization is full of
+inefficiency because we are satisfied to give our children these ghosts
+and shucks and husks of words, instead of the things themselves, that can
+be seen and hefted and handled and tested and heard."
+
+Jennie looked Jim over carefully. His queerness was taking on a new
+phase--and she felt a sense of surprise such as one experiences when the
+conjurer causes a rose to grow into a tree before your very eyes. Jim's
+development was not so rapid, but Jennie's perception of it was. She began
+to feel proud of the fact that a man who could make his impractical
+notions seem so plausible--and who was clearly fired with some sort of
+evangelistic fervor--had kissed her, once or twice, on bringing her home
+from the spelling school.
+
+"I think we lose so much time in school," Jim went on, "while the children
+are eating their dinners."
+
+"Well, Jim," said Mrs. Woodruff, "every one but you is down on the human
+level. The poor kids have to eat!"
+
+"But think how much good education there is wrapped up in the school
+dinner--if we could only get it out."
+
+Jennie grew grave. Here was this Brown Mouse actually introducing the
+subject of the school--and he ought to suspect that she was planning to
+line him up on this very thing--if he wasn't a perfect donkey as well as a
+dreamer. And he was calmly wading into the subject as if she were the
+ex-farm-hand country teacher, and he was the county superintendent-elect!
+
+"Eating a dinner like this, mother," said the colonel gallantly, "is an
+education in itself--and eating some others requires one; but just how
+'larnin' is wrapped up in the school lunch is a new one on me, Jim."
+
+"Well," said Jim, "in the first place the children ought to cook their
+meals as a part of the school work. Prior to that they ought to buy the
+materials. And prior to that they ought to keep the accounts of the school
+kitchen. They'd like to do these things, and it would help prepare them
+for life on an intelligent plane, while they prepared the meals."
+
+"Isn't that looking rather far ahead?" asked the county
+superintendent-elect.
+
+"It's like a lot of other things we think far ahead," urged Jim. "The only
+reason why they're far off is because we think them so. It's a
+thought--and a thought is as near the moment we think it as it will ever
+be."
+
+"I guess that's so--to a wild-eyed reformer," said the colonel. "But go
+on. Develop your thought a little. Have some more dressing."
+
+"Thanks, I believe I will," said Jim. "And a little more of the cranberry
+sauce. No more turkey, please."
+
+"I'd like to see the school class that could prepare this dinner," said
+Mrs. Woodruff.
+
+"Why," said Jim, "you'd be there showing them how! They'd get credits in
+their domestic-economy course for getting the school dinner--and they'd
+bring their mothers into it to help them stand at the head of their
+classes. And one detail of girls would cook one week, and another serve.
+The setting of the table would come in as a study--flowers, linen and all
+that. And when we get a civilized teacher, table manners!"
+
+"I'd take on that class," said the hired man, winking at Selma Carlson,
+the maid, from somewhere below the salt. "The way I make my knife feed my
+face would be a great help to the children."
+
+"And when the food came on the table," Jim went on, with a smile at his
+former fellow-laborer, who had heard most of this before as a part of the
+field conversation, "just think of the things we could study while eating
+it. The literary term for eating a meal is discussing it--well, the
+discussion of a meal under proper guidance is much more educative than a
+lecture. This breast-bone, now," said he, referring to the remains on his
+plate. "That's physiology. The cranberry-sauce--that's botany, and
+commerce, and soil management--do you know, Colonel, that the cranberry
+must have an acid soil--which would kill alfalfa or clover?"
+
+"Read something of it," said the colonel, "but it didn't interest me
+much."
+
+"And the difference between the types of fowl on the table--that's
+breeding. And the nutmeg, pepper and cocoanut--that's geography. And
+everything on the table runs back to geography, and comes to us linked to
+our lives by dollars and cents--and they're mathematics."
+
+"We must have something more than dollars and cents in life," said Jennie.
+"We must have culture."
+
+"Culture," cried Jim, "is the ability to think in terms of life--isn't
+it?"
+
+"Like Jesse James," suggested the hired man, who was a careful student of
+the life of that eminent bandit.
+
+There was a storm of laughter at this sally amidst which Jennie wished she
+had thought of something like that. Jim joined in the laughter at his own
+expense, but was clearly suffering from argumentative shock.
+
+"That's the best answer I've had on that point, Pete," he said, after the
+disturbance had subsided. "But if the James boys and the Youngers had had
+the sort of culture I'm for, they would have been successful stock men and
+farmers, instead of train-robbers. Take Raymond Simms, for instance. He
+had all the qualifications of a member of the James gang when he came
+here. All he needed was a few exasperated associates of his own sort, and
+a convenient railway with undefended trains running over it. But after a
+few weeks of real 'culture' under a mighty poor teacher, he's developing
+into the most enthusiastic farmer I know. That's real culture."
+
+"It's snowing like everything," said Jennie, who faced the window.
+
+"Don't cut your dinner short," said the colonel to Pete, "but I think
+you'll find the cattle ready to come in out of the storm when you get good
+and through."
+
+"I think I'll let 'em in now," said Pete, by way of excusing himself. "I
+expect to put in most of the day from now on getting ready to quit eating.
+Save some of everything for me, Selma,--I'll be right back!"
+
+"All right, Pete," said Selma.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+THE MOUSE ESCAPES
+
+
+Jennie played the piano and sang. They all joined in some simple Christmas
+songs. Mrs. Woodruff and Jim's mother went into other parts of the house
+on research work connected with their converse on domestic economy. The
+colonel withdrew for an inspection of the live stock on the eve of the
+threatened blizzard. And Jim was left alone with Jennie in the front
+parlor. After the buzz of conversation, they seemed to have nothing to
+say. Jennie played softly, and looked at nothing, but scrutinized Jim by
+means of the eyes which women have concealed in their back hair. There was
+something new in the man--she sensed that. He was more confident, more
+persuasive, more dynamic. She was used to him only as a static force.
+
+And Jim felt something new, too. He had felt it growing in him ever since
+he began his school work, and knew not the cause of it. The cause,
+however, would not have been a mystery to a wise old yogi who might
+discover the same sort of change in one of his young novices. Jim Irwin
+had been a sort of ascetic since his boyhood. He had mortified the flesh
+by hard labor in the fields, and by flagellations of the brain to drive
+off sleep while he pored over his books in the attic--which was often so
+hot after a day of summer's sun on its low thin roof, that he was forced
+to do his reading in the midmost night. He had looked long on such women
+as Helen of Troy, Cleopatra, Isabel, Cressida, Volumnia, Virginia,
+Evangeline, Agnes Wickfleld and Fair Rosamond; but on women in the flesh
+he had gazed as upon trees walking. The aforesaid spiritual director, had
+this young ascetic been under one, would have foreseen the effects on the
+psychology of a stout fellow of twenty-eight of freedom from the toil of
+the fields, and association with a group of young human beings of both
+sexes. To the novice struggling for emancipation from earthly thoughts, he
+would have recommended fasting and prayer, and perhaps, a hair shirt. Just
+what his prescription would have been for a man in Jim's position is, of
+course, a question. He would, no doubt, have considered carefully his
+patient's symptoms. These were very largely the mental experiences which
+most boys pass through in their early twenties, save, perhaps that, as in
+a belated season, the transition from winter to spring was more sudden,
+and the contrast more violent. Jim was now thrown every day into contact
+with his fellows. He was no longer a lay monk, but an active member of a
+very human group. He was becoming more of a boy, with the boys, and still
+more was he developing into a man with the women. The budding womanhood of
+Calista Simms and the other girls of his school thrilled him as Helen of
+Troy or Juliet had never done. This will not seem very strange to the
+experienced reader, but it astonished the unsophisticated young
+schoolmaster. The floating hair, the heaving bosom, the rosebud mouth, the
+starry eye, the fragrant breath, the magnetic hand--all these disturbed
+the hitherto sedate mind, and filled the brief hours he was accustomed to
+spend in sleep with strange dreams. And now, as he gazed at Jennie, he was
+suddenly aware of the fact that, after all, whenever these thoughts and
+dreams took on individuality, they were only persistent and intensified
+continuations of his old dreams of her. They had always been dormant in
+him, since the days they both studied from the same book. He was quite
+sure, now, that he had never forgotten for a moment, that Jennie was the
+only girl in the world for him. And possibly he was right about this. It
+is perfectly certain, however, that for years he had not consciously been
+in love with her.
+
+Now, however, he arose as from some inner compulsion, and went to her
+side. He wished that he knew enough of music to turn her sheets for her,
+but, alas! the notes were meaningless to him. Still scanning him by means
+of her back hair, Jennie knew that in another moment Jim would lay his
+hand on her shoulder, or otherwise advance to personal nearness, as he had
+done the night of his ill-starred speech at the schoolhouse--and she rose
+in self-defense. Self-defense, however, did not seem to require that he be
+kept at too great a distance; so she maneuvered him to the sofa, and
+seated him beside her. Now was the time to line him up.
+
+"It seems good to have you with us to-day," said she. "We're such old, old
+friends."
+
+"Yes," repeated Jim, "old friends .... We are, aren't we, Jennie?"
+
+"And I feel sure," Jennie went on, "that this marks a new era in our
+friendship."
+
+"Why?" asked Jim, after considering the matter.
+
+"Oh! everything is different, now--and getting more different all the
+time. My new work, and your new work, you know."
+
+"I should like to think," said Jim, "that we are beginning over again."
+
+"Oh, we are, we are, indeed! I am quite sure of it."
+
+"And yet," said Jim, "there is no such thing as a new beginning.
+Everything joins itself to something which went before. There isn't any
+seam."
+
+"No?" said Jennie interrogatively.
+
+"Our regard for each other," Jennie noted most pointedly his word
+"regard"--"must be the continuation of the old regard."
+
+"I hardly know what you mean," said Jennie.
+
+Jim reached over and possessed himself of her hand. She pulled it from him
+gently, but he paid no attention to the little muscular protest, and
+examined the hand critically. On the back of the middle finger he pointed
+out a scar--a very tiny scar.
+
+"Do you remember how you got that?" he asked.
+
+Because Jim clung to the hand, their heads were very close together as she
+joined in the examination.
+
+"Why, I don't believe I do," said she.
+
+"I do," he replied. "We--you and I and Mary Forsythe were playing
+mumble-peg, and you put your hand on the grass just as I threw the
+knife--it cut you, and left that scar."
+
+"I remember, now!" said she. "How such things come back over the memory.
+And did it leave a scar when I pushed you toward the red-hot stove in the
+schoolhouse one blizzardy day, like this, and you peeled the skin off your
+wrist where it struck the stove?"
+
+"Look at it," said he, baring his long and bony wrist. "Right there!"
+
+And they were off on the trail that leads back to childhood. They had
+talked long, and intimately, when the shadows of the early evening crept
+into the corners of the room. He had carried her across the flooded slew
+again after the big rain. They had relived a dozen moving incidents by
+flood and field. Jennie recalled the time when the tornado narrowly missed
+the schoolhouse, and frightened everybody in school nearly to death.
+
+"Everybody but you, Jim," Jennie remembered. "You looked out of the window
+and told the teacher that the twister was going north of us, and would
+kill somebody else."
+
+"Did I?" asked Jim.
+
+"Yes," said Jennie, "and when the teacher asked us to kneel and thank God,
+you said, 'Why should we thank God that somebody else is blowed away?' She
+was greatly shocked."
+
+"I don't see to this day," Jim asserted, "what answer there was to my
+question."
+
+In the gathering darkness Jim again took Jennie's hand, but this time she
+deprived him of it.
+
+He was trembling like a leaf. Let it be remembered in his favor that this
+was the only girl's hand he had ever held.
+
+"You can't find any more scars on it," she said soberly.
+
+"Let me see how much it has changed since I stuck the knife in it," begged
+Jim.
+
+Jennie held it up for inspection.
+
+"It's longer, and slenderer, and whiter, and even more beautiful," said
+he, "than the little hand I cut; but it was then the most beautiful hand
+in the world to me--and still is."
+
+"I must light the lamps," said the county superintendent-elect, rather
+flustered, it must be confessed. "Mama! Where are all the matches?"
+
+Mrs. Woodruff and Mrs. Irwin came in, and the lamplight reminded Jim's
+mother that the cow was still to milk, and that the chickens might need
+attention. The Woodruff sleigh came to the door to carry them home; but
+Jim desired to breast the storm. He felt that he needed the conflict. Mrs.
+Irwin scolded him for his foolishness, but he strode off into the whirling
+drift, throwing back a good-by for general consumption, and a pathetic
+smile to Jennie.
+
+"He's as odd as Dick's hatband," said Mrs. Woodruff, "tramping off in a
+storm like this."
+
+"Did you line him up?" asked the colonel of Jennie.
+
+The young lady started and blushed. She had forgotten all about the
+politics of the situation.
+
+"I--I'm afraid I didn't, papa," she confessed.
+
+"Those brown mice of Professor Darbishire's," said the colonel, "were the
+devil and all to control."
+
+Jennie was thinking of this as she dropped asleep.
+
+"Hard to control!" she thought. "I wonder. I wonder, after all, if Jim is
+not capable of being easily lined up--when he sees how foolish I think he
+is!"
+
+And Jim? He found himself hard to control that night. So much so that it
+was after midnight before he had finished work on a plan for a cooperative
+creamery.
+
+"The boys can be given work in helping to operate it," he wrote on a
+tablet, "which, in connection with the labor performed by the teacher,
+will greatly reduce the expense of operation. A skilled butter-maker, with
+slender white hands"--but he erased this last clause and retired.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+FACING TRIAL
+
+
+A distinct sensation ran through the Woodruff school, but the schoolmaster
+and a group of five big boys and three girls engaged in a very unclasslike
+conference in the back of the room were all unconscious of it. The
+geography classes had recited, and the language work was on. Those too
+small for these studies were playing a game under the leadership of Jinnie
+Simms, who had been promoted to the position of weed-seed monitor.
+
+The game was forfeits. Each child had been encouraged to bring some sort
+of weed from the winter fields--preferably one the seed of which still
+clung to the dried receptacles--but anyhow, a weed. Some pupils had
+brought merely empty tassels, some bare stalks, and some seeds which they
+had winnowed from the grain in their father's bins; and with them they
+played forfeits. They counted out by the "arey, Ira, ickery an'" method,
+and somebody was "It." Then, in order, they presented to him a seed, stalk
+or head of a weed, and if the one who was It could tell the name of the
+weed, the child who brought the specimen became It, and the name was
+written on slates or tablets, and the new It told where the weed or seed
+was collected. If any pupil brought in a specimen the name of which he
+himself could not correctly give, he paid a forfeit. If a specimen was
+brought in not found in the school cabinet--which was coming to contain a
+considerable collection--it was placed there, and the task allotted to the
+best penman in the school to write its proper label. All this caused
+excitement, and not a little buzz--but it ceased when the county
+superintendent entered the room.
+
+For it was after the first of January, and Jennie was visiting the
+Woodruff school.
+
+The group in the back of the room went on with its conference, oblivious
+of the entrance of Superintendent Jennie. Their work was rather absorbing,
+being no more nor less than the compilation of the figures of a cow census
+of the district.
+
+"Altogether," said Mary Talcott, "we have in the district one hundred and
+fifty-three cows."
+
+"I don't make it that," said Raymond Simms. "I don't get but a hundred and
+thirty-eight."
+
+"The trouble is," said Newton Bronson, "that Mary's counting in the Bailey
+herd of Shorthorns."
+
+"Well, they're cows, ain't they?" interrogated Mary.
+
+"Not for this census," said Raymond.
+
+"Why not?" asked Mary. "They're the prettiest cows in the neighborhood."
+
+"Scotch Shorthorns," said Newton, "and run with their calves."
+
+"Leave them out," said Jim, "and to-morrow, I want each one to tell in the
+language class, in three hundred words or less, whether there are enough
+cows in the district to justify a cooperative creamery, and give the
+reason. You'll find articles in the farm papers if you look through the
+card index. Now, how about the census in the adjoining districts?"
+
+"There are more than two hundred within four miles on the roads leading
+west," said a boy.
+
+"My father and I counted up about a hundred beyond us," said Mary. "But I
+couldn't get the exact number."
+
+"Why," said Raymond, "we could find six hundred dairy cows in this
+neighborhood, within an hour's drive."
+
+"Six hundred!" scoffed Newton. "You're crazy! In an hour's drive?"
+
+"I mean an hour's drive each way," said Raymond.
+
+"I believe we could," said Jim. "And after we find how far we will have to
+go to get enough cows, if half of them patronized the creamery, we'll work
+over the savings the business would make, if we could get the prices for
+butter paid the Wisconsin cooperative creameries, as compared with what
+the centralizers pay us, on a basis of the last six months. Who's in
+possession of that correspondence with the Wisconsin creameries?"
+
+"I have it," said Raymond. "I'm hectographing a lot of arithmetic problems
+from it."
+
+"How do you do, Mr. Irwin!" It was the superintendent who spoke.
+
+Jim's brain whirled little prismatic clouds before his vision, as he rose
+and shook Jennie's extended hand.
+
+"Let me give you a chair," said he.
+
+"Oh, no, thank you!" she returned. "I'll just make myself at home. I know
+my way about in this schoolhouse, you know!"
+
+She smiled at the children, and went about looking at their work--which
+was not noticeably disturbed, by reason of the fact that visitors were
+much more frequent now than ever before, and were no rarity. Certainly,
+Jennie Woodruff was no novelty, since they had known her all their lives.
+Most of the embarrassment was Jim's. He rose to the occasion, however,
+went through the routine of the closing day, and dismissed the flock, not
+omitting making an engagement with a group of boys for that evening to
+come back and work on the formalin treatment for smut in seed grains, and
+the blue-vitriol treatment for seed potatoes.
+
+"We hadn't time for these things," said he to the county superintendent,
+"in the regular class work--and it's getting time to take them up if we
+are to clean out the smut in next year's crop."
+
+They repeated Whittier's _Corn Song_ in concert, and school was out.
+
+Alone with her in the old schoolhouse, Jim confronted Jennie in the flesh.
+She felt a sense of his agitation, but if she had known the power of it,
+she would have been astonished. Since that Christmas afternoon when she
+had undertaken to follow Mr. Peterson's advice and line Yim Irwin up, Jim
+had gone through an inward transformation. He had passed from a late,
+cold, backward sexual spring, into a warm June of the spirit, in which he
+had walked amid roses and lilies with Jennie. He was in love with her. He
+knew how insane it was, how much less than nothing had taken place in his
+circumstances to justify the hope that he could ever emerge from the state
+in which she would not say "Humph!" at the thought that he could marry her
+or any one else. Yet, he had made up his mind that he would marry Jennie
+Woodruff .... She ought never have tried to line him up. She knew not what
+she did.
+
+He saw her through clouds of rose and pink; but she looked at him as at a
+foolish man who was making trouble for her, chasing rainbows at her
+expense, and deeply vexing her. She was in a cold official frame of mind.
+
+"Jim," said she, "do you know that you are facing trouble?"
+
+"Trouble," said Jim, "is the natural condition of a man in my state of
+mind. But it is going to be a delicious sort of tribulation."
+
+"I don't know what you mean," she replied in perfect honesty.
+
+"Then I don't know what you mean," replied Jim.
+
+"Jim," she said pleadingly, "I want you to give up this sort of teaching.
+Can't you see it's all wrong?"
+
+"No," answered Jim, in much the manner of a man who has been stabbed by
+his sweetheart. "I can't see that it's wrong. It's the only sort I can do.
+What do you see wrong in it?"
+
+"Oh, I can see some very wonderful things in it," said Jennie, "but it
+can't be done in the Woodruff District. It may be correct in theory, but
+it won't work in practise."
+
+"Jennie," said he, "when a thing won't work, it isn't correct in theory."
+
+"Well, then, Jim," said she, "why do you keep on with it?"
+
+"It works," said Jim. "Anything that's correct in theory will work. If the
+theory seems correct, and yet won't work, it's because something is wrong
+in an unsuspected way with the theory. But my theory is correct, and it
+works."
+
+"But the district is against it."
+
+"Who are the district?"
+
+"The school board are against it."
+
+"The school board elected me after listening to an explanation of my
+theories as to the new sort of rural school in which I believe. I assume
+that they commissioned me to carry out my ideas."
+
+"Oh, Jim!" cried Jennie. "That's sophistry! They all voted for you so you
+wouldn't be without support. Each wanted you to have just one vote. Nobody
+wanted you elected. They were all surprised. You know that!"
+
+"They stood by and saw the contract signed," said Jim, "and--yes, Jennie,
+I _am_ dealing in sophistry! I got the school by a sort of shell-game,
+which the board worked on themselves. But that doesn't prove that the
+district is against me. I believe the people are for me, now, Jennie. I
+really do!"
+
+Jennie rose and walked to the rear of the room and back, twice. When she
+spoke, there was decision in her tone--and Jim felt that it was hostile
+decision.
+
+"As an officer," she said rather grandly, "my relations with the district
+are with the school board on the one hand, and with your competency as a
+teacher on the other."
+
+"Has it come to that?" asked Jim. "Well, I have rather expected it."
+
+His tone was weary. The Lincolnian droop in his great, sad, mournful mouth
+accentuated the resemblance to the martyr president. Possibly his feelings
+were not entirely different from those experienced by Lincoln at some
+crises of doubt, misunderstanding and depression.
+
+"If you can't change your methods," said Jennie, "I suggest that you
+resign."
+
+"Do you think," said Jim, "that changing my methods would appease the men
+who feel that they are made laughing-stocks by having elected me?"
+
+Jennie was silent; for she knew that the school board meant to pursue
+their policy of getting rid of the accidental incumbent regardless of his
+methods.
+
+"They would never call off their dogs," said Jim.
+
+"But your methods would make a great difference with my decision," said
+Jennie.
+
+"Are you to be called upon to decide?" asked Jim.
+
+"A formal complaint against you for incompetency," she replied, "has been
+lodged in my office, signed by the three directors. I shall be obliged to
+take notice of it."
+
+"And do you think," queried Jim, "that my abandonment of the things in
+which I believe in the face of this attack would prove to your mind that I
+am competent? Or would it show me incompetent?"
+
+Again Jennie was silent.
+
+"I guess," said Jim, "that we'll have to stand or fall on things as they
+are."
+
+"Do you refuse to resign?" asked Jennie.
+
+"Sometimes I think it's not worth while to try any longer," said Jim. "And
+yet, I believe that in my way I'm working on the question which must be
+solved if this nation is to stand--the question of making the farm and
+farm life what they should be and may well be. At this moment, I feel like
+surrendering--for your sake more than mine; but I'll have to think about
+it. Suppose I refuse to resign?"
+
+Jennie had drawn on her gloves, and stood ready for departure.
+
+"Unless you resign before the twenty-fifth," said she, "I shall hear the
+petition for your removal on that date. You will be allowed to be present
+and answer the charges against you. The charges are incompetency. I bid
+you good evening!"
+
+"Incompetency!" The disgraceful word, representing everything he had
+always despised, rang through Jim's mind as he walked home. He could think
+of nothing else as he sat at the simple supper which he could scarcely
+taste. Incompetent! Well, had he not always been incompetent, except in
+the use of his muscles? Had he not always been a dreamer? Were not all his
+dreams as foreign to life and common sense as the Milky Way from the
+earth? What reason was there for thinking that this crusade of his for
+better schools had any sounder foundation than hia dream of being
+president, or a great painter, or a poet or novelist or philosopher? He
+was just a hayseed, a rube, a misfit, as odd as Dick's hatband, an off ox.
+He _was_ incompetent. He picked up a pen, and began writing. He wrote, "To
+the Honorable the Board of Education of the Independent District of ----"
+And he heard a tap at the door. His mother admitted Colonel Woodruff.
+
+"Hello, Jim," said he.
+
+"Good evening, Colonel," said Jim. "Take a chair, won't you?"
+
+"No," replied the colonel. "I thought I'd see if you and the boys at the
+schoolhouse can't tell me something about the smut in my wheat. I heard
+you were going to work on that to-night."
+
+"I had forgotten!" said Jim.
+
+"I wondered if you hadn't," said the colonel, "and so I came by for you. I
+was waiting up the road. Come on, and ride up with me."
+
+The colonel had always been friendly, but there was a new note in his
+manner to-night. He was almost deferential. If he had been talking to
+Senator Cummins or the president of the state university, his tone could
+not have been more courteous, more careful to preserve the amenities due
+from man to man. He worked with the class on the problem of smut. He
+offered to aid the boys in every possible way in their campaign against
+scab in potatoes. He suggested some tests which would show the real value
+of the treatment. The boys were in a glow of pride at this cooperation
+with Colonel Woodruff. This was real work! Jim and the colonel went away
+together. It had been a great evening.
+
+"Jim," said the colonel, "can these kids spell?"
+
+"You mean these boys?"
+
+"I mean the school."
+
+"I think," said Jim, "that they can outspell any school about here."
+
+"Good," said the colonel. "How are they about reading aloud?"
+
+"Better than they were when I took hold."
+
+"How about arithmetic and the other branches? Have you sort of kept them
+up to the course of study?"
+
+"I have carried them in a course parallel to the text-books," said Jim,
+"and covering the same ground. But it has been vocational work, you
+know--related to life."
+
+"Well," said the colonel, "if I were you, I'd put them over a rapid review
+of the text-books for a few days--say between now and the twenty-fifth."
+
+"What for?"
+
+"Oh, nothing--just to please me .... And say, Jim, I glanced over a
+communication you have started to the more or less Honorable Board of
+Education."
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"Well, don't finish it .... And say, Jim, I think I'll give myself the
+luxury of being a wild-eyed reformer for once."
+
+"Yes," said Jim, dazed.
+
+"And if you think, Jim, that you've got no friends, just remember that I'm
+for you."
+
+"Thank you, Colonel."
+
+"And we'll show them they're in a horse race."
+
+"I don't see ..." said Jim.
+
+"You're not supposed to see," said the colonel, "but you can bet that
+we'll be with them at the finish; and, by thunder! while they're getting a
+full meal, we'll get at least a lunch. See?"
+
+"But Jennie says," began Jim.
+
+"Don't tell me what she says," said the colonel. "She's acting according
+to her judgment, and her lights and other organs of perception, and I
+don't think it fittin' that her father should try to influence her
+official conduct. But you go on and review them common branches, and keep
+your nerve. I haven't felt so much like a scrap since the day we stormed
+Lookout Mountain. I kinder like being a wild-eyed reformer, Jim."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+FAME OR NOTORIETY
+
+
+The office of county superintendent was, as a matter of course, the least
+desirable room of the court-house. I say "room" advisedly, because it
+consisted of a single chamber of moderate size, provided with office
+furniture of the minimum quantity and maximum age. It opened off the
+central hall at the upper end of the stairway which led to the court room,
+and when court was in session, served the extraordinary needs of justice
+as a jury room. At such times the county superintendent's desk was removed
+to the hall, where it stood in a noisy and confusing but very democratic
+publicity. Superintendent Jennie might have anticipated the time when,
+during the March term, offenders passing from the county jail in the
+basement to arraignment at the bar of justice might be able to peek over
+her shoulders and criticize her method of treating examination papers. On
+the twenty-fifth of February, however, this experience lurked unsuspected
+in her official future.
+
+Poor Jennie! She anticipated nothing more than the appearance of Messrs.
+Bronson, Peterson and Bonner in her office to confront Jim Irwin on
+certain questions of fact relating to Jim's competency to hold a teacher's
+certificate. The time appointed was ten o'clock. At nine forty-five
+Cornelius Bonner and his wife entered the office, and took twenty-five per
+cent. of the chairs therein. At nine fifty Jim Irwin came in, haggard,
+weather-beaten and seedy as ever, and looked as if he had neither eaten
+nor slept since his sweetheart stabbed him. At nine fifty-five Haakon
+Peterson and Ezra Bronson came in, accompanied by Wilbur Smythe,
+attorney-at-law, who carried under his arm a code of Iowa, a compilation
+of the school laws of the state, and _Throop on Public Officers_. At nine
+fifty-six, therefore, the crowd in Jennie's office exceeded its seating
+capacity, and Jennie was in a flutter as the realization dawned upon her
+that this promised to be a bigger and more public affair than she had
+anticipated. At nine fifty-nine Raymond Simms opened the office door and
+there filed in enough children, large and small, some of them accompanied
+by their parents, and all belonging to the Woodruff school, to fill
+completely the interstices of the corners and angles of the room and
+between the legs of the grownups. In addition there remained an overflow
+meeting in the hall, under the command of that distinguished military
+gentleman, Colonel Albert Woodruff.
+
+"Say, Bill, come here!" said the colonel, crooking his finger at the
+deputy sheriff.
+
+"What you got here, Al!" said Bill, coming up the stairs, puffing. "Ain't
+it a little early for Sunday-school picnics?"
+
+"This is a school fight in our district," said the colonel. "It's Jennie's
+baptism of fire, I reckon ... and say, you're not using the court room,
+are you?"
+
+"Nope," said Bill.
+
+"Well, why not just slip around, then," said the colonel, "and tell Jennie
+she'd better adjourn to the big room."
+
+Which suggestion was acted upon instanter by Deputy Bill.
+
+"But I can't, I can't," said Jennie to the courteous deputy sheriff. "I
+don't want all this publicity, and I don't want to go into the court
+room."
+
+"I hardly see," said Deputy Bill, "how you can avoid it. These people seem
+to have business with you, and they can't get into your office."
+
+"But they have no business with me," said Jennie. "It's mere curiosity."
+
+Whereupon Wilbur Smythe, who could see no particular point in restricted
+publicity, said, "Madame County Superintendent, this hearing certainly is
+public or quasi-public. Your office is a public one, and while the right
+to attend this hearing may not possibly be a universal one, it surely is
+one belonging to every citizen and taxpayer of the county, and if the
+taxpayer, _qua_ taxpayer, then certainly _a fortiori_ to the members of
+the Woodruff school and residents of that district."
+
+Jennie quailed. "All right, all right!" said she. "But, shall I have to
+sit on the bench!"
+
+"You will find it by far the most convenient place," said Deputy Bill.
+
+Was this the life to which public office had brought her? Was it for this
+that she had bartered her independence--for this and the musty office, the
+stupid examination papers, and the interminable visiting of schools,
+knowing that such supervision as she could give was practically worthless?
+Jim had said to her that he had never heard of such a thing as a good
+county superintendent of schools, and she had thought him queer. And now,
+here was she, called upon to pass on the competency of the man who had
+always been her superior in everything that constitutes mental ability;
+and to make the thing more a matter for the laughter of the gods, she was
+perched on the judicial bench, which Deputy Bill had dusted off for her,
+tipping a wink to the assemblage while doing it. He expected to be a
+candidate for sheriff, one of these days, and was pleasing the crowd. And
+that crowd! To Jennie it was appalling. The school board under the lead of
+Wilbur Smythe took seats inside the railing which on court days divided
+the audience from the lawyers and litigants. Jim Irwin, who had never been
+in a court room before, herded with the crowd, obeying the attraction of
+sympathy, but to Jennie, seated on the bench, he, like other persons in
+the auditorium, was a mere blurry outline with a knob of a head on its
+top.
+
+She couldn't call the gathering to order. She had no idea as to the proper
+procedure. She sat there while the people gathered, stood about whispering
+and talking under their breaths, and finally became silent, all their eyes
+fixed on her, as she wished that the office of county superintendent had
+been abolished in the days of her parents' infancy.
+
+"May it please the court," said Wilbur Smythe, standing before the bar.
+"Or, Madame County Superintendent, I should say ..."
+
+A titter ran through the room, and a flush of temper tinted Jennie's face.
+They were laughing at her! She wouldn't be a spectacle any longer! So she
+rose, and handed down her first and last decision from the bench--a rather
+good one, I think.
+
+"Mr. Smythe," said she, "I feel very ill at ease up here, and I'm going to
+get down among the people. It's the only way I have of getting the
+truth."
+
+She descended from the bench, shook hands with everybody near her, and sat
+down by the attorney's table.
+
+"Now," said she, "this is no formal proceeding and we will dispense with
+red tape. If we don't, I shall get all tangled up in it. Where's Mr.
+Irwin? Please come in here, Jim. Now, I know there's some feeling in these
+things--there always seems to be; but I have none. So I'll just hear why
+Mr. Bronson, Mr. Peterson and Mr. Bonner think that Mr. James E. Irwin
+isn't competent to hold a certificate."
+
+Jennie was able to smile at them now, and everybody felt more at ease,
+save Jim Irwin, the members of the board and Wilbur Smythe. That
+individual arose, and talked down at Jennie.
+
+"I appear for the proponents here," said he, "and I desire to suggest
+certain principles of procedure which I take it belong indisputably to the
+conduct of this hearing."
+
+"Have you a lawyer?" asked the county superintendent of the respondent.
+
+"A what?" exclaimed Jim. "Nobody here has a lawyer!"
+
+"Well, what do you call Wilbur Smythe?" queried Newton Bronson from the
+midst of the crowd.
+
+"He ain't lawyer enough to hurt!" said the thing which the dramatists call
+A Voice.
+
+There was a little tempest of laughter at Wilbur Smythe's expense, which
+was quelled by Jennie's rapping on the table. She was beginning to feel
+the mouth of the situation.
+
+"I have no way of retaining a lawyer," said Jim, on whom the truth had
+gradually dawned. "If a lawyer is necessary, I am without protection--but
+it never occurred to me ..."
+
+"There is nothing in the school laws, as I remember them," said Jennie,
+"giving the parties any right to be represented by counsel. If there is,
+Mr. Smythe will please set me right."
+
+She paused for Mr. Smythe's reply.
+
+"There is nothing which expressly gives that privilege," said Mr. Smythe,
+"but the right to the benefit of skilled advisers is a universal one. It
+can not be questioned. And in opening this case for my clients, I desire
+to call your honor's attention--"
+
+"You may advise your clients all you please," said Jennie, "but I'm not
+going to waste time in listening to speeches, or having a lot of lawyers
+examine witnesses."
+
+"I protest," said Mr. Smythe.
+
+"Well, you may file your protest in writing," said Jennie. "I'm going to
+talk this matter over with these old friends and neighbors of mine. I
+don't want you dipping into it, I say!"
+
+Jennie's voice was rising toward the scream-line, and Mr. Smythe
+recognized the hand of fate. One may argue with a cantankerous judge, but
+the woman, who like necessity, knows no law, and who is smothering in a
+flood of perplexities, is beyond reason. Moreover, Jennie dimly saw that
+what she was doing had the approval of the crowd, and it solved the
+problem of procedure.
+
+There was a little wrangling, and a little protest from Con Bonner, but
+Jennie ruled with a rod of iron, and adhered to her ruling. When the
+hearing was resumed after the noon recess, the crowd was larger than ever,
+but the proceedings consisted mainly in a conference of the principals
+grouped about Jennie at the big lawyers' table. They were talking about
+the methods adopted by Jim in his conduct of the Woodruff school--just
+talking. The only new thing was the presence of a couple of newspaper men,
+who had queried Chicago papers on the story, and been given orders for a
+certain number of words on the case of the farm-hand schoolmaster on trial
+before his old sweetheart for certain weird things he had done in the home
+school in which they had once been classmates. The fact that the old
+school-sweetheart had kicked a lawyer out of the case was not overlooked
+by the gentlemen of the fourth estate. It helped to make it a "good
+story."
+
+By the time at which gathering darkness made it necessary for the bailiff
+to light the lamps, the parties had agreed on the facts. Jim admitted most
+of the allegations. He had practically ignored the text-books. He had
+burned the district fuel and worn out the district furniture early and
+late, and on Saturdays. He had introduced domestic economy and manual
+training, to some extent, by sending the boys to the workshops and the
+girls to the kitchens and sewing-rooms of the farmers who allowed those
+privileges. He had used up a great deal of time in studying farm
+conditions. He had induced the boys to test the cows of the district for
+butter-fat yield. He was studying the matter of a cooperative creamery. He
+hoped to have a blacksmith shop on the schoolhouse grounds sometime, where
+the boys could learn metal working by repairing the farm machinery, and
+shoeing the farm horses. He hoped to install a cooperative laundry in
+connection with the creamery. He hoped to see a building sometime, with an
+auditorium where the people would meet often for moving picture shows,
+lectures and the like, and he expected that most of the descriptions of
+foreign lands, industrial operations, wild animals--in short, everything
+that people should learn about by seeing, rather than reading--would be
+taught the children by moving pictures accompanied by lectures. He hoped
+to open to the boys and girls the wonders of the universe which are
+touched by the work on the farm. He hoped to make good and contented
+farmers of them, able to get the most out of the soil, to sell what they
+produced to the best advantage, and at the same time to keep up the
+fertility of the soil itself. And he hoped to teach the girls in such a
+way that they would be good and contented farmers' wives. He even had in
+mind as a part of the schoolhouse the Woodruff District would one day
+build, an apartment in which the mothers of the neighborhood would leave
+their babies when they went to town, so that the girls could learn the
+care of infants.
+
+"An' I say," interposed Con Bonner, "that we can rest our case right here.
+If that ain't the limit, I don't know what is!"
+
+"Well," said Jennie, "do you desire to rest your case right here?"
+
+Mr. Bonner made no reply to this, and Jennie turned to Jim.
+
+"Now, Mr. Irwin," said she, "while you have been following out these very
+interesting and original methods, what have you done in the way of
+teaching the things called for by the course of study?"
+
+"What is the course of study?" queried Jim. "Is it anything more than an
+outline of the mental march the pupils are ordered to make? Take reading:
+why does it give the children any greater mastery of the printed page to
+read about Casabianca on the burning deck, than about the cause of the
+firing of corn by hot weather? And how can they be given better command of
+language than by writing about things they have found out in relation to
+some of the sciences which are laid under contribution by farming?
+Everything they do runs into numbers, and we do more arithmetic than the
+course requires. There isn't any branch of study--not even poetry and art
+and music--that isn't touched by life. If there is we haven't time for it
+in the common schools. We work out from life to everything in the course
+of study."
+
+"Do you mean to assert," queried Jennie, "that while you have been doing
+all this work which was never contemplated by those who have made up the
+course of study, that you haven't neglected anything?"
+
+"I mean," said Jim, "that I'm willing to stand or fall on an examination
+of these children in the very text-books we are accused of neglecting."
+
+Jennie looked steadily at Jim for a full minute, and at the clock. It was
+nearly time for adjournment.
+
+"How many pupils of the Woodruff school are here?" she asked. "All rise,
+please!"
+
+A mass of the audience, in the midst of which sat Jennie's father, rose at
+the request.
+
+"Why," said Jennie, "I should say we had a quorum, anyhow! How many will
+come back to-morrow morning at nine o'clock, and bring your school-books?
+Please lift hands."
+
+Nearly every hand went up.
+
+"And, Mr. Irwin," she went on, "will you have the school records, so we
+may be able to ascertain the proper standing of these pupils?"
+
+"I will," said Jim.
+
+"Then," said Jennie, "we'll adjourn until nine o'clock. I hope to see
+every one here. We'll have school here to-morrow. And, Mr. Irwin, please
+remember that you state that you'll stand or fall on the mastery by these
+pupils of the text-books they are supposed to have neglected."
+
+"Not the mastery of the text," said Jim. "But their ability to do the work
+the text is supposed to fit them for."
+
+"Well," said Jennie, "I don't know but that's fair."
+
+"But," said Mrs. Haakon Peterson, "we don't want our children brought up
+to be yust farmers. Suppose we move to town--where does the culture come
+in?"
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Chicago papers had a news item which covered the result of the
+examinations; but the great sensation of the Woodruff District lay in the
+Sunday feature carried by one of them.
+
+It had a picture of Jim Irwin, and one of Jennie Woodruff--the latter
+authentic, and the former gleaned from the morgue, and apparently the
+portrait of a lumber-jack. There was also a very free treatment by the
+cartoonist of Mr. Simms carrying a rifle with the intention of shooting up
+the school board in case the decision went against the schoolmaster.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+"When it became known," said the news story, "that the schoolmaster had
+bet his job on the proficiency of his school in studies supposed and
+alleged to have been studiously neglected, the excitement rose to fever
+heat. Local sports bet freely on the result, the odds being eight to five
+on General Proficiency against the field. The field was Jim Irwin and his
+school. And the way those rural kids rose in their might and ate up the
+text-books was simply scandalous. There was a good deal of nervousness on
+the part of some of the small starters, and some bursts of tears at
+excusable failures. But when the fight was over, and the dead and wounded
+cared for, the school board and the county superintendent were forced to
+admit that they wished the average school could do as well under a similar
+test.
+
+"The local Mr. Dooley is Cornelius Bonner, a member of the 'board.' When
+asked for a statement of his views after the county superintendent had
+decided that her old sweetheart was to be allowed the priceless boon of
+earning forty dollars a month during the remainder of his contract, Mr.
+Bonner said, 'Aside from being licked, we're all right. But we'll get this
+guy yet, don't fall down and fergit that!'
+
+"'The examinations tind to show,' said Mr. Bonner, when asked for his
+opinion on the result, 'that in or-r-rder to larn anything you shud shtudy
+somethin' ilse. But we'll git this guy yit!'"
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Jim," said Colonel Woodruff, as they rode home together, "the next heat
+is the school election. We've got to control that board next year--and
+we've got to do it by electing one out of three."
+
+"Is that a possibility?" asked Jim. "Aren't we sure to be defeated at
+last? Shouldn't I quit at the end of my contract? All I ever hoped for was
+to be allowed to fulfill that. And is it worth the fight?"
+
+"It's not only possible," replied the colonel, "but probable. As for being
+worth while--why, this thing is too big to drop. I'm just beginning to
+understand what you're driving at. And I like being a wild-eyed reformer
+more and more."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+THE COLONEL TAKES THE FIELD
+
+
+Every Iowa county has its Farmers' Institute. Usually it is held in the
+county seat, and is a gathering of farmers for the ostensible purpose of
+listening to improving discussions and addresses both instructive and
+entertaining. Really, in most cases, the farmers' institutes have been
+occasions for the cultivation of relations between a few of the
+exceptional farmers and their city friends and with one another. Seldom is
+anything done which leads to any better selling methods for the farmers,
+any organization looking to cooperative effort, or anything else that an
+agricultural economist from Ireland, Germany or Denmark would suggest as
+the sort of action which the American farmer must take if he is to make
+the most of his life and labor.
+
+The Woodruff District was interested in the institute however, because of
+the fact that a rural-school exhibit was one of its features that year,
+and that Colonel Woodruff had secured an urgent invitation to the school
+to take part in it.
+
+"We've got something new out in our district school," said he to the
+president of the institute.
+
+"So I hear," said the president--"mostly a fight, isn't it?"
+
+"Something more," said the colonel. "If you'll persuade our school to make
+an exhibit of real rural work in a real rural school, I'll promise you
+something worth seeing and discussing."
+
+Such exhibits are now so common that it is not worth while for us to
+describe it; but then, the sight of a class of children testing and
+weighing milk, examining grains for viability and foul seeds, planning
+crop rotations, judging grains and live stock was so new in that county as
+to be the real sensation of the institute.
+
+Two persons were a good deal embarrassed by the success of the exhibit.
+One was the county superintendent, who was constantly in receipt of
+undeserved compliments upon her wisdom in fostering really "practical work
+in the schools." The other was Jim Irwin, who was becoming famous, and who
+felt he had done nothing to deserve fame. Professor Withers, an extension
+lecturer from Ames, took Jim to dinner at the best hotel in the town, for
+the purpose of talking over with him the needs of the rural schools. Jim
+was in agony. The colored waiter fussed about trying to keep Jim in the
+beaten track of hotel manners, restored to him the napkin which Jim failed
+to use, and juggled back into place the silverware which Jim
+misappropriated to alien and unusual uses. But, when the meal had
+progressed to the stage of conversation, the waiter noticed that gradually
+the uncouth farmer became master of the situation, and the well-groomed
+college professor the interested listener.
+
+"You've got to come down to our farmers' week next year, and tell us about
+these things," said he to Jim. "Can't you?"
+
+Jim's brain reeled. He go to a gathering of real educators and tell his
+crude notions! How could he get the money for his expenses? But he had
+that gameness which goes with supreme confidence in the thing dealt with.
+
+"I'll come," said he.
+
+"Thank you," said the Ames man, "There's a small honorarium attached, you
+know."
+
+Jim was staggered. What was an honorarium? He tried to remember what an
+honorarium is, and could get no further than the thought that it is in
+some way connected with the Latin root of "honor." Was he obliged to pay
+an honorarium for the chance to speak before the college gathering? Well,
+he'd save money and pay it. The professor must be able to understand that
+it couldn't be expected that a country school-teacher would be able to pay
+much.
+
+"I--I'll try to take care of the honorarium," said he. "I'll come."
+
+The professor laughed. It was the first joke the gangling innovator had
+perpetrated.
+
+"It won't bother you to take care of it," said he, "but if you're not too
+extravagant it will pay you your expenses and give you a few dollars
+over."
+
+Jim breathed more freely. An honorarium was paid to the person receiving
+the honor, then. What a relief!
+
+"All right," he exclaimed. "I'll be glad to come!"
+
+"Let's consider that settled," said the professor. "And now I must be
+going back to the opera-house. My talk on soil sickness comes next. I tell
+you, the winter wheat crop has been--"
+
+But Jim was not able to think much of the winter wheat problem as they
+went back to the auditorium. He was worth putting on the program at a
+state meeting! He was worth the appreciation of a college professor,
+trained to think on the very matters Jim had been so long mulling over in
+isolation and blindness! He was actually worth paying for his thoughts.
+
+Calista Simms thought she saw something shining and saint-like about the
+homely face of her teacher as he came to her at her post in the room in
+which the school exhibit was held. Calista was in charge of the little
+children whose work was to be demonstrated that day, and was in a state of
+exaltation to which her starved being had hitherto been a stranger.
+Perhaps there was something similar in her condition of fervent happiness
+to that of Jim. She, too, was doing something outside the sordid life of
+the Simms cabin. She yearned over the children in her care, and would have
+been glad to die for them--and besides was not Newton Bronson in charge of
+the corn exhibit, and a member of the corn-judging team? To the eyes of
+the town girls who passed about among the exhibits, she was poorly
+dressed; but if they could have seen the clothes she had worn on that
+evening when Jim Irwin first called at their cabin and failed to give a
+whoop from the big road, they could perhaps have understood the sense of
+wellbeing and happiness in Calista's soul at the feeling of her whole
+clean underclothes, her neat, if cheap, dress, and the "boughten" cloak
+she wore--and any of them, even without knowledge of this, might have
+understood Calista's joy at the knowledge that Newton Bronson's eyes were
+on her from his station by the big pillar, no matter how many town girls
+filed by. For therein they would have been in a realm of the passions
+quite universal in its appeal to the feminine soul.
+
+"Hello, Calista!" said Jim. "How are you enjoying it?"
+
+"Oh!" said Calista, and drew a long, long breath. "Ah'm enjoying myse'f
+right much, Mr. Jim."
+
+"Any of the home folks coming in to see?"
+
+"Yes, seh," answered Calista. "All the school board have stopped by this
+morning."
+
+Jim looked about him. He wished he could see and shake hands with his
+enemies, Bronson, Peterson and Bonner: and if he could tell them of his
+success with Professor Withers of the State Agricultural College, perhaps
+they would feel differently toward him. There they were now, over in a
+corner, with their heads together. Perhaps they were agreeing among
+themselves that he was right in his school methods, and they wrong. He
+went toward them, his face still beaming with that radiance which had
+shone so plainly to the eyes of Calista Simms, but they saw in it only a
+grin of exultation over his defeat of them at the hearing before Jennie
+Woodruff. When Sim had drawn so close as almost to call for the extended
+hand, he felt the repulsion of their attitudes and sheered off on some
+pretended errand to a dark corner across the room.
+
+They resumed their talk.
+
+"I'm a Dimocrat," said Con Bonner, "and you fellers is Republicans, and
+we've fought each other about who we was to hire for teacher; but when it
+comes to electing my successor, I think we shouldn't divide on party
+lines."
+
+"The fight about the teacher," said Haakon Peterson, "is a t'ing of the
+past. All our candidates got odder yobs now."
+
+"Yes," said Ezra Bronson. "Prue Foster wouldn't take our school now if she
+could get it"
+
+"And as I was sayin'," went on Bonner, "I want to get this guy, Jim Irwin.
+An' bein' the cause of his gittin' the school, I'd like to be on the board
+to kick him off; but if you fellers would like to have some one else, I
+won't run, and if the right feller is named, I'll line up what friends I
+got for him." "You got no friend can git as many wotes as you can," said
+Peterson. "I tank you better run."
+
+"What say, Ez?" asked Bonner.
+
+"Suits me all right," said Bronson. "I guess we three have had our fight
+out and understand each other."
+
+"All right," returned Bonner, "I'll take the office again. Let's not start
+too soon, but say we begin about a week from Sunday to line up our
+friends, to go to the school election and vote kind of unanimous-like?"
+
+"Suits me," said Bronson.
+
+"Wery well," said Peterson.
+
+"I don't like the way Colonel Woodruff acts," said Bonner. "He rounded up
+that gang of kids that shot us all to pieces at that hearing, didn't he?"
+
+"I tank not," replied Peterson. "I tank he was yust interested in how
+Yennie managed it."
+
+"Looked mighty like he was managin' the demonstration," said Bonner. "What
+d'ye think, Ez?"
+
+"Too small a matter for the colonel to monkey with," said Bronson. "I
+reckon he was just interested in Jennie's dilemmer. It ain't reasonable
+that Colonel Woodruff after the p'litical career he's had would mix up in
+school district politics."
+
+"Well," said Bonner, "he seems to take a lot of interest in this
+exhibition here. I think we'd better watch the colonel. That decision of
+Jennie's might have been because she's stuck on Jim Irwin, or because she
+takes a lot of notice of what her father says."
+
+"Or she might have thought the decision was right," said Bronson. "Some
+people do, you know."
+
+"Right!" scoffed Bonner. "In a pig's wrist! I tell you that decision was
+crooked."
+
+"Vell," said Haakon Peterson, "talk of crookedness wit' Yennie Woodruff
+don't get wery fur wit' me."
+
+"Oh, I don't mean anything bad, Haakon," replied Bonner, "but it wasn't an
+all-right decision. I think she's stuck on the guy."
+
+The caucus broke up after making sure that the three members of the school
+board would be as one man in maintaining a hostile front to Jim Irwin and
+his tenure of office. It looked rather like a foregone conclusion, in a
+little district wherein there were scarcely twenty-five votes. The three
+members of the board with their immediate friends and dependents could
+muster two or three ballots each--and who was there to oppose them? Who
+wanted to be school director? It was a post of no profit, little honor and
+much vexation. And yet, there are always men to be found who covet such
+places. Curiously there are always those who covet them for no
+ascertainable reason, for often they are men who have no theory of
+education to further, and no fondness for affairs of the intellect. In the
+Woodruff District, however, the incumbents saw no candidate in view who
+could be expected to stand up against the rather redoubtable Con Bonner.
+Jim's hold upon his work seemed fairly secure for the term of his
+contract, since Jennie had decided that he was competent; and after that
+he himself had no plans. He could not expect to be retained by the men who
+had so bitterly attacked him. Perhaps the publicity of his Ames address
+would get him another place with a sufficient stipend so that he could
+support his mother without the aid of the little garden, the cows and the
+fowls--and perhaps he would ask Colonel Woodruff to take him back as a
+farm-hand. These thoughts thronged his mind as he stood apart and alone
+after his rebuff by the caucusing members of the school board.
+
+"I don't see," said a voice over against the cooking exhibit, "what there
+is in this to set people talking? Buttonholes! Cookies! Humph!"
+
+It was Mrs. Bonner who had clearly come to scoff. With her was Mrs.
+Bronson, whose attitude was that of a person torn between conflicting
+influences. Her husband had indicated to the crafty Bonner and the subtle
+Peterson that while he was still loyal to the school board, and hence
+perforce opposed to Jim Irwin, and resentful to the decision of the county
+superintendent, his adhesion to the institutions of the Woodruff District
+as handed down by the fathers was not quite of the thick-and-thin type.
+For he had suggested that Jennie might have been sincere in rendering her
+decision, and that some people agreed with her: so Mrs. Bronson, while
+consorting with the censorious Mrs. Bonner evinced restiveness when the
+school and its work was condemned. Was not her Newton in charge of a part
+of this show! Had he not taken great interest in the project? Was he not
+an open and defiant champion of Jim Irwin, and a constant and enthusiastic
+attendant upon, not only his classes, but a variety of evening and
+Saturday affairs at which the children studied arithmetic, grammar,
+geography, writing and spelling, by working on cows, pigs, chickens,
+grains, grasses, soils and weeds? And had not Newton become a better
+boy--a wonderfully better boy? Mrs. Bronson's heart was filled with
+resentment that she also could not be enrolled among Jim Irwin's
+supporters. And when Mrs. Bonner sneered at the buttonholes and cookies,
+Mrs. Bronson, knowing how the little fingers had puzzled themselves over
+the one, and young faces had become floury and red over the other, flared
+up a little.
+
+"And I don't see," said she, "anything to laugh at when the young girls do
+the best they can to make themselves capable housekeepers. I'd like to
+help them." She turned to Mrs. Bonner as if to add "If this be treason,
+make the most of it!" but that lady was far too good a diplomat to be
+cornered in the same enclosure with a rupture of relations.
+
+"And quite right, too," said she, "in the proper place, and at the proper
+time. The little things ought to be helped by every real woman--of
+course!"
+
+"Of course," repeated Mrs. Bronson.
+
+"At home, now, and by their mothers," added Mrs. Bonner.
+
+"Well," said Mrs. Bronson, "take them Simms girls, now. They have to have
+help outside their home if they are ever going to be like other folks."
+
+"Yes," agreed Mrs. Bonner, "and a lot more help than a farm-hand can give
+'em in school. Pretty poor trash, they, and I shouldn't wonder if there
+was a lot we don't know about why they come north."
+
+"As for that," replied Mrs. Bronson, "I don't know as it's any of my
+business so long as they behave themselves."
+
+Again Mrs. Bonner felt the situation getting out of hand, and again she
+returned to the task of keeping Mrs. Bronson in alignment with the forces
+of accepted Woodruff District conditions.
+
+"Ain't it some of our business?" she queried. "I wonder now! By the way
+Newtie keeps his eye on that Simms girl, I shouldn't wonder if it might
+turn out your business."
+
+"Pshaw!" scoffed Mrs. Bronson. "Puppy love!"
+
+"You can't tell how far it'll go," persisted Mrs. Bonner. "I tell you
+these schools are getting to be nothing more than sparkin' bees, from the
+county superintendent down."
+
+"Well, maybe," said Mrs. Bronson, "but I don't see sparkin' in everything
+boys and girls do as quick as some."
+
+"I wonder," said Mrs. Bonner, "if Colonel Woodruff would be as friendly to
+Jim Irwin if he knew that everybody says Jennie decided he was to keep his
+certif'kit because she wants him to get along in the world, so he can
+marry her?"
+
+"I don't know as she is so very friendly to him," replied Mrs. Bronson;
+"and Jim and Jennie are both of age, you know."
+
+"Yes, but how about our schools bein' ruined by a love affair?"
+interrogated Mrs. Bonner, as they moved away. "Ain't that your business
+and mine?"
+
+Instead of desiring further knowledge of what they were discussing, Jim
+felt a dreadful disgust at the whole thing. Disgust at being the subject
+of gossip, at the horrible falsity of the picture he had been able to
+paint to the people of his objects and his ambitions, and especially at
+the desecration of Jennie by such misconstruction of her attitude toward
+him officially and personally. Jennie was vexed at him, and wanted him to
+resign from his position. He firmly believed that she was surprised at
+finding herself convinced that he was entitled to a decision in the matter
+of his competency as a teacher. She was against him, he believed, and as
+for her being in love with him--to hear these women discuss it was
+intolerable.
+
+He felt his face redden as at the hearing of some horrible indecency. He
+felt himself stripped naked, and he was hotly ashamed that Jennie should
+be associated with him in the exposure. And while he was raging inwardly,
+paying the penalty of his new-found place in the public eye--a publicity
+to which he was not yet hardened--he heard other voices. Professor
+Withers, County Superintendent Jennie and Colonel Woodruff were making an
+inspection of the rural-school exhibit.
+
+"I hear he has been having some trouble with his school board," the
+professor was saying.
+
+"Yes," said Jennie, "he has."
+
+"Wasn't there an effort made to remove him from his position?" asked the
+professor.
+
+"Proceedings before me to revoke his certificate," replied Jennie.
+
+"On what grounds?"
+
+"Incompetency," answered Jennie. "I found that his pupils were really
+doing very well in the regular course of study--which he seems to be
+neglecting."
+
+"I'm glad you supported him," said the professor. "I'm glad to find you
+helping him." "Really," protested Jennie, "I don't think myself--"
+
+"What do you think of his notions?" asked the colonel.
+
+"Very advanced," replied Professor Withers. "Where did he imbibe them
+all?"
+
+"He's a Brown Mouse," said the colonel.
+
+"I beg your pardon," said the puzzled professor. "I didn't quite
+understand. A--a--what?"
+
+"One of papa's breeding jokes," said Jennie. "He means a phenomenon in
+heredity--perhaps a genius, you know."
+
+"Ah, I see," replied the professor, "a Mendelian segregation, you mean?"
+
+"Certainly," said the colonel. "The sort of mind that imbibes things from
+itself."
+
+"Well, he's rather wonderful," declared the professor. "I had him to lunch
+to-day. He surprised me. I have invited him to make an address at Ames
+next winter during farmers' week."
+
+"He?"
+
+Jennie's tone showed her astonishment. Jim the underling. Jim the off ox.
+Jim the thorn in the county superintendent's side. Jim the country
+teacher! It was stupefying.
+
+"Oh, you musn't judge him by his looks," said the professor. "I really do
+hope he'll take some advice on the matter of clothes--put on a cravat and
+a different shirt and collar when he comes to Ames--but I have no doubt he
+will."
+
+"He hasn't any other," said the colonel.
+
+"Well, it won't signify, if he has the truth to tell us," said the
+professor.
+
+"_Has_ he?" asked Jennie.
+
+"Miss Woodruff," replied the professor earnestly, "he has something that
+looks toward truth, and something that we need. Just how far he will go,
+just what he will amount to, it is impossible to say. But something must
+be done for the rural schools--something along the lines he is trying to
+follow. He is a struggling soul, and he is worth helping. You won't make
+any mistake if you make the most of Mr. Irwin."
+
+Jim slipped out of a side door and fled. As in the case of the
+conversation between Mrs. Bronson and Mrs. Bonner, he was unable to
+discern the favorable auspices in the showing of adverse things. He had
+not sensed Mrs. Bronson's half-concealed friendliness for him, though it
+was disagreeably plain to Mrs. Bonner. And now he neglected the colonel's
+evident support of him, and Professor Withers' praise, in Jennie's
+manifest surprise that old Jim had been accorded the recognition of a
+place on a college program, and the professor's criticism of his dress and
+general appearance.
+
+It was unjust! What chance had he been given to discover what it was
+fashionable to wear, even if he had had the money to buy such clothes as
+other young men possessed? He would never go near Ames! He would stay in
+the Woodruff District where the people knew him, and some of them liked
+him. He would finish his school year, and go back to work on the farm. He
+would abandon the struggle.
+
+He started home, on foot as he had come, A mile or so out he was overtaken
+by the colonel, driving briskly along with room in his buggy for Jim.
+
+"Climb in, Jim!" said he. "Dan and Dolly didn't like to see you walk."
+
+"They're looking fine," said Jim.
+
+There is a good deal to say whenever two horse lovers get together. Hoofs
+and coats and frogs and eyes and teeth and the queer sympathies between
+horse and man may sometimes quite take the place of the weather for an
+hour or so. But when Jim had alighted at his own door, the colonel spoke
+of what had been in his mind all the time.
+
+"I saw Bonner and Haakon and Ez doing some caucusing to-day," said he.
+"They expect to elect Bonner to the board again."
+
+"Oh, I suppose so," replied Jim.
+
+"Well, what shall we do about it?" asked the colonel.
+
+"If the people want him--" began Jim.
+
+"The people," said the colonel, "must have a choice offered to 'em, or how
+can you or any man tell what they want? How can they tell themselves?"
+
+Jim was silent. Here was a matter on which he really had no ideas except
+the broad and general one that truth is mighty and shall prevail--but that
+the speed of its forward march is problematical.
+
+"I think," said the colonel, "that it's up to us to see that the people
+have a chance to decide. It's really Bonner against Jim Irwin."
+
+"That's rather startling," said Jim, "but I suppose it's true. And much
+chance Jim Irwin has!"
+
+"I calculate," rejoined the colonel, "that what you need is a champion."
+
+"To do what?"
+
+"To take that office away from Bonner."
+
+"Who can do that?"
+
+"Well, I'm free to say I don't know that any one can, but I'm willing to
+try. I think that in about a week I shall pass the word around that I'd
+like to serve my country on the school board."
+
+Jim's face lighted up--and then darkened.
+
+"Even then they'd be two to one, Colonel."
+
+"Maybe," replied the colonel, "and maybe not. That would have to be
+figured on. A cracked log splits easy."
+
+"Anyhow," Jim went on, "what's the use? I shan't be disturbed this
+year--and after that--what's the use?"
+
+"Why, Jim," said the colonel, "you aren't getting short of breath are you?
+Do I see frost on your boots? I thought you good for the mile, and you
+aren't turning out a quarter horse, are you? I don't know what all it is
+you want to do, but I don't, believe you can do it in nine months, can
+you?"
+
+"Not in nine years!" replied Jim.
+
+"Well, then, let's plan for ten years," said the colonel. "I ain't going
+to become a reformer at my time of life as a temporary job. Will you stick
+if we can swing the thing for you?"
+
+"I will," said Jim, in the manner of a person taking the vows in some
+solemn initiation.
+
+"All right," said the colonel. "We'll keep quiet and see how many votes we
+can muster up at the election. How many oan you speak for?"
+
+Jim gave himself for a few minutes to thought. It was a new thing to him,
+this matter of mustering votes--and a thing which he had always looked
+upon as rather reprehensible. The citizen should go forth with no
+coercion, no persuasion, no suggestion, and vote his sentiments.
+
+"How many can you round up?" persisted the colonel.
+
+"I think," said Jim, "that I can speak for myself and Old Man Simms!"
+
+The colonel laughed.
+
+"Fine politician!" he repeated. "Fine politician! Well, Jim, we may get
+beaten in this, but if we are, let's not have them going away picking
+their noses and saying they've had no fight. You round up yourself and Old
+Man Simms and I'll see what I can do--I'll see what I can do!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+A MINOR CASTS HALF A VOTE
+
+
+March came in like neither a lion nor a lamb, but was scarcely a week old
+before the wild ducks had begun to score the sky above Bronson's Slew
+looking for open water and badly-harvested corn-fields. Wild geese, too,
+honked from on high as if in wonder that these great prairies on which
+their forefathers had been wont fearlessly to alight had been changed into
+a disgusting expanse of farms. If geese are favored with the long lives in
+which fable bids us believe, some of these venerable honkers must have
+seen every vernal and autumnal phase of the transformation from boundless
+prairie to boundless corn-land. I sometimes seem to hear in the
+bewildering trumpetings of wild geese a cry of surprise and protest at the
+ruin of their former paradise. Colonel Woodruff's hired man, Pete, had no
+such foolish notions, however. He stopped Newton Bronson and Raymond Simms
+as they tramped across the colonel's pasture, gun in hand, trying to make
+themselves believe that the shooting was good.
+
+"This ain't no country to hunt in," said he. "Did either of you fellows
+ever have any real duck-shooting?"
+
+"The mountings," said Raymond, "air poor places for ducks."
+
+"Not big enough water," suggested Pete. "Some wood-ducks, I suppose?"
+
+"Along the creeks and rivers, yes seh," said Raymond, "and sometimes a
+flock of wild geese would get lost, and some bewildered, and a man would
+shoot one or two--from the tops of the ridges--but nothing to depend on."
+
+"I've never been nowhere," said Newton, "except once to
+Minnesota--and--and that wasn't in the shooting season."
+
+A year ago Newton would have boasted of having "bummed" his way to
+Faribault. His hesitant speech was a proof of the embarrassment his new
+respectability sometimes inflicted upon him.
+
+"I used to shoot ducks for the market at Spirit Lake," said Pete. "I know
+Fred Gilbert just as well as I know you. If I'd 'a' kep' on shooting I
+could have made my millions as champion wing shot as easy as he has. He
+didn't have nothing on me when we was both shooting for a livin'. But
+that's all over, now. You've got to go so fur now to get decent shooting
+where the farmers won't drive you off, that it costs nine dollars to send
+a postcard home."
+
+"I think we'll have fine shooting on the slew in a few days," said
+Newton.
+
+"Humph!" scoffed Pete. "I give you my word, if I hadn't promised the
+colonel I'd stay with him another year, I'd take a side-door Pullman for
+the Sand Hills of Nebraska or the Devil's Lake country to-morrow--if I had
+a gun."
+
+"If it wasn't for a passel of things that keep me hyeh," said Raymond,
+"I'd like to go too."
+
+"The colonel," said Pete, "needs me. He needs me in the election
+to-morrow. What's the matter of your ol' man, Newt? What for does he vote
+for that Bonner, and throw down an old neighbor?"
+
+"I can't do anything with him!" exclaimed Newton irritably. "He's all
+tangled up with Peterson and Bonner."
+
+"Well," said Pete, "if he'd just stay at home, it would help some. If he
+votes for Bonner, it'll be just about a stand-off."
+
+"He never misses a vote!" said Newton despairingly.
+
+"Can't you cripple him someway?" asked Pete jocularly. "Darned funny when
+a boy o' your age can't control his father's vote! So long!"
+
+"I wish I _could_ vote!" grumbled Newton. "I wish I _could_! We know a lot
+more about the school, and Jim Irwin bein' a good teacher than dad
+does--and we can't vote. Why can't folks vote when they are interested in
+an election, and know about the issues. It's tyranny that you and I can't
+vote."
+
+"I reckon," said Raymond, the conservative, "that the old-time people that
+fixed it thataway knowed best."
+
+"Rats!" sneered Newton, the iconoclast. "Why, Calista knows more about the
+election of school director than dad knows."
+
+"That don't seem reasonable," protested Raymond. "She's prejudyced, I
+reckon, in favor of Mr. Jim Irwin."
+
+"Well, dad's prejudiced against him,--er, no, he hain't either. He likes
+Jim. He's just prejudiced against giving up his old notions. No, he hain't
+neither--I guess he's only prejudiced against seeming to give up some old
+notions he seemed to have once! And the kids in school would be prejudiced
+right, anyhow!"
+
+"Paw says he'll be on hand prompt," said Raymond. "But he had to be
+p'swaded right much. Paw's proud--and he cain't read."
+
+"Sometimes I think the more people read the less sense they've got," said
+Newton. "I wish I could tie dad up! I wish I could get snakebit, and make
+him go for the doctor!"
+
+The boys crossed the ridge to the wooded valley in which nestled the Simms
+cabin. They found Mrs. Simms greatly exercised in her mind because young
+McGeehee had been found playing with some blue vitriol used by Raymond in
+his school work on the treatment of seed potatoes for scab.
+
+"His hands was all blue with it," said she. "Do you reckon, Mr. Newton,
+that it'll pizen him?"
+
+"Did he swallow any of it?" asked Newton.
+
+"Nah!" said McGeehee scornfully.
+
+Newton reassured Mrs. Simms, and went away pensive. He was in rebellion
+against the strange ways grown men have of discharging their duties as
+citizens--a rather remarkable thing, and perhaps a proof that Jim Irwin's
+methods had already accomplished much in preparing Newton and Raymond for
+citizenship. He had shown them the fact that voting really has some
+relation to life. At present, however, the new wine in the old bottles was
+causing Newton to forget his filial duty, and his respect for his father.
+He wished he could lock him up in the barn so he couldn't go to the school
+election. He wished he could become ill--or poisoned with blue vitriol or
+something--so his father would be obliged to go for a doctor. He
+wished----well, why couldn't he get sick. Mrs. Simms had been about to
+send for the doctor for Buddy when he had explained away the apparent
+necessity. People got dreadfully scared about poison---- Newton mended his
+pace, and looked happier. He looked very much as he had done on the day he
+adjusted the needle-pointed muzzle to his dog's nose. He looked, in fact,
+more like a person filled with deviltry, than one yearning for the right
+to vote.
+
+"I'll fix him!" said he to himself.
+
+"What time's the election, Ez?" asked Mrs. Bronson at breakfast.
+
+"I'm goin' at four o'clock," said Ezra. "And I don't want to hear any more
+from any one"--looking at Newton--"about the election. It's none of the
+business of the women an' boys."
+
+Newton took this reproof in an unexpectedly submissive spirit. In fact, he
+exhibited his very best side to the family that morning, like one going on
+a long journey, or about to be married off, or engaged in some deep dark
+plot.
+
+"I s'pose you're off trampin' the slews at the sight of a flock of ducks
+four miles off as usual?" stated Mr. Bronson challengingly.
+
+"I thought," said Newton, "that I'd get a lot of raisin bait ready for the
+pocket-gophers in the lower meadow. They'll be throwing up their mounds by
+the first of April."
+
+"Not them," said Mr. Bronson, somewhat mollified, "not before May. Where'd
+you get the raisin idee?"
+
+"We learned it in school," answered Newton. "Jim had me study a bulletin
+on the control and eradication of pocket-gophers. You use raisins with
+strychnine in 'em--and it tells how."
+
+"Some fool notion, I s'pose," said Mr. Bronson, rising. "But go ahead if
+you're careful about handlin' the strychnine."
+
+Newton spent the time from twelve-thirty to half after two in watching the
+clock; and twenty minutes to three found him seated in the woodshed with a
+pen-knife in his hand, a small vial of strychnine crystals on a stand
+before him, a saucer of raisins at his right hand, and one exactly like
+it, partially filled with gopher bait--by which is meant raisins under the
+skin of each of which a minute crystal of strychnine had been inserted on
+the point of the knife. Newton was apparently happy and was whistling _The
+Glow-Worm_. It was a lovely scene if one can forget the gopher's point of
+view.
+
+At three-thirty, Newton went into the house and lay down on the horsehair
+sofa, saying to his mother that he felt kind o' funny and thought he'd lie
+down a while. At three-forty he heard his father's voice in the kitchen
+and knew that his sire was preparing to start for the scene of battle
+between Colonel Woodruff and Con Bonner, on the result of which hinged the
+future of Jim Irwin and the Woodruff school.
+
+A groan issued from Newton's lips--a gruesome groan as of the painful
+death of a person very sensitive to physical suffering. But his father's
+voice from the kitchen door betrayed no agitation. He was scolding the
+horses as they stood tied to the hitching-post, in tones that showed no
+knowledge of his son's distressed moans.
+
+"What's the matter?"
+
+It was Newton's little sister who asked the question, her facial
+expression evincing appreciation of Newton's efforts in the line of
+groans, somewhat touched with awe. Even though regarded as a pure matter
+of make-believe, such sounds were terrible.
+
+"Oh, sister, sister!" howled Newton, "run and tell 'em that brother's
+dying!"
+
+Fanny disappeared in a manner which expressed her balanced feelings--she
+felt that her brother was making believe, but she believed for all that,
+that something awful was the matter. So she went rather slowly to the
+kitchen door, and casually remarked that Newton was dying on the sofa in
+the sitting-room.
+
+"You little fraud!" said her father.
+
+"Why, Fanny!" said her mother--and ran into the sitting-room--whence in a
+moment, with a cry that was almost a scream, she summoned her husband, who
+responded at the top of his speed.
+
+Newton was groaning and in convulsions. Horrible grimaces contorted his
+face, his jaws were set, his arms and legs drawn up, and his muscles
+tense.
+
+"What's the matter?" His father's voice was stern as well as full of
+anxiety. "What's the matter, boy?"
+
+"Oh!" cried Newton. "Oh! Oh! Oh!"
+
+"Newtie, Newtie!" cried his mother, "where are you in pain? Tell mother,
+Newtie!"
+
+"Oh," groaned Newtie, relaxing, "I feel awful!"
+
+"What you been eating?" interrogated his father.
+
+"Nothing," replied Newton.
+
+"I saw you eatin' dinner," said his father.
+
+Again Newton was convulsed by strong spasms, and again his groans filled
+the hearts of his parents with terror.
+
+"That's all I've eaten," said he, when his spasms had passed, "except a
+few raisins. I was putting strychnine in 'em----"
+
+"Oh, heavens!" cried his mother. "He's poisoned! Drive for the doctor,
+Ezra! Drive!"
+
+Mr. Bronson forgot all about the election--forgot everything save
+antidotes and speed. He leaped toward the door. As he passed out, he
+shouted "Give him an emetic!" He tore the hitching straps from the posts,
+jumped into the buggy and headed for the road. Skilfully avoiding an
+overturn as he rounded into the highway, he gave the spirited horses their
+heads, and fled toward town, carefully computing the speed the horses
+could make and still be able to return. Mile after mile he covered,
+passing teams, keeping ahead of automobiles and advertising panic. Just at
+the town limits, he met the doctor in Sheriff Dilly's automobile, the
+sheriff himself at the steering wheel. Mr. Bronson signaled them to stop,
+ignoring the fact that they were making similar signs to him.
+
+"We're just starting for your place," said the doctor. "Your wife got me
+on the phone."
+
+"Thank God!" replied Bronson. "Don't fool any time away on me. Drive!"
+
+"Get in here, Ez," said the sheriff. "Doc knows how to drive, and I'll
+come on with your team. They need a slow drive to cool 'em off."
+
+"Why didn't you phone me?" asked the doctor.
+
+"Never thought of it," replied Bronson. "I hain't had the phone only a few
+years. Drive faster!"
+
+"I want to get there, or I would," answered the doctor. "Don't worry. From
+what your wife told me over the phone I don't believe the boy's eaten any
+more strychnine than I have--and probably not so much."
+
+"He was alive, then?"
+
+"Alive and making an argument against taking the emetic," replied the
+doctor. "But I guess she got it down him."
+
+"I'd hate to lose that boy, Doc!"
+
+"I don't believe there's any danger. It doesn't sound like a genuine
+poisoning case to me."
+
+Thus reassured, Mr. Bronson was calm, even if somewhat tragic in calmness,
+when he entered the death chamber with the doctor. Newton was sitting up,
+his eyes wet, and his face pale. His mother had won the argument, and
+Newton had lost his dinner. Haakon Peterson occupied an armchair.
+
+"What's all this?" asked the doctor. "How you feeling, Newt? Any pain?"
+
+"I'm all right," said Newton. "Don't give me any more o' that nasty
+stuff!"
+
+"No," said the doctor, "but if you don't tell me just what you've been
+eating, and doing, and pulling off on us, I'll use this"--and the doctor
+exhibited a huge stomach pump.
+
+"What'll you do with that?" asked Newton faintly.
+
+"I'll put this down into your hold, and unload you, that's what I'll do."
+
+"Is the election over, Mr. Peterson?" asked Newton.
+
+"Yes," answered Mr. Peterson, "and the votes counted."
+
+"Who's elected?" asked Newton.
+
+"Colonel Woodruff," answered Mr. Peterson. "The vote was twelve to
+eleven."
+
+"Well, dad," said Newton, "I s'pose you'll be sore, but the only way I
+could see to get in half a vote for Colonel Woodruff was to get poisoned
+and send you after the doctor. If you'd gone, it would 'a' been a tie,
+anyhow, and probably you'd 'a' persuaded somebody to change to Bonner.
+That's what's the matter with me. I killed your vote. Now, you can do
+whatever you like to me--but I'm sorry I scared mother."
+
+Ezra Bronson seized Newton by the throat, but his fingers failed to close.
+"Don't pinch, dad," said Newton. "I've been using that neck an' it's
+tired." Mr. Bronson dropped his hands to his sides, glared at his son for
+a moment and breathed a sigh of relief.
+
+"Why, you darned infernal little fool," said he. "I've a notion to take a
+hamestrap to you! If I'd been there the vote would have been eleven to
+thirteen!"
+
+"There was plenty wotes there for the colonel, if he needed 'em," said
+Haakon, whose politician's mind was already fully adjusted to the changed
+conditions. "Ay tank the Woodruff District will have a junanimous school
+board from dis time on once more. Colonel Woodruff is yust the man we have
+needed."
+
+"I'm with you there," said Bronson. "And as for you, young man, if one or
+both of them horses is hurt by the run I give them, I'll lick you within
+an inch of your life---- Here comes Dilly driving 'em in now---- I guess
+they're all right. I wouldn't want to drive a good team to death for any
+young hoodlum like him---- All right, how much do I owe you. Doc?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+THE GLORIOUS FOURTH
+
+
+A good deal of water ran under the Woodruff District bridges in the weeks
+between the school election and the Fourth of July picnic at Eight-Mile
+Grove. They were very important weeks to Jim Irwin, though outwardly
+uneventful. Great events are often mere imperceptible developments of the
+spirit.
+
+Spring, for instance, brought a sort of spiritual crisis to Jim; for he
+had to face the accusing glance of the fields as they were plowed and sown
+while he lived indoors. As he labored at the tasks of the Woodruff school
+he was conscious of a feeling not very easily distinguished from a sense
+of guilt. It seemed that there must be something almost wicked in his
+failure to be afield with his team in the early spring mornings when the
+woolly anemones appeared in their fur coats, the heralds of the later
+comers--violets, sweet-williams, puccoons, and the scarlet prairie
+lilies.
+
+A moral crisis accompanies the passing of a man from the struggle with the
+soil to any occupation, the productiveness of which is not quite so clear.
+It requires a keenly sensitive nature to feel conscious of it, but Jim
+Irwin possessed such a temperament; and from the beginning of the daily
+race with the seasons, which makes the life of a northern farmer an eight
+months' Marathon in which to fall behind for a week is to lose much of the
+year's reward, the gawky schoolmaster slept uneasily, and heard the
+earliest cock-crow as a soldier hears a call to arms to which he has made
+up his mind he will not respond.
+
+I think there is a real moral principle involved. I believe that this deep
+instinct for labor in and about the soil is a valid one, and that the
+gathering together of people in cities has been at the cost of an obscure
+but actual moral shock.
+
+I doubt if the people of the cities can ever be at rest in a future full
+of moral searchings of conscience until every man has traced definitely
+the connection of the work he is doing with the maintenance of his
+country's population. Sometimes those vocations whose connection can not
+be so traced will be recognized as wicked ones, and people engaged in them
+will feel as did Jim--until he worked out the facts in the relation of
+school-teaching to the feeding, clothing and sheltering of the world. Most
+school-teaching he believed--correctly or incorrectly--has very little to
+do with the primary task of the human race; but as far as his teaching was
+concerned, even he believed in it. If by teaching school he could not make
+a greater contribution to the productiveness of the Woodruff District than
+by working in the fields, he would go back to the fields. Whether he could
+make his teaching thus productive or not was the very fact in issue
+between him and the local body politic.
+
+These are some of the waters that ran under the bridges before the Fourth
+of July picnic at Eight-Mile Grove. Few surface indications there were of
+any change in the little community in this annual gathering of friends and
+neighbors. Wilbur Smythe made the annual address, and was in rather finer
+fettle than usual as he paid his fervid tribute to the starry flag, and to
+this very place as the most favored spot in the best country of the
+greatest state in the most powerful, intellectual, freest and most
+progressive nation in the best possible of worlds. Wilbur was going
+strong. Jim Irwin read the Declaration rather well, Jennie Woodruff
+thought, as she sat on the platform between Deacon Avery, the oldest
+settler in the district, and Mrs. Columbus Brown, the sole local
+representative of the Daughters of the American Revolution. Colonel
+Woodruff presided in his Grand Army of the Republic uniform.
+
+The fresh northwest breeze made free with the oaks, elms, hickories and
+box-elders of Eight-Mile Grove, and the waters of Pickerel Creek glimmered
+a hundred yards away, beyond the flitting figures of the boys who
+preferred to shoot off their own fire-crackers and torpedoes and
+nigger-chasers, rather than to listen to those of Wilbur Smythe. Still
+farther off could be heard the voice of a lone lemonade vender as he
+advertised ice-cold lemonade, made in the shade, with a brand-new spade,
+by an old maid, as a guaranty that it was the blamedest, coldest lemonade
+ever sold. And under the shadiest trees a few incorrigible Marthas were
+spreading the snowy tablecloths on which would soon be placed the
+bountiful repasts stored in ponderous wicker baskets and hampers. It was a
+lovely day, in a lovely spot--a good example of the miniature forests
+which grew naturally from time immemorial in favored locations on the Iowa
+prairies--half a square mile of woodland, all about which the green
+corn-rows stood aslant in the cool breeze, "waist-high and laid by."
+
+They were passing down the rough board steps from the platform after the
+exercises had terminated in a rousing rendition of _America_, when Jennie
+Woodruff, having slipped by everybody else to reach him, tapped Jim Irwin
+on the arm. He looked back at her over his shoulder with his slow gentle
+smile.
+
+"Isn't your mother here, Jim?" she asked. "I've been looking all over the
+crowd and can't see her."
+
+"She isn't here," answered Jim. "I was in hopes that when she broke loose
+and went to your Christmas dinner she would stay loose--but she went home
+and settled back into her rut."
+
+"Too bad," said Jennie. "She'd have had a nice time if she had come."
+
+"Yes," said Jim, "I believe she would."
+
+"I want help," said Jennie. "Our hamper is terribly heavy. Please!"
+
+It was rather obvious to Mrs. Bonner that Jennie was throwing herself at
+Jim's head; but that was an article of the Bonner family creed since the
+decision which closed the hearing at the court-house. It must be admitted
+that the young county superintendent found tasks which kept the
+schoolmaster very close to her side. He carried the hamper, helped Jennie
+to spread the cloth on the grass, went with her to the well for water and
+cracked ice wherewith to cool it. In fact, he quite cut Wilbur Smythe out
+when that gentleman made ponderous efforts to obtain a share of the favor
+implied in these permissions.
+
+"Sit down, Jim," said Mrs. Woodruff, "you've earned a bite of what we've
+got. It's good enough, what there is of it, and there's enough of it, such
+as it is!"
+
+"I'm sorry," said Jim, "but I've a prior engagement."
+
+"Why, Jim!" protested Jennie. "I've been counting on you. Don't desert
+me!"
+
+"I'm awfully sorry," said Jim, "but I promised. I'll see you later."
+
+One might have thought, judging by the colonel's quizzical smile, that he
+was pleased at Jennie's loss of her former swain.
+
+"We'll have to invite Jim longer ahead of time," said he. "He's getting to
+be in demand."
+
+He seemed to be in demand--a fact that Jennie confirmed by observation as
+she chatted with Deacon Avery, Mrs. Columbus Brown and her husband, and
+the Orator of the Day, at the table set apart for the guests and notables.
+Jim received a dozen invitations as he passed the groups seated on the
+grass--one of them from Mrs. Cornelius Bonner, who saw no particular point
+in advertising disgruntlement. The children ran to him and clung to his
+hands; young girls gave him sisterly smiles and such trifles as chicken
+drumsticks, pieces of cake and like tidbits. His passage to the numerous
+groups at a square table under a big burr-oak was quite an ovation--an
+ovation of the significance of which he was himself quite unaware. The
+people were just friendly, that was all--to his mind.
+
+But Jennie--the daughter of a politician and a promising one
+herself--Jennie sensed the fact that Jim Irwin had won something from the
+people of the Woodruff District in the way of deference. Still he was the
+gangling, Lincolnian, ill-dressed, poverty-stricken Jim Irwin of old, but
+Jennie had no longer the feeling that one's standing was somewhat
+compromised by association with him. He had begun to put on something more
+significant than clothes, something which he had possessed all the time,
+but which became valid only as it was publicly apprehended. There was a
+slight air of command in his down-sitting and up-rising at the picnic. He
+was clearly the central figure of his group, in which she recognized the
+Bronsons, those queer children from Tennessee, the Simmses, the Talcotts,
+the Hansens, the Hamms and Colonel Woodruff's hired man, Pete, whose other
+name is not recorded.
+
+Jim sat down between Bettina Hansen, a flaxen-haired young Brunhilde of
+seventeen, and Calista Simms--Jennie saw him do it, while listening to
+Wilbur Smythe's account of the exacting nature of the big law practise he
+was building up,--and would have been glad to exchange places with Calista
+or Bettina.
+
+The repast drew to a close; and over by the burr-oak the crowd had grown
+to a circle surrounding Jim Irwin.
+
+"He seems to be making an address," said Wilbur Smythe.
+
+"Well, Wilbur," replied the colonel, "you had the first shot at us.
+Suppose we move over and see what's under discussion."
+
+As they approached the group, they heard Jim Irwin answering something
+which Ezra Bronson had said.
+
+"You think so, Ezra," said he, "and it seems reasonable that big
+creameries like those at Omaha, Sioux City, Des Moines and the other
+centralizer points can make butter cheaper than we would do here--but
+we've the figures that show that they aren't economical."
+
+"They can't make good butter, for one thing," said Newton Bronson
+cockily.
+
+"Why can't they?" asked Olaf Hansen, the father of Bettina.
+
+"Well," said Newton, "they have to have so much cream that they've got to
+ship it so far that it gets rotten on the way, and they have to renovate
+it with lime and other ingredients before they can churn it."
+
+"Well," said Raymond Simms, "I reckon they sell their butter fo' all it's
+wuth; an' they cain't get within from foah to seven cents a pound as much
+fo' it as the farmers' creameries in Wisconsin and Minnesota get fo'
+theirs."
+
+"That's a fact, Olaf," said Jim.
+
+"How do you kids know so darned much about it?" queried Pete.
+
+"Huh!" sniffed Bettina. "We've been reading about it, and writing letters
+about it, and figuring percentages on it in school all winter. We've done
+arithmetic and geography and grammar and I don't know what else on it."
+
+"Well, I'm agin' any schoolin'," said Pete, "that makes kids smarter in
+farmin' than their parents and their parents' hired men. Gi' me another
+swig o' that lemonade, Jim!"
+
+"You see," said Jim to his audience, meanwhile pouring the lemonade, "the
+centralizer creamery is uneconomic in several ways. It has to pay
+excessive transportation charges. It has to pay excessive commissions to
+its cream buyers. It has to accept cream without proper inspection, and
+mixes the good with the bad. It makes such long shipments that the cream
+spoils in transit and lowers the quality of the butter. It can't make the
+best use of the buttermilk. All these losses and leaks the farmers have to
+stand. I can prove--and so can the six or eight pupils in the Woodruff
+school who have been working on the cream question this winter--that we
+could make at least six cents a pound on our butter if we had a
+cooperative creamery and all sent our cream to it."
+
+"Well," said Ezra Bronson, "let's start one."
+
+"I'll go in," said Olaf Hansen.
+
+"Me, too," said Con Bonner.
+
+There was a general chorus of assent. Jim had convinced his audience.
+
+"He's got the jury," said Wilbur Smythe to Colonel Woodruff.
+
+"Yes," said the colonel, "and right here is where he runs into danger. Can
+he handle the crowd when it's with him?"
+
+"Well," said Jim, "I think we ought to organize one, but I've another
+proposition first. Let's get together and pool our cream. By that, I mean
+that we'll all sell to the same creamery, and get the best we can out of
+the centralizers by the cooperative method. We can save two cents a pound
+in that way, and we'll learn to cooperate. When we have found just how
+well we can hang together, we'll be able to take up the cooperative
+creamery, with less danger of falling apart and failing."
+
+"Who'll handle the pool?" inquired Mr. Hansen.
+
+"We'll handle it in the school," answered Jim.
+
+"School's about done," objected Mr. Bronson.
+
+"Won't the cream pool pretty near pay the expenses of running the school
+all summer?" asked Bonner.
+
+"We ought to run the school plant all the time," said Jim. "It's the only
+way to get full value out of the investment. And we've corn-club work,
+pig-club work, poultry work and canning-club work which make it very
+desirable to keep in session with only a week's vacation. If you'll add
+the cream pool, it will make the school the hardest working crowd in the
+district and doing actual farm work, too. I like Mr. Bonner's
+suggestion."
+
+"Well," said Haakon Peterson, who had joined the group, "Ay tank we better
+have a meeting of the board and discuss it."
+
+"Well, darn it," said Columbus Brown, "I want in on this cream pool--and I
+live outside the district!"
+
+"We'll let you in, Clumb," said the colonel.
+
+"Sure!" said Pete. "We hain't no more sense than to let any one in, Clumb.
+Come in, the water's fine. We ain't proud!"
+
+"Well," said Clumb, "if this feller is goin' to do school work of this
+kind, I want in the district, too."
+
+"We'll come to that one of these days," said Jim. "The district is too
+small."
+
+Wilbur Smythe's car stopped at the distant gate and honked for him--a
+signal which broke up the party. Haakon Peterson passed the word to the
+colonel and Mr. Bronson for a board meeting the next evening. The picnic
+broke up in a dispersion of staid married couples to their homes, and
+young folks in top buggies to dances and displays of fireworks in the
+surrounding villages. Jim walked across the fields to his home--neither
+old nor young, having neither sweetheart with whom to dance nor farm to
+demand labor in its inexorable chores. He turned after crawling through a
+wire fence and looked longingly at Jennie as she was suavely assisted into
+the car by the frock-coated lawyer.
+
+"You saw what he did?" said the colonel interrogatively, as he and his
+daughter sat on the Woodruff veranda that evening. "Who taught him the
+supreme wisdom of holding back his troops when they grew too wild for
+attack?"
+
+"He may lose them," said Jennie.
+
+"Not so," said the colonel. "Individuals of the Brown Mouse type always
+succeed when they find their environment. And I believe Jim has found
+his."
+
+"Well," said Jennie, "I wish his environment would find him some clothes.
+It's a shame the way he has to go looking. He'd be nice-appearing if he
+was dressed anyway."
+
+"Would he?" queried the colonel. "I wonder, now! Well, Jennie, as his
+oldest friend having any knowledge of clothes, I think it's up to you to
+act as a committee of one on Jim's apparel."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+A TROUBLE SHOOTER
+
+
+A sudden July storm had drenched the fields and filled the swales with
+water. The cultivators left the corn-fields until the next day's sun and a
+night of seepage might once more fit the black soil for tillage. The
+little boys rolled up their trousers and tramped home from school with the
+rich mud squeezing up between their toes, thrilling with the electricity
+of clean-washed nature, and the little girls rather wished they could go
+barefooted, too, as, indeed, some of the more sensible did.
+
+A lithe young man with climbers on his legs walked up a telephone pole by
+the roadside to make some repairs to the wires, which had been whipped
+into a "cross" by the wind of the storm and the lashing of the limbs of
+the roadside trees. He had tied his horse to a post up the road, and was
+running out the trouble on the line, which was plentifully in evidence
+just then. Wind and lightning had played hob with the system, and the line
+repairer was cheerfully profane, in the manner of his sort, glad by reason
+of the fire of summer in his veins, and incensed at the forces of nature
+which had brought him out through the mud to the Woodruff District to do
+these piffling jobs that any of the subscribers ought to have known how to
+do themselves, and none of which took more than a few minutes of his time
+when he reached the seat of the difficulty.
+
+Jim Irwin, his school out for the day, came along the muddy road with two
+of his pupils, a bare-legged little boy and a tall girl with flaxen
+hair--Bettina Hansen and her small brother Hans, who refused to answer to
+any name other than Hans Nilsen. His father's name was Nils Hansen, and
+Hans, a born conservative, being the son of Nils, regarded himself as
+rightfully a Nilsen, and disliked the "Hans Hansen" on the school
+register. Thus do European customs sometimes survive among us.
+
+Hans strode through the pool of water which the shower had spread
+completely over the low turnpike a few rods from the pole on which the
+trouble shooter was at work, and the electrician ceased his labors and
+rested himself on a cross-arm while he waited to see what the
+flaxen-haired girl would do when she came to it.
+
+Jim and Bettina stopped at the water's edge. "Oh!" cried she, "I can't get
+through!" The trouble shooter felt the impulse to offer his aid, but
+thought it best on the whole, to leave the matter in the hands of the lank
+schoolmaster.
+
+"I'll carry you across," said Jim.
+
+"I'm too heavy," answered Bettina.
+
+"Nonsense!" said Jim.
+
+"She's awful heavy," piped Hans. "Better take off your shoes, anyhow!"
+
+Jim thought of the welfare of his only good trousers, and saw that Hans'
+suggestion was good; but a mental picture of himself with shoes in hand
+and bare legs restrained him. He took Bettina in his arms and went slowly
+across, walking rather farther with his blushing burden than was strictly
+necessary. Bettina was undoubtedly heavy; but she was also wonderfully
+pleasant to feel in arms which had never borne such a burden before; and
+her arms about his neck as he slopped through the pond were curiously
+thrilling. Her cheek brushed his as he set her upon her feet and felt,
+rather than thought, that if there had only been a good reason for it,
+Bettina would have willingly been carried much farther.
+
+"How strong you are!" she panted. "I'm awful heavy, ain't I?"
+
+"Not very," said Jim, with scholastic accuracy. "You're just right. I--I
+mean, you're simply well-nourished and wholesomely plump!"
+
+Bettina blushed still more rosily.
+
+"You've ruined your clothes," said she. "Now you'll have to come home with
+me and let me--see who's there!"
+
+Jim looked up at the trouble shooter, and went over to the foot of the
+pole. The man walked down, striking his spurs deep into the wood for
+safety.
+
+"Hello!" said he. "School out?"
+
+"For the day," said Jim. "Any important work on the telephone line now?"
+
+"Just trouble-shooting," was the answer. "I have to spend three hours
+hunting these troubles, to one in fixing 'em up."
+
+"Do they take much technical skill?" asked Jim.
+
+"Mostly shakin' out crosses, and puttin' in new carbons in the arresters,"
+replied the trouble man. "Any one ought to do any of 'em with five
+minutes' instruction. But these farmers--they'd rather have me drive ten
+miles to take a hair-pin from across the binding-posts than to do it
+themselves. That's the way they are!"
+
+"Will you be out here to-morrow?" queried the teacher.
+
+"Sure!"
+
+"I'd like to have you show my class in manual training something about the
+telephone," said Jim. "The reason we can't fix our own troubles, if they
+are as simple as you say, is because we don't know how simple they are."
+
+"I'll tell you what I'll do, Professor," said the trouble man. "I'll bring
+a phone with me and give 'em a lecture. I don't see how I can employ the
+company's time any better than in beating a little telephone sense into
+the heads of the community. Set the time, and I'll be there with bells."
+
+Bettina and her teacher walked on up the shady lane, feeling that they had
+a secret. They were very nearly on a parity as to the innocence of soul
+with which they held this secret, except that Bettina was much more
+single-minded toward it than Jim. To her he had been gradually attaining
+the status of a hero whose clasp of her in that iron-armed way was
+mysteriously blissful--and beyond that her mind had not gone. To Jim,
+Bettina represented in a very sweet way the disturbing influences which
+had recently risen to the threshold of consciousness in his being, and
+which were concretely but not very hopefully embodied in Jennie Woodruff.
+
+Thus interested in each other, they turned the corner which took them out
+of sight of the lineman, and stopped at the shady avenue leading up to
+Nils Hansen's farmstead. Little Hans Nilsen had disappeared by the simple
+method of cutting across lots. Bettina's girlish instinct called for
+something more than the casual good-by which would have sufficed
+yesterday. She lingered, standing close by Jim Irwin.
+
+"Won't you come in and let me clean the mud off you," she asked, "and give
+you some dry socks?"
+
+"Oh, no!" replied Jim. "It's almost as far to your house as it is home.
+Thank you, no."
+
+"There's a splash of mud on your face," said Bettina. "Let me--" And with
+her little handkerchief she began wiping off the mud. Jim stooped to
+permit the attention, but not much, for Bettina was of the mold of women
+of whom warriors are born--their faces approached, and Jim recognized a
+crisis in the fact that Bettina's mouth was presented for a kiss. Jim met
+the occasion like the gentleman he was. He did not leave her stung by
+rejection; neither did he obey the impulse to respond to the invitation
+according to his man's instinct; he took the rosy face between his palms
+and kissed her forehead--and left her in possession of her self-respect.
+After that Bettina Hansen felt, somehow, that the world could not possibly
+contain another man like Jim Irwin--a conviction which she still cherishes
+when that respectful caress has been swept into the cloudy distance of a
+woman's memories.
+
+Pete, Colonel Woodruff's hired man, was watering the horses at the trough
+when the trouble shooter reached the Woodruff telephone. County
+Superintendent Jennie had run for her father's home in her little
+motor-car in the face of the shower, and was now on the bench where once
+she had said "Humph!" to Jim Irwin--and thereby started in motion the
+factors in this story.
+
+"Anything wrong with your phone?" asked the trouble man of Pete.
+
+"Nah," replied Pete. "It was on the blink till you done something down the
+road."
+
+"Crossed up," said the lineman. "These trees along here are something
+fierce."
+
+"I'd cut 'em all if they was mine," said Pete, "but the colonel set 'em
+out, along about sixty-six, and I reckon they'll have to go on
+a-growin'."
+
+"Who's your school-teacher?" asked the telephone man.
+
+The county superintendent pricked up her ears--being quite properly
+interested in matters educational.
+
+"Feller name of Irwin," said Pete.
+
+"Not much of a looker," said the trouble shooter.
+
+"Nater of the sile," said Pete. "He an' I both worked in it together till
+it roughened up our complexions."
+
+"Farmer, eh?" said the lineman interrogatively. "Well, he's the first
+farmer I ever saw in my life that recognized there's education in the
+telephone business. I'm goin' to teach a class in telephony at the
+schoolhouse to-morrow."
+
+"Don't get swelled up," said Pete. "He has everybody tell them young ones
+about everything--blacksmith, cabinet-maker, pie-founder, cookie-cooper,
+dressmaker--even down to telephones. He'll have them scholars figurin' on
+telephones, and writin' compositions on 'em, and learnin' 'lectricity from
+'em an' things like that"
+
+"He must be some feller," said the lineman. "And who's his star pupil?"
+
+"Didn't know he had one," said Pete. "Why?"
+
+"Girl," said the trouble-shooter. "Goes to school from the farm where the
+Western Union brace is used at the road."
+
+"Nils Hansen's girl?" asked Pete.
+
+"Toppy little filly," said the lineman, "with silver mane--looks like
+she'd pull a good load and step some."
+
+"M'h'm," grunted Pete. "Bettina Hansen. Looks well enough. What about
+her?"
+
+Again the county superintendent, seated on the bench, pricked up her ears
+that she might learn, mayhap, something of educational interest.
+
+"I never wanted to be a school-teacher as bad," continued the shooter of
+trouble, "as I did when this farmer got to the low place in the road with
+the fair Bettina this afternoon when they was comin' home from school. The
+water was all over the road----"
+
+"Then I win a smoke from the roadmaster," said Pete. "I bet him it would
+overflow."
+
+"Well, if I was in the professor's place, I'd be glad to pay the bet,"
+said the worldly lineman. "And I'll say this for him, he rose equal to the
+emergency and caved the emergency's head in. He carried her across the
+pond, and her a-clingin' to his neck in a way to make your mouth water.
+She wasn't a bit mad about it, either."
+
+"I'd rather have a good cigar any ol' time," said Pete. "Nothin' but a
+yaller-haired kid--an' a Dane at that. I had a dame once up at Spirit
+Lake----"
+
+"Well, I must be drivin' on," said the lineman. "Got to get up a lecture
+for Professor Irwin to-morrow--and maybe I'll be able to meet that
+yaller-haired kid. So long!"
+
+The county superintendent recognized at once the educational importance of
+the matter, when one of her country teachers adopted the policy of calling
+in everybody available who could teach the pupils anything special, and
+converting the school into a local Chautauqua served by local lecturers.
+She made a run of ten miles to hear the trouble shooter's lecture. She saw
+the boys and some of the girls give an explanation of the telephone and
+the use of it. She heard the teacher give as a language exercise the next
+day an essay on the ethics and proprieties of eavesdropping on party
+lines; and she saw the beginning of an arrangement under which the boys of
+the Woodruff school took the contract to look after easily-remedied line
+troubles in the neighborhood on the basis which paid for a telephone for
+the school, and swelled slightly the fund which Jim was accumulating for
+general purposes. Incidentally, she saw how really educational was the
+work of the day, and that to which it led.
+
+She had no curiosity to which she would have confessed, about the
+relations between Jim Irwin and his "star pupil," that young
+Brunhilde--Bettina Hansen; but her official duty required her to observe
+the attitude of pupils to teachers--Bettina among them. Clearly, Jim was
+looked upon by the girls, large and small, as a possession of theirs. They
+competed for the task of keeping his desk in order, and of dusting and
+tidying up the schoolroom. There was something of exaltation of sentiment
+in this. Bettina's eyes followed him about the room in a devotional sort
+of way; but so, too, did those of the ten-year-olds. He was loved, that
+was clear, by Bettina, Calista Simms and all the rest--an excellent thing
+in a school.
+
+All the same, Jennie met Jim rather oftener after the curious conversation
+between those rather low fellows, Pete and the trouble shooter. As autumn
+approached, and the time came for Jim to begin to think of his trip to
+Ames, Colonel Woodruff's hint that she should assume charge of the problem
+of Jim's clothes for the occasion, came more and more often to her mind.
+Would Jim be able to buy suitable clothes? Would he understand that he
+ought not to appear in the costume which was tolerable in the Woodruff
+District only because the people there were accustomed to seeing him
+dressed like a tramp? Could she approach the subject with any degree of
+safety? Really these were delicate questions; and considering the fact
+that Jennie had quite dismissed her old sweetheart from the list of
+eligibles--had never actually admitted him to it, in fact--they assumed
+great importance to her mind. Once, only a little more than a year ago,
+she had scoffed at Jim's mention of the fact that he might think of
+marrying; and now she could not think of saying to him kindly, "Jim, you
+really must have some better clothes to wear when you go to Ames!" It
+would have been far easier last summer.
+
+Somehow, Jim had been acquiring dignity and unapproachability. She must
+sidle up to the subject. She did. She took him into her runabout one day
+as he was striding toward town in that plowed-ground manner of his, and
+gave him a spin over to the fair grounds and two or three times around the
+half-mile track.
+
+"I'm going to Ames to hear your speech," said she.
+
+"I'm glad of that," said Jim. "More of the farmers are going from this
+neighborhood than ever before. I'll feel at home, if they all sit together
+where I can talk at them."
+
+"Who's going?" asked Jennie.
+
+"The Bronsons, Con Bonner and Nils Hansen and Bettina," replied Jim.
+"That's all from our district--and Columbus Brown and probably others from
+near-by localities."
+
+"I shall have to have some clothes," said Jennie.
+
+Jim failed to respond to this, as clearly out of his field. They were
+passing the county fair buildings, and he began expatiating on the kind of
+county fair he would have--a great county exposition with the schools as
+its central thought--a clearing house for the rural activities of all the
+country schools.
+
+"And pa's going to have a suit before we go, too," said Jennie. "Here are
+some samples I got of Atkins, the tailor. Which would be the most becoming
+do you think?"
+
+Jim looked the samples over carefully, but had little to say as to their
+adaptation to Colonel Woodruff's sartorial needs. Jennie laid great stress
+on the excellent quality of one or two samples, and carefully specified
+the prices of them. Jim exhibited no more than a languid and polite
+interest, and gave not the slightest symptom of ever having considered
+even remotely the contingency of having a tailor-made suit. Jennie sidled
+closer to the subject.
+
+"I should think it would be awfully hard for you to get fitted in the
+stores," said she, "you are so very tall."
+
+"It would be," said Jim, "if I had ever considered the matter of looks
+very much. I guess I'm not constructed on any plan the clothing
+manufacturers have regarded as even remotely possible. How about this
+county fair idea? Couldn't we do this next fall? You organize the
+teachers----"
+
+Jennie advanced the spark, cut out the muffler and drowned the rest of
+Jim's remarks in wind and dust.
+
+"I give it up, dad," said she to her father that evening.
+
+"What?" queried the colonel.
+
+"Jim Irwin's clothes," she replied. "I think he'll go to Ames in a
+disgraceful plight, but I can't get any closer to the subject than I have
+done."
+
+"Oh, then you haven't heard the news," said the colonel. "Jim's going to
+have his first made-to-measure suit for Ames. It's all fixed."
+
+"Who's making it?" asked Jennie.
+
+"Gustaf Paulsen, the Dane that's just opened a shop in town." "A Dane?"
+queried Jennie. "Isn't he related to some of the neighbors?"
+
+"A brother to Mrs. Hansen," answered the colonel.
+
+"Bettina's uncle!"
+
+"Ratherly," said the colonel jocularly, "seeing as how Bettina's Mrs.
+Hansen's daughter."
+
+Clothes are rather important, but the difference between a suit made by
+Atkins the tailor, and one built by Gustaf Paulsen, the new Danish
+craftsman, could not be supposed to be crucially important, even when
+designed for a very dear friend. And Jim was scarcely that--of course not!
+Why, then, did the county superintendent hastily run to her room, and cry?
+Why did she say to herself that the Hansens were very good people, and
+well-to-do, and it would be a fine thing for Jim and his mother,--and then
+cry some more? Colonel failed to notice Jennie's unceremonious retirement
+from circulation that evening, and had he known all about what took place,
+he would have been as mystified as you or I.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+JIM GOES TO AMES
+
+
+The boat tipped over, and Jim Irwin was left struggling in the water. It
+was in the rapids just above the cataract--and poor Jim could not swim a
+stroke. Helpless, terrified, gasping, he floated to destruction, and
+Jennie Woodruff was not able to lift a hand to help him. To see any human
+being swept to such an end is dreadful, but for a county superintendent to
+witness the drowning of one of her best--though sometimes it must be
+confessed most insubordinate--teachers, under such circumstances, is
+unspeakable; and when that teacher is a young man who was once that county
+superintendent's sweetheart, and falls in, clothed in a new made-to-order
+suit in which he looks almost handsome despite his manifest discomfort in
+his new cravat and starched collar, the experience is something almost
+impossible to endure. That is why Jennie gripped her seat until she must
+have scratched the varnish. That is why she felt she must go to him--and
+do something. She could not endure it a moment longer, she felt; and there
+he floated away, his poor pale face dipping below the waves, his sad,
+long, homely countenance sadder than ever, his lovely--yes, she must
+confess it now, his eyes were lovely!--his lovely blue eyes, so honest and
+true, wide with terror; and she unable to give him so much as a cry of
+encouragement!
+
+And then Jim began to swim. He cast aside the roll of manuscript which he
+had held in his hand when the waters began to rise about him, and struck
+out for the shore with strong strokes--wild and agitated at first, but
+gradually becoming controlled and coordinated, and Jennie drew a long
+breath as he finally came to shore, breasting the waves like Triton, and
+master of the element in which he moved. There was a burst of applause,
+and people went forward to congratulate the greenhorn who had really made
+good.
+
+Jennie felt like throwing her arms about his neck and weeping out her joy
+at his escape, and his restoration to her. Her eyes told him something of
+this; for there was a look in them which reminded him of fifteen years
+ago. Bettina Hansen was proud of him, and Con Bonner shook his hand and
+said that he agreed with him. Neither Bettina nor Con had noticed the
+capsizing of the boat or saw the form of Jim as it went drifting toward
+the cataract. But Jim knew how near he had been to disaster, and knew that
+Jennie knew. For she had seen him turn pale when he came on the platform
+to make his address at the farmers' meeting at Ames, had seen him begin
+the speech he had committed to memory, had observed how unable he was to
+remember it, had noted his confusion as he tried to find his manuscript,
+and then his place of beginning in it--and when his confusion had
+seemingly quite overcome him, had seen him begin talking to his audience
+just as he had talked to the political meeting that time when he had so
+deeply offended her, and had observed how he won first their respect, then
+their attention, then apparently their convictions.
+
+To Jennie's agitated mind Jim had barely escaped being drowned in the
+ocean of his own unreadiness and confusion under trying conditions. And
+she was right. Jim had never felt more the upstart uneducated farm-hand
+than when he was introduced to that audience by Professor Withers, nor
+more completely disgraced than when he concluded his remarks. Even the
+applause was to him a kindly effort on the part of the audience to comfort
+him in his failure. His only solace was the look in Jennie's eyes.
+
+"Young man," said an old farmer who wore thick glasses and looked like a
+Dutch burgomaster, "I want to have a little talk with you."
+
+"This is Mr. Hofmyer of Pottawatomie County," said the dean of the
+college.
+
+"I'm glad to meet you," said Jim. "I can talk to you now."
+
+"No," said Jennie. "I know Mr. Hofmyer will excuse you until after dinner.
+We have a little party for Mr. Irwin, and we shall be late if we don't
+hurry."
+
+"Where can I see you after supper?" asked Mr. Hofmyer.
+
+Easy it was to satisfy Mr. Hofmyer; and Jim was carried off to a dinner
+given by County Superintendent Jennie to Jim, the dean, Professor Withers,
+and one or two others--and a wonderfully select and distinguished company
+it seemed to Jim. Jennie seized a moment's opportunity to say, "You did
+beautifully, Jim; everybody says so."
+
+"I failed!" said. Jim. "You know I failed. I couldn't remember my speech.
+I can't stay here feasting. I want to get out in the snow."
+
+"You made the best address of the meeting; and you did it because you
+forgot your speech," insisted Jennie.
+
+"Does anybody else think so?"
+
+"Why, Jim! You must learn to believe in what you have done. Even Con
+Bonner says it was the best. He says he didn't think you had it in ye!"
+
+This advice from her to "believe in what you have done,"--wasn't there
+something new in Jennie's attitude here? Wasn't his belief in what he was
+doing precisely the thing which had made him such a nuisance to the county
+superintendent? However, Jim couldn't stop to answer the question which
+popped up in his mind.
+
+"What does Professor Withers say?" he asked.
+
+"He's delighted--silly!"
+
+"Silly!" How wonderful it was to be called "silly"--in that tone.
+
+"I shouldn't have forgotten the speech if it hadn't been for this darned
+boiled shirt and collar, and for wearing a cravat," urged Jim in
+extenuation.
+
+"You ought to 've worn them around the house for a week before coming,"
+said Jennie. "Why didn't you ask my advice?"
+
+"I will, next time, Jennie," said Jim. "I didn't suppose I needed a
+bitting-rig--but I guess I did!"
+
+Jennie ran away then to ask Nils Hansen and Bettina to join their dinner
+party. She had a sudden access of friendliness for the Hansens. Nils
+refused because he was going out to see the college herds fed; but at
+Jennie's urgent request, reinforced by pats and hugs, Bettina consented.
+Jennie was very happy, and proved herself a beaming hostess. The dean
+devoted himself to Bettina--and Jim found out afterward that this
+inquiring gentleman was getting at the mental processes of a specimen
+pupil in one of the new kind of rural schools, in which he was only half
+inclined to believe. He thanked Jim for his speech, and said it was "most
+suggestive and thought-provoking," and as the party broke up slipped into
+Jim's hand a check for the honorarium. It was not until then that Jim felt
+quite sure that he was actually to be paid for his speech; and he felt a
+good deal like returning the check to the conscience fund of the State of
+Iowa, if it by any chance possessed such a fund. But the breach made in
+his financial entrenchments by the expenses of the trip and the
+respectable and well-fitting suit of clothes overcame his feeling of
+getting something for nothing. If he hadn't given the state anything, he
+had at least expended something--a good deal in fact--on the state's
+account.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+JIM'S WORLD WIDENS
+
+
+Mr. Hofmyer was waiting to give Jim the final convincing proof that he had
+produced an effect with his speech.
+
+"Do you teach the kind of school you lay out in your talk?" he asked.
+
+"I try to," said Jim, "and I believe I do."
+
+"Well," said Mr. Hofmyer, "that's the kind of education I b'lieve in. I
+kep' school back in Pennsylvany fifty years ago, and I made the scholars
+measure things, and weigh things, and apply their studies as fur as I
+could."
+
+"All good teachers have always done that," said Jim. "Froebel, Pestalozzi,
+Colonel Parker--they all had the idea which is at the bottom of my work;
+'learn to do by doing,' and connecting up the school with life."
+
+"M'h'm," grunted Mr. Hofmyer, "I hain't been able to see how Latin
+connects up with a high-school kid's life--unless he can find a Latin
+settlement som'eres and git a job clerkin' in a store."
+
+"But it used to relate to life," said Jim, "the life of the people who
+made Greek and Latin a part of everybody else's education as well as their
+own. Latin and Greek were the only languages in which anything worth much
+was written, you know. But now"--Jim spread out his arms as if to take in
+the whole world--"science, the marvelous literature of our tongue in the
+last three centuries! And to make a child learn Latin with all that, a
+thousand times richer than all the literature of Latin, lying unused
+before him!"
+
+"Know any Latin?" asked Mr. Hofmyer.
+
+Jim blushed, as one caught in condemning what he knows nothing about.
+
+"I--I have studied the grammar, and read _Cæsar_," he faltered, "but that
+isn't much. I had no teacher, and I had to work pretty hard, and it didn't
+go very well."
+
+"I've had all the Latin they gave in the colleges of my time," said Mr.
+Hofmyer, "if I do talk dialect; and I'll agree with you so far as to say
+that it would have been a crime for me to neglect the chemistry,
+bacteriology, physics, engineering and other sciences that pertain to
+farmin'--if there'd been any such sciences when I was gettin' my
+schoolin'."
+
+"And yet," said Jim, "some people want us to guide ourselves by the
+courses of study made before these sciences existed."
+
+"I don't, by hokey!" said Mr. Hofmyer. "I'll be dag-goned if you ain't
+right. I wouldn't 'a' said so before I heard that speech--but I say so
+now."
+
+Jim's face lighted up at this, the first convincing evidence that he had
+scored.
+
+"I b'lieve, too," went on Mr. Hofmyer, "that your idee would please our
+folks. I've been the stand-patter in our parts--mostly on English and--say
+German. What d'ye say to comin' down and teachin' our school? We've got a
+two-room affair, and I was made a committee of one to find a teacher."
+
+"I--I don't see how--" Jim stammered, all taken aback by this new breeze
+of recognition.
+
+"We can't pay much," said Mr. Hofmyer. "You have charge of the
+dis-_cip_-line in the whole school, and teach in Number Two room.
+Seventy-five dollars a month. Does it appeal to ye?"
+
+Appeal to him! Why, eighteen months ago it would have been worth crawling
+across the state after, and now to have it offered to him--it was
+stupendous. And yet, how about the Simmses, Colonel Woodruff, the Hansens
+and Newton Bronson, now just getting a firm start on the upward path to
+usefulness and real happiness? How could he leave the little, crude, puny
+structure on which he had been working--on which he had been merely
+practising--for a year, and remove to the new field? Jim was in exactly
+the same situation in which every able young minister of the gospel finds
+himself sooner or later. The Lord was calling to a broader field--but how
+could he be sure it was the Lord?
+
+"I'm afraid I can't," said Jim Irwin, "but----"
+
+"If you're only 'fraid you can't," said Mr. Hofmyer, "think it over. I've
+got your post-office address on this program, and we'll write you a formal
+offer. We may spring them figures a little. Think it over."
+
+"You mustn't think," said Jim, "that we've _done_ all the things I
+mentioned in my talk, or that I haven't made any mistakes or failures."
+
+"Your county superintendent didn't mention any failures," said Mr.
+Hofmyer.
+
+"Did you talk with her about my work?" inquired Jim, suddenly very
+curious.
+
+"M'h'm."
+
+"Then I don't see why you want me," Jim went on.
+
+"Why?" asked Mr. Hofmyer.
+
+"I had not supposed," said Jim, "that she had a very high opinion of my
+work."
+
+"I didn't ask her about that," said Mr. Hofmyer, "though I guess she
+thinks well of it. I asked her what you are tryin' to do, and what sort of
+a fellow you are. I was favorably impressed; but she didn't mention any
+failures."
+
+"We haven't succeeded in adopting a successful system of selling our
+cream," said Jim. "I believe we can do it, but we haven't."
+
+"Wal," said Mr. Hofmyer, "I d'know as I'd call that a failure. The fact
+that you're tryin' of it shows you've got the right idees. We'll write ye,
+and mebbe pay your way down to look us over. We're a pretty good crowd,
+the neighbors think."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+THINK OF IT
+
+
+Ames was an inspiration. Jim Irwin received from the great agricultural
+college more real education in this one trip than many students get from a
+four years' course in its halls; for he had spent ten years in getting
+ready for the experience. The great farm of hundreds of acres, all under
+the management of experts, the beautiful campus, the commodious classrooms
+and laboratories, and especially the barns, the greenhouses, gardens,
+herds and flocks filled him with a sort of apostolic joy.
+
+"Every school," said he to Professor Withers, "ought to be doing a good
+deal of the work you have to do here."
+
+"I'll admit," said the professor, "that much of our work in agriculture is
+pretty elementary."
+
+"It's intermediate school work," said Jim. "It's a wrong to force boys and
+girls to leave their homes and live in a college to get so much of what
+they should have before they're ten years old."
+
+"There's something in what you say," said the professor, "but some
+experiment station men seem to think that agriculture in the common
+schools will take from the young men and women the felt need, and
+therefore the desire to come to the college."
+
+"If you can't give them anything better than high-school work," said Jim,
+"that will be so; but if the science and art of agriculture is what I
+think it is, it would make them hungry for the advanced work that really
+can't be done at home. To make the children wait until they're twenty is
+to deny them more than half what the college ought to give them--and make
+them pay for what they don't get."
+
+"I think you're right," said the professor.
+
+"Give us the kind of schools I ask for," cried Jim, "and I'll fill a
+college like this in every congressional district in Iowa, or I'll force
+you to tear this down and build larger."
+
+The professor laughed at his enthusiasm.
+
+More nearly happy, and rather shorter of money than he had recently been,
+Jim journeyed home among the companions from his own neighborhood, in a
+frenzy of plans for the future. Mr. Hofmyer had dropped from his mind,
+until Con Bonner, his old enemy, drew him aside in the vestibule of the
+train and spoke to him in the mysterious manner peculiar to politicians.
+
+"What kind of a proposition did that man Hofmeister make you?" he
+inquired. "He asked me about you, and I told him you're a crackerjack."
+
+"I'm much obliged," replied Jim.
+
+"No use in back-cappin' a fellow that's tryin' to make somethin' of
+himself," said Bonner. "That ain't good politics, nor good sense. Anything
+to him?"
+
+"He offered me a salary of seventy-five dollars a month to take charge of
+his school," said Jim.
+
+"Well," said Con, "we'll be sorry to lose yeh, but you can't turn down
+anything like that."
+
+"I don't know," said Jim. "I haven't decided."
+
+Bonner scrutinized his face sharply, as if to find out what sort of game
+he was playing.
+
+"Well," said he, at last, "I hope you can stay with us, o' course. I'm
+licked, and I never squeal. If the rist of the district can stand your
+kind of thricks, I can. And say, Jim"--here he grew still more
+mysterious--"if you do stay, some of us would like to have you be
+enough of a Dimmycrat to go into the next con'vintion f'r county
+superintendent."
+
+"Why," replied Jim, "I never thought of such a thing!"
+
+"Well, think of it," said Con. "The county's close, and wid a pop'lar
+young educator--an' a farmer, too, it might be done. Think of it."
+
+It must be confessed that Jim was almost dazed at the number of
+"propositions" of which he was now required to "think"--and that Bonner's
+did not at first impress him as having anything back of it but blarney. He
+was to find out later, however, that the wily Con had made up his mind
+that the ambition of Jim to serve the rural schools in a larger sphere
+might be used for the purpose of bringing to earth what he regarded as the
+soaring political ambitions of the Woodruff family.
+
+To defeat the colonel in the defeat of his daughter when running for her
+traditionally-granted second term; to get Jim Irwin out of the Woodruff
+District by kicking him up-stairs into a county office; to split the
+forces which had defeated Mr. Bonner in his own school district; and to do
+these things with the very instrument used by the colonel on that sad but
+glorious day of the last school election--these, to Mr. Bonner, would be
+diabolically fine things to do--things worthy of those Tammany politicians
+who from afar off had won his admiration.
+
+Jim had scarcely taken his seat in the car, facing Jennie Woodruff and
+Bettina Hansen in the Pullman, when Columbus Brown, pathmaster of the road
+district and only across the way from residence in the school district,
+came down the aisle and called Jim to the smoking-room.
+
+"Did an old fellow named Hoffman from Pottawatomie County ask you to leave
+us and take his school?" he asked.
+
+"Mr. Hofmyer," said Jim, "--yes, he did."
+
+"Well," said Columbus, "I don't want to ask you to stand in your own
+light, but I hope you won't let him toll you off there among strangers.
+We're proud of you, Jim, and we don't want to lose you."
+
+Proud of him! Sweet music to the underling's ears! Jim blushed and
+stammered.
+
+"The fact is," said Columbus, "I know that Woodruff District job hain't
+big enough for you any more; but we can make it bigger. If you'll stay, I
+believe we can pull off a deal to consolidate some of them districts, and
+make you boss of the whole shooting match."
+
+"I appreciate this, Clumb," said Jim, "but I don't believe you can do
+it."
+
+"Well, think of it," said Columbus. "And don't do anything till you talk
+with me and a few of the rest of the boys."
+
+"Think of it" again!
+
+A fine home-coming it was for Jim, with the colonel waiting at the station
+with a double sleigh, and the chance to ride into the snowy country in the
+same seat with Jennie--a chance which was blighted by the colonel's
+placing of Jennie, Bettina and Nils Hansen in the broad rear seat, and Jim
+in front with himself. A fine ride, just the same, over fine roads, and
+past fine farmsteads snuggled into their rectangular wrappages of trees
+set out in the old pioneer days. The colonel would not allow him to get
+out and walk when he could really have reached home more quickly by doing
+so; no, he set the Hansens down at their door, took Jennie home, and then
+drove the lightened sleigh merrily to the humble cabin of the rather
+excited young schoolmaster.
+
+"Did you make any deal with those people down in the western part of the
+state?" asked the colonel. "Jennie wrote me that you've got an offer."
+
+"No," said Jim, and he told the colonel about the proposal of Mr.
+Hofmyer.
+
+"Well," said the colonel, "in my capacity of wild-eyed reformer, I've made
+up my mind that the first four miles in the trip is to make the rural
+teacher's job a bigger job. It's got to be a man's size, woman's size job,
+or we can't get real men and real women to stay in the work."
+
+"I think that's a statesmanlike formulation of it," said Jim.
+
+"Well," said the colonel, "don't turn down the Pottawatomie County job
+until we have a chance to see what we can do. I'll get some kind of a
+meeting together, and what I want you to do is to use this offer as a club
+over this helpless school district. What we need is to be held up. Do the
+Jesse James act, Jim!"
+
+"I can't, Colonel!"
+
+"Yes, you can, too. Will you try it?"
+
+"I want to treat everybody fairly," said Jim, "including Mr. Hofmyer. I
+don't know what to do, hardly."
+
+"Well, I'll get the meeting together," said the colonel, "and in the
+meantime, think of what I've said."
+
+Another thing to think of! Jim rushed into the house and surprised his
+mother, who had expected him to arrive after a slow walk from town through
+the snow. Jim caught her in his arms, from which she was released a moment
+later, quite flustered and blushing.
+
+"Why, James," said she, "you seem excited. What's happened?"
+
+"Nothing, mother," he replied, "except that I believe there's just a
+possibility of my being a success in the world!"
+
+"My boy, my boy!" said she, laying her hand on his arm, "if you were to
+die to-night, you'd die the greatest success any boy ever was--if your
+mother is any judge."
+
+Jim kissed her, and went up to his attic to change his clothes. Inside the
+waistcoat was a worn envelope, which he carefully opened, and took from it
+a letter much creased from many foldings. It was the old letter from
+Jennie, written when the comical mistake had been made of making him the
+teacher of the Woodruff school. It still contained her rather fussy
+cautions about being "too original," and the sage statement that "the
+wheel runs easiest in the beaten track." It was written before the
+vexation and trouble he had caused her; but he did not read the advice,
+nor think of the coolness which had come between them--he read only the
+sentence in which Jennie had told of her father's interest in Jim's
+success, ending with the underscored words, "_I'm for you, too._"
+
+"I wonder," said Jim, as he went out to do the evening's tasks, "I wonder
+if she _is_ for me!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+A SCHOOL DISTRICT HELD UP
+
+
+Young McGeehee Simms was loitering along the snowy way to the schoolhouse
+bearing a brightly scoured tin pail two-thirds full of water. He had been
+allowed to act as Water Superintendent of the Woodruff School as a reward
+of merit--said merit being an essay on which he received credit in both
+language and geography on "Harvesting Wheat in the Tennessee Mountains."
+This had been of vast interest to the school in view of the fact that the
+Simmses were the only pupils in the school who had ever seen in use that
+supposedly-obsolete harvesting implement, the cradle. Buddy's essay had
+been passed over to the class in United States history as the evidence of
+an eye-witness concerning farming conditions in our grandfathers' times.
+
+The surnameless Pete, Colonel Woodruff's hired man, halted Buddy at the
+door.
+
+"Mr. Simms, I believe?" he said.
+
+"I reckon you must be lookin' for my brother, Raymond, suh," said Buddy.
+
+"I am a-lookin'," said Pete impressively, "for Mr. McGeehee Simms."
+
+"That's me," said Buddy; "but I hain't been doin' nothin' wrong, suh!"
+
+"I have a message here," said Pete, "for Professor James E. Irwin. He's
+what-ho within, there, ain't he?"
+
+"He's inside, I reckon," said Buddy.
+
+"Then will you be so kind and condescendin' as to stoop so low as to jump
+so high as to give him this letter?" asked Pete.
+
+Buddy took the letter and was considering of his reply to this remarkable
+speech, when Pete, gravely saluting, passed on, rather congratulating
+himself on having staged a very good burlesque of the dignified manners of
+those queer mountaineers, the Simmses.
+
+  "Please come to the meeting to-night," ran the colonel's note to Jim;
+  "and when you come, come prepared to hold the district up. If we
+  can't meet the Pottawatomie County standard of wages, we ought to
+  lose you. Everybody in the district will be there. Come late, so you
+  won't hear yourself talked about--I should recommend nine-thirty and
+  war-paint."
+
+It was a crisis, no doubt of that; and the responsibility of the situation
+rather sickened Jim of the task of teaching. How could he impose
+conditions on the whole school district? How could the colonel expect such
+a thing of him? And how could any one look for anything but scorn for the
+upstart field-hand from these men who had for so many years made him the
+butt of their good-natured but none the less contemptuous ridicule? Who
+was he, anyway, to lay down rules for these substantial and successful
+men--he who had been for all the years of his life at their command,
+subservient to their demands for labor--their underling? Only one thing
+kept him from dodging the whole issue and remaining at home--the colonel's
+matter-of-fact assumption that Jim had become master of the situation. How
+could he flee, when this old soldier was fighting so valiantly for him in
+the trenches? So Jim went to the meeting.
+
+The season was nearing spring, and it was a mild thawy night. The windows
+of the schoolhouse were filled with heads, evidencing the presence of a
+crowd of almost unprecedented size, and the sashes had been thrown up for
+ventilation and coolness. As Jim climbed the back fence of the
+school-yard, he heard a burst of applause, from which he judged that some
+speaker had just finished his remarks. There was silence when he came
+alongside the window at the right of the chairman's desk, a silence broken
+by the voice of Old Man Simms, saying "Mistah Chairman!"
+
+"The chair," said the voice of Ezra Bronson, "recognizes Mr. Simms."
+
+Jim halted in indecision. He was not expected while the debate was in
+progress, and therefore regarded himself at this time as somewhat _de
+trop_. There is no rule of manners or morals, however, forbidding
+eavesdropping during the proceedings of a public meeting--and anyhow, he
+felt rather shiveringly curious about these deliberations. Therefore he
+listened to the first and last public speech of Old Man Simms.
+
+"Ah ain't no speaker," said Old Man Simms, "but Ah cain't set here and be
+quiet an' go home an' face my ole woman an' my boys an' gyuhls withouten
+sayin' a word fo' the best friend any family evah had, Mr. Jim Irwin."
+(Applause.) "Ah owe it to him that Ah've got the right to speak in this
+meetin' at all. Gentlemen, we-all owe everything to Mr. Jim Irwin! Maybe
+Ah'll be thought forrard to speak hyah, bein' as Ah ain't no learnin' an'
+some may think Ah don't pay no taxes; but it will be overlooked, I reckon,
+seein' as how we've took the Blanchard farm, a hundred an' sixty acres,
+for five yeahs, an' move in a week from Sat'day. We pay taxes in our rent,
+Ah reckon, an' howsomever that may be, Ah've come to feel that you-all
+won't think hard of me if Ah speak what we-uns feel so strong about Mr.
+Jim Irwin?"
+
+Old Man Simms finished this exordium with the rising inflection, which
+denoted a direct question as to his status in the meeting. "Go on!"
+"You've got as good a right as any one!" "You're all right, old man!" Such
+exclamations as these came to Jim's ears with scarcely less gratefulness
+than to those of Old Man Simms--who stammered and went on.
+
+"Ah thank you-all kindly. Gentlemen an' ladies, when Mr. Jim Irwin found
+us, we was scandalous pore, an' we was wuss'n pore--we was low-down."
+(Cries of "No--No!") "Yes, we was, becuz what's respectable in the
+mountings is one thing, whar all the folks is pore, but when a man gets in
+a new place, he's got to lift himse'f up to what folks does where he's
+come to, or he'll fall to the bottom of what there is in that there
+community--an' maybe he'll make a place fer himse'f lower'n anybody else.
+In the mountings we was good people, becuz we done the best we could an'
+the best any one done; but hyah, we was low-down people becuz we hated the
+people that had mo' learnin', mo' land, mo' money, an' mo' friends than
+what we had. My little gyuhls wasn't respectable in their clothes. My
+childern was igernant, an' triflin', but I was the most triflin' of all.
+Ah'll leave it to Colonel Woodruff if I was good fer a plug of terbacker,
+or a bakin' of flour at any sto' in the county. Was I, Colonel? Wasn't I
+perfectly wuthless an' triflin'?"
+
+There was a ripple of laughter, in the midst of which the colonel's voice
+was heard saying, "I guess you were, Mr. Simms, I guess you were,
+but----"
+
+"Thankee," said Old Man Simms, as if the colonel had given a really
+valuable testimonial to his character. "I sho' was! Thankee kindly!
+An'now, what am I good fer? Cain't I get anything I want at the stores?
+Cain't I git a little money at the bank, if I got to have it?"
+
+"You're just as good as any man in the district," said the colonel. "You
+don't ask for more than you can pay, and you can get all you ask."
+
+"Thankee," said Mr. Simms gravely. "What Ah tell you-all is right, ladies
+and gentlemen. An' what has made the change in we-uns, ladies and
+gentlemen? It's the wuk of Mr. Jim Irwin with my boy Raymond, the best boy
+any man evah hed, and my gyuhl, Calista, an' Buddy, an' Jinnie, an' with
+me an' my ole woman. He showed us how to get a toe-holt into this new
+kentry. He teached the children what orto be did by a rentin' farmer in
+Ioway. He done lifted us up, an' made people of us. He done showed us that
+you-all is good people, an' not what we thought you was. Outen what he
+learned in school, my boy Raymond an' me made as good crops as we could
+last summer, an' done right much wuk outside. We got the name of bein'
+good farmers an' good wukkers, an' when Mr. Blanchard moved to town, he
+said he was glad to give us his fine farm for five years. Now, see what
+Mr. Jim Irwin has done for a pack o' outlaws and outcasts. Instid o'
+hidin' out from the Hobdays that was lay-wayin' us in the mountings, we'll
+be livin' in a house with two chimleys an' a swimmin' tub made outen
+crock'ryware. We'll be in debt a whole lot--an' we owe it to Mr. Jim Irwin
+that we got the credit to git in debt with, an' the courage to go on and
+git out agin!" (Applause.) "Ah could affo'd to pay Mr. Jim Irwin's salary
+mysr'f, if Ah could. An' there's enough men hyah to-night that say they've
+been money-he'ped by his teachin' the school to make up mo' than his
+wages. Let's not let Mr. Jim Irwin go, neighbors! Let's not let him go!"
+
+Jim's heart sank. Surely the case was desperate which could call forth
+such a forlorn-hope charge as that of Old Man Simms--a performance on Mr.
+Simms' part which warmed Jim's soul. "There isn't a man in that meeting,"
+said he to himself, as he walked to the schoolhouse door, "possessed of
+the greatness of spirit of Old Man Simms. If he's a fair sample of the
+people of the mountains, they are of the stuff of which great nations are
+made--if they only are given a chance!"
+
+Colonel Woodruff was on his feet as Jim made his way through the crowd
+about the door.
+
+"Mr. Irwin is here, ladies and gentlemen," said he, "and I move that we
+hear from him as to what we can do to meet the offer of our friends in
+Pottawatomie County, who have heard of his good work, and want him to work
+for them; but before I yield the floor, I want to say that this meeting
+has been worth while just to have been the occasion of our all becoming
+better acquainted with our friend and neighbor, Mr. Simms. Whatever may
+have been the lack of understanding, on our part, of his qualities, they
+were all cleared up by that speech of his--the best I have ever heard in
+this neighborhood."
+
+More applause, in the midst of which Old Man Simms slunk away down in his
+seat to escape observation. Then the chairman said that if there was no
+objection they would hear from their well-known citizen, whose growing
+fame was more remarkable for the fact that it had been gained as a country
+schoolmaster--he need not add that he referred to Mr. James E. Irwin. More
+and louder applause.
+
+"Friends and neighbors," said Jim, "you ask me to say to you what I want
+you to do. I want you to do what you want to do--nothing more nor less.
+Last year I was glad to be tolerated here; and the only change in the
+situation lies in the fact that I have another place offered me--unless
+there has been a change in your feelings toward me and my work. I hope
+there has been; for I know my work is good now, whereas I only believed it
+then."
+
+"Sure it is!" shouted Con Bonner from a front seat, thus signalizing that
+astute wire-puller's definite choice of a place in the bandwagon. "Tell us
+what you want, Jim!"
+
+"What do I want?" asked Jim. "More than anything else, I want such
+meetings as this--often--and a place to hold them. If I stay in the
+Woodruff District, I want this meeting to effect a permanent organization
+to work with me. I can't teach this district anything. Nobody can teach
+any one anything. All any teacher can do is to direct people's activities
+in teaching themselves. You are gathered here to decide what you'll do
+about the small matter of keeping me at work as your hired man. You can't
+make any legal decision here, but whatever this meeting decides will be
+law, just the same, because a majority of the people of the district are
+here. Such a meeting as this can decide almost anything. If I'm to be your
+hired man, I want a boss in the shape of a civic organization which will
+take in every man and woman in the district. Here's the place and now's
+the time to make that organization--an organization the object of which
+shall be to put the whole district at school, and to boss me in my work
+for the whole district."
+
+"Dat sounds good," cried Haakon Peterson. "Ve'll do dat!"
+
+"Then I want you to work out a building scheme for the school," Jim went
+on. "We want a place where the girls can learn to cook, keep house, take
+care of babies, sew and learn to be wives and mothers. We want a place in
+which Mrs. Hansen can come to show them how to cure meat--she's the best
+hand at that in the county--where Mrs. Bonner can teach them to make bread
+and pastry--she ought to be given a doctor's degree for that--where Mrs.
+Woodruff can teach them the cooking of turkeys, Mrs. Peterson the way to
+give the family a balanced ration, and Mrs. Simms induct them into the
+mysteries of weaving rag rugs and making jellies and preserves--you can
+all learn these things from her. There's somebody right in this
+neighborhood able to teach anything the young people want to learn.
+
+"And I want a physician here once in a while to examine the children as to
+their health, and a dentist to look after their teeth and teach them how
+to care for them. Also an oculist to examine their eyes. And when Bettina
+Hansen comes home from the hospital a trained nurse, I want her to have a
+job as visiting nurse right here in the Woodruff District.
+
+"I want a counting-room for the keeping of the farm accounts and the
+record of our observation in farming. I want cooperation in letting us
+have these accounts.
+
+"I want some manual training equipment for wood-working and metal working,
+and a blacksmith and wagon shop, in which the boys may learn to shoe
+horses, repair tools, design buildings, and practise the best agricultural
+engineering. So I want a blacksmith and handyman with tools regularly on
+the job--and he'll more than pay his way. I want some land for actual
+farming. I want to do work in poultry according to the most modern
+breeding discoveries, and I want your cooperation in that, and a poultry
+plant somewhere in the district.
+
+"I want a laboratory in which we can work on seeds, pests, soils, feeds
+and the like. For the education of your children must come out of these
+things.
+
+"I want these things because they are necessary if we are to get the
+culture out of life we should get--and nobody gets culture out of any sort
+of school--they get it out of life, or they don't get it at all.
+
+"So I want you to build as freely for your school as for your cattle and
+horses and hogs.
+
+"The school I ask for will make each of you more money than the taxes it
+will require would make if invested in your farm equipment. If you are not
+convinced of this, don't bother with me any longer. But the money the
+school will make for you--this new kind of rural school--will be as
+nothing to the social life which will grow up--a social life which will
+make necessary an assembly-room, which will be the social center, because
+it will be the educational center, and the business center of the
+countryside.
+
+"I want all these things, and more. But I don't expect them all at once. I
+know that this district is too small to do all of them, and therefore, I
+am going to tell you of another want which will tempt you to think that I
+am crazy. I want a bigger district--one that will give us the financial
+strength to carry out the program I have sketched. This may be a
+presumptuous thing for me to propose; but the whole situation here
+to-night is presumptuous on my part, I fear. If you think so, let me go;
+but if you don't, please keep this meeting together in a permanent
+organization of grown-up members of the Woodruff school, and by pulling
+together, you can do these things--all of them--and many more--and you'll
+make the Woodruff District a good place to live in and die in--and I shall
+be proud to live and die in it at your service, as the neighborhood's
+hired man!"
+
+As Jim sat down there was a hush in the crowded room, as if the people
+were dazed at his assurance. There was no applause, until Jennie Woodruff,
+now seen by Jim for the first time over next the blackboard, clapped her
+gloved hands together and started it; then it swept out through the
+windows in a storm. The dust rose from stamping feet until the kerosene
+lamps were dimmed by it. And as the noise subsided, Jim saw standing out
+in front the stooped form of B. B. Hamm, one of the most prosperous men in
+the district.
+
+"Mr. Chairman--Ezra Bronson," he roared, "this feller's crazy, an' from
+the sound of things, you're all as crazy as he is. If this fool scheme of
+his goes through, my farm's for sale! I'll quit before I'm sold out for
+taxes!"
+
+"Just a minute, B. B.!" interposed Colonel Woodruff. "This ain't as
+dangerous as you think. You don't want us to do all this in fifteen
+minutes, do you, Jim?"
+
+"Oh, as to that," replied Jim, "I just wanted you to have in your minds
+what I have in my mind--and unless we can agree to work toward these
+things there's no use in my staying. But time--that's another matter.
+Believe with me, and I'll work with you."
+
+"Get out of here!" said the colonel to Jim in an undertone, "and leave the
+rest to your friends."
+
+Jim walked out of the room and took the way toward his home. A horse tied
+to the hitching-pole had his blanket under foot, and Jim replaced it on
+his back, patting him kindly and talking horse language to him. Then he
+went up and down the line of teams, readjusting blankets, tying loosened
+knots, and assuring himself that his neighbors' horses were securely tied
+and comfortable. He knew horses better than he knew people, he thought. If
+he could manage people as he could manage horses--but that would be wrong.
+The horse did his work as a servant, submissive to the wills of others;
+the community could never develop anything worth while in its common life,
+until it worked the system out for itself. Horse management was despotism;
+man-government must be like the government of a society of wild horses,
+the result of the common work of the members of the herd.
+
+Two figures emerged from the schoolhouse door, and as he turned toward his
+home after his pastoral calls on the horses, they overtook him. They were
+the figures of Newton Bronson and the county superintendent of schools.
+
+"We were coming after you," said Jennie.
+
+"Dad wants you back there again," said Newton.
+
+"What for?" inquired Jim.
+
+"You silly boy," said Jennie, "you talked about the good of the schools
+all of the time, and never said a word about your own salary! What do you
+want? They want to know?"
+
+"Oh!" exclaimed Jim in the manner of one who suddenly remembers that he
+has forgotten his umbrella or his pocket-knife. "I forgot all about it. I
+haven't thought about that at all, Jennie!"
+
+"Jim," said she, "you need a guardian!"
+
+"I know it, Jennie," said he, "and I know who I want. I want----"
+
+"Please come back," said Jennie, "and tell papa how much you're going to
+hold the district up for."
+
+"You run back," said Jim to Newton, "and tell your father that whatever is
+right in the way of salary will be satisfactory to me. I leave that to the
+people."
+
+Newton darted off, leaving the schoolmaster standing in the road with the
+county superintendent.
+
+"I can't go back there!" said Jim.
+
+"I'm proud of you, Jim," said Jennie. "This community has found its
+master. They can't do all you ask now, nor very soon; but finally they'll
+do just as you want them to do. And, Jim, I want to say that I've been the
+biggest little fool in the county!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+AN EMBASSY FROM DIXIE
+
+
+Superintendent Jennie sat at her desk in no very satisfactory frame of
+mind. In the first place court was to convene on the following Monday, and
+both grand jury and petit juries would be in session, so that her one-room
+office was not to be hers for a few days. Her desk was even now ready to
+be moved into the hall by the janitor. To Wilbur Smythe, who did her the
+honor of calling occasionally as the exigencies of his law practise took
+him past the office of the pretty country girl on whose shapely shoulders
+rested the burden of the welfare of the schools, she remarked that if they
+didn't soon build the new court-house so as to give her such
+accommodations as her office really needed, "they might take their old
+office--so there!"
+
+"Fair woman," said Wilbur, as he creased his Prince Albert in a parting
+bow, "should adorn the home!"
+
+"Bosh!" sneered Jennie, rather pleased, all the same, "suppose she isn't
+fair, and hasn't any home!"
+
+This question of adorning a home was no nearer settlement with Jennie than
+it had ever been, though increasingly a matter of speculation.
+
+There were two or three men--rather good catches, too--who, if they were
+encouraged--but what was there to any of them? Take Wilbur Smythe, now; he
+would by sheer force of persistent assurance and fair abilities eventually
+get a good practise for a country lawyer--three or four thousand a
+year--serve in the legislature or the state senate, and finally become a
+bank director with a goodly standing as a safe business man; but what was
+there to him? This is what Jennie asked her paper-weight as she placed it
+on a pile of unfinished examination papers. And the paper-weight echoed,
+"Not a thing out of the ordinary!" And then, said Jennie, "Well, you
+little simpleton, who and what are _you_ so out of the ordinary that you
+should sneer at Wilbur Smythe and Beckman Fifield and such men?" And echo
+answered, "What?"--and then the mail-carrier came in.
+
+Down near the bottom of the pile she found this letter, signed by a
+southern state superintendent of schools, but dated at Kirksville,
+Missouri:
+
+  "I am a member of a party of southern educators--state
+  superintendents in the main," the letter ran, "_en tour_ of the
+  country to see what we can find of an instructive nature in rural
+  school work. I assure you that we are being richly repaid for the
+  time and expense. There are things going on in the schools here in
+  northeastern Missouri, for instance, which merit much study. We have
+  met Professor Withers, of Ames, who suggests that we visit your
+  schools, and especially the rural school taught by a young man named
+  Irwin, and I wonder if you will be free on next Monday morning, if we
+  come to your office, to direct us to the place? If you could
+  accompany us on the trip, and perhaps show us some of your other
+  excellent schools, we should be honored and pleased. The South is
+  recreating her rural schools, and we are coming to believe that we
+  shall be better workmen if we create a new kind rather than an
+  improvement of the old kind."
+
+There was more of this courteous and deferential letter, all giving Jennie
+a sense of being saluted by a fine gentleman in satin and ruffles, and
+with a plume on his hat. And then came the shock--a party of state
+officials were coming into the county to study Jim Irwin's school! They
+would never come to study Wilbur Smythe's law practise--never in the
+world--or her work as county superintendent--never!--and Jim was getting
+seventy-five dollars a month, and had a mother to support. Moreover, he
+was getting more than he had asked when the colonel had told him to "hold
+the district up!" But there could be no doubt that there was something
+_to_ Jim--the man was out of the ordinary. And wasn't that just what she
+had been looking for in her mind?
+
+Jennie wired to her southerner for the number of his party, and secured
+automobiles for the trip. She sent a note to Jim Irwin telling of the
+prospective visitation. She would show all concerned that she could do
+some things, anyhow, and she would send these people on with a good
+impression of her county.
+
+She was glad of the automobiles the next Monday morning, when at
+nine-thirty the train discharged upon her a dozen very alert, very
+up-to-date, very inquisitive southerners, male and female, most of whom
+seemed to have left their "r's" in the gulf region. It was eleven when the
+party parked their machines before the schoolhouse door.
+
+"There are visitors here before us," said Jennie.
+
+"Seems rather like an educational shrine," said Doctor Brathwayt, of
+Mississippi. "How does he accommodate so many visitors in that small
+edifice?"
+
+"I am not aware," said Jennie, "that he has been in the habit of receiving
+so very many from outside the district. Well, shall we go in?"
+
+Once inside, Jennie felt a queer return of her old aversion to Jim's
+methods--the aversion which had caused her to criticize him so sharply on
+the occasion of her first visit. The reason for the return of the feeling
+lay in the fact that the work going on was of the same sort, but of a more
+intense character. It was so utterly unlike a school as Jennie understood
+the word, that she glanced back at the group of educators with a little
+blush. The school was in a sort of uproar. Not that uproar of boredom and
+mischief of which most of us have familiar memories, but a sort of eager
+uproar, in which every child was intensely interested in the same thing;
+and did little rustling things because of this interest; something like
+the hum at a football game or a dog-fight.
+
+On one side of the desk stood Jim Irwin, and facing him was a smooth
+stranger of the old-fashioned lightning-rod-agent type--the shallower and
+laxer sort of salesman of the kind whose sole business is to get
+signatures on the dotted line, and let some one else do the rest. In
+short, he was a "closer."
+
+Standing back of him in evident distress was Mr. Cornelius Bonner, and
+grouped about were Columbus Brown, B. B. Hamm, Ezra Bronson, A. B. Talcott
+and two or three others from outside the Woodruff District. With envelopes
+in their hands and the light of battle in their eyes stood Newton Bronson,
+Raymond Simms, Bettina Hansen, Mary Smith and Angie Talcott, the boys
+filled with delight, the girls rather frightened at being engaged in
+something like a debate with the salesman.
+
+As the latest-coming visitors moved forward, they heard the schoolmaster
+finishing his passage at arms with the salesman.
+
+"You should not feel exasperated at us, Mr. Carmichael," said he in tones
+of the most complete respect, "for what our figures show. You are
+unfortunate in the business proposition you offer this community. That is
+all. Even these children have the facts to prove that the creamery outfit
+you offer is not worth within two thousand dollars of what you ask for it,
+and that it is very doubtful if it is the sort of outfit we should need."
+
+"I'll bet you a thousand dollars--" began Carmichael hotly, when Jim waved
+him down.
+
+"Not with me," said Jim. "Your friend, Mr. Bonner, there, knows what
+chance there is for you to bet even a thousand cents with me. Besides, we
+know our facts, in this school. We've been working on them for a long
+time."
+
+"Bet your life we have!" interpolated Newton Bronson.
+
+"Before we finish," said Jim, "I want to thank you gentlemen for bringing
+in Mr. Carmichael. We have been reading up on the literature of the
+creamery promoter, and it is a very fine thing to have one in the flesh
+with whom to--to--demonstrate, if Mr. Carmichael will allow me to say
+so."
+
+Carmichael looked at Bonner, made an expressive motion with his head
+toward the door, and turned as if to leave.
+
+"Well," said he, "I can do plenty of business with _men_. If you _men_
+want to make the deal I offer you, and I can show you from the statistics
+I've got at the hotel that it's a special deal just to get started in this
+part of the state, and carries a thousand dollars of cut in price to you.
+Let's leave these children and this he school-ma'am and get something
+done."
+
+"I can't allow you to depart," said Jim more gently than before, "without
+thanking you for the very excellent talk you gave us on the advantage of
+the cooperative creamery over the centralizer. We in this school believe
+in the cooperative creamery, and if we can get rid of you, Mr. Carmichael,
+without buying your equipment, I think your work here may be productive of
+good."
+
+"He's off three or four points on the average overrun in the Wisconsin
+co-ops," said Newton.
+
+"And we thought," said Mary Smith, "that we'd need more cows than he said
+to keep up a creamery of our own."
+
+"Oh," replied Jim, "but we mustn't expect Mr. Carmichael to know the
+subject as well as we do, children. He makes a practise of talking mostly
+to people who know nothing about it--and he talks very well. All in favor
+of thanking Mr. Carmichael please say 'Aye.'"
+
+There was a rousing chorus of "Aye!" in which Mr. Carmichael, followed
+closely by Mr. Bonner, made his exit. B. B. Hamm went forward and shook
+Jim's hand slowly and contemplatively, as if trying to remember just what
+he should say.
+
+"James E. Irwin," said he, "you've saved us from being skinned by the
+smoothest grafter that I ever seen."
+
+"Not I," said Jim; "the kind of school I stand for, Mr. Hamm, will save
+you more than that--and give you the broadest culture any school ever
+gave. A culture based on life. We've been studying life, in this
+school--the life we all live here in this district."
+
+"He had a smooth partner, too," said Columbus Brown. Jim looked at
+Bonner's little boy in one of the front seats and shook his head at
+Columbus warningly.
+
+"If I hadn't herded 'em in here to ask you a few questions about
+cooperative creameries," said Mr. Talcott, "we'd have been stuck--they
+pretty near had our names. And then the whole neighborhood would have been
+sucked in for about fifty dollars a name."
+
+"I'd have gone in for two hundred," said B. B. Hamm.
+
+"May I call a little meeting here for a minute, Jim?" asked Ezra Bronson.
+"Why, where's he gone?"
+
+"They's some other visitors come in," said a little girl, pulling her
+apron in embarrassment at the teacher's absence.
+
+Jim had, after what seemed to Jennie an interminable while, seen the
+county superintendent and her distinguished party, and was now engaged in
+welcoming them and endeavoring to find them seats,--quite an impossible
+thing at that particular moment, by the way.
+
+"Don't mind us, Mr. Irwin," said Doctor Brathwayt. "This is the best thing
+we've seen on our journeyings. Please go on with the proceedin's. That
+gentleman seems to have in mind the perfectin' of some so't of
+organization. I'm intensely interested."
+
+"I'd like to call a little meetin' here," said Ezra to the teacher.
+"Seein' we've busted up your program so far, may we take a little while
+longer?"
+
+"Certainly," said Jim. "The school will please come to order."
+
+The pupils took their seats, straightened their books and papers, and were
+at attention. Doctor Brathwayt nodded approvingly as if at the answer to
+some question in his mind.
+
+"Children," said Mr. Irwin, "you may or may not be interested in what
+these gentlemen are about to do--but I hope you are. Those who wish may be
+members of Mr. Bronson's meeting. Those who do not prefer to do so may
+take up their regular work."
+
+"Gentlemen," said Mr. Bronson to the remains of Mr. Carmichael's creamery
+party, "we've been cutting bait in this neighborhood about long enough.
+I'm in favor of fishing, now. It would have been the biggest disgrace ever
+put on this district to have been swindled by that sharper, when the man
+that could have set us right on the subject was right here working for us,
+and we never let him have a chance. And yet that's what we pretty near
+did. How many here favor building a cooperative creamery if we can get the
+farmers in with cows enough to make it profitable, and the equipment at
+the right price?"
+
+Each man held up a hand.
+
+"Here's one of our best farmers not voting," said Mr. Bronson, indicating
+Raymond Simms. "How about you, Raymond?"
+
+"Ah reckon paw'll come in," said Raymond blushingly.
+
+"He will if you say so," said Mr. Bronson.
+
+Raymond's hand went up amid a ripple of applause from the pupils, who
+seemed glad to have a voter in their ranks.
+
+"Unanimous!" said Mr. Bronson. "It is a vote! Now I'd like to hear a
+motion to perfect a permanent organization to build a creamery."
+
+"I think we ought to have a secretary first," said Mr. Talcott, "and I
+nominate Mr. James E. Irwin for the post."
+
+"Quite correct," said Mr. Bronson, "thankee, A. B. I was about to forgit
+the secretary. Any other nominations? No 'bjections, Mr. Irwin will be
+declared unanimously elected. Mr. Irwin's elected. Mr. Irwin, will you
+please assume the duties?"
+
+Jim sat down at the desk and began making notes.
+
+"I think we ought to call this the Anti-Carmichael Protective
+Association," said Columbus Brown, but Mr. Bronson interrupted him, rather
+frowningly.
+
+"All in good time, Clumb," said he, "but this is serious work." So
+admonished, the meeting appointed committees, fixed upon a time for a
+future meeting, threw a collection of half-dollars on the desk to start a
+petty cash fund, made the usual joke about putting the secretary under
+bond, adjourned and dispersed.
+
+"It's a go this time!" said Newton to Jim.
+
+"I think so," said Jim, "with those men interested. Well, our study of
+creameries has given a great deal of language work, a good deal of
+arithmetic, some geography, and finally saved the people from a swindle.
+Rather good work, Raymond!"
+
+"My mother has a delayed luncheon ready for the party," said Jennie to
+Jim. "Please come with us--please!"
+
+But Jim demurred. Getting off at this time of day was really out of the
+question if he was to be ready to show the real work of the school in the
+afternoon session.
+
+"This has been rather extraordinary," said Jim, "but I am very glad you
+were here. It shows the utility of the right sort of work in
+letter-writing, language, geography and arithmetic--in learning things
+about farming."
+
+"It certainly does," said Doctor Brathwayt. "I wouldn't have missed it
+under any consideration; but I'm certainly sorry for that creamery shark
+and his accomplice--to be routed by the Fifth Reader grade in farming!"
+
+The luncheon was rather a wonderful affair--and its success was
+unqualified after everybody discovered that the majority of those in
+attendance felt much more at home when calling it dinner. Colonel Woodruff
+had fought against the regiment of the father of Professor Gray, of
+Georgia, in at least one engagement, and tentative plans were laid for the
+meeting of the two old veterans "some winter in the future."
+
+"What d'ye think of our school?" asked the colonel.
+
+"Well," said Professor Gray, "it's not fair to judge, Colonel, on what
+must have been rather an extraordinary moment in the school's history. I
+take it that you don't put on a representation of 'The Knave Unmasked'
+every morning."
+
+"It was more like a caucus than I've ever seen it, daddy," said Jennie,
+"and less like a school."
+
+"Don't you think," said Doctor Brathwayt, "that it was less like a school
+because it was more like life? It _was_ life. If I am not mistaken,
+history for this community was making in that schoolroom as we entered."
+
+"You're perfectly right, Doctor," said the colonel. "Columbus Brown and
+about a dozen others living outside the district are calling Wilbur Smythe
+in counsel to perfect plans for an election to consolidate a few of these
+little independent districts, for the express purpose of giving Jim Irwin
+a plant that he can do something with. Jim's got too big for the district,
+and so we're going to enlarge the district, and the schoolhouse, and the
+teaching force, and the means of educational grace generally. That's as
+sure as can be--after what took place this morning."
+
+"He's rather a wonderful person, to be found in such a position," said
+Professor Gray, "or would be in any region I have visited."
+
+"He's a native product," said the colonel, "but a wonder all the same.
+He's a Brown Mouse, you know."
+
+"A--a--?" Doctor Brathwayt was plainly astonished. And so the colonel was
+allowed to tell again the story of the Darbishire brown mice, and why he
+called Jim Irwin one. Doctor Brathwayt said it was an interesting
+Mendelian explanation of the appearance of such a character as Jim. "And
+if you are right, Colonel, you'll lose him one of these days. You can't
+expect to retain a Cæsar, a Napoleon, or a Lincoln in a rural school, can
+you?"
+
+"I don't know about that," said the colonel. "The great opportunity for
+such a Brown Mouse may be in this very school, right now. He'd have as big
+an army right here as Socrates ever had. The Brown Mouse is the only judge
+of his own proper place."
+
+"I think," said Mrs. Brathwayt, as they motored back to the school, "that
+your country schoolmaster is rather terrible. The way he crushed that Mr.
+Carmichael was positively merciless. Did he know how cruel he was?"
+
+"I think not," said Jennie. "It was the truth that crushed Mr.
+Carmichael."
+
+"But that vote of thanks," said Mrs. Brathwayt. "Surely that was the
+bitterest irony."
+
+"I wonder if it was," said Jennie. "No, I am sure it wasn't. He wanted to
+leave the children thinking as well as possible of their victim, and
+especially of Mr. Bonner; and there was really something in Mr.
+Carmichael's talk which could be praised. I have known Jim Irwin since we
+were both children, and I feel sure that if he had had any idea that his
+treatment of this man had been unnecessarily cruel, it would have given
+him a lot of pain."
+
+"My dear," said Mrs. Brathwayt, "I think you are to be congratulated for
+having known for a long time a genius."
+
+"Thank you," said Jennie. And Mrs. Brathwayt gave her a glance which
+brought to her cheek another blush; but of a different sort from the one
+provoked by the uproar in the Woodruff school.
+
+There could be no doubt now that Jim was thoroughly wonderful--nor that
+she, the county superintendent, was quite as thoroughly a little fool. She
+to be put in authority over him! It was too absurd for laughter.
+Fortunately, she hadn't hindered him much--but who was to be thanked for
+that? Was it owing to any wisdom of hers? Well, she had decided in his
+favor, in those first proceedings to revoke his certificate. Perhaps that
+was as good a thing to remember as was to be found in the record.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+AND SO THEY LIVED----
+
+
+And so it turned out quite as if it were in the old ballad, that "all in
+the merry month of May," and also "all in the merry green wood," there
+were great doings about the bold little promontory where once stood the
+cabin on the old wood-lot where the Simms family had dwelt. The brook ran
+about the promontory, and laid at its feet on three sides a carpet of
+blue-grass, amid clumps of trees and wild bushes. Not far afield on either
+hand came the black corn-land, but up and down the bluffy sides of the
+brook for some distance on both sides of the King-dragged highway, ran the
+old wood-lot, now regaining much of the unkempt appearance which
+characterized it when Jim Irwin had drawn upon himself the gentle rebuke
+of Old Man Simms for not giving a whoop from the big road before coming
+into the yard.
+
+But Old Man Simms was gone, with all the Simmses, now thoroughly
+established on the Blanchard farm, and quite happy in their new success.
+The cabin was gone, and in its place stood a pretty little bungalow, about
+which blossomed the lilacs and peonies and roses and other old-fashioned
+flowers, planted there long ago by some pioneer woman, nourished back to
+thriftiness by old Mrs. Simms, and carefully preserved during the
+struggles with the builders of the bungalow by Mrs. Irwin. For this was
+Mrs. Irwin's new home. It was, in point of fact, the teacher's house or
+schoolmanse for the new consolidated Woodruff District, and the old Simms
+wood-lot was the glebe-land of the schoolmanse.
+
+Jim turned over and over in his mind these new applications of old,
+historic, significant words, dear to every reader of
+history--"glebe-land," "schoolmanse"--and it seemed to him that they
+signified the return of many old things lost in Merrie England, lost in
+New England, lost all over the English-speaking world, when the old
+publicly-paid clergyman ceased to be so far the servant of all the people
+that they refused to be taxed for his support. Was not the new kind of
+rural teacher to be a publicly-paid leader of thought, of culture, of
+progress, and was he not to have his manse, his glebe-land, and his
+"living"? And all because, like the old clergymen, he was doing a work in
+which everybody was interested and for which they were willing to be
+taxed. Perhaps it was not so high a status as the old; but who was to say
+that? Certainly not Jim Irwin, the possessor of the new kind of "living,"
+with its "glebe-land" and its "schoolmanse." He would have rated the new
+quite as high as the old.
+
+From the brow of the promontory, a light concrete bridge took the pretty
+little gorge in the leap of a single arch, and landed the eye at the
+bottom of the front yard of the schoolhouse. Thus the new institution of
+life was in full view of the schoolmanse veranda, and yet shut off from it
+by the dry moat of the brook and its tiny meadow of blue-grass.
+
+Across the road was the creamery, with its businesslike unloading
+platform, and its addition in process of construction for the reception of
+the machinery for the cooperative laundry. Not far from the creamery, and
+also across the road, stood the blacksmith and wheelwright shop. Still
+farther down the stream were the barn, poultry house, pens, hutches and
+yards of the little farm--small, economically made, and unpretentious, as
+were all the buildings save the schoolhouse itself, which was builded for
+the future.
+
+And even the schoolhouse, when one thinks of the uses to which it was to
+be put--kitchen, nursery, kindergarten, banquet-hall, theater,
+moving-picture hall, classrooms, manual training rooms, laboratory and
+counting-room and what-not, was wonderfully small--Colonel Woodruff said
+far too small--though it was necessarily so large as to be rather
+astonishing to the unexpectant passer-by.
+
+The unexpectant passer-by this May day, however, would have been
+especially struck by the number of motor-cars, buggies and surreys parked
+in the yard back of the creamery, along the roadside, and by the driveway
+running to the schoolhouse. People in numbers had arrived by five o'clock
+in the afternoon, and were still coming. They strolled about the place,
+examining the buildings and grounds, and talking with the blacksmith and
+the butter-maker, gradually drawing into the schoolhouse like a swarm of
+bees into a hive selected by the queen. None of them, however, went across
+the concrete bridge to the schoolmanse, save Mrs. Simms, who crossed,
+consulted with Mrs. Irwin about the shrubbery and flowers, and went back
+to Buddie and Jinnie, who were good children but natchally couldn't be
+trusted with so many other young ones withouten some watchin'.
+
+"They're coming! They're coming!"
+
+This was the cry borne to the people in and about the schoolhouse by that
+Hans Hansen who would be called Hans Nilsen. Hans had been to the top of
+the little hill and had a look toward town. Like a crew manning the
+rigging, or a crowd having its picture taken, the assemblage crystallized
+into forms determined by the chances of getting a glimpse of the bungalow
+across the ravine--on posts, fences, trees and hillocks. Still nobody went
+across the bridge, and when McGeehee Simms and Johnny Bonner strayed to
+the bridge-head, Mrs. Simms called them back by a minatory, "Buddy, what
+did I _tell_ you? You come hyah!"
+
+A motor-car came over the hillock, ran down the road to the driveway to
+the schoolmanse and drew up at the door. Out of it stepped Mrs. Woodruff
+and the colonel, their daughter, the county superintendent of schools, and
+Mr. Jim Irwin. Jennie was dressed in a very well-tailored traveling
+costume, and Jim in a moderately well-tailored business suit. Mrs. Irwin
+kissed her son and Jennie, and led the way into the house. Jennie and Jim
+followed--and when they went in, the crowd over across the ravine burst
+forth into a tremendous cheer, followed by a three-times-three and a
+tiger. The unexpectant passer-by would have been rather surprised at this,
+but we who are acquainted with the parties must all begin to have our
+suspicions. The fact that when they reached the threshold Jim picked
+Jennie up in his arms and carried her in, will enable any good detective
+to put one and one together and make a pair--which comes pretty near
+telling the whole story.
+
+By this time it was nearly seven, and Calista Simms came across the
+charmed bridge as a despatch-bearer, saying that if Mr. Jim and Miss
+Jennie didn't mind, dinner would be suhved right soon. It was cooked about
+right, and the folks was gettin' right hungry--an' such a crowd! There
+were fifteen in the babies' room, and for a while they thought the
+youngest Hamm young one had swallowed a marble. She would tell 'em they
+would be right over; good-by.
+
+There was another cheer as the three elderly and the two young people
+emerged from the schoolmanse and took their way over the bridge to the
+school side of the velvet-bottomed moat; but it did not terminate in
+three-times-three and a tiger. It was, in fact shut off like the vibration
+of a bell dipped in water by the sudden rush of the shouters into the big
+assembly-room, now filled with tables for the banquet--and here the
+domestic economy classes, with their mothers, sisters, female cousins and
+aunts, met them, as waiters, hat-snatchers, hostesses, floor-managers and
+cooks, scoring the greatest triumph of history in the Woodruff District.
+For everything went off like clockwork, especially the victuals--and such
+victuals!
+
+There was quantity in meats, breads, vegetables--and there was also savor.
+There was plenty, and there was style. Ask Mrs. Haakon Peterson, who
+yearned for culture, and had been afraid her children wouldn't get it if
+Yim Irwin taught them nothing but farming. She will tell you that the
+dinner--which so many thought of all the time as supper--was yust as well
+served as it if had been in the Chamberlain Hotel in Des Moines, where she
+had stayed when she went with Haakon to the state convention.
+
+Why shouldn't it have been even better served? It was planned, cooked,
+served and eaten by people of intelligence and brains, in their own house,
+as a community affair, and in a community where, if any one should ask
+you, you are authorized to state that there's as much wealth to the acre
+as in any strictly farming spot between the two oceans, and where you are
+perfectly safe--financially--in dropping from a balloon in the dark of the
+moon, and paying a hundred and fifty dollars an acre for any farm you
+happen to land on. Why shouldn't things have been well done, when every
+one worked, not for money, but for the love of the doing, and the love of
+learning to do in the best way?
+
+Some of these things came out in the speeches following the repast--and
+some other things, too. It was probably not quite fair for B. B. Hamm to
+incorporate in his wishes for the welfare and prosperity and so forth of
+Jim and Jennie that stale one about the troubles of life, but he wanted to
+see Jennie blush--which as a matter of fact he did; but she failed to grow
+quite so fiery red as did Jim. But B. B. was a good fellow, and a Trojan
+in his work for the cause, and the schoolmaster and superintendent of
+schools forgave him. A remark may be a little broad, and still clean, and
+B. B. made a clean speech mainly devoted to the increased value of that
+farm he at one memorable time was going to sell before Jim's fool notions
+could be carried out.
+
+Colonel Woodruff made most of the above points which I have niched from
+him. He had begun as a reformer late in life, he said, but he would leave
+it to them if he hadn't worked at the trade steadily after enlistment. He
+had become a follower of Jim Irwin, because Jim's reform was like dragging
+the road in front of your own farm--it was reform right at home, and not
+at the county seat, or Des Moines, or Washington. He had followed Jim
+Irwin as he had followed Lincoln, and Grant, and Blaine, and
+McKinley--because Jim Irwin stood for more upward growth for the average
+American citizen than the colonel could see any prospect of getting from
+any other choice. And he was proud to live in a country like this, saved
+and promoted by the great men he had followed, and in a neighborhood
+served and promoted, if not quite saved, by Jim Irwin. And he was not so
+sure about its not being saved. Every man and nation had to be saved anew
+every so often, and the colonel believed that Jim Irwin's new kind of
+rural school is just as necessary to the salvation of this country as
+Lincoln's new kind of recognition of human rights was half a century ago.
+"I am about to close my speech," said the colonel, "and the small service
+I have been able to give to this nation. I went through the war,
+neighbors--and am proud of it; but I've done more good in the peaceful
+service of the last three years than I did in four of fighting and
+campaigning. That's the way I feel about what we've done in Consolidated
+District Number One." (Vociferous and long-continued applause.)
+
+"Oh, Colonel!" The voice of Angie Talcott rose from away back near the
+kitchen. "Can Jennie keep on bein' county superintendent, now she's
+married?"
+
+A great guffaw of laughter reduced poor Angie to tears; and Jennie had to
+go over and comfort her. It was all right for her to ask that, and they
+ought not to laugh at Angie, so there! Now, you're all right, and let's
+talk about the new schoolhouse, and so forth. Jennie brought the smiles
+back to Angle's face, just in time to hear Jim tell the people amid louder
+cheers that he had been asked to go into the rural-school extension work
+in two states, and had been offered a fine salary in either place, but
+that he wasn't even considering these offers. And about that time, the
+children began to get sleepy and cross and naughty, and the women set in
+motion the agencies which moved the crowd homeward.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+Before a bright wood fire--which they really didn't need, but how else was
+Jim's mother to show off the little fireplace?--sat Jim and Jennie. They
+had been together for a week now--this being their home-coming--and had
+only begun to get really happy.
+
+"Isn't it fine to have the fireplace?" said Jennie.
+
+"Yes, but we can't really afford to burn a fire in it--in Iowa," said Jim.
+"Fuel's too everlastingly scarce. If we use it much, the fagots and
+deadwood on our 'glebe-land' won't last long."
+
+"If you should take that Oklahoma position," said Jennie, "we could afford
+to have open wood fires all the time."
+
+"It's warmer in Oklahoma," said Jim, "and wood's more plentiful.
+Yes"--contemplatively--"we could, dear."
+
+"It would be nice, wouldn't it?" said Jennie.
+
+"All right," said Jim briskly, "get me my writing materials, and we'll
+accept. It's still open."
+
+Jennie sat looking into the fire oblivious of the suggestion. She was
+smiling. Jim moved uneasily, and rose.
+
+"Well," he said, "I believe I can better guess where mother would put
+those writing materials than you could, after all. I'll hunt them up."
+
+As he passed, Jennie took him by the hand and pulled him down on the arm
+of her chair.
+
+"Jim," she said, "don't be mean to me! You know you wouldn't do such a
+wicked, wicked thing at this time as to leave the people here."
+
+"All right," said Jim, "whatever you say is the law."
+
+When Jennie spoke again things had taken place which caused her voice to
+emanate from Jim's shirt-front.
+
+"Did you hear," said she, "what Angie Talcott asked?"
+
+"M'h'm," said Jim.
+
+"Well," said Jennie, "now that I'm married can I go on being county
+superintendent?"
+
+There was a long silence.
+
+"Would you like to?" asked Jim.
+
+"Kind of," said Jennie; "if I knew enough about things to do anything
+worth while; but I'm afraid that by rising to my full height I shall
+always just fail to be able to see over anything."
+
+"You've done more for the schools of the county," said Jim, "in the last
+year than any other county superintendent has ever done."
+
+"And we shall need the money so like--so like the dickens," said Jennie.
+
+"Oh, not so badly," laughed Jim, "except for the first year. I'll have
+this little farm paying as much as some quarter-sections when we get
+squared about. Why, we can make a living on this school farm, Jennie,--or
+I'm not fit to be the head of the school."
+
+There was another silence, during which Jennie took down her hair, and
+wound it around Jim's neck.
+
+"It will settle itself soon one of these days anyhow," said he at last.
+"There's enough to do for both of us right here."
+
+"But they won't pay me," she protested.
+
+"They don't pay the ministers' wives," said Jim, "and yet, the ministers
+with the right sort of wives are always the best paid. I guess you'll be
+in the bill, Jennie."
+
+Jim walked to the open window and looked out over the still landscape. The
+untidy grounds appealed to him--there would be lessons in their
+improvement for both the children and the older people. It was all good.
+Down in the little meadow grew the dreaming trees, their round crowns
+rising as from a sea not quite to the level of the bungalow, their thrifty
+leaves glistening in the moonlight. Across the pretty bridge lay the
+silent little campus with its twentieth-century temple facing its chief
+priest. It was all good, without and within. He went across the hall to
+bid his mother good night. She clung to him convulsively, and they had
+their own five minutes which arranged matters for these two silent natures
+on the new basis forever. Jennie was in white before the mantel when he
+returned, smiling at the inscription thereon.
+
+"Why didn't you put it in Latin?" she inquired. "It would have had so much
+more distinction."
+
+"I wanted it to have meaning instead," said Jim. "And besides, nobody who
+was at hand was quite sure how to turn the Latin phrase. Are you?"
+
+Jennie leaned forward with her elbows on her knees, and studied it.
+
+"I believe I could," said she, "without any pony. But after all, I like it
+better as it is. I like everything, Jim--everything!"
+
+"LET US CEASE THINKING SO MUCH OF AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION, AND DEVOTE
+OURSELVES TO EDUCATIONAL AGRICULTURE. SO WILL THE NATION BE MADE STRONG."
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Brown Mouse, by Herbert Quick
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+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Brown Mouse, by Herbert Quick
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Brown Mouse
+
+Author: Herbert Quick
+
+Release Date: October 21, 2008 [EBook #26987]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BROWN MOUSE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<hr class='silver' />
+
+<div class='ce'>
+<p style=' font-size:2em; margin-top:1.6em;'>THE</p>
+<p style=' font-size:2.2em; margin-bottom:1em;'>BROWN MOUSE</p>
+<p><i>By</i></p>
+<p style=' font-size:1.2em;'>HERBERT QUICK</p>
+<p style=' font-size:0.8em;'><i>Author of</i></p>
+<p style=' font-size:0.8em; font-variant:small-caps;'>Aladdin &amp; Company, The Broken Lance</p>
+<p style=' font-size:0.8em; margin-bottom:8em; font-variant:small-caps;'>On Board the Good Ship Earth, Etc.</p>
+<p>INDIANAPOLIS</p>
+<p>THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY</p>
+<p style=' margin-bottom:2em;'>PUBLISHERS</p>
+</div>
+
+<hr class='silver' />
+
+<div class='ce' style=' font-size:0.8em; margin-top:2em;'>
+<p style=' font-variant:small-caps;'>Copyright 1915</p>
+<p style=' font-variant:small-caps;'>The Bobbs-Merrill Company</p>
+<div style='margin-top:1em'></div>
+<p style=' margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:2em;'><i>Printed in the United States of America</i></p>
+<div style='margin-top:1em'></div>
+<p>PRESS OF</p>
+<p>BRAUNWORTH &amp; CO.</p>
+<p>BOOK MANUFACTURERS</p>
+<p style=' margin-bottom:2em;'>BROOKLYN, N. Y.</p>
+</div>
+
+<hr class='silver' />
+
+<div class='ce'>
+<p style=' font-size:1.4em; margin-bottom:1em;'>Contents</p>
+</div>
+
+<table border='0' width='500' cellpadding='2' cellspacing='0' summary='Contents' style='margin:1em auto;'>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' align='right' style='padding-right:1em;'>I</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left'><span style='font-variant: small-caps'>A Maiden&#8217;s &#8220;Humph&#8221;</span>&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#I_A_MAIDEN_S__HUMPH'>1</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' align='right' style='padding-right:1em;'>II</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left'><span style='font-variant: small-caps'>Reversed Unanimity</span>&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#II_REVERSED_UNANIMITY'>24</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' align='right' style='padding-right:1em;'>III</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left'><span style='font-variant: small-caps'>What Is a Brown Mouse</span>&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#III_WHAT_IS_A_BROWN_MOUSE'>38</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' align='right' style='padding-right:1em;'>IV</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left'><span style='font-variant: small-caps'>The First Day of School</span>&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#IV_THE_FIRST_DAY_OF_SCHOOL'>48</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' align='right' style='padding-right:1em;'>V</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left'><span style='font-variant: small-caps'>The Promotion of Jennie</span>&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#V_THE_PROMOTION_OF_JENNIE'>55</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' align='right' style='padding-right:1em;'>VI</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left'><span style='font-variant: small-caps'>Jim Talks the Weather Cold</span>&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#VI_JIM_TALKS_THE_WEATHER_COLD'>65</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' align='right' style='padding-right:1em;'>VII</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left'><span style='font-variant: small-caps'>The New Wine</span>&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#VII_THE_NEW_WINE'>75</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' align='right' style='padding-right:1em;'>VIII</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left'><span style='font-variant: small-caps'>And the Old Bottles</span>&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#VIII_AND_THE_OLD_BOTTLES'>89</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' align='right' style='padding-right:1em;'>IX</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left'><span style='font-variant: small-caps'>Jennie Arranges a Christmas Party</span>&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#IX_JENNIE_ARRANGES_A_CHRISTMAS_PARTY'>99</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' align='right' style='padding-right:1em;'>X</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left'><span style='font-variant: small-caps'>How Jim Was Lined Up</span>&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#X_HOW_JIM_WAS_LINED_UP'>111</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' align='right' style='padding-right:1em;'>XI</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left'><span style='font-variant: small-caps'>The Mouse Escapes</span>&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#XI_THE_MOUSE_ESCAPES'>122</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' align='right' style='padding-right:1em;'>XII</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left'><span style='font-variant: small-caps'>Facing Trial</span>&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#XII_FACING_TRIAL'>132</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' align='right' style='padding-right:1em;'>XIII</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left'><span style='font-variant: small-caps'>Fame or Notoriety</span>&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#XIII_FAME_OR_NOTORIETY'>147</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' align='right' style='padding-right:1em;'>XIV</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left'><span style='font-variant: small-caps'>The Colonel Takes the Field</span>&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#XIV_THE_COLONEL_TAKES_THE_FIELD'>164</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' align='right' style='padding-right:1em;'>XV</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left'><span style='font-variant: small-caps'>A Minor Casts Half a Vote</span>&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#XV_A_MINOR_CASTS_HALF_A_VOTE'>188</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' align='right' style='padding-right:1em;'>XVI</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left'><span style='font-variant: small-caps'>The Glorious Fourth</span>&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#XVI_THE_GLORIOUS_FOURTH'>203</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' align='right' style='padding-right:1em;'>XVII</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left'><span style='font-variant: small-caps'>A Trouble Shooter</span>&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#XVII_A_TROUBLE_SHOOTER'>218</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' align='right' style='padding-right:1em;'>XVIII</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left'><span style='font-variant: small-caps'>Jim Goes to Ames</span>&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#XVIII_JIM_GOES_TO_AMES'>235</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' align='right' style='padding-right:1em;'>XIX</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left'><span style='font-variant: small-caps'>Jim&#8217;s World Widens</span>&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#XIX_JIM_S_WORLD_WIDENS'>242</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' align='right' style='padding-right:1em;'>XX</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left'><span style='font-variant: small-caps'>Think of It</span>&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#XX_THINK_OF_IT'>248</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' align='right' style='padding-right:1em;'>XXI</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left'><span style='font-variant: small-caps'>A School District Held Up</span>&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#XXI_A_SCHOOL_DISTRICT_HELD_UP'>258</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' align='right' style='padding-right:1em;'>XXII</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left'><span style='font-variant: small-caps'>An Embassy From Dixie</span>&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#XXII_AN_EMBASSY_FROM_DIXIE'>277</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' align='right' style='padding-right:1em;'>XXIII</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left'><span style='font-variant: small-caps'>And So They Lived&mdash;&mdash;</span>&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#XXIII_AND_SO_THEY_LIVED'>295</a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+<hr class='silver' />
+
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_1' name='page_1'></a>1</span></div>
+<div class='ce'>
+<p style=' font-size:1.6em;'>THE BROWN MOUSE</p>
+</div>
+
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<a name='I_A_MAIDEN_S__HUMPH' id='I_A_MAIDEN_S__HUMPH'></a>
+<h2>CHAPTER I</h2>
+<h3>A MAIDEN&#8217;S &#8220;HUMPH&#8221;</h3>
+</div>
+
+<p>A Farm-hand nodded in answer to a question
+asked him by Napoleon on the morning
+of Waterloo. The nod was false, or the
+emperor misunderstood&mdash;and Waterloo was
+lost. On the nod of a farm-hand rested the
+fate of Europe.</p>
+<p>This story may not be so important as the
+battle of Waterloo&mdash;and it may be. I think
+that Napoleon was sure to lose to Wellington
+sooner or later, and therefore the words &#8220;fate
+of Europe&#8221; in the last paragraph should be
+understood as modified by &#8220;for a while.&#8221; But
+this story may change the world permanently.
+We will not discuss that, if you please. What
+I am endeavoring to make plain is that this
+history would never have been written if a
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_2' name='page_2'></a>2</span>
+farmer&#8217;s daughter had not said &#8220;Humph!&#8221; to
+her father&#8217;s hired man.</p>
+<p>Of course she never said it as it is printed.
+People never say &#8220;Humph!&#8221; in that way. She
+just closed her lips tight in the manner of people
+who have a great deal to say and prefer
+not to say it, and&mdash;I dislike to record this of
+a young lady who has been &#8220;off to school,&#8221; but
+truthfulness compels&mdash;she grunted through
+her little nose the ordinary &#8220;Humph!&#8221; of conversational
+commerce, which was accepted at
+its face value by the farm-hand as an evidence
+of displeasure, disapproval, and even of contempt.
+Things then began to happen as they
+never would have done if the maiden hadn&#8217;t
+&#8220;Humphed!&#8221; and this is a history of those happenings.</p>
+<p>As I have said, it may be more important
+than Waterloo. <i>Uncle Tom&#8217;s Cabin</i> was, and
+I hope&mdash;I am just beginning, you know&mdash;to
+make this a much greater book than <i>Uncle
+Tom&#8217;s Cabin</i>. And it all rests on a &#8220;Humph!&#8221;
+Holmes says,</p>
+<table summary='poetry' style='margin:0 auto'><tr><td>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.0em;'>&#8220;Soft is the breath of a maiden&#8217;s &#8216;Yes,&#8217;</p>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.0em;'>Not the light gossamer stirs with less.&#8221;</p>
+</td></tr></table>
+
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_3' name='page_3'></a>3</span></div>
+<p>but what bard shall rightly sing the importance
+of a maiden&#8217;s &#8220;Humph!&#8221; when I shall have finished
+telling what came of what Jennie Woodruff
+said to Jim Irwin, her father&#8217;s hired man?</p>
+<p>Jim brought from his day&#8217;s work all the fragrances
+of next year&#8217;s meadows. He had been
+feeding the crops. All things have opposite
+poles, and the scents of the farm are no exception
+to the rule. Just now, Jim Irwin possessed
+in his clothes and person the olfactory pole opposite
+to the new-mown hay, the fragrant butter
+and the scented breath of the lowing kine&mdash;perspiration
+and top-dressing.</p>
+<p>He was not quite so keenly conscious of this
+as was Jennie Woodruff. Had he been so, the
+glimmer of her white piqué dress on the bench
+under the basswood would not have drawn him
+back from the gate. He had come to the house
+to ask Colonel Woodruff about the farm work,
+and having received instructions to take a
+team and join in the road work next day, he
+had gone down the walk between the beds of
+four o&#8217;clocks and petunias to the lane. Turning
+to latch the gate, he saw through the dusk
+the white dress under the tree and drawn by
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_4' name='page_4'></a>4</span>
+the greatest attraction known in nature, had re-entered
+the Woodruff grounds and strolled
+back.</p>
+<p>A brief hello betrayed old acquaintance, and
+that social equality which still persists in theory
+between the work people on the American
+farm and the family of the employer. A desultory
+murmur of voices ensued. Jim Irwin sat
+down on the bench&mdash;not too close, be it observed,
+to the piqué skirt.... There came
+into the voices a note of deeper earnestness,
+betokening something quite aside from the rippling
+of the course of true love running
+smoothly. In the man&#8217;s voice was a tone of
+protest and pleading....</p>
+<p>&#8220;I know you are,&#8221; said she; &#8220;but after all
+these years don&#8217;t you think you should be at
+least preparing to be something more than
+that?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;What can I do?&#8221; he pleaded. &#8220;I&#8217;m tied
+hand and foot.... I might have ...&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You might have,&#8221; said she, &#8220;but, Jim,
+you haven&#8217;t ... and I don&#8217;t see any prospects....&#8221;
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_5' name='page_5'></a>5</span>
+&#8220;I have been writing for the farm papers,&#8221;
+said Jim; &#8220;but ...&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;But that doesn&#8217;t get you anywhere, you
+know.... You&#8217;re a great deal more able and
+intelligent than Ed &mdash;&mdash; and see what a fine
+position he has in Chicago....&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;There&#8217;s mother, you know,&#8221; said Jim gently.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You can&#8217;t do anything here,&#8221; said Jennie.
+&#8220;You&#8217;ve been a farm-hand for fifteen years
+... and you always will be unless you pull
+yourself loose. Even a girl can make a place
+for herself if she doesn&#8217;t marry and leaves the
+farm. You&#8217;re twenty-eight years old.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s all wrong!&#8221; said Jim gently. &#8220;The
+farm ought to be the place for the best sort
+of career&mdash;I love the soil!&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ve been teaching for only two years, and
+they say I&#8217;ll be nominated for county superintendent
+if I&#8217;ll take it. Of course I won&#8217;t&mdash;it
+seems silly&mdash;but if it were you, now, it would
+be a first step to a life that leads to something.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Mother and I can live on my wages&mdash;and
+the garden and chickens and the cow,&#8221; said
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_6' name='page_6'></a>6</span>
+Jim. &#8220;After I received my teacher&#8217;s certificate,
+I tried to work out some way of doing
+the same thing on a country teacher&#8217;s wages.
+I couldn&#8217;t. It doesn&#8217;t seem right.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Jim rose and after pacing back and forth
+sat down again, a little closer to Jennie. Jennie
+moved away to the extreme end of the
+bench, and the shrinking away of Jim as if he
+had been repelled by some sort of negative magnetism
+showed either sensitiveness or temper.</p>
+<p>&#8220;It seems as if it ought to be possible,&#8221; said
+Jim, &#8220;for a man to do work on the farm, or
+in the rural schools, that would make him a
+livelihood. If he is only a field-hand, it ought
+to be possible for him to save money and buy a
+farm.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Pa&#8217;s land is worth two hundred dollars an
+acre,&#8221; said Jennie. &#8220;Six months of your wages
+for an acre&mdash;even if you lived on nothing.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;No,&#8221; he assented, &#8220;it can&#8217;t be done. And
+the other thing can&#8217;t, either. There ought to
+be such conditions that a teacher could make a
+living.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;They do,&#8221; said Jennie, &#8220;if they can live at
+home during vacations. <i>I</i> do.&#8221;
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_7' name='page_7'></a>7</span></p>
+<p>&#8220;But a man teaching in the country ought
+to be able to marry.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Marry!&#8221; said Jennie, rather unfeelingly, I
+think. &#8220;<i>You</i> marry!&#8221; Then after remaining
+silent for nearly a minute, she uttered the
+syllable&mdash;without the utterance of which this
+narrative would not have been written. &#8220;<i>You</i>
+marry! Humph!&#8221;</p>
+<p>Jim Irwin rose from the bench tingling with
+the insult he found in her tone. They had been
+boy-and-girl sweethearts in the old days at the
+Woodruff schoolhouse down the road, and before
+the fateful time when Jennie went &#8220;off to
+school&#8221; and Jim began to support his mother.
+They had even kissed&mdash;and on Jim&#8217;s side,
+lonely as was his life, cut off as it necessarily
+was from all companionship save that of his
+tiny home and his fellow-workers of the field,
+the tender little love-story was the sole romance
+of his life. Jennie&#8217;s &#8220;Humph!&#8221; retired
+this romance from circulation, he felt. It
+showed contempt for the idea of his marrying.
+It relegated him to a sexless category with
+other defectives, and badged him with the celibacy
+of a sort of twentieth-century monk, without
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_8' name='page_8'></a>8</span>
+the honor of the priestly vocation. From
+another girl it would have been bad enough,
+but from Jennie Woodruff&mdash;and especially on
+that quiet summer night under the linden&mdash;it
+was insupportable.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Good night,&#8221; said Jim&mdash;simply because he
+could not trust himself to say more.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Good night,&#8221; replied Jennie, and sat for a
+long time wondering just how deeply she had
+unintentionally wounded the feelings of her
+father&#8217;s field-hand; deciding that if he was
+driven from her forever, it would solve the
+problem of terminating that old childish love
+affair which still persisted in occupying a suite
+of rooms all of its own in her memory; and
+finally repenting of the unpremeditated thrust
+which might easily have hurt too deeply so
+sensitive a man as Jim Irwin. But girls are
+not usually so made as to feel any very bitter
+remorse for their male victims, and so Jennie
+slept very well that night.</p>
+<p>Great events, I find myself repeating, sometimes
+hinge on trivial things. Considered
+deeply, all those matters which we are wont to
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_9' name='page_9'></a>9</span>
+call great events are only the outward and visible
+results of occurrences in the minds and
+souls of people. Sir Walter Raleigh thought
+of laying his cloak under the feet of Queen
+Elizabeth as she passed over a mud-puddle, and
+all the rest of his career followed, as the effect
+of Sir Walter&#8217;s mental attitude. Elias Howe
+thought of a machine for sewing, Eli Whitney
+of a machine for ginning cotton, George Stephenson
+of a tubular boiler for his locomotive engine,
+and Cyrus McCormick of a sickle-bar, and
+the world was changed by those thoughts,
+rather than by the machines themselves. John
+D. Rockefeller thought strongly that he would
+be rich, and this thought, and not the Standard
+Oil Company, changed the commerce and
+finance of the world. As a man thinketh so
+is he; and as men think so is the world. Jim
+Irwin went home thinking of the &#8220;Humph!&#8221; of
+Jennie Woodruff&mdash;thinking with hot waves and
+cold waves running over his body, and swellings
+in his throat. Such thoughts centered upon
+his club foot made Lord Byron a great sardonic
+poet. That club foot set him apart
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_10' name='page_10'></a>10</span>
+from the world of boys and tortured him into
+a fury which lasted until he had lashed society
+with the whips of his scorn.</p>
+<p>Jim Irwin was not club-footed; far from it.
+He was bony and rugged and homely, with a
+big mouth, and wide ears, and a form stooped
+with labor. He had fine, lambent, gentle eyes
+which lighted up his face when he smiled, as
+Lincoln&#8217;s illuminated his. He was not ugly.
+In fact, if that quality which fair ladies&mdash;if
+they are wise&mdash;prize far more than physical
+beauty, the quality called charm, can with propriety
+be ascribed to a field-hand who has just
+finished a day of the rather unfragrant labor
+to which I have referred, Jim Irwin possessed
+charm. That is why little Jennie Woodruff
+had asked him to help with her lessons, rather
+oftener than was necessary, in those old days
+in the Woodruff schoolhouse when Jennie wore
+her hair down her back.</p>
+<p>But in spite of this homely charm of personality,
+Jim Irwin was set off from his fellows
+of the Woodruff neighborhood in a manner
+quite as segregative as was Byron by his
+deformity. He was different. In local parlance,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_11' name='page_11'></a>11</span>
+he was an off ox. He was as odd as
+Dick&#8217;s hatband. He ran in a gang by himself,
+like Deacon Avery&#8217;s celebrated bull. He failed
+to matriculate in the boy banditti which played
+cards in the haymows on rainy days, told
+stereotyped stories that smelled to heaven,
+raided melon patches and orchards, swore horribly
+like Sir Toby Belch, and played pool in
+the village saloon. He had always liked to
+read, and had piles of literature in his attic
+room which was good, because it was cheap.
+Very few people know that cheap literature is
+very likely to be good, because it is old and unprotected
+by copyright. He had Emerson,
+Thoreau, a John B. Alden edition of Chambers&#8217;
+<i>Encyclopedia of English Literature</i>, some
+Franklin Square editions of standard poets in
+paper covers, and a few Ruskins and Carlyles&mdash;all
+read to rags. He talked the book English
+of these authors, mispronouncing many of
+the hard words, because he had never heard
+them pronounced by any one except himself,
+and had no standards of comparison. You find
+this sort of thing in the utterances of self-educated
+recluses. And he had piles of reports of
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_12' name='page_12'></a>12</span>
+the secretary of agriculture, college bulletins
+from Ames, and publications of the various bureaus
+of the Department of Agriculture at
+Washington. In fact, he had a good library of
+publications which can be obtained gratis, or
+very cheaply&mdash;and he knew their contents. He
+had a personal philosophy, which while it had
+cost him the world in which his fellows lived,
+had given him one of his own, in which he
+moved as lonely as a cloud, and as untouched of
+the life about him.</p>
+<p>He seemed superior to the neighbor boys,
+and felt so; but this feeling was curiously mingled
+with a sense of degradation. By every
+test of common life, he was a failure. His
+family history was a badge of failure. People
+despised a man who was so incontestably
+smarter than they, and yet could do no better
+with himself than to work in the fields alongside
+the tramps and transients and hoboes who
+drifted back and forth as the casual market for
+labor and the lure of the cities swept them.
+Save for his mother and their cow and garden
+and flock of fowls and their wretched little
+rented house, he was a tramp himself.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_13' name='page_13'></a>13</span></p>
+<p>His father had been no better. He had come
+into the neighborhood from nobody knows
+where, selling fruit trees, with a wife and baby
+in his old buggy&mdash;and had died suddenly, leaving
+the baby and widow, and nothing else save
+the horse and buggy. That horse and buggy
+were still on the Irwin books represented by
+Spot the cow&mdash;so persistent are the assets of
+cautious poverty. Mrs. Irwin had labored
+in kitchen and sewing room until Jim had
+been able to assume the breadwinner&#8217;s burden&mdash;which
+he did about the time he finished the
+curriculum of the Woodruff District school.
+He was an off ox and odd as Dick&#8217;s hatband,
+largely because his duties to his mother and
+his love of reading kept him from joining the
+gangs whereof I have spoken. His duties, his
+mother, and his father&#8217;s status as an outcast
+were to him the equivalent of the Byronic club
+foot, because they took away his citizenship in
+Boyville, and drove him in upon himself, and,
+at first, upon his school books which he mastered
+so easily and quickly as to become the
+star pupil of the Woodruff District school, and
+later upon Emerson, Thoreau, Ruskin and the
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_14' name='page_14'></a>14</span>
+poets, and the agricultural reports and
+bulletins.</p>
+<p>All this degraded&mdash;or exalted&mdash;him to the
+position of an intellectual farm-hand, with a
+sense of superiority and a feeling of degradation.
+It made Jennie Woodruff&#8217;s &#8220;Humph!&#8221;
+potent to keep him awake that night, and send
+him to the road work with Colonel Woodruff&#8217;s
+team next morning with hot eyes and a hotter
+heart.</p>
+<p>What was he anyhow? And what could he
+ever be? What was the use of his studies in
+farming practise, if he was always to be an
+underling whose sole duty was to carry out the
+crude ideas of his employers? And what
+chance was there for a farm-hand to become a
+farm owner, or even a farm renter, especially
+if he had a mother to support out of the
+twenty-five or thirty dollars of his monthly
+wages? None.</p>
+<p>A man might rise in the spirit, but how
+about rising in the world?</p>
+<p>Colonel Woodruff&#8217;s gray percherons seemed
+to feel the unrest of their driver, for they
+fretted and actually executed a clumsy prance
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_15' name='page_15'></a>15</span>
+as Jim Irwin pulled them up at the end of the
+turnpike across Bronson&#8217;s Slew&mdash;the said slew
+being a peat-marsh which annually offered the
+men of the Woodruff District the opportunity
+to hold the male equivalent of a sewing circle
+while working out their road taxes, with much
+conversational gain, and no great damage to
+the road.</p>
+<p>In fact, Columbus Brown, the pathmaster,
+prided himself on the Bronson Slew Turnpike
+as his greatest triumph in road engineering.
+The work consisted in hauling, dragging and
+carrying gravel out on the low fill which carried
+the road across the marsh, and then watching
+it slowly settle until the next summer.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Haul gravel from the east gravel bed, Jim,&#8221;
+called Columbus Brown from the lowest spot
+in the middle of the turnpike. &#8220;Take Newt
+here to help load.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Jim smiled his habitual slow, gentle smile at
+Newton Bronson, his helper. Newton was seventeen,
+undersized, tobacco-stained, profane
+and proud of the fact that he had once beaten
+his way from Des Moines to Faribault on
+freight trains. A source of anxiety to his
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_16' name='page_16'></a>16</span>
+father, and the subject of many predictions
+that he would come to no good end, Newton
+was out on the road work because he was likely
+to be of little use on the farm. Clearly, Newton
+was on the downward road in a double
+sense&mdash;and yet, Jim Irwin rather liked him.</p>
+<p>&#8220;The fellers have put up a job on you, Jim,&#8221;
+volunteered Newton, as they began filling the
+wagon with gravel.</p>
+<p>&#8220;What sort of job?&#8221; asked Jim.</p>
+<p>&#8220;They&#8217;re nominating you for teacher,&#8221; replied
+Newton.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Since when has the position of teacher been
+an elective office?&#8221; asked Jim.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Sure, it ain&#8217;t elective,&#8221; answered Newton.
+&#8220;But they say that with as many brains as
+you&#8217;ve got sloshing around loose in the neighborhood,
+you&#8217;re a candidate that can break the
+deadlock in the school board.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Jim shoveled on silently for a while, and by
+example urged Newton to earn the money
+credited to his father&#8217;s assessment for the day&#8217;s
+work.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Aw, what&#8217;s the use of diggin&#8217; into it like
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_17' name='page_17'></a>17</span>
+this?&#8221; protested Newton, who was developing
+an unwonted perspiration. &#8220;None of the others
+are heatin&#8217; themselves up.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Don&#8217;t you get any fun out of doing a good
+day&#8217;s work?&#8221; asked Jim.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Fun!&#8221; exclaimed Newton. &#8220;You&#8217;re crazy!&#8221;</p>
+<p>A slide of earth from the top of the pit
+threatened to bury Newton in gravel, sand and
+good top soil. A sweet-clover plant growing
+rankly beside the pit, and thinking itself perfectly
+safe, came down with it, its dark green
+foliage anchored by the long roots which penetrated
+to a depth below the gravel pit&#8217;s bottom.
+Jim Irwin pulled it loose from its anchorage,
+and after looking attentively at the roots, laid
+the whole plant on the bank for safety.</p>
+<p>&#8220;What do you want of that weed?&#8221; asked
+Newton.</p>
+<p>Jim picked it up and showed him the nodules
+on its roots&mdash;little white knobs, smaller than
+pinheads.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Know what they are, Newt?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Just white specks on the roots,&#8221; replied
+Newton.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_18' name='page_18'></a>18</span></p>
+<p>&#8220;The most wonderful specks in the world,&#8221;
+said Jim. &#8220;Ever hear of the use of nitrates to
+enrich the soil?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Ain&#8217;t that the stuff the old man used on the
+lawn last spring?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes,&#8221; said Jim, &#8220;your father used some on
+his lawn. We don&#8217;t put it on our fields in
+Iowa&mdash;not yet; but if it weren&#8217;t for those white
+specks on the clover-roots, we should be obliged
+to do so&mdash;as they do back east.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;How do them white specks keep us from
+needin&#8217; nitrates?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s a long story,&#8221; said Jim. &#8220;You see, before
+there were any plants big enough to be
+visible&mdash;if there had been any one to see them&mdash;the
+world was full of little plants so small
+that there may be billions of them in one of
+these little white specks. They knew how to
+take the nitrates from the air&mdash;&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Air!&#8221; ejaculated Newton. &#8220;Nitrates in the
+air! You&#8217;re crazy!&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;No,&#8221; said Jim. &#8220;There are tons of nitrogen
+in the air that press down on your head&mdash;but
+the big plants can&#8217;t get it through their
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_19' name='page_19'></a>19</span>
+leaves, or their roots. They never had to learn,
+because when the little plants&mdash;bacteria&mdash;found
+that the big plants had roots with sap in them,
+they located on those roots and tapped them
+for the sap they needed. They began to get
+their board and lodgings off the big plants.
+And in payment for their hotel bills, the little
+plants took nitrogen out of the air for both
+themselves and their hosts.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;What d&#8217;ye mean by &#8216;hosts&#8217;?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Their hotel-keepers&mdash;the big plants. And
+now the plants that have the hotel roots for
+the bacteria furnish nitrogen not only for
+themselves but for the crops that follow. Corn
+can&#8217;t get nitrogen out of the air; but clover
+can&mdash;and that&#8217;s why we ought to plow down
+clover before a crop of corn.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Gee!&#8221; said Newt. &#8220;If you could get to
+teach our school, I&#8217;d go again.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It would interfere with your pool playing.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;What business is that o&#8217; yours?&#8221; interrogated
+Newt defiantly.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well, get busy with that shovel,&#8221; suggested
+Jim, who had been working steadily, driving
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_20' name='page_20'></a>20</span>
+out upon the fill occasionally to unload. On his
+return from dumping the next load, Newton
+seemed, in a superior way, quite amiably disposed
+toward his workfellow&mdash;rather the habitual
+thing in the neighborhood.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ll work my old man to vote for you for
+the job,&#8221; said he.</p>
+<p>&#8220;What job?&#8221; asked Jim.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Teacher for our school,&#8221; answered Newt.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Those school directors,&#8221; replied Jim, &#8220;have
+become so bullheaded that they&#8217;ll never vote for
+any one except the applicants they&#8217;ve been voting
+for.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;The old man says he will have Prue Foster
+again, or he&#8217;ll give the school a darned long
+vacation, unless Peterson and Bonner join on
+some one else. That would beat Prue, of
+course.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;And Con Bonner won&#8217;t vote for any one
+but Maggie Gilmartin,&#8221; added Jim.</p>
+<p>&#8220;And,&#8221; supplied Newton, &#8220;Haakon Peterson
+says he&#8217;ll stick to Herman Paulson until the
+Hot Springs freeze over.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;And there you are,&#8221; said Jim. &#8220;You tell
+your father for me that I think he&#8217;s a mere
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_21' name='page_21'></a>21</span>
+mule&mdash;and that the whole district thinks the
+same.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;All right,&#8221; said Newt. &#8220;I&#8217;ll tell him that
+while I&#8217;m working him to vote for you.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Jim smiled grimly. Such a position might
+have been his years ago, if he could have left
+his mother or earned enough in it to keep both
+alive. He had remained a peasant because the
+American rural teacher is placed economically
+lower than the peasant. He gave Newton&#8217;s
+chatter no consideration. But when, in the
+afternoon, he hitched his team with others to
+the big road grader, and the gang became concentrated
+within talking distance, he found
+that the project of heckling and chaffing him
+about his eminent fitness for a scholastic position
+was to be the real entertainment of the
+occasion.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Jim&#8217;s the candidate to bust the deadlock,&#8221;
+said Columbus Brown, with a wink. &#8220;Just like
+Garfield in that Republican convention he was
+nominated in&mdash;eh, Con?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Con&#8221; was Cornelius Bonner, an Irishman,
+one of the deadlocked school board, and the
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_22' name='page_22'></a>22</span>
+captain of the road grader. He winked back
+at the pathmaster.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Jim&#8217;s the gray-eyed man o&#8217; destiny,&#8221; he replied,
+&#8220;if he can get two votes in that board.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You&#8217;d vote for me, wouldn&#8217;t you, Con?&#8221;
+asked Jim.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ll try annything wance,&#8221; replied Bonner.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Try voting with Ezra Bronson once, for
+Prue Foster,&#8221; suggested Jim. &#8220;She&#8217;s done
+good work here.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Opinions differ,&#8221; said Bonner, &#8220;an&#8217; when
+you try annything just for wance, it shouldn&#8217;t
+be an irrevocable shtip, me bye.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You&#8217;re a reasonable board of public servants,&#8221;
+said Jim ironically. &#8220;I&#8217;d like to tell the
+whole board what I think of them.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Come down to-night,&#8221; said Bonner jeeringly.
+&#8220;We&#8217;re going to have a board meeting
+at the schoolhouse and ballot a few more times.
+Come down, and be the Garfield of the convintion.
+We&#8217;ve lacked brains on the board, that&#8217;s
+clear. They ain&#8217;t a man on the board that iver
+studied algebra, &#8217;r that knows more about
+farmin&#8217; than their impl&#8217;yers. Come down to
+the schoolhouse, and we&#8217;ll have a field-hand addriss
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_23' name='page_23'></a>23</span>
+the school board&mdash;and begosh, I&#8217;ll move
+yer illiction mesilf! Come, now, Jimmy, me
+bye, be game. It&#8217;ll vary the program, anny-how.&#8221;</p>
+<p>The entire gang grinned. Jim flushed, and
+then reconquered his calmness of spirit.</p>
+<p>&#8220;All right, Con,&#8221; said he. &#8220;I&#8217;ll come and tell
+you a few things&mdash;and you can do as you like
+about making the motion.&#8221;</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<a name='II_REVERSED_UNANIMITY' id='II_REVERSED_UNANIMITY'></a>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_24' name='page_24'></a>24</span>
+<h2>CHAPTER II</h2>
+<h3>REVERSED UNANIMITY</h3>
+</div>
+
+<p>The great blade of the grading machine,
+running diagonally across the road and
+pulling the earth toward its median line, had
+made several trips, and much persiflage about
+Jim Irwin&#8217;s forthcoming appearance before
+the board had been addressed to Jim and exchanged
+by others for his benefit.</p>
+<p>To Newton Bronson was given the task of
+leveling and distributing the earth rolled into
+the road by the grader&mdash;a labor which in the
+interests of fitting a muzzle on his big mongrel
+dog he deserted whenever the machine moved
+away from him. No dog would have seemed
+less deserving of a muzzle, for he was a
+friendly animal, always wagging his tail, pressing
+his nose into people&#8217;s palms, licking their
+clothing and otherwise making a nuisance of
+himself. That there was some mystery about
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_25' name='page_25'></a>25</span>
+the muzzle was evident from Newton&#8217;s pains
+to make a secret of it. Its wires were curled
+into a ring directly over the dog&#8217;s nose, and
+into this ring Newton had fitted a cork,
+through which he had thrust a large needle
+which protruded, an inch-long bayonet, in
+front of Ponto&#8217;s nose. As the grader swept
+back, horses straining, harness creaking and
+a billow of dark earth rolling before the knife,
+Ponto, fully equipped with this stinger, raced
+madly alongside, a friend to every man, but
+not unlike some people, one whose friendship
+was of all things to be most dreaded.</p>
+<p>As the grader moved along one side of
+the highway, a high-powered automobile approached
+on the other. It was attempting to
+rush the swale for the hill opposite, and
+making rather bad weather of the newly repaired
+road. A pile of loose soil that Newton
+had allowed to lie just across the path made
+a certain maintenance of speed desirable. The
+knavish Newton planted himself in the path
+of the laboring car, and waved its driver a
+command to halt. The car came to a standstill
+with its front wheels in the edge of the loose
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_26' name='page_26'></a>26</span>
+earth, and the chauffeur fuming at the possibility
+of stalling&mdash;a contingency upon which
+Newton had confidently reckoned.</p>
+<p>&#8220;What d&#8217;ye want?&#8221; he demanded. &#8220;What
+d&#8217;ye mean by stopping me in this kind of
+place?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I want to ask you,&#8221; said Newton with mock
+politeness, &#8220;if you have the correct time.&#8221;</p>
+<p>The chauffeur sought words appropriate to
+his feelings. Ponto and his muzzle saved him
+the trouble. A pretty pointer leaped from the
+car, and attracted by the evident friendliness
+of Ponto&#8217;s greeting, pricked up its ears, and
+sought, in a spirit of canine brotherhood, to
+touch noses with him. The needle in Ponto&#8217;s
+muzzle did its work to the agony and horror
+of the pointer, which leaped back with a yelp,
+and turned tail. Ponto, in an effort to apologize,
+followed, and finding itself bayonetted at
+every contact with this demon dog, the pointer
+definitely took flight, howling, leaving Ponto
+in a state of wonder and humiliation at the
+sudden end of what had promised to be a very
+friendly acquaintance. I have known instances
+not entirely dissimilar among human beings.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_27' name='page_27'></a>27</span>
+The pointer&#8217;s master watched its strange
+flight, and swore. His eye turned to the boy
+who had caused all this, and he alighted pale
+with anger.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ve got time,&#8221; said he, remembering Newton&#8217;s
+impudent question, &#8220;to give you what
+you deserve.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Newton grinned and dodged, but the bank
+of loose earth was his undoing, and while he
+stumbled, the chauffeur caught and held him
+by the collar. And as he held the boy, the operation
+of flogging him in the presence of the
+grading gang grew less to his taste. Again
+Ponto intervened, for as the chauffeur stood
+holding Newton, the dog, evidently regarding
+the stranger as his master&#8217;s friend, thrust his
+nose into the chauffeur&#8217;s palm&mdash;the needle necessarily
+preceding the nose. The chauffeur
+behaved much as his pointer had done, saving
+and excepting that the pointer did not
+swear.</p>
+<p>It was funny&mdash;even the pain involved could
+not make it otherwise than funny. The grading
+gang laughed to a man. Newton grinned
+even while in the fell clutch of circumstance.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_28' name='page_28'></a>28</span>
+Ponto tried to smell the chauffeur&#8217;s trousers,
+and what had been a laugh became a roar,
+quite general save for the fact that the chauffeur
+did not join in it.</p>
+<p>Caution and mercy departed from the chauffeur&#8217;s
+mood; and he drew back his fist to strike
+the boy&mdash;and found it caught by the hard hand
+of Jim Irwin.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You&#8217;re too angry to punish this boy,&#8221; said
+Jim gently,&mdash;&#8220;even if you had the right to
+punish him at all!&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, cut it out,&#8221; said a fat man in the rear
+of the car, who had hitherto manifested no interest
+in anything save Ponto. &#8220;Get in, and
+let&#8217;s be on our way!&#8221;</p>
+<p>The chauffeur, however, recognized in a man
+of mature years and full size, and a creature
+with no mysterious needle in his nose, a relief
+from his embarrassment. Unhesitatingly, he
+released Newton, and blindly, furiously and futilely,
+he delivered a blow meant for Jim&#8217;s jaw,
+but which really miscarried by a foot. In reply,
+Jim countered with an awkward swinging
+uppercut, which was superior to the chauffeur&#8217;s
+blow in one respect only&mdash;it landed fairly on the
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_29' name='page_29'></a>29</span>
+point of the jaw. The chauffeur staggered and
+slowly toppled over into the soft earth which
+had caused so much of the rumpus. Newton
+Bronson slipped behind a hedge, and took his
+infernally equipped dog with him. The grader
+gang formed a ring about the combatants and
+waited. Colonel Woodruff, driving toward
+home in his runabout, held up by the traffic
+blockade, asked what was going on here, and
+the chauffeur, rising groggily, picked up his
+goggles, climbed into the car; and the meeting
+dissolved, leaving Jim Irwin greatly embarrassed
+by the fact that for the first time in his
+life, he had struck a man in combat.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Good work, Jim,&#8221; said Cornelius Bonner.
+&#8220;I didn&#8217;t think &#8217;twas in ye!&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s beastly,&#8221; said Jim, reddening. &#8220;I didn&#8217;t
+know, either.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Colonel Woodruff looked at his hired man
+sharply, gave him some instructions for the
+next day and drove on. The road gang dispersed
+for the afternoon. Newton Bronson
+carefully secreted the magic muzzle, and
+chuckled at what had been perhaps the most
+picturesquely successful bit of deviltry in his
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_30' name='page_30'></a>30</span>
+varied record. Jim Irwin put out his team, got
+his supper and went to the meeting of the school
+board.</p>
+<p>The deadlocked members of the board had
+been so long at loggerheads that their relations
+had swayed back to something like amity. Jim
+had scarcely entered when Con Bonner addressed
+the chair.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Mr. Prisidint,&#8221; said he, &#8220;we have wid us
+t&#8217;night, a young man who nades no introduction
+to an audience in this place, Mr. Jim Irwin.
+He thinks we&#8217;re bullheaded mules, and
+that all the schools are bad. At the proper
+time I shall move that we hire him f&#8217;r teacher;
+and pinding that motion, I move that he be
+given the floor. Ye&#8217;ve all heared of Mr. Irwin&#8217;s
+ability as a white hope, and I know he&#8217;ll
+be listened to wid respect!&#8221;</p>
+<p>Much laughter from the board and the spectators,
+as Jim arose. He looked upon it as ridicule
+of himself, while Con Bonner regarded it
+as a tribute to his successful speech.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Board,&#8221;
+said Jim, &#8220;I&#8217;m not going to tell you anything
+that you don&#8217;t know about yourselves. You
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_31' name='page_31'></a>31</span>
+are simply making a farce of the matter of
+hiring a teacher for this school. It is not as
+if any of you had a theory that the teaching
+methods of one of these teachers would be any
+better than or much different from those of
+the others. You know, and I know, that whichever
+is finally engaged, or even if your silly
+deadlock is broken by employing a new candidate,
+the school will be the same old story. It
+will still be the school it was when I came into
+it a little ragged boy&#8221;&mdash;here Jim&#8217;s voice grew a
+little husky&mdash;&#8220;and when I left it, a bigger boy,
+but still as ragged as ever.&#8221;</p>
+<p>There was a slight sensation in the audience,
+as if, as Con Bonner said about the knockdown,
+they hadn&#8217;t thought Jim Irwin could
+do it.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well,&#8221; said Con, &#8220;you&#8217;ve done well to hold
+your own.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;In all the years I attended this school,&#8221; Jim
+went on, &#8220;I never did a bit of work in school
+which was economically useful. It was all dry
+stuff copied from the city schools. No other
+pupil ever did any real work of the sort farmers&#8217;
+boys and girls should do. We copied city
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_32' name='page_32'></a>32</span>
+schools&mdash;and the schools we copied are poor
+schools. We made bad copies of them, too. If
+any of you three men were making a fight for
+what Roosevelt&#8217;s Country Life Commission
+called a &#8216;new kind of rural school,&#8217; I&#8217;d say fight.
+But you aren&#8217;t. You&#8217;re just making individual
+fights for your favorite teachers.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Jim Irwin made a somewhat lengthy speech
+after the awkwardness wore off, so long that
+his audience was nodding and yawning by the
+time he reached his peroration, in which he abjured
+Bronson, Bonner and Peterson to study
+his plan of a new kind of rural school,&mdash;in
+which the work of the school should be correlated
+with the life of the home and the farm&mdash;a
+school which would be in the highest degree
+cultural by being consciously useful and
+obviously practical. The sharp spats of applause
+from the useless hands of Newton Bronson
+gave the final touch of absurdity to a situation
+which Jim had felt to be ridiculous all
+through. Had it not been for Jennie Woodruff&#8217;s
+&#8220;Humph!&#8221; stinging him to do something
+outside the round of duties into which he had
+fallen, had it not been for the absurd notion
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_33' name='page_33'></a>33</span>
+that perhaps, after they had heard his speech,
+they would place him in charge of the school,
+and that he might be able to do something
+really important in it, he would not have been
+there. As he sat down, he felt himself a silly
+clodhopper, filled with the east wind of his own
+conceit, out of touch with the real world of
+men. He knew himself a dreamer. The nodding
+board of directors, the secretary, actually
+snoring, and the bored audience restored the
+field-hand to a sense of his proper place.</p>
+<p>&#8220;We have had the privilege of list&#8217;nin&#8217;,&#8221; said
+Con Bonner, rising, &#8220;to a great speech, Mr.
+Prisidint. We should be proud to have a borned
+orator like this in the agricultural pop&#8217;lation
+of the district. A reg&#8217;lar William Jennin&#8217;s
+Bryan. I don&#8217;t understand what he was trying
+to tell us, but sometimes I&#8217;ve had the same
+difficulty with the spaches of the Boy Orator
+of the Platte. Makin&#8217; a good spache is one
+thing, and teaching a good school is another,
+but in order to bring this matter before the
+board, I nominate Mr. James E. Irwin, the Boy
+Orator of the Woodruff District, and the new
+white hope, f&#8217;r the job of teacher of this school,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_34' name='page_34'></a>34</span>
+and I move that when he shall have received
+a majority of the votes of this board, the secretary
+and prisidint be insthructed to enter
+into a contract with him f&#8217;r the comin&#8217; year.&#8221;</p>
+<p>The seconding of motions on a board of
+three has its objectionable features, since it
+seems to commit a majority of the body to the
+motion in advance. The president, therefore,
+followed usage, when he said&mdash;&#8220;If there&#8217;s no
+objection, it will be so ordered. The chair
+hears no objection&mdash;and it is so ordered. Prepare
+the ballots for a vote on the election of
+teacher, Mr. Secretary. Each votes his preference
+for teacher. A majority elects.&#8221;</p>
+<p>For months, the ballots had come out of the
+box&mdash;an empty crayon-box&mdash;Herman Paulson,
+one; Prudence Foster, one; Margaret Gilmartin,
+one; and every one present expected the
+same result now. There was no surprise, however,
+in view of the nomination of Jim Irwin
+by the blarneying Bonner when the secretary
+smoothed out the first ballot, and read: &#8220;James
+E. Irwin, one.&#8221; Clearly this was the Bonner
+vote; but when the next slip came forth, &#8220;James
+E. Irwin, two,&#8221; the Board of Directors of the
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_35' name='page_35'></a>35</span>
+Woodruff Independent District were stunned
+at the slowly dawning knowledge that they had
+made an election! Before they had rallied, the
+secretary drew from the box the third and last
+ballot, and read, &#8220;James E. Irwin, three.&#8221;</p>
+<p>President Bronson choked as he announced
+the result&mdash;choked and stammered, and made
+very hard weather of it, but he went through
+with the motion, as we all run in our grooves.</p>
+<p>&#8220;The ballot having shown the unanimous
+election of James E. Irwin, I declare him
+elected.&#8221;</p>
+<p>He dropped into his chair, while the secretary,
+a very methodical man, drew from his
+portfolio a contract duly drawn up save for the
+signatures of the officers of the district, and
+the name and signature of the teacher-elect.
+This he calmly filled out, and passed over to the
+president, pointing to the dotted line. Mr.
+Bronson would have signed his own death-warrant
+at that moment, not to mention a
+perfectly legal document, and signed with
+Peterson and Bonner looking on stonily. The
+secretary signed and shoved the contract over
+to Jim Irwin.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_36' name='page_36'></a>36</span></p>
+<p>&#8220;Sign there,&#8221; he said.</p>
+<p>Jim looked it over, saw the other signatures,
+and felt an impulse to dodge the whole thing.
+He could not feel that the action of the board
+was serious. He thought of the platform he
+had laid down for himself, and was daunted.
+He thought of the days in the open field, and
+of the untroubled evenings with his books, and
+he shrank from the work. Then he thought of
+Jennie Woodruff&#8217;s &#8220;Humph!&#8221;&mdash;and he signed!</p>
+<p>&#8220;Move we adjourn,&#8221; said Peterson.</p>
+<p>&#8220;No &#8217;bjection &#8217;t&#8217;s so ordered!&#8221; said Mr.
+Bronson.</p>
+<p>The secretary and Jim went out, while the
+directors waited.</p>
+<p>&#8220;What the Billy&mdash;&#8221; began Bonner, and finished
+lamely! &#8220;What for did you vote for the
+dub, Ez?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I voted for him,&#8221; replied Bronson, &#8220;because
+he fought for my boy this afternoon. I didn&#8217;t
+want it stuck into him too hard. I wanted him
+to have <i>one</i> vote.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;An&#8217; I wanted him to have wan vote, too,&#8221;
+said Bonner. &#8220;I thought mesilf the only dang
+fool on the board&mdash;an&#8217; he made a spache that
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_37' name='page_37'></a>37</span>
+airned wan vote&mdash;but f&#8217;r the love of hivin, that
+dub f&#8217;r a teacher! What come over you,
+Haakon&mdash;you voted f&#8217;r him, too!&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Ay vanted him to have one wote, too,&#8221; said
+Peterson.</p>
+<p>And in this wise, Jim became the teacher in
+the Woodruff District&mdash;all on account of Jennie
+Woodruff&#8217;s &#8220;Humph!&#8221;</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<a name='III_WHAT_IS_A_BROWN_MOUSE' id='III_WHAT_IS_A_BROWN_MOUSE'></a>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_38' name='page_38'></a>38</span>
+<h2>CHAPTER III</h2>
+<h3>WHAT IS A BROWN MOUSE</h3>
+</div>
+
+<p>Immediately upon the accidental election
+of Jim Irwin to the position of teacher of
+the Woodruff school, he developed habits somewhat
+like a ghost&#8217;s or a bandit&#8217;s. That is, he
+walked of nights and on rainy days.</p>
+<p>On fine days, he worked in Colonel Woodruff&#8217;s
+fields as of yore. Had he been appointed to a
+position attached to a salary of fifty thousand
+dollars a year, he might have spent six months
+on a preliminary vacation in learning something
+about his new duties. But Jim&#8217;s salary
+was to be three hundred and sixty dollars for
+nine months&#8217; work in the Woodruff school, and
+he was to find himself&mdash;and his mother. Therefore,
+he had to indulge in his loose habits of
+night walking and roaming about after hours
+only, or on holidays and in foul weather.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_39' name='page_39'></a>39</span></p>
+<p>The Simms family, being from the mountings
+of Tennessee, were rather startled one night,
+when Jim Irwin, homely, stooped and errandless,
+silently appeared in their family circle
+about the front door. They had lived where it
+was the custom to give a whoop from the big
+road before one passed through the palin&#8217;s and
+up to the house. Otherwise, how was one to
+know whether the visitor was friend or foe?</p>
+<p>From force of habit, Old Man Simms started
+for his gun-rack at Jim&#8217;s appearance, but the
+Lincolnian smile and the low slow speech, so
+much like his own in some respects, ended that
+part of the matter. Besides, Old Man Simms
+remembered that none of the Hobdays, whose
+hostilities somewhat stood in the way of the
+return of the Simmses to their native hills,
+could possibly be expected to appear thus in
+Iowa.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Stranger,&#8221; said Mr. Simms, after greetings
+had been exchanged, &#8220;you&#8217;re right welcome,
+but in my kentry you&#8217;d find it dangersome to
+walk in thisaway.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;How so?&#8221; queried Jim Irwin.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You&#8217;d more&#8217;n likely git shot up some,&#8221; replied
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_40' name='page_40'></a>40</span>
+Mr. Simms, &#8220;onless you whooped from
+the big road.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I didn&#8217;t know that,&#8221; replied Jim. &#8220;I&#8217;m
+ignorant of the customs of other countries.
+Would you rather I&#8217;d whoop from the big
+road&mdash;nobody else will.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I reckon,&#8221; replied Mr. Simms, &#8220;that we-all
+will have to accommodate ourse&#8217;ves to the
+ways hyeh.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Evidently Jim was the Simms&#8217; first caller
+since they had settled on the little brushy tract
+whose hills and trees reminded them of their
+mountains. Low hills, to be sure, with only
+a footing of rocks where the creek had cut
+through, and not many trees, but down in the
+creek bed, with the oaks, elms and box-elders
+arching overhead, the Simmses could imagine
+themselves beside some run falling into the
+French Broad, or the Holston. The creek bed
+was a withdrawing room in which to retire
+from the eternal black soil and level corn-fields
+of Iowa. What if the soil was so poor,
+in comparison with those black uplands, that
+the owner of the old wood-lot could find no
+renter? It was better than the soil in the
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_41' name='page_41'></a>41</span>
+mountains, and suited the lonesome Simmses
+much more than a better farm would have
+done. They were not of the Iowa people anyhow,
+not understood, not their equals&mdash;they
+were pore, and expected to stay pore&mdash;while
+the Iowa people all seemed to be either well-to-do,
+or expecting to become so. It was much
+more agreeable to the Simmses to retire to the
+back wood-lot farm with the creek bed running
+through it.</p>
+<p>Jim Irwin asked Old Man Simms about the
+fishing in the creek, and whether there was any
+duck shooting spring and fall.</p>
+<p>&#8220;We git right smart of these little panfish,&#8221;
+said Mr. Simms, &#8220;an&#8217; Calista done shot two
+butterball ducks about &#8216;tater-plantin&#8217; time.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Calista blushed&mdash;but this stranger, so much
+like themselves, could not see the rosy suffusion.
+The allusion gave him a chance to look about
+him at the family. There was a boy of sixteen,
+a girl&mdash;the duck-shooting Calista&mdash;younger
+than Raymond&mdash;a girl of eleven, named Virginia,
+but called Jinnie&mdash;and a smaller lad
+who rejoiced in the name of McGeehee, but was
+mercifully called Buddy.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_42' name='page_42'></a>42</span></p>
+<p>Calista squirmed for something to say.
+&#8220;Raymond runs a line o&#8217; traps when the fur&#8217;s
+prime,&#8221; she volunteered.</p>
+<p>Then came a long talk on traps and trapping,
+shooting, hunting and the joys of the mountings&mdash;during
+which Jim noted the ignorance
+and poverty of the Simmses. The clothing of
+the girls was not decent according to local
+standards; for while Calista wore a skirt hurriedly
+slipped on, Jim was quite sure&mdash;and not
+without evidence to support his views&mdash;that
+she had been wearing when he arrived the
+same regimentals now displayed by Jinnie&mdash;a
+pair of ragged blue overalls. Evidently the
+Simmses were wearing what they had and not
+what they desired. The father was faded,
+patched, gray and earthy, and the boys looked
+better than the rest solely because we expect
+boys to be torn and patched. Mrs. Simms was
+invisible except as a gray blur beyond the rain-barrel,
+in the midst of which her pipe glowed
+with a regular ebb and flow of embers.</p>
+<p>On the next rainy day Jim called again and
+secured the services of Raymond to help him
+select seed corn. He was going to teach the
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_43' name='page_43'></a>43</span>
+school next winter, and he wanted to have a
+seed-corn frolic the first day, instead of waiting
+until the last&mdash;and you had to get seed corn
+while it was on the stalk, if you got the best.
+No Simms could refuse a favor to the fellow
+who was so much like themselves, and who
+was so greatly interested in trapping, hunting
+and the Tennessee mountains&mdash;so Raymond
+went with Jim, and with Newt Bronson and
+five more they selected Colonel Woodruff&#8217;s seed
+corn for the next year, under the colonel&#8217;s
+personal superintendence.</p>
+<p>In the evening they looked the grain over
+on the Woodruff lawn, and the colonel talked
+about corn and corn selection. They had supper
+at half past six, and Jennie waited on them&mdash;having
+assisted her mother in the cooking.
+It was quite a festival. Jim Irwin was the
+least conspicuous person in the gathering, but
+the colonel, who was a seasoned politician, observed
+that the farm-hand had become a fisher
+of men, and was angling for the souls of these
+boys, and their interest in the school. Jim was
+careful not to flush the covey, but every boy
+received from the next winter&#8217;s teacher some
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_44' name='page_44'></a>44</span>
+confidential hint as to plans, and some suggestion
+that Jim was relying on the aid and comfort
+of that particular boy. Newt Bronson,
+especially, was leaned on as a strong staff and
+a very present help in time of trouble. As
+for Raymond Simms, it was clearly best to
+leave him alone. All this talk of corn selection
+and related things was new to him, and he
+drank it in thirstily. He had an inestimable
+advantage over Newt in that he was starved,
+while Newt was surfeited with &#8220;advantages&#8221;
+for which he had no use.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Jennie,&#8221; said Colonel Woodruff, after the
+party had broken up, &#8220;I&#8217;m losing the best hand
+I ever had, and I&#8217;ve been sorry.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m glad he&#8217;s leaving you,&#8221; said Jennie. &#8220;He
+ought to do something except work in the field
+for wages.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ve had no idea he could make good as a
+teacher&mdash;and what is there in it if he does?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;What has he lost if he doesn&#8217;t?&#8221; rejoined
+Jennie. &#8220;And why can&#8217;t he make good?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;The school board&#8217;s against him, for one
+thing,&#8221; replied the colonel. &#8220;They&#8217;ll fire him if
+they get a chance. They&#8217;re the laughing-stock
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_45' name='page_45'></a>45</span>
+of the country for hiring him by mistake, and
+they&#8217;re irritated. But after seeing him perform
+to-night, I wonder if he can&#8217;t make good.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;If he could <i>feel</i> like anything but an underling
+he&#8217;d succeed,&#8221; said Jennie.</p>
+<p>&#8220;That&#8217;s his heredity,&#8221; stated the colonel,
+whose live-stock operations were based on
+heredity. &#8220;Jim&#8217;s a scrub, I suppose; but he
+acts as if he might turn out to be a Brown
+Mouse.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;What do you mean, pa,&#8221; scoffed Jennie&mdash;&#8220;a
+Brown Mouse!&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;A fellow in Edinburgh,&#8221; said the colonel,
+&#8220;crossed the Japanese waltzing mouse with the
+common white mouse. Jim&#8217;s pedling father
+was a waltzing mouse, no good except to jump
+from one spot to another for no good reason.
+Jim&#8217;s mother is an albino of a woman, with all
+the color washed out in one way or another. Jim
+ought to be a mongrel, and I&#8217;ve always considered
+him one. But the Edinburgh fellow
+every once in a while got out of his variously-colored,
+waltzing and albino hybrids, a brown
+mouse. It wasn&#8217;t a common house mouse,
+either, but a wild mouse unlike any he had
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_46' name='page_46'></a>46</span>
+ever seen. It ran away, and bit and
+gnawed, and raised hob. It was what we breeders
+call a Mendelian segregation of genetic
+factors that had been in the waltzers and albinos
+all the time&mdash;their original wild ancestor
+of the woods and fields. If Jim turns out to be
+a Brown Mouse, he may be a bigger man than
+any of us. Anyhow, I&#8217;m for him.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;He&#8217;ll have to be a big man to make anything
+out of the job of a country school-teacher,&#8221; said
+Jennie.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Any job&#8217;s as big as the man who holds it
+down,&#8221; said her father.</p>
+<p>Next day, Jim received a letter from Jennie.</p>
+<hr class='tb' />
+
+<p>&#8220;Dear Jim,&#8221; it ran. &#8220;Father says you are
+sure to have a hard time&mdash;the school board&#8217;s
+against you, and all that. But he added, &#8216;I&#8217;m
+for Jim, anyhow!&#8217; I thought you&#8217;d like to know
+this. Also he said, &#8216;Any job&#8217;s as big as the man
+who holds it down,&#8217; And I believe this also,
+<i>and I&#8217;m for you, too!</i> You are doing wonders
+even before the school starts in getting the
+pupils interested in a lot of things, which, while
+they don&#8217;t belong to school work, will make
+them friends of yours. I don&#8217;t see how this
+will help you much, but it&#8217;s a fine thing, and
+shows your interest in them. Don&#8217;t be too
+original. The wheel runs easiest in the beaten
+track. Yours. Jennie.&#8221;
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_47' name='page_47'></a>47</span></p>
+<p>Jennie&#8217;s caution made no impression on Jim&mdash;but
+he put the letter away, and every evening
+took it out and read the italicized words, <i>&#8220;I&#8217;m
+for you, too!&#8221;</i> The colonel&#8217;s dictum, &#8220;Any job&#8217;s
+as big as the man who holds it down,&#8221; was
+an Emersonian truism to Jim. It reduced all
+jobs to an equality, and it meant equality in
+intellectual and spiritual development. It
+didn&#8217;t mean, for instance, that any job was as
+good as another in making it possible for a
+man to marry&mdash;and Jennie Woodruff&#8217;s
+&#8220;Humph!&#8221; returned to kill and drag off her
+&#8220;I&#8217;m for you, too!&#8221;</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<a name='IV_THE_FIRST_DAY_OF_SCHOOL' id='IV_THE_FIRST_DAY_OF_SCHOOL'></a>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_48' name='page_48'></a>48</span>
+<h2>CHAPTER IV</h2>
+<h3>THE FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL</h3>
+</div>
+
+<p>I suppose every reader will say that genius
+consists very largely in seeing Opportunity
+in the set of circumstances or thoughts or impressions
+that constitute Opportunity, and
+making the best of them.</p>
+<p>Jim Irwin would have said so, anyhow. He
+was full of his Emerson&#8217;s <i>Representative Men</i>,
+and his Carlyle&#8217;s <i>French Revolution</i>, and the
+other old-fashioned, excellent good literature
+which did not cost over twenty-five cents a
+volume; and he had pored long and with many
+thrills over the pages of Matthews&#8217; <i>Getting on
+in the World</i>&mdash;which is the best book of purely
+conventional helpfulness in the language. And
+his view of efficiency was that it is the capacity
+to see opportunity where others overlook it,
+and make the most of it.</p>
+<p>All through his life he had had his own plans
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_49' name='page_49'></a>49</span>
+for becoming great. He was to be a general,
+hurling back the foes of his country; he was
+to be the nation&#8217;s master in literature; a successful
+drawing on his slate had filled him
+with ambition, confidently entertained, of becoming
+a Rubens&mdash;and the story of Benjamin
+West in his school reader fanned this spark
+to a flame; science, too, had at times been his
+chosen field; and when he had built a mousetrap
+which actually caught mice, he saw himself
+a millionaire inventor. As for being president,
+that was a commonplace in his dreams.
+And all the time, he was barefooted, ill-clad
+and dreamed his dreams to the accompaniment
+of the growl of the plow cutting the roots
+under the brown furrow-slice, or the wooshing
+of the milk in the pail. At twenty-eight, he
+considered these dreams over.</p>
+<p>As for this new employment, he saw no great
+opportunity in it. Of any spark of genius he
+was to show in it, of anything he was to suffer
+in it, of those pains and penalties wherewith
+the world pays its geniuses, Jim Irwin anticipated
+nothing. He went into the small, mean,
+ill-paid task as a part of the day&#8217;s work, with
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_50' name='page_50'></a>50</span>
+no knowledge of the stirring of the nation for
+a different sort of rural school, and no suspicion
+that there lay in it any highway to success
+in life. He was not a college man or even
+a high-school man. All his other dreams had
+found rude awakening in the fact that he had
+not been able to secure the schooling which
+geniuses need in these days. He was unfitted
+for the work geniuses do. All he was to be
+was a rural teacher, accidentally elected by a
+stupid school board, and with a hard tussle
+before him to stay on the job for the term of
+his contract. He could have accepted positions
+quite as good years ago, save for the fact that
+they would have taken him away from his
+mother, their cheap little home, their garden
+and their fowls. He rather wondered why
+he had allowed Jennie&#8217;s sneer to sting him
+into the course of action which put him in this
+new relation to his neighbors.</p>
+<p>But, true to his belief in honest thorough
+work, like a general preparing for battle, he
+examined his field of operations. His manner
+of doing this seemed to prove to Colonel Woodruff,
+who watched it with keen interest as something
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_51' name='page_51'></a>51</span>
+new in the world, that Jim Irwin was
+possibly a Brown Mouse. But the colonel knew
+only a part of Jim&#8217;s performances. He saw
+Jim clothed in slickers, walking through rainstorms
+to the houses in the Woodruff District,
+as greedy for every moment of rain as a haymaker
+for shine; and he knew that Jim made
+a great many evening calls.</p>
+<p>But he did not know that Jim was making
+what our sociologists call a survey. For that
+matter, neither did Jim; for books on sociology
+cost more than twenty-five cents a volume, and
+Jim had never seen one. However, it was a
+survey. To be sure, he had long known everybody
+in the district, save the Simmses&mdash;and he
+was now a friend of all that exotic race; but
+there is knowing and knowing. He now had
+note-books full of facts about people and their
+farms. He knew how many acres each family
+possessed, and what sort of farming each husband
+was doing&mdash;live stock, grain or mixed.
+He knew about the mortgages, and the debts.
+He knew whether the family atmosphere was
+happy and contented, or the reverse. He knew
+which boys and girls were wayward and insubordinate.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_52' name='page_52'></a>52</span>
+He made a record of the advancement
+in their studies of all the children, and
+what they liked to read. He knew their favorite
+amusements. He talked with their mothers
+and sisters&mdash;not about the school, to any extent,
+but on the weather, the horses, the automobiles,
+the silo-filling machinery and the
+profits of farming.</p>
+<p>I suppose that no person who has undertaken
+the management of the young people of any
+school in all the history of education, ever did
+so much work of this sort before his school
+opened. Really, though Jennie Woodruff did
+not see how such doings related to school
+work, Jim Irwin&#8217;s school was running full blast
+in the homes of the district and the minds of
+many pupils, weeks and weeks before that day
+when he called them to order on the Monday
+specified in his contract as the first day of
+school.</p>
+<p>Con Bonner, who came to see the opening,
+voiced the sentiments of the older people when
+he condemned the school as disorderly. To be
+sure, there were more pupils enrolled than
+had ever entered on a first day in the whole
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_53' name='page_53'></a>53</span>
+history of the school, and it was hard to accommodate
+them all. But the director&#8217;s criticism
+was leveled against the free-and-easy air
+of the children. Most of them had brought
+seed corn and a good-sized corn show was on
+view. There was much argument as to the
+merits of the various entries. Instead of a
+language lesson from the text-book, Jim had
+given them an exercise based on an examination
+of the ears of corn.</p>
+<p>The number exercises of the little chaps had
+been worked out with ears and kernels of corn.
+One class in arithmetic calculated the percentage
+of inferior kernels at tip and butt to the
+full-sized grains in the middle of the ear.</p>
+<p>All the time, Jim Irwin, awkward and
+uncouth, clad in his none-too-good Sunday suit
+and trying to hide behind his Lincolnian smile
+the fact that he was pretty badly frightened
+and much embarrassed, passed among them,
+getting them enrolled, setting them to work,
+wasting much time and laboring like a heavy-laden
+barge in a seaway.</p>
+<p>&#8220;That feller&#8217;ll never do,&#8221; said Bonner to
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_54' name='page_54'></a>54</span>
+Bronson next day. &#8220;Looks like a tramp in the
+schoolroom.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Wearin&#8217; his best, I guess,&#8221; said Bronson.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Half the kids call him &#8216;Jim,&#8217;&#8221; said Bonner.</p>
+<p>&#8220;That&#8217;s all right with me,&#8221; replied Bronson.</p>
+<p>&#8220;The room was as noisy as a caucus,&#8221; was
+Bonner&#8217;s next indictment, &#8220;and the flure was
+all over corn like a hog-pin.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh! I don&#8217;t suppose he can get away with
+it,&#8221; assented Bronson disgustedly, &#8220;but that
+boy of mine is as tickled as a colt with the
+whole thing. Says he&#8217;s goin&#8217; reg&#8217;lar this
+winter.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;That&#8217;s because Jim don&#8217;t keep no order,&#8221;
+said Bonner. &#8220;He lets Newt do as he dam
+pleases.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;First time he&#8217;s ever pleased to do anything
+but deviltry,&#8221; protested Bronson. &#8220;Oh, I suppose
+Jim&#8217;ll fall down, and we&#8217;ll have to fire
+him&mdash;but I wish we could git a <i>good</i> teacher
+that would git hold of Newt the way he
+seems to!&#8221;</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<a name='V_THE_PROMOTION_OF_JENNIE' id='V_THE_PROMOTION_OF_JENNIE'></a>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_55' name='page_55'></a>55</span>
+<h2>CHAPTER V</h2>
+<h3>THE PROMOTION OF JENNIE</h3>
+</div>
+
+<p>If Jennie Woodruff was the cause of Jim
+Irwin&#8217;s sudden irruption into the educational
+field by her scoffing &#8220;Humph!&#8221; at the idea
+of a farm-hand&#8217;s ever being able to marry, she
+also gave him the opportunity to knock down
+the driver of the big motor-car, and perceptibly
+elevate himself in the opinion of the neighborhood,
+while filling his own heart with something
+like shame.</p>
+<p>The fat man who had said &#8220;Cut it out&#8221; to his
+driver, was Mr. Charles Dilly, a business man
+in the village at the extreme opposite corner
+of the county. His choice of the Woodruff District
+as a place for motoring had a secret explanation.
+I am under no obligation to preserve
+the secret. He came to see Colonel Woodruff
+and Jennie. Mr. Dilly was a candidate for
+county treasurer, and wished to be nominated
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_56' name='page_56'></a>56</span>
+at the approaching county convention. In his
+part of the county lived the county superintendent&mdash;a
+candidate for renomination. He
+was just a plain garden or field county superintendent
+of schools, no better and no worse than
+the general political run of them, but he had
+local pride enlisted in his cause, and was a
+good politician.</p>
+<p>Mr. Dilly was in the Woodruff District to
+build a backfire against this conflagration of
+the county superintendent. He expected to use
+Jennie Woodruff to light it withal. That is,
+while denying that he wished to make any deal
+or trade&mdash;every candidate in every convention
+always says that&mdash;he wished to say to Miss
+Woodruff and her father, that if Miss Woodruff
+would permit her name to be used for the
+office of county superintendent of schools, a
+goodly group of delegates could be selected in
+the other corner of the county who would be
+glad to reciprocate any favors Mr. Charles J.
+Dilly might receive in the way of votes for
+county treasurer with ballots for Miss Jennie
+Woodruff for superintendent of schools.</p>
+<p>Mr. Dilly never inquired as to Miss Woodruff&#8217;s
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_57' name='page_57'></a>57</span>
+abilities as an educator. That would
+have been eccentric. Miss Woodruff never
+asked herself if she knew anything about rural
+education which especially fitted her for the
+task; for was she not a popular and successful
+teacher&mdash;and was not that enough? Mr. Dilly
+merely asked himself if Miss Woodruff&#8217;s name
+could command strength enough to eliminate
+the embarrassing candidate in his part of the
+county and leave the field to himself. Miss
+Woodruff asked herself whether the work
+would not give her a pleasanter life than did
+teaching, a better salary, and more chances
+to settle herself in life. So are the officials
+chosen who supervise and control the education
+of the farm children of America.</p>
+<p>This secret mission to effect a political trade
+accounted for Mr. Dilly&#8217;s desire that his driver
+should &#8220;cut out&#8221; the controversy with Newton
+Bronson, and the personal encounter with Jim
+Irwin&mdash;and it may account for Jim&#8217;s easy victory
+in his first and only physical encounter.
+An office seeker could scarcely afford to let his
+friend or employee lick a member of a farmers&#8217;
+road gang. It certainly explains the fact that
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_58' name='page_58'></a>58</span>
+when Jim Irwin started home from putting
+out his team the day after his first call on the
+Simms family, Jennie was waiting at the gate
+to be congratulated on her nomination.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I congratulate you,&#8221; said Jim.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Thanks,&#8221; said Jennie, extending her hand.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I hope you&#8217;re elected,&#8221; Jim went on, holding
+the hand; &#8220;but there&#8217;s no doubt of that.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;They say not,&#8221; replied Jennie; &#8220;but father
+says I must go about and let the people see
+me. He believes in working just as if we didn&#8217;t
+have a big majority for the ticket.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;A woman has an advantage of a man in
+such a contest,&#8221; said Jim; &#8220;she can work just
+as hard as he can, and at the same time profit
+by the fact that it&#8217;s supposed she can&#8217;t.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I need all the advantage I possess,&#8221; said
+Jennie, &#8220;and all the votes. Say a word for me
+when on your pastoral rounds.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;All right,&#8221; said Jim, &#8220;what shall I say you&#8217;ll
+do for the schools?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Why,&#8221; said Jennie, rather perplexed, &#8220;I&#8217;ll
+be fair in my examinations of teachers, try to
+keep the unfit teachers out of the schools, visit
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_59' name='page_59'></a>59</span>
+schools as often as I can, and&mdash;why, what does
+any good superintendent do?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I never heard of a good county superintendent,&#8221;
+said Jim.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Never heard of one&mdash;why, Jim Irwin!&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t believe there is any such thing,&#8221;
+persisted Jim, &#8220;and if you do no more than you
+say, you&#8217;ll be off the same piece as the rest.
+Your system won&#8217;t give us any better schools
+than we have&mdash;of the old sort&mdash;and we need a
+new kind.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, Jim, Jim! Dreaming as of yore! Why
+can&#8217;t you be practical! What do you mean by
+a new kind of rural school?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;A truly-rural rural school,&#8221; said Jim.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I can&#8217;t pronounce it,&#8221; smiled Jennie, &#8220;to say
+nothing of understanding it. What would your
+tralalooral rural school do?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It would be correlated with rural life,&#8221; said
+Jim.</p>
+<p>&#8220;How?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It would get education out of the things the
+farmers and farmers&#8217; wives are interested in
+as a part of their lives.&#8221;
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_60' name='page_60'></a>60</span></p>
+<p>&#8220;What, for instance?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Dairying, for instance, in this district; and
+soil management; and corn-growing; and farm
+manual training for boys; and sewing, cooking
+and housekeeping for the girls&mdash;and caring for
+babies!&#8221;</p>
+<p>Jennie looked serious, after smothering a
+laugh.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Jim,&#8221; said she, &#8220;you&#8217;re going to have a hard
+enough time to succeed in the Woodruff school,
+if you confine yourself to methods that have
+been tested, and found good.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;But the old methods,&#8221; urged Jim, &#8220;have
+been tested and found bad. Shall I keep to
+them?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;They have made the American people what
+they are,&#8221; said Jennie. &#8220;Don&#8217;t be unpatriotic,
+Jim.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;They have educated our farm children for
+the cities,&#8221; said Jim. &#8220;This county is losing
+population&mdash;and it&#8217;s the best county in the
+world.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Pessimism never wins,&#8221; said Jennie.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Neither does blindness,&#8221; answered Jim. &#8220;It
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_61' name='page_61'></a>61</span>
+is losing the farms their dwellers, and swelling
+the cities with a proletariat.&#8221;</p>
+<p>For some time, now, Jim had ceased to hold
+Jennie&#8217;s hand; and their sweetheart days had
+never seemed farther away.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Jim,&#8221; said Jennie, &#8220;I may be elected to a
+position in which I shall be obliged to pass on
+your acts as teacher&mdash;in an official way, I mean.
+I hope they will be justifiable.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Jim smiled his slowest and saddest smile.</p>
+<p>&#8220;If they&#8217;re not, I&#8217;ll not ask you to condone
+them,&#8221; said he. &#8220;But first, they must be justifiable
+to me, Jennie.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Good night,&#8221; said Jennie curtly, and left
+him.</p>
+<p>Jennie, I am obliged to admit, gave scant
+attention to the new career upon which her old
+sweetheart seemed to be entering. She was
+in politics, and was playing the game as became
+the daughter of a local politician. The
+reader must not by this term get the impression
+that Colonel Woodruff was a man of the
+grafting tricky sort of which we are prone to
+think when the term is used. The West has
+been ruled by just such men as he, and the West
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_62' name='page_62'></a>62</span>
+has done rather well, all things considered.
+Colonel Albert Woodruff went south with the
+army as a corporal in 1861, and came back a
+lieutenant. His title of colonel was conferred
+by appointment as a member of the staff of
+the governor, long years ago, when he was
+county auditor. He was not a rich man, as I
+may have suggested, but a well-to-do farmer,
+whose wife did her own work much of the
+time, not because the colonel could not afford
+to hire &#8220;help,&#8221; but for the reason that &#8220;hired
+girls&#8221; were hard to get.</p>
+<p>The colonel, having seen the glory of the
+coming of the Lord in the triumph of his side
+in the great war, was inclined to think that all
+reform had ceased, and was a political stand-patter&mdash;a
+very honest and sincere one. Moreover,
+he was influential enough so that when
+Mr. Cummins or Mr. Dolliver came into the
+county on political errands, Colonel Woodruff
+had always been called into conference. He
+was of the old New England type, believed
+very much in heredity, very much in the theory
+that whatever is is right, in so far as it has
+secured money or power.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_63' name='page_63'></a>63</span></p>
+<p>He had hated General Weaver and his forces;
+and had sometimes wondered how a man of
+Horace Boies&#8217; opinions had succeeded in being
+so good a governor. He broke with Governor
+Larrabee when that excellent man had turned
+against the great men who had developed Iowa
+by building the railroads. He was always in
+the county convention, and preferred to serve
+on the committee on credentials, and leave to
+others the more showy work of membership in
+the committee on resolutions. He believed in
+education, provided it did not unsettle things.
+He had a good deal of Latin and some Greek,
+and lived on a farm rather than in a fine
+house in the county seat because of his lack
+of financial ability. As a matter of fact, he
+had been too strictly scrupulous to do the
+things&mdash;such as dealing in lands belonging to
+eastern speculators who were not advised as
+to their values, speculating in county warrants,
+buying up tax titles with county money, and
+the like&mdash;by which his fellow-politicians who
+held office in the early years of the county had
+founded their fortunes. A very respectable,
+honest, American tory was the colonel, fond of
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_64' name='page_64'></a>64</span>
+his political sway, and rather soured by the
+fact that it was passing from him. He had
+now broken with Cummins and Dolliver as he
+had done years ago with Weaver and later with
+Larrabee&mdash;and this breach was very important
+to him, whether they were greatly concerned
+about it or not.</p>
+<p>Such being her family history, Jennie was
+something of a politician herself. She was in
+no way surprised when approached by party
+managers on the subject of accepting the nomination
+for county superintendent of schools.
+Colonel Woodruff could deliver some delegates
+to his daughter, though he rather shied at the
+proposal at first, but on thinking it over,
+warmed somewhat to the notion of having a
+Woodruff on the county pay-roll once more.</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<a name='VI_JIM_TALKS_THE_WEATHER_COLD' id='VI_JIM_TALKS_THE_WEATHER_COLD'></a>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_65' name='page_65'></a>65</span>
+<h2>CHAPTER VI</h2>
+<h3>JIM TALKS THE WEATHER COLD</h3>
+</div>
+
+<p>&#8220;Going to the rally, James?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Jim had finished his supper, and yearned
+for a long evening in his attic den with his
+cheap literature. But as the district schoolmaster
+he was to some extent responsible for
+the protection of the school property, and felt
+some sense of duty as to exhibiting an interest
+in public affairs.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I guess I&#8217;ll have to go, mother,&#8221; he replied
+regretfully. &#8220;I want to see Mr. Woodruff about
+borrowing his Babcock milk tester, and I&#8217;ll go
+that way. I guess I&#8217;ll go on to the meeting.&#8221;</p>
+<p>He kissed his mother when he went&mdash;a habit
+from which he never deviated, and another of
+those personal peculiarities which had marked
+him as different from the other boys of the
+neighborhood. His mother urged his overcoat
+upon him in vain&mdash;for Jim&#8217;s overcoat was distinctly
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_66' name='page_66'></a>66</span>
+a bad one, while his best suit, now worn
+every day as a concession to his scholastic
+position, still looked passably well after several
+weeks of schoolroom duty. She pressed him
+to wear a muffler about his neck, but he declined
+that also. He didn&#8217;t need it, he said;
+but he was thinking of the incongruity of a
+muffler with no overcoat. It seemed more
+logical to assume that the weather was milder
+than it really was, on that sharp October evening,
+and appear at his best, albeit rather aware
+of the cold. Jennie was at home, and he was
+likely to see and be seen of her.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You can borrow that tester,&#8221; said the
+colonel, &#8220;and the cows that go with it, if you
+can use &#8217;em. They ain&#8217;t earning their keep
+here. But how does the milk tester fit into
+the curriculum of the school? A decoration?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;We want to make a few tests of the cows
+in the neighborhood,&#8221; answered Jim. &#8220;Just
+another of my fool notions.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;All right,&#8221; said the colonel. &#8220;Take it along.
+Going to the speakin&#8217;?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Certainly, he&#8217;s going,&#8221; said Jennie, entering.
+&#8220;This is my meeting, Jim.&#8221;
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_67' name='page_67'></a>67</span></p>
+<p>&#8220;Surely, I&#8217;m going,&#8221; assented Jim. &#8220;And I
+think I&#8217;ll run along.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I wish we had room for you in the car,&#8221;
+said the colonel. &#8220;But I&#8217;m going around by
+Bronson&#8217;s to pick up the speaker, and I&#8217;ll have
+a chuck-up load.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Not so much of a load as you think,&#8221; said
+Jennie. &#8220;I&#8217;m going with Jim. The walk will
+do me good.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Any candidate warms to her voting population
+just before election; but Jennie had a
+special kindness for Jim. He was no longer
+a farm-hand. The fact that he was coming
+to be a center of disturbance in the district,
+and that she quite failed to understand how
+his eccentric behavior could be harmonized
+with those principles of teaching which she
+had imbibed at the state normal school in
+itself lifted him nearer to equality with her.
+A public nuisance is really more respectable
+than a nonentity.</p>
+<p>She gave Jim a thrill as she passed through
+the gate that he opened for her. White moonlight
+on her white furs suggested purity, exaltation,
+the essence of womanhood&mdash;things far
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_68' name='page_68'></a>68</span>
+finer in the woman of twenty-seven than the
+glamour thrown over him by the schoolgirl
+of sixteen.</p>
+<p>Jim gave her no thrill; for he looked gaunt
+and angular in his skimpy, ready-made suit, too
+short in legs and sleeves, and too thin for the
+season. Yet, as they walked along, Jim grew
+upon her. He strode on with immense strides,
+made slow to accommodate her shorter steps,
+and embarrassing her by his entire absence of
+effort to keep step. For all that, he lifted his
+face to the stars, and he kept silence, save for
+certain fragments of his thoughts, in dropping
+which he assumed that she, like himself, was
+filled with the grandeur of the sparkling sky, its
+vast moon, plowing like an astronomical liner
+through the cloudlets of a wool-pack. He
+pointed out the great open spaces in the Milky
+Way, wondering at their emptiness, and at the
+fact that no telescope can find stars in them.</p>
+<p>They stopped and looked. Jim laid his hard
+hands on the shoulders of her white fur collarette.</p>
+<p>&#8220;What&#8217;s the use of political meetings,&#8221; said
+Jim, &#8220;when you and I can stand here and think
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_69' name='page_69'></a>69</span>
+our way out, even beyond the limits of our
+Universe?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;A wonderful journey,&#8221; said she, not quite
+understanding his mood, but very respectful to
+it.</p>
+<p>&#8220;And together,&#8221; said Jim. &#8220;I&#8217;d like to go on
+a long, long journey with you to-night, Jennie,
+to make up for the years since we went anywhere
+together.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;And we shouldn&#8217;t have come together
+to-night,&#8221; said Jennie, getting back to earth,
+&#8220;if I hadn&#8217;t exercised my leap-year privilege.&#8221;</p>
+<p>She slipped her arm in his, and they went
+on in a rather intimate way.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m not to blame, Jennie,&#8221; said he. &#8220;You
+know that at any time I&#8217;d have given anything&mdash;anything&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;And even now,&#8221; said Jennie, taking
+advantage of his depleted stock of words, &#8220;while
+we roam beyond the Milky Way, we aren&#8217;t
+getting any votes for me for county superintendent.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Jim said nothing. He was quite, quite
+reestablished on the earth.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Don&#8217;t you want me to be elected, Jim?&#8221;
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_70' name='page_70'></a>70</span></p>
+<p>Jim seemed to ponder this for some time&mdash;a
+period of taking the matter under advisement
+which caused Jennie to drop his arm and busy
+herself with her skirts.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes,&#8221; said Jim, at last; &#8220;of course I do.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Nothing more was said until they reached
+the schoolhouse door.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well,&#8221; said Jennie rather indignantly, &#8220;I&#8217;m
+glad there are plenty of voters who are more
+enthusiastic about me than you seem to be!&#8221;</p>
+<p>More interesting to a keen observer than
+the speeches, were the unusual things in the
+room itself. To be sure, there were on the
+blackboards exercises and outlines, of lessons
+in language, history, mathematics, geography
+and the like. But these were not the usual
+things taken from text-books. The problems in
+arithmetic were calculations as to the feeding
+value of various rations for live stock, records
+of laying hens and computation as to the excess
+of value in eggs produced over the cost of feed.
+Pinned to the wall were market reports on all
+sorts of farm products, and especially numerous
+were the statistics on the prices of cream and
+butter. There were files of farm papers piled
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_71' name='page_71'></a>71</span>
+about, and racks of agricultural bulletins. In
+one corner of the room was a typewriting machine,
+and in another a sewing machine. Parts
+of an old telephone were scattered about on
+the teacher&#8217;s desk. A model of a piggery stood
+on a shelf, done in cardboard. Instead of the
+usual collection of text-books in the desk, there
+were hectograph copies of exercises, reading
+lessons, arithmetical tables and essays on
+various matters relating to agriculture, all of
+which were accounted for by two or three
+hand-made hectographs&mdash;a very fair sort of
+printing plant&mdash;lying on a table. The members
+of the school board were there, looking on
+these evidences of innovation with wonder and
+more or less disfavor. Things were disorderly.
+The text-books recently adopted by the board
+against some popular protest had evidently
+been pitched, neck and crop, out of the school
+by the man whom Bonner had termed a dub.
+It was a sort of contempt for the powers
+that be.</p>
+<p>Colonel Woodruff was in the chair. After
+the speechifying was over, and the stereotyped,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_72' name='page_72'></a>72</span>
+though rather illogical, appeal had been made
+for voters of the one party to cast the straight
+ticket, and for those of the other faction to
+scratch, the colonel rose to adjourn the meeting.</p>
+<p>Newton Bronson, safely concealed behind
+taller people, called out, &#8220;Jim Irwin! speech!&#8221;</p>
+<p>There was a giggle, a slight sensation, and
+many voices joined in the call for the new
+schoolmaster.</p>
+<p>Colonel Woodruff felt the unwisdom of
+ignoring the demand. Probably he relied upon
+Jim&#8217;s discretion and expected a declination.</p>
+<p>Jim arose, seedy and lank, and the voices
+ceased, save for another suppressed titter.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t know,&#8221; said Jim, &#8220;whether this call
+upon me is a joke or not. If it is, it isn&#8217;t a
+practical one, for I can&#8217;t talk. I don&#8217;t care
+much about parties or politics. I don&#8217;t know
+whether I&#8217;m a Democrat, a Republican or a
+Populist.&#8221;</p>
+<p>This caused a real sensation. The nerve of
+the fellow! Really, it must in justice be said,
+Jim was losing himself in a desire to tell his
+true feelings. He forgot all about Jennie and
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_73' name='page_73'></a>73</span>
+her candidacy&mdash;about everything except his
+real, true feelings. This proves that he was no
+politician.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t see much in this county campaign
+that interests me,&#8221; he went on&mdash;and Jennie
+Woodruff reddened, while her seasoned father
+covered his mouth with his hand to conceal a
+smile. &#8220;The politicians come out into the farming
+districts every campaign and get us hayseeds
+for anything they want. They always
+have got us. They&#8217;ve got us again! They
+give us clodhoppers the glad hand, a cheap
+cigar, and a cheaper smile after election;&mdash;and
+that&#8217;s all. I know it, you all know it, they
+know it. I don&#8217;t blame them so very much.
+The trouble is we don&#8217;t ask them to do anything
+better. I want a new kind of rural school;
+but I don&#8217;t see any prospect, no matter how
+this election goes, for any change in them. We
+in the Woodruff District will have to work out
+our own salvation. Our political ring never&#8217;ll
+do anything but the old things. They don&#8217;t
+want to, and they haven&#8217;t sense enough to do
+it if they did. That&#8217;s all&mdash;and I don&#8217;t suppose
+I should have said as much as I have!&#8221;
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_74' name='page_74'></a>74</span></p>
+<p>There was stark silence for a moment when he
+sat down, and then as many cheers for Jim as
+for the principal speaker of the evening, cheers
+mingled with titters and catcalls. Jim felt a
+good deal as he had done when he knocked
+down Mr. Billy&#8217;s chauffeur&mdash;rather degraded
+and humiliated, as if he had made an ass of
+himself. And as he walked out of the door,
+the future county superintendent passed by
+him in high displeasure, and walked home with
+some one else.</p>
+<p>Jim found the weather much colder than it
+had been while coming. He really needed an
+Eskimo&#8217;s fur suit.</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<a name='VII_THE_NEW_WINE' id='VII_THE_NEW_WINE'></a>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_75' name='page_75'></a>75</span>
+<h2>CHAPTER VII</h2>
+<h3>THE NEW WINE</h3>
+</div>
+
+<p>In the little strip of forest which divided the
+sown from the Iowa sown wandered two
+boys in earnest converse. They seemed to be
+Boy Trappers, and from their backloads of
+steel-traps one of them might have been Frank
+Merriwell, and the other Dead-Shot Dick.
+However, though it was only mid-December,
+and the fur of all wild varmints was at its
+primest, they were bringing their traps into the
+settlements, instead of taking them afield.
+&#8220;The settlements&#8221; were represented by the
+ruinous dwelling of the Simmses, and the boy
+who resembled Frank Merriwell was Raymond
+Simms. The other, who was much more barbarously
+accoutered, whose overalls were
+fringed, who wore a cartridge belt about his
+person, and carried hatchet, revolver, and a
+long knife with a deerfoot handle, and who so
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_76' name='page_76'></a>76</span>
+studiously looked like Dead-Shot Dick, was our
+old friend of the road gang, Newton Bronson.
+On the right, on the left, a few rods would
+have brought the boys out upon the levels of
+rich corn-fields, and in sight of the long rows
+of cottonwoods, willows, box-elders and soft
+maples along the straight roads, and of the huge
+red barns, each of which possessed a numerous
+progeny of outbuildings, among which the
+dwelling held a dubious headship. But here,
+they could be the Boy Trappers&mdash;a thin fringe
+of bushes and trees made of the little valley a
+forest to the imagination of the boys. Newton
+put down his load, and sat upon a stump to
+rest.</p>
+<p>Raymond Simms was dimly conscious of a
+change in Newton since the day when they
+met and helped select Colonel Woodruff&#8217;s next
+year&#8217;s seed corn. Newton&#8217;s mother had a
+mother&#8217;s confidence that Newton was now a
+good boy, who had been led astray by other
+boys, but had reformed. Jim Irwin had a
+distinct feeling of optimism. Newton had quit
+tobacco and beer, casually stating to Jim that
+he was &#8220;in training.&#8221; Since Jim had shown
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_77' name='page_77'></a>77</span>
+his ability to administer a knockout to that
+angry chauffeur, he seemed to this hobbledehoy
+peculiarly a proper person for athletic confidences.
+Newton&#8217;s mind seemed gradually
+filling up with interests that displaced the
+psychological complex out of which oozed the
+bad stories and filthy allusion. Jim attributed
+much of this to the clear mountain atmosphere
+which surrounded Raymond Simms, the
+ignorant barbarian driven out of his native
+hills by a feud. Raymond was of the open
+spaces, and refused to hear fetid things that
+seemed out of place in them. There was a
+dignity which impressed Newton, in the blank
+gaze with which Raymond greeted Newton&#8217;s
+sallies that were wont to set the village pool
+room in a roar; but how could you have a fuss
+with a feller who knew all about trapping, who
+had seen a man shot, who had shot a bear, who
+had killed wild turkeys, who had trapped a
+hundred dollars&#8217; worth of furs in one winter,
+who knew the proper &#8220;sets&#8221; for all fur-bearing
+animals, and whom you liked, and who liked
+you?</p>
+<p>As the reason for Newton&#8217;s improvement in
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_78' name='page_78'></a>78</span>
+manner of living, Raymond, out of his own
+experience, would have had no hesitation in
+naming the school and the schoolmaster.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I wouldn&#8217;t go back on a friend,&#8221; said Newton,
+seated on the stump with his traps on the
+ground at his feet, &#8220;the way you&#8217;re going back
+on me.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You got no call to talk thataway,&#8221; replied
+the mountain boy. &#8220;How&#8217;m I goin&#8217; back on
+you?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;We was goin&#8217; to trap all winter,&#8221;
+asseverated Newton, &#8220;and next winter we were
+goin&#8217; up in the north woods together.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You know,&#8221; said Raymond somberly, &#8220;that
+we cain&#8217;t run any trap line and do whut we
+got to do to he&#8217;p Mr. Jim.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Newton sat mute as one having no rejoinder.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Mr. Jim,&#8221; went on Raymond, &#8220;needs all the
+he&#8217;p every kid in this settlement kin give him.
+He&#8217;s the best friend I ever had. I&#8217;m a pore
+ignerant boy, an&#8217; he teaches me how to do
+things that will make me something.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Darn it all!&#8221; said Newton.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You know,&#8221; said Raymond, &#8220;that you&#8217;d
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_79' name='page_79'></a>79</span>
+think mahgty small of me, if I&#8217;d desert Mr. Jim
+Irwin.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well, then,&#8221; replied Newton, seizing his
+traps and throwing them across his shoulder,
+&#8220;come on with the traps, and shut up! What&#8217;ll
+we do when the school board gets Jennie Woodruff
+to revoke his certificate and make him quit
+teachin&#8217;, hey?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Nobody&#8217;ll eveh do that,&#8221; said Raymond. &#8220;I&#8217;d
+set in the schoolhouse do&#8217; with my rifle and
+shoot anybody that&#8217;d come to th&#8217;ow Mr. Jim
+outen the school.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Not in this country,&#8221; said Newton. &#8220;This
+ain&#8217;t a gun country.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;But it orto be either a justice kentry, or a
+gun kentry,&#8221; replied the mountain boy. &#8220;It
+stands to reason it must be one &#8217;r the otheh,
+Newton.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;No, it don&#8217;t, neither,&#8221; said Newton dogmatically.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Why should they th&#8217;ow Mr. Jim outen the
+school?&#8221; inquired Raymond. &#8220;Ain&#8217;t he teachin&#8217;
+us right?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Newton explained for the tenth time that his
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_80' name='page_80'></a>80</span>
+father, Mr. Con Bonner and Mr. Haakon Peterson
+had not meant to hire Jim Irwin at all, but
+each had voted for him so that he might have
+one vote. They were all against him from the
+first, but they had not known how to get rid
+of him. Now, however, Jim had done so many
+things that no teacher was supposed to do, and
+had left undone so many things that teachers
+were bound by custom to perform, that Newton&#8217;s
+father and Mr. Bonner and Mr. Peterson
+had made up up their minds that they would call
+upon him to resign, and if he wouldn&#8217;t, they
+would &#8220;turn him out&#8221; in some way. And the
+best way if they could do it, would be to induce
+County Superintendent Woodruff, who didn&#8217;t
+like Jim since the speech he made at the political
+meeting, to revoke his certificate.</p>
+<p>&#8220;What wrong&#8217;s he done committed?&#8221; asked
+Raymond. &#8220;I don&#8217;t know what teachers air
+supposed to do in this kentry, but Mr. Jim
+seems to be the only shore-enough teacher I
+ever see!&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;He don&#8217;t teach out of the books the school
+board adopted,&#8221; replied Newton.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_81' name='page_81'></a>81</span></p>
+<p>&#8220;But he makes up better lessons,&#8221; urged Raymond.
+&#8220;An&#8217; all the things we do in school,
+he&#8217;ps us make a livin&#8217;.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;He begins at eight in the mornin&#8217;,&#8221; said
+Newton, &#8220;an&#8217; he has some of us there till half
+past five, and comes back in the evening. And
+every Saturday, some of the kids are doin&#8217;
+something at the schoolhouse.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;They don&#8217;t pay him for overtime, do they?&#8221;
+queried Raymond. &#8220;Well, then, they orto,
+instid of turnin&#8217; him out!&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well, they&#8217;ll turn him out!&#8221; prophesied
+Newton. &#8220;I&#8217;m havin&#8217; more fun in school than
+I ever&mdash;an&#8217; that&#8217;s why I&#8217;m with you on this
+quittin&#8217; trapping&mdash;but they&#8217;ll get Jim, all
+right!&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m having something betteh&#8217;n fun,&#8221; replied
+Raymond. &#8220;My pap has never understood this
+kentry, an&#8217; we-all has had bad times hyeh; but
+Mr. Jim an&#8217; I have studied out how I can make
+a betteh livin&#8217; next year&mdash;and pap says we kin
+go on the way Mr. Jim says. I&#8217;ll work for
+Colonel Woodruff a part of the time, an&#8217; pap
+kin make corn in the biggest field. It seems
+we didn&#8217;t do our work right last year&mdash;an&#8217; in
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_82' name='page_82'></a>82</span>
+a couple of years, with the increase of the
+hawgs, an&#8217; the land we kin get under plow....&#8221;</p>
+<p>Raymond was off on his pet dream of becoming
+something better than the oldest of the
+Simms tribe of outcasts, and Newton was subconsciously
+impressed by the fact that never
+for a moment did Raymond&#8217;s plans fail to include
+the elevation with him of Calista and
+Jinnie and Buddy and Pap and Mam. It was
+taken for granted that the Simmses sank or
+swam together, whether their antagonists were
+poverty and ignorance, or their ancient foes,
+the Hobdays. Newton drew closer to Raymond&#8217;s
+side.</p>
+<p>It was still an hour before nine&mdash;when the
+rural school traditionally &#8220;takes up&#8221;&mdash;when
+the boys had stored their traps in a shed at the
+Bronson home, and walked on to the schoolhouse.
+That rather scabby and weathered
+edifice was already humming with industry of
+a sort. In spite of the hostility of the school
+board, and the aloofness of the patrons of the
+school, the pupils were clearly interested in
+Jim Irwin&#8217;s system of rural education. Never
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_83' name='page_83'></a>83</span>
+had the attendance been so large or regular;
+and one of the reasons for sessions before nine
+and after four was the inability of the teacher
+to attend to the needs of his charges in the
+five and a half hours called &#8220;school hours.&#8221;</p>
+<p>This, however, was not the sole reason. It
+was the new sort of work which commanded
+the attention of Raymond and Newton as they
+entered. This morning, Jim had arranged in
+various sorts of dishes specimens of grain and
+grass seeds. By each was a card bearing the
+name of the farm from which one of the older
+boys or girls had brought it. &#8220;Wheat, Scotch
+Fife, from the farm of Columbus Smith.&#8221;
+&#8220;Timothy, or Herd&#8217;s Grass, from the farm of
+A. B. Talcott.&#8221; &#8220;Alsike Clover, from the farm
+of B. B. Hamm.&#8221; Each lot was in a small cloth
+bag which had been made by one of the little
+girls as a sewing exercise; and each card had
+been written as a lesson in penmanship by one
+of the younger pupils, and contained, in addition
+to the data above mentioned, heads under
+which to enter the number of grains of the
+seed examined, the number which grew, the
+percentage of viability, the number of alien
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_84' name='page_84'></a>84</span>
+seeds of weeds and other sorts, the names of
+these adulterants, the weight of true and
+vitalized, and of foul and alien and dead seeds,
+the value per bushel in the local market of the
+seeds under test, and the real market values
+of the samples, after dead seeds and alien
+matter had been subtracted.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Now get busy, here,&#8221; cried Jim Irwin.
+&#8220;We&#8217;re late! Raymond, you&#8217;ve a quick eye&mdash;you
+count seeds&mdash;and you, Calista, and Mary
+Smith&mdash;and mind, next year&#8217;s crop may depend
+on making no mistakes!&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Mistakes!&#8221; scoffed Mary Smith, a dumpy
+girl of fourteen. &#8220;We don&#8217;t make mistakes
+any more, teacher.&#8221;</p>
+<p>It was a frolic, rather than a task. All had
+come with a perfect understanding that this
+early attendance was quite illegal, and not to
+be required of them&mdash;but they came.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Newt,&#8221; suggested Jim, &#8220;get busy on the
+percentage problems for that second class in
+arithmetic.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Sure,&#8221; said Newt. &#8220;Let&#8217;s see.... Good
+seed is the base, and bad seed and dead seed
+the percentage&mdash;find the rate....&#8221;
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_85' name='page_85'></a>85</span></p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, you know!&#8221; said Jim. &#8220;Make them
+easy and plain and as many as you can get
+out&mdash;and be sure that you name the farm every
+pop!&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Got you!&#8221; answered Newton, and in a fine
+frenzy went at the job of creating a text-book
+in arithmetic.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Buddy,&#8221; said Jim, patting the youngest
+Simms on the head, &#8220;you and Virginia can
+print the reading lessons this morning, can&#8217;t
+you?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes, Mr. Jim,&#8221; answered both McGeehee
+Simms and his sister cheerily. &#8220;Where&#8217;s the
+copy?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Here,&#8221; answered the teacher, handing each
+a typewritten sheet for use as the original from
+which the young mountaineers were to make
+hectograph copies, &#8220;and mind you make good
+copies! Bettina Hansen pretty nearly cried
+last night because she had to write them over
+so many times on the typewriter before she
+got them all right.&#8221;</p>
+<p>The reading lesson was an article on corn
+condensed from a farm paper, and a selection
+from <i>Hiawatha</i>&mdash;the Indian-corn myth.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_86' name='page_86'></a>86</span></p>
+<p>&#8220;We&#8217;ll be careful, Mr. Jim,&#8221; said Buddy.</p>
+<p>Half past eight, and only half an hour until
+school would officially be &#8220;called.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Newton Bronson was writing in aniline ink
+for the hectographs, such problems as these:</p>
+<p>&#8220;If Mr. Ezra Bronson&#8217;s seed wheat carries
+in each 250 grains, ten cockle grains, fifteen
+rye grains, twenty fox-tail seeds, three iron-weed
+seeds, two wild oats grains, twenty-seven
+wild buckwheat seeds, one wild morning-glory
+seed, and eighteen lamb&#8217;s quarter seeds, what
+percentage of the seeds sown is wheat, and
+what foul seed?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;If in each 250 grains of wheat in Mr.
+Bronson&#8217;s bins, 30 are cracked, dead or otherwise
+not capable of sprouting, what per cent,
+of the seed sown will grow?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;If the foul seed and dead wheat amount to
+one-eighth by weight of the mass, what did
+Mr. Bronson pay per bushel for the good wheat,
+if it cost him $1.10 in the bin, and what per
+cent, did he lose by the adulterations and the
+poor wheat?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Jim ran over these rapidly. &#8220;Your mathematics
+is good, Newton,&#8221; said the schoolmaster,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_87' name='page_87'></a>87</span>
+&#8220;but if you expect to pass in penmanship, you&#8217;ll
+have to take more pains.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;How about the grammar?&#8221; asked Newton.
+&#8220;The writing is pretty bad, I&#8217;ll own up.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;The grammar is good this morning. You&#8217;re
+gradually mastering the art of stating a problem
+in arithmetic in English&mdash;and that&#8217;s improvement.&#8221;</p>
+<p>The hands of Jim Irwin&#8217;s dollar watch
+gradually approached the position indicating
+nine o&#8217;clock&mdash;at which time the schoolmaster
+rapped on his desk and the school came to
+order. Then, for a while, it became like other
+schools. A glance over the room enabled him
+to enter the names of the absentees, and those
+tardy. There was a song by the school, the
+recitation in concert of <i>Little Brown Hands</i>,
+some general remarks and directions by the
+teacher, and the primary pupils came forward
+for their reading exercises. A few classes began
+poring over their text-books, but most of
+the pupils had their work passed out to them in
+the form of hectograph copies of exercises
+prepared in the school itself.</p>
+<p>As the little ones finished their recitations,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_88' name='page_88'></a>88</span>
+they passed to the dishes of wheat, and began
+aiding Raymond&#8217;s squad in the counting and
+classifying of the various seeds. They counted
+to five, and they counted the fives. They
+laughed in a subdued way, and whispered constantly,
+but nobody seemed disturbed.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Do they help much, Calista?&#8221; asked the
+teacher, as the oldest Simms girl came to his
+desk for more wheat.</p>
+<p>&#8220;No, seh, not much,&#8221; replied Calista, beaming,
+&#8220;but they don&#8217;t hold us back any&mdash;and
+maybe they do he&#8217;p a little.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;That&#8217;s good,&#8221; said Jim, &#8220;and they enjoy
+it, don&#8217;t they?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, yes, Mr. Jim,&#8221; assented Calista, &#8220;and
+the way Buddy is learnin&#8217; to count is fine!
+They-all will soon know all the addition they
+is, and a lot of multiplication. Angie Talcott
+knows the kinds of seeds better&#8217;n what I do!&#8221;</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<a name='VIII_AND_THE_OLD_BOTTLES' id='VIII_AND_THE_OLD_BOTTLES'></a>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_89' name='page_89'></a>89</span>
+<h2>CHAPTER VIII</h2>
+<h3>AND THE OLD BOTTLES</h3>
+</div>
+
+<p>The day passed. Four o&#8217;clock came. In
+order that all might reach home for supper,
+there was no staying, except that Newt Bronson
+and Raymond Simms remained to sweep
+and dust the schoolroom, and prepare kindling
+for the next morning&#8217;s fire&mdash;a work they had
+taken upon themselves, so as to enable the
+teacher to put on the blackboards such outlines
+for the morrow&#8217;s class work as might be required.
+Jim was writing on the board a list
+of words constituting a spelling exercise. They
+were not from the text-book, but grew naturally
+out of the study of the seed wheat&mdash;&#8220;cockle,&#8221;
+&#8220;morning-glory,&#8221; &#8220;convolvulus,&#8221; &#8220;viable,&#8221; &#8220;viability,&#8221;
+&#8220;sprouting,&#8221; &#8220;iron-weed&#8221; and the like.
+A tap was heard at the door, and Raymond
+Simms opened it.</p>
+<p>In filed three women&mdash;and Jim Irwin knew
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_90' name='page_90'></a>90</span>
+as he looked at them that he was greeting a
+deputation, and felt that it meant a struggle.
+For they were the wives of the members of
+the school board. He placed for them the three
+available chairs, and in the absence of any for
+himself remained standing before them, a gaunt
+shabby-looking revolutionist at the bar of
+settled usage and fixed public opinion.</p>
+<p>Mrs. Haakon Peterson was a tall blonde
+woman who, when she spoke betrayed her
+Scandinavian origin by the northern burr to
+her &#8220;r&#8217;s,&#8221; and a slight difficulty with her &#8220;j&#8217;s,&#8221;
+her &#8220;y&#8217;s&#8221; and long &#8220;a&#8217;s.&#8221; She was slow-spoken
+and dignified, and Jim felt an instinctive respect
+for her personality. Mrs. Bronson was
+a good motherly woman, noted for her
+housekeeping, and for her church activities.
+She looked oftener at her son, and his friend
+Raymond than at the schoolmaster. Mrs. Bonner
+was the most voluble of the three, and was
+the only one who shook hands with Jim; but
+in spite of her rather offhand manner, Jim
+sensed in the little, black-eyed Irishwoman the
+real commander of the expedition against
+him&mdash;for such he knew it to be.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_91' name='page_91'></a>91</span></p>
+<p>&#8220;You may think it strange of us coming
+after hours,&#8221; said she, &#8220;but we wanted to
+speak to you, teacher, without the children
+here.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I wish more of the parents would call,&#8221;
+said Jim. &#8220;At any hour of the day.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Or night either, I dare say,&#8221; suggested Mrs.
+Bonner. &#8220;I hear you&#8217;ve the scholars here at
+all hours, Jim.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Jim smiled his slow patient smile.</p>
+<p>&#8220;We do break the union rules, I guess, Mrs.
+Bonner,&#8221; said he; &#8220;there seems to be more to
+do than we can get done during school
+hours.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;What right have ye,&#8221; struck in Mrs. Bonner,
+&#8220;to be burning the district&#8217;s fuel, and wearing
+out the school&#8217;s property out of hours like
+that&mdash;not that it&#8217;s anny of my business,&#8221; she
+interposed, hastily, as if she had been diverted
+from her chosen point of attack. &#8220;I just
+thought of it, that&#8217;s all. What we came for,
+Mr. Irwin, is to object to the way the teachin&#8217;s
+being done&mdash;corn and wheat, and hogs and the
+like, instead of the learnin&#8217; schools was made
+to teach.&#8221;
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_92' name='page_92'></a>92</span></p>
+<p>&#8220;Schools were made to prepare children for
+life, weren&#8217;t they, Mrs. Bonner?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;To be sure,&#8221; went on Mrs. Bonner, &#8220;I can
+see an&#8217; the whole district can see that it&#8217;s
+easier for a man that&#8217;s been a farm-hand to
+teach farm-hand knowledge, than the learnin&#8217;
+schools was set up to teach; but if so be he
+hasn&#8217;t the book education to do the right thing,
+we think he should get out and give a real
+teacher a chance.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;What am I neglecting?&#8221; asked Jim mildly.</p>
+<p>Mrs. Bonner seemed unprepared for the
+question, and sat for an instant mute. Mrs.
+Peterson interposed her attack while Mrs. Bonner
+might be recovering her wind.</p>
+<p>&#8220;We people that have had a hard time,&#8221; she
+said in a precise way which seemed to show
+that she knew exactly what she wanted, &#8220;want
+to give our boys and girls a chance to live
+easier lives than we lived. We don&#8217;t want our
+children taught about nothing but work. We
+want higher things.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Mrs. Peterson,&#8221; said Jim earnestly, &#8220;we
+must have first things first. Making a living
+is the first thing&mdash;and the highest.&#8221;
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_93' name='page_93'></a>93</span></p>
+<p>&#8220;Haakon and I will look after making a
+living for our family,&#8221; said she. &#8220;We want
+our children to learn nice things, and go to
+high school, and after a while to the Juniwersity.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;And I,&#8221; declared Jim, &#8220;will send out from
+this school, if you will let me, pupils better
+prepared for higher schools than have ever
+gone from it&mdash;because they will be trained to
+think in terms of action. They will go knowing
+that thoughts must always be linked with
+things. Aren&#8217;t your children happy in school,
+Mrs. Peterson?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t send them to school to be happy,
+Yim,&#8221; replied Mrs. Peterson, calling him by
+the name most familiarly known to all of them;
+&#8220;I send them to learn to be higher people than
+their father and mother. That&#8217;s what America
+means!&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;They&#8217;ll be higher people&mdash;higher than their
+parents&mdash;higher than their teacher&mdash;they&#8217;ll be
+efficient farmers, and efficient farmers&#8217; wives.
+They&#8217;ll be happy, because they will know how
+to use more brains in farming than any lawyer
+or doctor or merchant can possibly use in his
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_94' name='page_94'></a>94</span>
+business. I&#8217;m educating them to find an outlet
+for genius in farming!&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s a fine thing,&#8221; said Mrs. Bonner, coming
+to the aid of her fellow soldiers, &#8220;to work hard
+for a lifetime, an&#8217; raise nothing but a family
+of farmers! A fine thing!&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;They will be farmers anyhow,&#8221; cried Jim,
+&#8220;in spite of your efforts&mdash;ninety out of every
+hundred of them! And of the other ten, nine
+will be wage-earners in the cities, and wish to
+God they were back on the farm; and the
+hundredth one will succeed in the city. Shall
+we educate the ninety-and-nine to fail, that the
+hundredth, instead of enriching the rural life
+with his talents, may steal them away to make
+the city stronger? It is already too strong
+for us farmers. Shall we drive our best away
+to make it stronger?&#8221;</p>
+<p>The guns of Mrs. Bonner and Mrs. Peterson
+were silenced for a moment, and Mrs. Bronson,
+after gazing about at the typewriter, the hectograph,
+the exhibits of weed seeds, the Babcock
+milk tester, and the other unscholastic equipment,
+pointed to the list of words, and the
+arithmetic problems on the board.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_95' name='page_95'></a>95</span></p>
+<p>&#8220;Do you get them words from the speller?&#8221;
+she asked.</p>
+<p>&#8220;No,&#8221; said he, &#8220;we got them from a lesson on
+seed wheat.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Did them examples come out of an arithmetic
+book?&#8221; cross-examined she.</p>
+<p>&#8220;No,&#8221; said Jim, &#8220;we used problems we made
+ourselves. We were figuring profits and losses
+on your cows, Mrs. Bronson!&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Ezra Bronson,&#8221; said Mrs. Bronson loftily,
+&#8220;don&#8217;t need any help in telling what&#8217;s a good
+cow. He was farming before you was born!&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Like fun, he don&#8217;t need help! He&#8217;s going
+to dry old Cherry off and fatten her for beef;
+and he can make more money on the cream by
+beefing about three more of &#8217;em. The Babcock
+test shows they&#8217;re just boarding on us without
+paying their board!&#8221;</p>
+<p>The delegation of matrons ruffled like a group
+of startled hens at this interposition, which
+was Newton Bronson&#8217;s effective seizing of the
+opportunity to issue a progress bulletin in the
+research work on the Bronson dairy herd.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Newton!&#8221; said his mother, &#8220;don&#8217;t interrupt
+me when I&#8217;m talking to the teacher!&#8221;
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_96' name='page_96'></a>96</span></p>
+<p>&#8220;Well, then,&#8221; said Newton, &#8220;don&#8217;t tell the
+teacher that pa knew which cows were good
+and which were poor. If any one in this
+district wants to know about their cows they&#8217;ll
+have to come to this shop. And I can tell you
+that it&#8217;ll pay &#8217;em to come too, if they&#8217;re going
+to make anything selling cream. Wait until
+we get out our reports on the herds, ma!&#8221;</p>
+<p>The women were rather stampeded by this
+onslaught of the irregular troops&mdash;especially
+Mrs. Bronson. She was placed in the position
+of a woman taking a man&#8217;s wisdom from her
+ne&#8217;er-do-well son for the first time in her life.
+Like any other mother in this position, she
+felt a flutter of pride&mdash;but it was strongly
+mingled with a motherly desire to spank him.
+The deputation rose, with a unanimous feeling
+that they had been scored upon.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Cows!&#8221; scoffed Mrs. Peterson. &#8220;If we leave
+you in this yob, Mr. Irwin, our children will
+know nothing but cows and hens and soils and
+grains&mdash;and where will the culture come in?
+How will our boys and girls appear when we
+get fixed so we can move to town? We won&#8217;t
+have no culture at all, Yim!&#8221;
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_97' name='page_97'></a>97</span></p>
+<p>&#8220;Culture!&#8221; exclaimed Jim. &#8220;Why&mdash;why,
+after ten years of the sort of school I would
+give you if I were a better teacher, and could
+have my way, the people of the cities would
+be begging to have their children admitted so
+that they might obtain real culture&mdash;culture
+fitting them for life in the twentieth century&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Don&#8217;t bother to get ready for the city
+children, Jim,&#8221; said Mrs. Bonner sneeringly,
+&#8220;you won&#8217;t be teaching the Woodruff school
+that long.&#8221;</p>
+<p>All this time, the dark-faced Cracker had
+been glooming from a corner, earnestly seeking
+to fathom the wrongness he sensed in the
+gathering. Now he came forward.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I reckon I may be making a mistake to say
+anything,&#8221; said he, &#8220;f&#8217;r we-all is strangers
+hyeh, an&#8217; we&#8217;re pore; but I must speak out
+for Mr. Jim&mdash;I must! Don&#8217;t turn him out,
+folks, f&#8217;r he&#8217;s done mo&#8217; f&#8217;r us than eveh any
+one done in the world!&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;What do you mean?&#8221; asked Mrs. Peterson.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I mean,&#8221; said Raymond, &#8220;that when Mr. Jim
+began talking school to us, we was a pore
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_98' name='page_98'></a>98</span>
+no-&#8217;count lot without any learnin&#8217;, with nothin&#8217;
+to talk about except our wrongs, an&#8217; our enemies,
+and the meanness of the Iowa folks.
+You see we didn&#8217;t understand you-all. An&#8217;
+now, we have hope. We done got hope from
+this school. We&#8217;re goin&#8217; to make good in the
+world. We&#8217;re getting education. We&#8217;re all
+learnin&#8217; to use books. My little sister will be
+as good as anybody, if you&#8217;ll just let Mr. Jim
+alone in this school&mdash;as good as any one. An&#8217;
+I&#8217;ll he&#8217;p pap get a farm, and we&#8217;ll work and
+think at the same time, an&#8217; be happy!&#8221;</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<a name='IX_JENNIE_ARRANGES_A_CHRISTMAS_PARTY' id='IX_JENNIE_ARRANGES_A_CHRISTMAS_PARTY'></a>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_99' name='page_99'></a>99</span>
+<h2>CHAPTER IX</h2>
+<h3>JENNIE ARRANGES A CHRISTMAS PARTY</h3>
+</div>
+
+<p>The great party magnates who made up the
+tickets from governor down to the lowest
+county office, doubtless regarded the little political
+plum shaken off into the apron of Miss
+Jennie Woodruff of the Woodruff District, as
+the very smallest and least bloomy of all the
+plums on the tree; but there is something which
+tends to puff one up in the mere fact of having
+received the votes of the people for any office,
+especially in a region of high average civilization,
+covering six hundred or seven hundred
+square miles of good American domain. Jennie
+was a sensible country girl. Being sensible,
+she tried to avoid uppishness. But she did feel
+some little sense of increased importance as she
+drove her father&#8217;s little one-cylinder runabout
+over the smooth earth roads, in the crisp December
+weather, just before Christmas.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_100' name='page_100'></a>100</span></p>
+<p>The weather itself was stimulating, and she
+was making rapid progress in the management
+of the little car which her father had offered
+to lend her for use in visiting the one hundred
+or more rural schools soon to come under her
+supervision. She rather fancied the picture
+of herself, clothed in more or less authority and
+queening it over her little army of teachers.</p>
+<p>Mr. Haakon Peterson was phlegmatically
+conscious that she made rather an agreeable
+picture, as she stopped her car alongside his
+top buggy to talk with him. She had bright
+blue eyes, fluffy brown hair, a complexion
+whipped pink by the breeze, and she smiled
+at him ingratiatingly.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Don&#8217;t you think father is lovely?&#8221; said she.
+&#8220;He is going to let me use the runabout when
+I visit the schools.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;That will be good,&#8221; said Haakon. &#8220;It will
+save you lots of time. I hope you make the
+county pay for the gasoline.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I haven&#8217;t thought about that,&#8221; said Jennie.
+&#8220;Everybody&#8217;s been so nice to me&mdash;I want to
+give as well as receive.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Why,&#8221; said Haakon, &#8220;you will yust begin
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_101' name='page_101'></a>101</span>
+to receive when your salary begins in Yanuary.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, no!&#8221; said Jennie. &#8220;I&#8217;ve received much
+more than that now! You don&#8217;t know how
+proud I feel. So many nice men I never knew
+before, and all my old friends like you working
+for me in the convention and at the polls, just
+as if I amounted to something.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;And you don&#8217;t know how proud I feel,&#8221;
+said Haakon, &#8220;to have in county office a little
+girl I used to hold on my lap.&#8221;</p>
+<p>In early times, when Haakon was a flat-capped
+immigrant boy, he had earned the initial
+payment on his first eighty acres of prairie
+land as a hired man on Colonel Woodruff&#8217;s
+farm. Now he was a rather richer man than
+the colonel, and not a little proud of his ascent
+to affluence. He was a mild-spoken, soft-voiced
+Scandinavian, quite completely Americanized,
+and possessed of that aptitude for local politics
+which makes so good a citizen of the Norwegian
+and Swede. His influence was always
+worth fifty to sixty Scandinavian votes in any
+county election. He was a good party man
+and conscious of being entitled to his voice
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_102' name='page_102'></a>102</span>
+in party matters. This seemed to him an opportunity
+for exerting a bit of political
+influence.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yennie,&#8221; said he, &#8220;this man Yim Irwin
+needs to be lined up.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Lined up! What do you mean?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;The way he is doing in the school,&#8221; said
+Haakon, &#8220;is all wrong. If you can&#8217;t line him
+up, he will make you trouble. We must look
+ahead. Everybody has his friends, and Yim
+Irwin has his friends. If you have trouble
+with him, his friends will be against you when
+we want to nominate you for a second term.
+The county is getting close. If we go to conwention
+without your home delegation it would
+weaken you, and if we nominate you, every
+piece of trouble like this cuts down your wote.
+You ought to line him up and have him do
+right.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;But he is so funny,&#8221; said Jennie.</p>
+<p>&#8220;He likes you,&#8221; said Haakon. &#8220;You can line
+him up.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Jennie blushed, and to conceal her slight embarrassment,
+got out for the purpose of cranking
+her machine.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_103' name='page_103'></a>103</span></p>
+<p>&#8220;But if I can not line him up?&#8221; said she.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I tank,&#8221; said Haakon, &#8220;if you can&#8217;t line him
+up, you will have a chance to rewoke his certificate
+when you take office.&#8221;</p>
+<p>So Jim Irwin was to be crushed like an insect.
+The little local gearing of the big party
+machine was to crush him. Jennie dimly sensed
+the tragedy of it, but very dimly. Mainly she
+thought of Mr. Peterson&#8217;s suggestion as to
+&#8220;lining up&#8221; Jim Irwin as so thoroughly sensible
+that she gave it a good deal of thought that
+day. She could not help feeling a little resentment
+at Jim for following his own fads and
+fancies so far. We always resent the necessity
+of crushing any weak creature which must
+needs be wiped out. The idea that there could
+be anything fundamentally sane in his overturning
+of the old and tried school methods
+under which both he and she had been educated,
+was absurd to Jennie. To be sure, everybody
+had always favored &#8220;more practical education,&#8221;
+and Jim&#8217;s farm arithmetic, farm physiology,
+farm reading and writing, cow-testing
+exercises, seed analysis, corn clubs and the tomato,
+poultry and pig clubs he proposed to
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_104' name='page_104'></a>104</span>
+have in operation the next summer, seemed
+highly practical; but to Jennie&#8217;s mind, the fact
+that they introduced dissension in the neighborhood
+and promised to make her official life
+vexatious, seemed ample proof that Jim&#8217;s work
+was visionary and impractical. Poor Jennie
+was not aware of the fact that new truth always
+comes bringing, not peace to mankind, but a
+sword.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Father,&#8221; said she that night, &#8220;let&#8217;s have a
+little Christmas party.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;All right,&#8221; said the colonel. &#8220;Whom shall
+we invite?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Don&#8217;t laugh,&#8221; said she. &#8220;I want to invite
+Jim Irwin and his mother, and nobody else.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;All right,&#8221; reiterated the colonel. &#8220;But
+why?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh,&#8221; said Jennie, &#8220;I want to see whether I
+can talk Jim out of some of his foolishness.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You want to line him up, do you?&#8221; said the
+colonel. &#8220;Well, that&#8217;s good politics, and incidentally,
+you may get some good ideas out of
+Jim.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Rather unlikely,&#8221; said Jennie.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t know about that,&#8221; said the colonel,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_105' name='page_105'></a>105</span>
+smiling. &#8220;I begin to think that Jim&#8217;s a Brown
+Mouse. I&#8217;ve told you about the Brown Mouse,
+haven&#8217;t I?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes,&#8221; said Jennie. &#8220;You&#8217;ve told me. But
+Professor Darbishire&#8217;s brown mice were simply
+wild and incorrigible creatures. Just because
+it happens to emerge suddenly from the forests
+of heredity, it doesn&#8217;t prove that the Brown
+Mouse is any good.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Justin Morgan was a Brown Mouse,&#8221; said
+the colonel. &#8220;And he founded the greatest
+breed of horses in the world.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You say that,&#8221; said Jennie, &#8220;because you&#8217;re
+a lover of the Morgan horse.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Napoleon Bonaparte was a Brown Mouse,&#8221;
+said the colonel. &#8220;So was George Washington,
+and so was Peter the Great. Whenever a
+Brown Mouse appears he changes things in
+a little way or a big way.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;For the better, always?&#8221; asked Jennie.</p>
+<p>&#8220;No,&#8221; said the colonel. &#8220;The Brown Mouse
+may throw back to slant-headed savagery. But
+Jim ... sometimes I think Jim is the kind of
+Mendelian segregation out of which we get
+Franklins and Edisons and their sort. You
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_106' name='page_106'></a>106</span>
+may get some good ideas out of Jim. Let us
+have them here for Christmas, by all means.&#8221;</p>
+<p>In due time Jennie&#8217;s invitation reached Jim
+and his mother, like an explosive shell fired
+from a distance into their humble dwelling&mdash;quite
+upsetting things. Twenty-five years constitute
+rather a long wait for social recognition,
+and Mrs. Irwin had long since regarded
+herself as quite outside society. To be sure,
+for something like half of this period, she
+had been of society if not in it. She had done
+the family washings, scrubbings and cleanings,
+had made the family clothes and been a woman
+of all work, passing from household to household,
+in an orbit determined by the exigencies
+of threshing, harvesting, illness and child-bearing.
+At such times she sat at the family
+table and participated in the neighborhood gossip,
+in quite the manner of a visiting aunt or
+other female relative; but in spite of the democracy
+of rural life, there is and always has
+been a social difference between a hired woman
+and an invited guest. And when Jim, having
+absorbed everything which the Woodruff school
+could give him in the way of education, found
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_107' name='page_107'></a>107</span>
+his first job at &#8220;making a hand,&#8221; Mrs. Irwin,
+at her son&#8217;s urgent request, ceased going out
+to work for a while, until she could get back
+her strength. This she had never succeeded
+in doing, and for a dozen years or more had
+never entered a single one of the houses in
+which she had formerly served.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I can&#8217;t go, James,&#8221; said she; &#8220;I can&#8217;t possibly
+go.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, yes, you can! Why not?&#8221; said Jim.
+&#8220;Why not?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You know I don&#8217;t go anywhere,&#8221; urged Mrs.
+Irwin.</p>
+<p>&#8220;That&#8217;s no reason,&#8221; said her son.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I haven&#8217;t a thing to wear,&#8221; said Mrs. Irwin.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Nothing to wear!&#8221;</p>
+<p>I wonder if any ordinary person can understand
+the shock with which Jim Irwin heard
+those words from his mother&#8217;s lips. He was
+approaching thirty, and the association of the
+ideas of Mother and Costume was foreign to
+his mind. Other women had surfaces different
+from hers, to be sure&mdash;but his mother was not
+as other women. She was just Mother, always
+at work in the house or in the garden, always
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_108' name='page_108'></a>108</span>
+doing for him those inevitable things which
+made up her part in life, always clothed in the
+browns, grays, gray-blues, neutral stripes and
+checks which were cheap and common and
+easily made. Clothes! They were in the Irwin
+family no more than things by which the
+rules of decency were complied with, and the
+cold of winter turned back&mdash;but as for their
+appearance! Jim had never given the thing
+a thought further than to wear out his Sunday
+best in the schoolroom, to wonder where the
+next suit of Sunday best was to come from,
+and to buy for his mother the cheap and common
+fabrics which she fashioned into the garments
+in which alone, it seemed to him, she
+would seem like Mother. A boy who lives
+until he is nearly thirty in intimate companionship
+with Carlyle, Thoreau, Wordsworth,
+Shakespeare, Emerson, Professor Henry, Liberty
+H. Bailey, Cyril Hopkins, Dean Davenport
+and the great obscurities of the experiment stations,
+may be excused if his views regarding
+clothes are derived in a transcendental manner
+from <i>Sartor Resartus</i> and the agricultural college
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_109' name='page_109'></a>109</span>
+tests as to the relation between Shelter
+and Feeding.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Why, mother,&#8221; said he, &#8220;I think it would
+be pretty hard to explain to the Woodruffs that
+you stayed away because of clothes. They have
+seen you in the clothes you wear pretty often
+for the last thirty years!&#8221;</p>
+<hr class='tb' />
+
+<p>Was a woman ever quite without a costume?</p>
+<p>Mrs. Irwin gazed at vacancy for a while,
+and went to the old bureau. From the bottom
+drawer she took an old, old black alpaca dress&mdash;a
+dress which Jim had never seen. She
+spread it out on her bed in the alcove off the
+combined kitchen, parlor and dining-room in
+which they lived, and smoothed out the wrinkles.
+It was almost whole, save for the places
+where her body, once so much fuller than now,
+had drawn the threads apart&mdash;under the arms,
+and at some of the seams&mdash;and she handled it
+as one deals with something very precious.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I never thought I&#8217;d wear it again,&#8221; said she,
+&#8220;but once. I&#8217;ve been saving it for my last
+dress. But I guess it won&#8217;t hurt to wear it once
+for the benefit of the living.&#8221;
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_110' name='page_110'></a>110</span></p>
+<p>Jim kissed his mother&mdash;a rare thing, save
+as the caress was called for by the established
+custom between them.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Don&#8217;t think of that, mother,&#8221; said he, &#8220;for
+years and years yet!&#8221;</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<a name='X_HOW_JIM_WAS_LINED_UP' id='X_HOW_JIM_WAS_LINED_UP'></a>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_111' name='page_111'></a>111</span>
+<h2>CHAPTER X</h2>
+<h3>HOW JIM WAS LINED UP</h3>
+</div>
+
+<p>There is no doubt that Jennie Woodruff
+was justified in thinking that they were a
+queer couple. They weren&#8217;t like the Woodruffs,
+at all. They were of a different pattern.
+To be sure, Jim&#8217;s clothes were not especially
+noteworthy, being just shiny, and frayed at
+cuff and instep, and short of sleeve and leg,
+and ill-fitting and cheap. They betrayed poverty,
+and the inability of a New York sweatshop
+to anticipate the prodigality of Nature in
+the matter of length of leg and arm, and
+wealth of bones and joints which she had lavished
+upon Jim Irwin. But the Woodruff table
+had often enjoyed Jim&#8217;s presence, and the
+standards prevailing there as to clothes were
+only those of plain people who eat with their
+hired men, buy their clothes at a county seat
+town, and live simply and sensibly on the fat
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_112' name='page_112'></a>112</span>
+of the land. Jim&#8217;s queerness lay not so much
+in his clothes as in his personality.</p>
+<p>On the other hand, Jennie could not help
+thinking that Mrs. Irwin&#8217;s queerness was to be
+found almost solely in her clothes. The black
+alpaca looked undeniably respectable, especially
+when it was helped out by a curious old
+brooch of goldstone, bordered with flowers in
+blue and white and red and green&mdash;tiny blossoms
+of little stones which looked like the
+flowers which grow at the snow line on Pike&#8217;s
+Peak. Jennie felt that it must be a cheap affair,
+but it was decorative, and she wondered
+where Mrs. Irwin got it. She guessed it must
+have a story&mdash;a story in which the stooped,
+rusty, somber old lady looked like a character
+drawn to harmonize with the period just after
+the war. For the black alpaca dress looked
+more like a costume for a masquerade than a
+present-day garment, and Mrs. Irwin was so
+oppressed with doubt as to whether she was
+presentable, with knowledge that her dress
+didn&#8217;t fit, and with the difficulty of behaving
+naturally&mdash;like a convict just discharged from
+prison after a ten years&#8217; term&mdash;that she took
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_113' name='page_113'></a>113</span>
+on a stiffness of deportment quite in keeping
+with the idea that she was a female Rip Van
+Winkle not yet quite awake. But Jennie had
+the keenness to see that if Mrs. Irwin could
+have had an up-to-date costume she would have
+become a rather ordinary and not bad-looking
+old lady. What Jennie failed to divine was
+that if Jim could have invested a hundred dollars
+in the services of tailors, haberdashers,
+barbers and other specialists in personal appearance,
+and could for this hour or so have
+blotted out his record as her father&#8217;s field-hand,
+he would have seemed to her a distinguished-looking
+young man. Not handsome, of course,
+but the sort people look after&mdash;and follow.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Come to dinner,&#8221; said Mrs. Woodruff, who
+at this juncture had a hired girl, but was yoked
+to the oar nevertheless when it came to turkey
+and the other fixings of a Christmas dinner.
+&#8220;It&#8217;s good enough, what there is of it, and
+there&#8217;s enough of it such as it is&mdash;but the dressing
+in the turkey would be better for a little
+more sage!&#8221;</p>
+<p>The bountiful meal piled mountain high for
+guest and hired help and family melted away
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_114' name='page_114'></a>114</span>
+in a manner to delight the hearts of Mrs.
+Woodruff and Jennie. The colonel, in stiff
+starched shirt, black tie and frock coat, carved
+with much empressement, and Jim felt almost
+for the first time a sense of the value of manner.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I had bigger turkeys,&#8221; said Mrs. Woodruff
+to Mrs. Irwin, &#8220;but I thought it would be better
+to cook two turkey-hens instead of one
+great big gobbler with meat as tough as tripe
+and stuffed full of fat.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;One of the hens would &#8217;a&#8217; been plenty,&#8221; replied
+Mrs. Irwin. &#8220;How much did they
+weigh?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;About fifteen pounds apiece,&#8221; was the answer.
+&#8220;The gobbler would &#8217;a&#8217; weighed thirty,
+I guess. He&#8217;s pure Mammoth Bronze.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I wish,&#8221; said Jim, &#8220;that we could get a few
+breeding birds of the wild bronze turkeys from
+Mexico.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Why?&#8221; asked the colonel.</p>
+<p>&#8220;They&#8217;re the original blood of the domestic
+bronze turkeys,&#8221; said Jim, &#8220;and they&#8217;re bigger
+and handsomer than the pure-bred bronzes,
+even. They&#8217;re a better stock than the northern
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_115' name='page_115'></a>115</span>
+wild turkeys from which our common birds
+originated.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Where do you learn all these things, Jim?&#8221;
+asked Mrs. Woodruff. &#8220;I declare, I often tell
+Woodruff that it&#8217;s as good as a lecture to have
+Jim Irwin at table. My intelligence has fallen
+since you quit working here, Jim.&#8221;</p>
+<p>There came into Jim&#8217;s eyes the gleam of the
+man devoted to a Cause&mdash;and the dinner tended
+to develop into a lecture. Jennie saw a little
+more plainly wherein his queerness lay.</p>
+<p>&#8220;There&#8217;s an education in any meal, if we
+would just use the things on the table as materials
+for study, and follow their trails back
+to their starting-points. This turkey takes us
+back to the chaparral of Mexico&mdash;&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;What&#8217;s chaparral?&#8221; asked Jennie, as a diversion.
+&#8220;It&#8217;s one of the words I have seen
+so often and know perfectly to speak it and
+read it&mdash;but after all it&#8217;s just a word, and
+nothing more.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Ain&#8217;t that the trouble with our education,
+Jim?&#8221; queried the colonel, cleverly steering
+Jim back into the track of his discourse.</p>
+<p>&#8220;They are not even living words,&#8221; answered
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_116' name='page_116'></a>116</span>
+Jim, &#8220;unless we have clothed them in flesh and
+blood through some sort of concrete notion.
+&#8216;Chaparral&#8217; to Jennie is just the ghost of a
+word. Our civilization is full of inefficiency because
+we are satisfied to give our children these
+ghosts and shucks and husks of words, instead
+of the things themselves, that can be seen and
+hefted and handled and tested and heard.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Jennie looked Jim over carefully. His queerness
+was taking on a new phase&mdash;and she felt
+a sense of surprise such as one experiences
+when the conjurer causes a rose to grow into
+a tree before your very eyes. Jim&#8217;s development
+was not so rapid, but Jennie&#8217;s perception
+of it was. She began to feel proud of the fact
+that a man who could make his impractical notions
+seem so plausible&mdash;and who was clearly
+fired with some sort of evangelistic fervor&mdash;had
+kissed her, once or twice, on bringing her
+home from the spelling school.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I think we lose so much time in school,&#8221;
+Jim went on, &#8220;while the children are eating
+their dinners.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well, Jim,&#8221; said Mrs. Woodruff, &#8220;every one
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_117' name='page_117'></a>117</span>
+but you is down on the human level. The poor
+kids have to eat!&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;But think how much good education there
+is wrapped up in the school dinner&mdash;if we
+could only get it out.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Jennie grew grave. Here was this Brown
+Mouse actually introducing the subject of the
+school&mdash;and he ought to suspect that she was
+planning to line him up on this very thing&mdash;if
+he wasn&#8217;t a perfect donkey as well as a
+dreamer. And he was calmly wading into the
+subject as if she were the ex-farm-hand country
+teacher, and he was the county superintendent-elect!</p>
+<p>&#8220;Eating a dinner like this, mother,&#8221; said
+the colonel gallantly, &#8220;is an education in itself&mdash;and
+eating some others requires one; but
+just how &#8216;larnin&#8217; is wrapped up in the school
+lunch is a new one on me, Jim.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well,&#8221; said Jim, &#8220;in the first place the children
+ought to cook their meals as a part of
+the school work. Prior to that they ought to
+buy the materials. And prior to that they
+ought to keep the accounts of the school
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_118' name='page_118'></a>118</span>
+kitchen. They&#8217;d like to do these things, and
+it would help prepare them for life on an intelligent
+plane, while they prepared the meals.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Isn&#8217;t that looking rather far ahead?&#8221; asked
+the county superintendent-elect.</p>
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s like a lot of other things we think far
+ahead,&#8221; urged Jim. &#8220;The only reason why
+they&#8217;re far off is because we think them so.
+It&#8217;s a thought&mdash;and a thought is as near the
+moment we think it as it will ever be.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I guess that&#8217;s so&mdash;to a wild-eyed reformer,&#8221;
+said the colonel. &#8220;But go on. Develop your
+thought a little. Have some more dressing.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Thanks, I believe I will,&#8221; said Jim. &#8220;And
+a little more of the cranberry sauce. No more
+turkey, please.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;d like to see the school class that could
+prepare this dinner,&#8221; said Mrs. Woodruff.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Why,&#8221; said Jim, &#8220;you&#8217;d be there showing
+them how! They&#8217;d get credits in their domestic-economy
+course for getting the school dinner&mdash;and
+they&#8217;d bring their mothers into it to
+help them stand at the head of their classes.
+And one detail of girls would cook one week,
+and another serve. The setting of the table
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_119' name='page_119'></a>119</span>
+would come in as a study&mdash;flowers, linen and
+all that. And when we get a civilized teacher,
+table manners!&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;d take on that class,&#8221; said the hired man,
+winking at Selma Carlson, the maid, from
+somewhere below the salt. &#8220;The way I make
+my knife feed my face would be a great help
+to the children.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;And when the food came on the table,&#8221; Jim
+went on, with a smile at his former fellow-laborer,
+who had heard most of this before as
+a part of the field conversation, &#8220;just think of
+the things we could study while eating it. The
+literary term for eating a meal is discussing
+it&mdash;well, the discussion of a meal under proper
+guidance is much more educative than a lecture.
+This breast-bone, now,&#8221; said he, referring
+to the remains on his plate. &#8220;That&#8217;s physiology.
+The cranberry-sauce&mdash;that&#8217;s botany,
+and commerce, and soil management&mdash;do you
+know, Colonel, that the cranberry must have an
+acid soil&mdash;which would kill alfalfa or clover?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Read something of it,&#8221; said the colonel,
+&#8220;but it didn&#8217;t interest me much.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;And the difference between the types of
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_120' name='page_120'></a>120</span>
+fowl on the table&mdash;that&#8217;s breeding. And the
+nutmeg, pepper and cocoanut&mdash;that&#8217;s geography.
+And everything on the table runs back
+to geography, and comes to us linked to our
+lives by dollars and cents&mdash;and they&#8217;re mathematics.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;We must have something more than dollars
+and cents in life,&#8221; said Jennie. &#8220;We must have
+culture.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Culture,&#8221; cried Jim, &#8220;is the ability to think
+in terms of life&mdash;isn&#8217;t it?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Like Jesse James,&#8221; suggested the hired man,
+who was a careful student of the life of that
+eminent bandit.</p>
+<p>There was a storm of laughter at this sally
+amidst which Jennie wished she had thought
+of something like that. Jim joined in the
+laughter at his own expense, but was clearly
+suffering from argumentative shock.</p>
+<p>&#8220;That&#8217;s the best answer I&#8217;ve had on that
+point, Pete,&#8221; he said, after the disturbance had
+subsided. &#8220;But if the James boys and the
+Youngers had had the sort of culture I&#8217;m for,
+they would have been successful stock men and
+farmers, instead of train-robbers. Take Raymond
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_121' name='page_121'></a>121</span>
+Simms, for instance. He had all the
+qualifications of a member of the James gang
+when he came here. All he needed was a few
+exasperated associates of his own sort, and a
+convenient railway with undefended trains
+running over it. But after a few weeks of real
+&#8216;culture&#8217; under a mighty poor teacher, he&#8217;s developing
+into the most enthusiastic farmer I
+know. That&#8217;s real culture.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s snowing like everything,&#8221; said Jennie,
+who faced the window.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Don&#8217;t cut your dinner short,&#8221; said the
+colonel to Pete, &#8220;but I think you&#8217;ll find the
+cattle ready to come in out of the storm when
+you get good and through.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I think I&#8217;ll let &#8217;em in now,&#8221; said Pete, by
+way of excusing himself. &#8220;I expect to put in
+most of the day from now on getting ready to
+quit eating. Save some of everything for
+me, Selma,&mdash;I&#8217;ll be right back!&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;All right, Pete,&#8221; said Selma.</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<a name='XI_THE_MOUSE_ESCAPES' id='XI_THE_MOUSE_ESCAPES'></a>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_122' name='page_122'></a>122</span>
+<h2>CHAPTER XI</h2>
+<h3>THE MOUSE ESCAPES</h3>
+</div>
+
+<p>Jennie played the piano and sang. They
+all joined in some simple Christmas songs.
+Mrs. Woodruff and Jim&#8217;s mother went into
+other parts of the house on research work connected
+with their converse on domestic economy.
+The colonel withdrew for an inspection
+of the live stock on the eve of the threatened
+blizzard. And Jim was left alone with Jennie
+in the front parlor. After the buzz of conversation,
+they seemed to have nothing to say.
+Jennie played softly, and looked at nothing, but
+scrutinized Jim by means of the eyes which
+women have concealed in their back hair.
+There was something new in the man&mdash;she
+sensed that. He was more confident, more persuasive,
+more dynamic. She was used to him
+only as a static force.</p>
+<p>And Jim felt something new, too. He had
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_123' name='page_123'></a>123</span>
+felt it growing in him ever since he began his
+school work, and knew not the cause of it. The
+cause, however, would not have been a mystery
+to a wise old yogi who might discover the
+same sort of change in one of his young novices.
+Jim Irwin had been a sort of ascetic since his
+boyhood. He had mortified the flesh by hard
+labor in the fields, and by flagellations of the
+brain to drive off sleep while he pored over his
+books in the attic&mdash;which was often so hot
+after a day of summer&#8217;s sun on its low thin
+roof, that he was forced to do his reading in
+the midmost night. He had looked long on
+such women as Helen of Troy, Cleopatra, Isabel,
+Cressida, Volumnia, Virginia, Evangeline,
+Agnes Wickfleld and Fair Rosamond; but on
+women in the flesh he had gazed as upon trees
+walking. The aforesaid spiritual director, had
+this young ascetic been under one, would have
+foreseen the effects on the psychology of a stout
+fellow of twenty-eight of freedom from the toil
+of the fields, and association with a group of
+young human beings of both sexes. To the
+novice struggling for emancipation from earthly
+thoughts, he would have recommended fasting
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_124' name='page_124'></a>124</span>
+and prayer, and perhaps, a hair shirt. Just
+what his prescription would have been for a
+man in Jim&#8217;s position is, of course, a question.
+He would, no doubt, have considered carefully
+his patient&#8217;s symptoms. These were very
+largely the mental experiences which most boys
+pass through in their early twenties, save, perhaps
+that, as in a belated season, the transition
+from winter to spring was more sudden, and
+the contrast more violent. Jim was now thrown
+every day into contact with his fellows. He was
+no longer a lay monk, but an active member of
+a very human group. He was becoming more
+of a boy, with the boys, and still more was he
+developing into a man with the women. The
+budding womanhood of Calista Simms and the
+other girls of his school thrilled him as Helen
+of Troy or Juliet had never done. This will
+not seem very strange to the experienced
+reader, but it astonished the unsophisticated
+young schoolmaster. The floating hair, the
+heaving bosom, the rosebud mouth, the starry
+eye, the fragrant breath, the magnetic hand&mdash;all
+these disturbed the hitherto sedate mind,
+and filled the brief hours he was accustomed
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_125' name='page_125'></a>125</span>
+to spend in sleep with strange dreams. And
+now, as he gazed at Jennie, he was suddenly
+aware of the fact that, after all, whenever
+these thoughts and dreams took on individuality,
+they were only persistent and intensified
+continuations of his old dreams of her. They
+had always been dormant in him, since the days
+they both studied from the same book. He was
+quite sure, now, that he had never forgotten
+for a moment, that Jennie was the only girl in
+the world for him. And possibly he was right
+about this. It is perfectly certain, however,
+that for years he had not consciously been in
+love with her.</p>
+<p>Now, however, he arose as from some inner
+compulsion, and went to her side. He wished
+that he knew enough of music to turn her
+sheets for her, but, alas! the notes were meaningless
+to him. Still scanning him by means
+of her back hair, Jennie knew that in another
+moment Jim would lay his hand on her shoulder,
+or otherwise advance to personal nearness,
+as he had done the night of his ill-starred
+speech at the schoolhouse&mdash;and she rose in self-defense.
+Self-defense, however, did not seem
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_126' name='page_126'></a>126</span>
+to require that he be kept at too great a distance;
+so she maneuvered him to the sofa, and
+seated him beside her. Now was the time to
+line him up.</p>
+<p>&#8220;It seems good to have you with us to-day,&#8221;
+said she. &#8220;We&#8217;re such old, old friends.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes,&#8221; repeated Jim, &#8220;old friends .... We
+are, aren&#8217;t we, Jennie?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;And I feel sure,&#8221; Jennie went on, &#8220;that this
+marks a new era in our friendship.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Why?&#8221; asked Jim, after considering the
+matter.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh! everything is different, now&mdash;and getting
+more different all the time. My new work,
+and your new work, you know.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I should like to think,&#8221; said Jim, &#8220;that we
+are beginning over again.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, we are, we are, indeed! I am quite sure
+of it.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;And yet,&#8221; said Jim, &#8220;there is no such thing
+as a new beginning. Everything joins itself
+to something which went before. There isn&#8217;t
+any seam.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;No?&#8221; said Jennie interrogatively.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Our regard for each other,&#8221; Jennie noted
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_127' name='page_127'></a>127</span>
+most pointedly his word &#8220;regard&#8221;&mdash;&#8220;must be
+the continuation of the old regard.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I hardly know what you mean,&#8221; said Jennie.</p>
+<p>Jim reached over and possessed himself of
+her hand. She pulled it from him gently, but
+he paid no attention to the little muscular protest,
+and examined the hand critically. On the
+back of the middle finger he pointed out a scar&mdash;a
+very tiny scar.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Do you remember how you got that?&#8221; he
+asked.</p>
+<p>Because Jim clung to the hand, their heads
+were very close together as she joined in the
+examination.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Why, I don&#8217;t believe I do,&#8221; said she.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I do,&#8221; he replied. &#8220;We&mdash;you and I and
+Mary Forsythe were playing mumble-peg, and
+you put your hand on the grass just as I threw
+the knife&mdash;it cut you, and left that scar.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I remember, now!&#8221; said she. &#8220;How such
+things come back over the memory. And did
+it leave a scar when I pushed you toward the
+red-hot stove in the schoolhouse one blizzardy
+day, like this, and you peeled the skin off your
+wrist where it struck the stove?&#8221;
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_128' name='page_128'></a>128</span></p>
+<p>&#8220;Look at it,&#8221; said he, baring his long and
+bony wrist. &#8220;Right there!&#8221;</p>
+<p>And they were off on the trail that leads
+back to childhood. They had talked long, and
+intimately, when the shadows of the early evening
+crept into the corners of the room. He
+had carried her across the flooded slew again
+after the big rain. They had relived a dozen
+moving incidents by flood and field. Jennie
+recalled the time when the tornado narrowly
+missed the schoolhouse, and frightened everybody
+in school nearly to death.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Everybody but you, Jim,&#8221; Jennie remembered.
+&#8220;You looked out of the window and
+told the teacher that the twister was going
+north of us, and would kill somebody else.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Did I?&#8221; asked Jim.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes,&#8221; said Jennie, &#8220;and when the teacher
+asked us to kneel and thank God, you said,
+&#8216;Why should we thank God that somebody else
+is blowed away?&#8217; She was greatly shocked.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t see to this day,&#8221; Jim asserted, &#8220;what
+answer there was to my question.&#8221;</p>
+<p>In the gathering darkness Jim again took
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_129' name='page_129'></a>129</span>
+Jennie&#8217;s hand, but this time she deprived him
+of it.</p>
+<p>He was trembling like a leaf. Let it be remembered
+in his favor that this was the only
+girl&#8217;s hand he had ever held.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You can&#8217;t find any more scars on it,&#8221; she
+said soberly.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Let me see how much it has changed since
+I stuck the knife in it,&#8221; begged Jim.</p>
+<p>Jennie held it up for inspection.</p>
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s longer, and slenderer, and whiter, and
+even more beautiful,&#8221; said he, &#8220;than the little
+hand I cut; but it was then the most beautiful
+hand in the world to me&mdash;and still is.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I must light the lamps,&#8221; said the county
+superintendent-elect, rather flustered, it must
+be confessed. &#8220;Mama! Where are all the
+matches?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Mrs. Woodruff and Mrs. Irwin came in, and
+the lamplight reminded Jim&#8217;s mother that the
+cow was still to milk, and that the chickens
+might need attention. The Woodruff sleigh
+came to the door to carry them home; but Jim
+desired to breast the storm. He felt that he
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_130' name='page_130'></a>130</span>
+needed the conflict. Mrs. Irwin scolded him
+for his foolishness, but he strode off into the
+whirling drift, throwing back a good-by for
+general consumption, and a pathetic smile to
+Jennie.</p>
+<p>&#8220;He&#8217;s as odd as Dick&#8217;s hatband,&#8221; said Mrs.
+Woodruff, &#8220;tramping off in a storm like this.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Did you line him up?&#8221; asked the colonel
+of Jennie.</p>
+<p>The young lady started and blushed. She
+had forgotten all about the politics of the situation.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&mdash;I&#8217;m afraid I didn&#8217;t, papa,&#8221; she confessed.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Those brown mice of Professor Darbishire&#8217;s,&#8221;
+said the colonel, &#8220;were the devil and
+all to control.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Jennie was thinking of this as she dropped
+asleep.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Hard to control!&#8221; she thought. &#8220;I wonder.
+I wonder, after all, if Jim is not capable of being
+easily lined up&mdash;when he sees how foolish
+I think he is!&#8221;</p>
+<p>And Jim? He found himself hard to control
+that night. So much so that it was after
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_131' name='page_131'></a>131</span>
+midnight before he had finished work on a
+plan for a cooperative creamery.</p>
+<p>&#8220;The boys can be given work in helping to
+operate it,&#8221; he wrote on a tablet, &#8220;which, in
+connection with the labor performed by the
+teacher, will greatly reduce the expense of operation.
+A skilled butter-maker, with slender
+white hands&#8221;&mdash;but he erased this last clause
+and retired.</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<a name='XII_FACING_TRIAL' id='XII_FACING_TRIAL'></a>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_132' name='page_132'></a>132</span>
+<h2>CHAPTER XII</h2>
+<h3>FACING TRIAL</h3>
+</div>
+
+<p>A distinct sensation ran through the
+Woodruff school, but the schoolmaster and
+a group of five big boys and three girls engaged
+in a very unclasslike conference in the
+back of the room were all unconscious of it.
+The geography classes had recited, and the language
+work was on. Those too small for these
+studies were playing a game under the leadership
+of Jinnie Simms, who had been promoted
+to the position of weed-seed monitor.</p>
+<p>The game was forfeits. Each child had been
+encouraged to bring some sort of weed from
+the winter fields&mdash;preferably one the seed of
+which still clung to the dried receptacles&mdash;but
+anyhow, a weed. Some pupils had brought
+merely empty tassels, some bare stalks, and
+some seeds which they had winnowed from
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_133' name='page_133'></a>133</span>
+the grain in their father&#8217;s bins; and with them
+they played forfeits. They counted out by the
+&#8220;arey, Ira, ickery an&#8217;&#8221; method, and somebody
+was &#8220;It.&#8221; Then, in order, they presented to
+him a seed, stalk or head of a weed, and if the
+one who was It could tell the name of the weed,
+the child who brought the specimen became It,
+and the name was written on slates or tablets,
+and the new It told where the weed or seed was
+collected. If any pupil brought in a specimen
+the name of which he himself could not correctly
+give, he paid a forfeit. If a specimen
+was brought in not found in the school cabinet&mdash;which
+was coming to contain a considerable
+collection&mdash;it was placed there, and the task
+allotted to the best penman in the school to
+write its proper label. All this caused excitement,
+and not a little buzz&mdash;but it ceased when
+the county superintendent entered the room.</p>
+<p>For it was after the first of January, and
+Jennie was visiting the Woodruff school.</p>
+<p>The group in the back of the room went on
+with its conference, oblivious of the entrance
+of Superintendent Jennie. Their work was
+rather absorbing, being no more nor less than
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_134' name='page_134'></a>134</span>
+the compilation of the figures of a cow census
+of the district.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Altogether,&#8221; said Mary Talcott, &#8220;we have
+in the district one hundred and fifty-three
+cows.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t make it that,&#8221; said Raymond Simms.
+&#8220;I don&#8217;t get but a hundred and thirty-eight.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;The trouble is,&#8221; said Newton Bronson, &#8220;that
+Mary&#8217;s counting in the Bailey herd of Shorthorns.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well, they&#8217;re cows, ain&#8217;t they?&#8221; interrogated
+Mary.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Not for this census,&#8221; said Raymond.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Why not?&#8221; asked Mary. &#8220;They&#8217;re the prettiest
+cows in the neighborhood.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Scotch Shorthorns,&#8221; said Newton, &#8220;and run
+with their calves.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Leave them out,&#8221; said Jim, &#8220;and to-morrow,
+I want each one to tell in the language
+class, in three hundred words or less, whether
+there are enough cows in the district to justify
+a cooperative creamery, and give the reason.
+You&#8217;ll find articles in the farm papers if you
+look through the card index. Now, how about
+the census in the adjoining districts?&#8221;
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_135' name='page_135'></a>135</span></p>
+<p>&#8220;There are more than two hundred within
+four miles on the roads leading west,&#8221; said a
+boy.</p>
+<p>&#8220;My father and I counted up about a hundred
+beyond us,&#8221; said Mary. &#8220;But I couldn&#8217;t
+get the exact number.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Why,&#8221; said Raymond, &#8220;we could find six
+hundred dairy cows in this neighborhood,
+within an hour&#8217;s drive.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Six hundred!&#8221; scoffed Newton. &#8220;You&#8217;re
+crazy! In an hour&#8217;s drive?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I mean an hour&#8217;s drive each way,&#8221; said
+Raymond.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I believe we could,&#8221; said Jim. &#8220;And after
+we find how far we will have to go to get
+enough cows, if half of them patronized the
+creamery, we&#8217;ll work over the savings the business
+would make, if we could get the prices
+for butter paid the Wisconsin cooperative
+creameries, as compared with what the centralizers
+pay us, on a basis of the last six months.
+Who&#8217;s in possession of that correspondence
+with the Wisconsin creameries?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I have it,&#8221; said Raymond. &#8220;I&#8217;m hectographing
+a lot of arithmetic problems from it.&#8221;
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_136' name='page_136'></a>136</span></p>
+<p>&#8220;How do you do, Mr. Irwin!&#8221; It was the superintendent
+who spoke.</p>
+<p>Jim&#8217;s brain whirled little prismatic clouds
+before his vision, as he rose and shook Jennie&#8217;s
+extended hand.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Let me give you a chair,&#8221; said he.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, no, thank you!&#8221; she returned. &#8220;I&#8217;ll just
+make myself at home. I know my way about
+in this schoolhouse, you know!&#8221;</p>
+<p>She smiled at the children, and went about
+looking at their work&mdash;which was not noticeably
+disturbed, by reason of the fact that visitors
+were much more frequent now than ever
+before, and were no rarity. Certainly, Jennie
+Woodruff was no novelty, since they had known
+her all their lives. Most of the embarrassment
+was Jim&#8217;s. He rose to the occasion, however,
+went through the routine of the closing day,
+and dismissed the flock, not omitting making
+an engagement with a group of boys for that
+evening to come back and work on the formalin
+treatment for smut in seed grains, and the
+blue-vitriol treatment for seed potatoes.</p>
+<p>&#8220;We hadn&#8217;t time for these things,&#8221; said he
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_137' name='page_137'></a>137</span>
+to the county superintendent, &#8220;in the regular
+class work&mdash;and it&#8217;s getting time to take them
+up if we are to clean out the smut in next year&#8217;s
+crop.&#8221;</p>
+<p>They repeated Whittier&#8217;s <i>Corn Song</i> in
+concert, and school was out.</p>
+<p>Alone with her in the old schoolhouse, Jim
+confronted Jennie in the flesh. She felt a sense
+of his agitation, but if she had known the
+power of it, she would have been astonished.
+Since that Christmas afternoon when she had
+undertaken to follow Mr. Peterson&#8217;s advice and
+line Yim Irwin up, Jim had gone through an
+inward transformation. He had passed from
+a late, cold, backward sexual spring, into a
+warm June of the spirit, in which he had
+walked amid roses and lilies with Jennie. He
+was in love with her. He knew how insane it
+was, how much less than nothing had taken
+place in his circumstances to justify the hope
+that he could ever emerge from the state in
+which she would not say &#8220;Humph!&#8221; at the
+thought that he could marry her or any one
+else. Yet, he had made up his mind that he
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_138' name='page_138'></a>138</span>
+would marry Jennie Woodruff .... She ought
+never have tried to line him up. She knew not
+what she did.</p>
+<p>He saw her through clouds of rose and pink;
+but she looked at him as at a foolish man who
+was making trouble for her, chasing rainbows
+at her expense, and deeply vexing her. She
+was in a cold official frame of mind.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Jim,&#8221; said she, &#8220;do you know that you are
+facing trouble?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Trouble,&#8221; said Jim, &#8220;is the natural condition
+of a man in my state of mind. But it is
+going to be a delicious sort of tribulation.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t know what you mean,&#8221; she replied
+in perfect honesty.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Then I don&#8217;t know what you mean,&#8221; replied
+Jim.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Jim,&#8221; she said pleadingly, &#8220;I want you to
+give up this sort of teaching. Can&#8217;t you see
+it&#8217;s all wrong?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;No,&#8221; answered Jim, in much the manner
+of a man who has been stabbed by his sweetheart.
+&#8220;I can&#8217;t see that it&#8217;s wrong. It&#8217;s the
+only sort I can do. What do you see wrong
+in it?&#8221;
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_139' name='page_139'></a>139</span></p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, I can see some very wonderful things
+in it,&#8221; said Jennie, &#8220;but it can&#8217;t be done in the
+Woodruff District. It may be correct in theory,
+but it won&#8217;t work in practise.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Jennie,&#8221; said he, &#8220;when a thing won&#8217;t work,
+it isn&#8217;t correct in theory.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well, then, Jim,&#8221; said she, &#8220;why do you
+keep on with it?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It works,&#8221; said Jim. &#8220;Anything that&#8217;s correct
+in theory will work. If the theory seems
+correct, and yet won&#8217;t work, it&#8217;s because something
+is wrong in an unsuspected way with the
+theory. But my theory is correct, and it
+works.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;But the district is against it.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Who are the district?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;The school board are against it.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;The school board elected me after listening
+to an explanation of my theories as to the new
+sort of rural school in which I believe. I assume
+that they commissioned me to carry out
+my ideas.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, Jim!&#8221; cried Jennie. &#8220;That&#8217;s sophistry!
+They all voted for you so you wouldn&#8217;t be without
+support. Each wanted you to have just one
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_140' name='page_140'></a>140</span>
+vote. Nobody wanted you elected. They were
+all surprised. You know that!&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;They stood by and saw the contract signed,&#8221;
+said Jim, &#8220;and&mdash;yes, Jennie, I <i>am</i> dealing in
+sophistry! I got the school by a sort of shell-game,
+which the board worked on themselves.
+But that doesn&#8217;t prove that the district is
+against me. I believe the people are for me,
+now, Jennie. I really do!&#8221;</p>
+<p>Jennie rose and walked to the rear of the
+room and back, twice. When she spoke, there
+was decision in her tone&mdash;and Jim felt that it
+was hostile decision.</p>
+<p>&#8220;As an officer,&#8221; she said rather grandly, &#8220;my
+relations with the district are with the school
+board on the one hand, and with your competency
+as a teacher on the other.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Has it come to that?&#8221; asked Jim. &#8220;Well, I
+have rather expected it.&#8221;</p>
+<p>His tone was weary. The Lincolnian droop
+in his great, sad, mournful mouth accentuated
+the resemblance to the martyr president. Possibly
+his feelings were not entirely different
+from those experienced by Lincoln at some
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_141' name='page_141'></a>141</span>
+crises of doubt, misunderstanding and depression.</p>
+<p>&#8220;If you can&#8217;t change your methods,&#8221; said
+Jennie, &#8220;I suggest that you resign.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Do you think,&#8221; said Jim, &#8220;that changing
+my methods would appease the men who feel
+that they are made laughing-stocks by having
+elected me?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Jennie was silent; for she knew that the
+school board meant to pursue their policy of
+getting rid of the accidental incumbent regardless
+of his methods.</p>
+<p>&#8220;They would never call off their dogs,&#8221; said
+Jim.</p>
+<p>&#8220;But your methods would make a great difference
+with my decision,&#8221; said Jennie.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Are you to be called upon to decide?&#8221; asked
+Jim.</p>
+<p>&#8220;A formal complaint against you for incompetency,&#8221;
+she replied, &#8220;has been lodged in my
+office, signed by the three directors. I shall
+be obliged to take notice of it.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;And do you think,&#8221; queried Jim, &#8220;that my
+abandonment of the things in which I believe
+in the face of this attack would prove to your
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_142' name='page_142'></a>142</span>
+mind that I am competent? Or would it show
+me incompetent?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Again Jennie was silent.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I guess,&#8221; said Jim, &#8220;that we&#8217;ll have to stand
+or fall on things as they are.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Do you refuse to resign?&#8221; asked Jennie.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Sometimes I think it&#8217;s not worth while to
+try any longer,&#8221; said Jim. &#8220;And yet, I believe
+that in my way I&#8217;m working on the question
+which must be solved if this nation is to stand&mdash;the
+question of making the farm and farm life
+what they should be and may well be. At this
+moment, I feel like surrendering&mdash;for your
+sake more than mine; but I&#8217;ll have to think
+about it. Suppose I refuse to resign?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Jennie had drawn on her gloves, and stood
+ready for departure.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Unless you resign before the twenty-fifth,&#8221;
+said she, &#8220;I shall hear the petition for your removal
+on that date. You will be allowed to
+be present and answer the charges against
+you. The charges are incompetency. I bid you
+good evening!&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Incompetency!&#8221; The disgraceful word,
+representing everything he had always despised,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_143' name='page_143'></a>143</span>
+rang through Jim&#8217;s mind as he walked
+home. He could think of nothing else as he sat
+at the simple supper which he could scarcely
+taste. Incompetent! Well, had he not always
+been incompetent, except in the use of his
+muscles? Had he not always been a dreamer?
+Were not all his dreams as foreign to life
+and common sense as the Milky Way
+from the earth? What reason was there for
+thinking that this crusade of his for better
+schools had any sounder foundation than his
+dream of being president, or a great painter,
+or a poet or novelist or philosopher? He was
+just a hayseed, a rube, a misfit, as odd as Dick&#8217;s
+hatband, an off ox. He <i>was</i> incompetent. He
+picked up a pen, and began writing. He wrote,
+&#8220;To the Honorable the Board of Education of
+the Independent District of &mdash;&mdash;&#8221; And he
+heard a tap at the door. His mother admitted
+Colonel Woodruff.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Hello, Jim,&#8221; said he.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Good evening, Colonel,&#8221; said Jim. &#8220;Take
+a chair, won&#8217;t you?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;No,&#8221; replied the colonel. &#8220;I thought I&#8217;d
+see if you and the boys at the schoolhouse
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_144' name='page_144'></a>144</span>
+can&#8217;t tell me something about the smut in my
+wheat. I heard you were going to work on that
+to-night.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I had forgotten!&#8221; said Jim.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I wondered if you hadn&#8217;t,&#8221; said the colonel,
+&#8220;and so I came by for you. I was waiting up
+the road. Come on, and ride up with me.&#8221;</p>
+<p>The colonel had always been friendly, but
+there was a new note in his manner to-night.
+He was almost deferential. If he had been
+talking to Senator Cummins or the president
+of the state university, his tone could not have
+been more courteous, more careful to preserve
+the amenities due from man to man. He
+worked with the class on the problem of smut.
+He offered to aid the boys in every possible
+way in their campaign against scab in potatoes.
+He suggested some tests which would show the
+real value of the treatment. The boys were in
+a glow of pride at this cooperation with Colonel
+Woodruff. This was real work! Jim and the
+colonel went away together. It had been a
+great evening.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Jim,&#8221; said the colonel, &#8220;can these kids
+spell?&#8221;
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_145' name='page_145'></a>145</span></p>
+<p>&#8220;You mean these boys?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I mean the school.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I think,&#8221; said Jim, &#8220;that they can outspell
+any school about here.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Good,&#8221; said the colonel. &#8220;How are they
+about reading aloud?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Better than they were when I took hold.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;How about arithmetic and the other
+branches? Have you sort of kept them up to
+the course of study?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I have carried them in a course parallel to
+the text-books,&#8221; said Jim, &#8220;and covering the
+same ground. But it has been vocational work,
+you know&mdash;related to life.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well,&#8221; said the colonel, &#8220;if I were you, I&#8217;d
+put them over a rapid review of the text-books
+for a few days&mdash;say between now and the
+twenty-fifth.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;What for?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, nothing&mdash;just to please me .... And
+say, Jim, I glanced over a communication
+you have started to the more or less Honorable
+Board of Education.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well, don&#8217;t finish it .... And say, Jim,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_146' name='page_146'></a>146</span>
+I think I&#8217;ll give myself the luxury of being a
+wild-eyed reformer for once.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes,&#8221; said Jim, dazed.</p>
+<p>&#8220;And if you think, Jim, that you&#8217;ve got no
+friends, just remember that I&#8217;m for you.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Thank you, Colonel.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;And we&#8217;ll show them they&#8217;re in a horse
+race.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t see ...&#8221; said Jim.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You&#8217;re not supposed to see,&#8221; said the
+colonel, &#8220;but you can bet that we&#8217;ll be with
+them at the finish; and, by thunder! while
+they&#8217;re getting a full meal, we&#8217;ll get at least
+a lunch. See?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;But Jennie says,&#8221; began Jim.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Don&#8217;t tell me what she says,&#8221; said the
+colonel. &#8220;She&#8217;s acting according to her judgment,
+and her lights and other organs of perception,
+and I don&#8217;t think it fittin&#8217; that her
+father should try to influence her official conduct.
+But you go on and review them common
+branches, and keep your nerve. I haven&#8217;t felt
+so much like a scrap since the day we stormed
+Lookout Mountain. I kinder like being a wild-eyed
+reformer, Jim.&#8221;</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<a name='XIII_FAME_OR_NOTORIETY' id='XIII_FAME_OR_NOTORIETY'></a>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_147' name='page_147'></a>147</span>
+<h2>CHAPTER XIII</h2>
+<h3>FAME OR NOTORIETY</h3>
+</div>
+
+<p>The office of county superintendent was, as
+a matter of course, the least desirable room
+of the court-house. I say &#8220;room&#8221; advisedly,
+because it consisted of a single chamber of
+moderate size, provided with office furniture of
+the minimum quantity and maximum age. It
+opened off the central hall at the upper end of
+the stairway which led to the court room, and
+when court was in session, served the extraordinary
+needs of justice as a jury room. At
+such times the county superintendent&#8217;s desk
+was removed to the hall, where it stood in a
+noisy and confusing but very democratic publicity.
+Superintendent Jennie might have
+anticipated the time when, during the March
+term, offenders passing from the county jail
+in the basement to arraignment at the bar of
+justice might be able to peek over her shoulders
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_148' name='page_148'></a>148</span>
+and criticize her method of treating
+examination papers. On the twenty-fifth of
+February, however, this experience lurked
+unsuspected in her official future.</p>
+<p>Poor Jennie! She anticipated nothing more
+than the appearance of Messrs. Bronson,
+Peterson and Bonner in her office to confront
+Jim Irwin on certain questions of fact relating
+to Jim&#8217;s competency to hold a teacher&#8217;s
+certificate. The time appointed was ten
+o&#8217;clock. At nine forty-five Cornelius Bonner
+and his wife entered the office, and took twenty-five
+per cent. of the chairs therein. At nine
+fifty Jim Irwin came in, haggard, weather-beaten
+and seedy as ever, and looked as if he
+had neither eaten nor slept since his sweetheart
+stabbed him. At nine fifty-five Haakon Peterson
+and Ezra Bronson came in, accompanied by
+Wilbur Smythe, attorney-at-law, who carried
+under his arm a code of Iowa, a compilation
+of the school laws of the state, and <i>Throop on
+Public Officers</i>. At nine fifty-six, therefore, the
+crowd in Jennie&#8217;s office exceeded its seating
+capacity, and Jennie was in a flutter as the
+realization dawned upon her that this promised
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_149' name='page_149'></a>149</span>
+to be a bigger and more public affair than she
+had anticipated. At nine fifty-nine Raymond
+Simms opened the office door and there filed
+in enough children, large and small, some of
+them accompanied by their parents, and all
+belonging to the Woodruff school, to fill completely
+the interstices of the corners and angles
+of the room and between the legs of the grownups.
+In addition there remained an overflow
+meeting in the hall, under the command of that
+distinguished military gentleman, Colonel Albert
+Woodruff.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Say, Bill, come here!&#8221; said the colonel,
+crooking his finger at the deputy sheriff.</p>
+<p>&#8220;What you got here, Al!&#8221; said Bill, coming
+up the stairs, puffing. &#8220;Ain&#8217;t it a little early
+for Sunday-school picnics?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;This is a school fight in our district,&#8221; said
+the colonel. &#8220;It&#8217;s Jennie&#8217;s baptism of fire, I
+reckon ... and say, you&#8217;re not using the
+court room, are you?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Nope,&#8221; said Bill.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well, why not just slip around, then,&#8221; said
+the colonel, &#8220;and tell Jennie she&#8217;d better adjourn
+to the big room.&#8221;
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_150' name='page_150'></a>150</span></p>
+<p>Which suggestion was acted upon instanter
+by Deputy Bill.</p>
+<p>&#8220;But I can&#8217;t, I can&#8217;t,&#8221; said Jennie to the
+courteous deputy sheriff. &#8220;I don&#8217;t want all this
+publicity, and I don&#8217;t want to go into the court
+room.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I hardly see,&#8221; said Deputy Bill, &#8220;how you
+can avoid it. These people seem to have business
+with you, and they can&#8217;t get into your
+office.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;But they have no business with me,&#8221; said
+Jennie. &#8220;It&#8217;s mere curiosity.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Whereupon Wilbur Smythe, who could see no
+particular point in restricted publicity, said,
+&#8220;Madame County Superintendent, this hearing
+certainly is public or quasi-public. Your office
+is a public one, and while the right to attend
+this hearing may not possibly be a universal
+one, it surely is one belonging to every citizen
+and taxpayer of the county, and if the taxpayer,
+<i>qua</i> taxpayer, then certainly <i>a fortiori</i> to the
+members of the Woodruff school and residents
+of that district.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Jennie quailed. &#8220;All right, all right!&#8221; said
+she. &#8220;But, shall I have to sit on the bench!&#8221;
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_151' name='page_151'></a>151</span></p>
+<p>&#8220;You will find it by far the most convenient
+place,&#8221; said Deputy Bill.</p>
+<p>Was this the life to which public office had
+brought her? Was it for this that she had
+bartered her independence&mdash;for this and the
+musty office, the stupid examination papers,
+and the interminable visiting of schools, knowing
+that such supervision as she could give
+was practically worthless? Jim had said to her
+that he had never heard of such a thing as a
+good county superintendent of schools, and she
+had thought him queer. And now, here was she,
+called upon to pass on the competency of the
+man who had always been her superior in
+everything that constitutes mental ability; and
+to make the thing more a matter for the laughter
+of the gods, she was perched on the judicial
+bench, which Deputy Bill had dusted off for
+her, tipping a wink to the assemblage while
+doing it. He expected to be a candidate for
+sheriff, one of these days, and was pleasing
+the crowd. And that crowd! To Jennie it
+was appalling. The school board under the
+lead of Wilbur Smythe took seats inside the
+railing which on court days divided the audience
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_152' name='page_152'></a>152</span>
+from the lawyers and litigants. Jim
+Irwin, who had never been in a court room before,
+herded with the crowd, obeying the attraction
+of sympathy, but to Jennie, seated on
+the bench, he, like other persons in the auditorium,
+was a mere blurry outline with a knob
+of a head on its top.</p>
+<p>She couldn&#8217;t call the gathering to order. She
+had no idea as to the proper procedure. She
+sat there while the people gathered, stood about
+whispering and talking under their breaths,
+and finally became silent, all their eyes fixed
+on her, as she wished that the office of county
+superintendent had been abolished in the days
+of her parents&#8217; infancy.</p>
+<p>&#8220;May it please the court,&#8221; said Wilbur
+Smythe, standing before the bar. &#8220;Or, Madame
+County Superintendent, I should say ...&#8221;</p>
+<p>A titter ran through the room, and a flush
+of temper tinted Jennie&#8217;s face. They were
+laughing at her! She wouldn&#8217;t be a spectacle
+any longer! So she rose, and handed down
+her first and last decision from the bench&mdash;a
+rather good one, I think.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Mr. Smythe,&#8221; said she, &#8220;I feel very ill at
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_153' name='page_153'></a>153</span>
+ease up here, and I&#8217;m going to get down among
+the people. It&#8217;s the only way I have of getting
+the truth.&#8221;</p>
+<p>She descended from the bench, shook hands
+with everybody near her, and sat down by the
+attorney&#8217;s table.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Now,&#8221; said she, &#8220;this is no formal proceeding
+and we will dispense with red tape. If
+we don&#8217;t, I shall get all tangled up in it.
+Where&#8217;s Mr. Irwin? Please come in here,
+Jim. Now, I know there&#8217;s some feeling in these
+things&mdash;there always seems to be; but I have
+none. So I&#8217;ll just hear why Mr. Bronson, Mr.
+Peterson and Mr. Bonner think that Mr. James
+E. Irwin isn&#8217;t competent to hold a certificate.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Jennie was able to smile at them now, and
+everybody felt more at ease, save Jim Irwin,
+the members of the board and Wilbur Smythe.
+That individual arose, and talked down at Jennie.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I appear for the proponents here,&#8221; said he,
+&#8220;and I desire to suggest certain principles of
+procedure which I take it belong indisputably
+to the conduct of this hearing.&#8221;
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_154' name='page_154'></a>154</span></p>
+<p>&#8220;Have you a lawyer?&#8221; asked the county
+superintendent of the respondent.</p>
+<p>&#8220;A what?&#8221; exclaimed Jim. &#8220;Nobody here
+has a lawyer!&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well, what do you call Wilbur Smythe?&#8221;
+queried Newton Bronson from the midst of the
+crowd.</p>
+<p>&#8220;He ain&#8217;t lawyer enough to hurt!&#8221; said the
+thing which the dramatists call A Voice.</p>
+<p>There was a little tempest of laughter at
+Wilbur Smythe&#8217;s expense, which was quelled
+by Jennie&#8217;s rapping on the table. She was beginning
+to feel the mouth of the situation.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I have no way of retaining a lawyer,&#8221; said
+Jim, on whom the truth had gradually dawned.
+&#8220;If a lawyer is necessary, I am without protection&mdash;but
+it never occurred to me ...&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;There is nothing in the school laws, as I
+remember them,&#8221; said Jennie, &#8220;giving the parties
+any right to be represented by counsel. If
+there is, Mr. Smythe will please set me right.&#8221;</p>
+<p>She paused for Mr. Smythe&#8217;s reply.</p>
+<p>&#8220;There is nothing which expressly gives that
+privilege,&#8221; said Mr. Smythe, &#8220;but the right to
+the benefit of skilled advisers is a universal
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_155' name='page_155'></a>155</span>
+one. It can not be questioned. And in opening
+this case for my clients, I desire to call your
+honor&#8217;s attention&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You may advise your clients all you please,&#8221;
+said Jennie, &#8220;but I&#8217;m not going to waste time
+in listening to speeches, or having a lot of lawyers
+examine witnesses.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I protest,&#8221; said Mr. Smythe.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well, you may file your protest in writing,&#8221;
+said Jennie. &#8220;I&#8217;m going to talk this matter
+over with these old friends and neighbors of
+mine. I don&#8217;t want you dipping into it, I say!&#8221;</p>
+<p>Jennie&#8217;s voice was rising toward the scream-line,
+and Mr. Smythe recognized the hand of
+fate. One may argue with a cantankerous judge,
+but the woman, who like necessity, knows no
+law, and who is smothering in a flood of perplexities,
+is beyond reason. Moreover, Jennie
+dimly saw that what she was doing had the
+approval of the crowd, and it solved the problem
+of procedure.</p>
+<p>There was a little wrangling, and a little
+protest from Con Bonner, but Jennie ruled with
+a rod of iron, and adhered to her ruling. When
+the hearing was resumed after the noon recess,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_156' name='page_156'></a>156</span>
+the crowd was larger than ever, but the proceedings
+consisted mainly in a conference of
+the principals grouped about Jennie at the big
+lawyers&#8217; table. They were talking about the
+methods adopted by Jim in his conduct of the
+Woodruff school&mdash;just talking. The only new
+thing was the presence of a couple of newspaper
+men, who had queried Chicago papers
+on the story, and been given orders for a certain
+number of words on the case of the farm-hand
+schoolmaster on trial before his old sweetheart
+for certain weird things he had done in the
+home school in which they had once been classmates.
+The fact that the old school-sweetheart
+had kicked a lawyer out of the case was not
+overlooked by the gentlemen of the fourth
+estate. It helped to make it a &#8220;good story.&#8221;</p>
+<p>By the time at which gathering darkness
+made it necessary for the bailiff to light the
+lamps, the parties had agreed on the facts.
+Jim admitted most of the allegations. He had
+practically ignored the text-books. He had
+burned the district fuel and worn out the district
+furniture early and late, and on Saturdays.
+He had introduced domestic economy
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_157' name='page_157'></a>157</span>
+and manual training, to some extent, by sending
+the boys to the workshops and the girls to
+the kitchens and sewing-rooms of the farmers
+who allowed those privileges. He had used
+up a great deal of time in studying farm conditions.
+He had induced the boys to test the
+cows of the district for butter-fat yield. He
+was studying the matter of a cooperative
+creamery. He hoped to have a blacksmith
+shop on the schoolhouse grounds sometime,
+where the boys could learn metal working by
+repairing the farm machinery, and shoeing the
+farm horses. He hoped to install a cooperative
+laundry in connection with the creamery. He
+hoped to see a building sometime, with an auditorium
+where the people would meet often for
+moving picture shows, lectures and the like,
+and he expected that most of the descriptions
+of foreign lands, industrial operations, wild
+animals&mdash;in short, everything that people
+should learn about by seeing, rather than reading&mdash;would
+be taught the children by moving
+pictures accompanied by lectures. He hoped
+to open to the boys and girls the wonders of
+the universe which are touched by the work
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_158' name='page_158'></a>158</span>
+on the farm. He hoped to make good and contented
+farmers of them, able to get the most
+out of the soil, to sell what they produced to
+the best advantage, and at the same time to
+keep up the fertility of the soil itself. And
+he hoped to teach the girls in such a way that
+they would be good and contented farmers&#8217;
+wives. He even had in mind as a part of the
+schoolhouse the Woodruff District would one
+day build, an apartment in which the mothers
+of the neighborhood would leave their babies
+when they went to town, so that the girls could
+learn the care of infants.</p>
+<p>&#8220;An&#8217; I say,&#8221; interposed Con Bonner, &#8220;that
+we can rest our case right here. If that ain&#8217;t
+the limit, I don&#8217;t know what is!&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well,&#8221; said Jennie, &#8220;do you desire to rest
+your case right here?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Mr. Bonner made no reply to this, and Jennie
+turned to Jim.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Now, Mr. Irwin,&#8221; said she, &#8220;while you have
+been following out these very interesting and
+original methods, what have you done in the
+way of teaching the things called for by the
+course of study?&#8221;
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_159' name='page_159'></a>159</span></p>
+<p>&#8220;What is the course of study?&#8221; queried Jim.
+&#8220;Is it anything more than an outline of the
+mental march the pupils are ordered to make?
+Take reading: why does it give the children
+any greater mastery of the printed page to
+read about Casabianca on the burning deck,
+than about the cause of the firing of corn by hot
+weather? And how can they be given better
+command of language than by writing about
+things they have found out in relation to some
+of the sciences which are laid under contribution
+by farming? Everything they do runs
+into numbers, and we do more arithmetic than
+the course requires. There isn&#8217;t any branch
+of study&mdash;not even poetry and art and music&mdash;that
+isn&#8217;t touched by life. If there is we haven&#8217;t
+time for it in the common schools. We work
+out from life to everything in the course of
+study.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Do you mean to assert,&#8221; queried Jennie,
+&#8220;that while you have been doing all this work
+which was never contemplated by those who
+have made up the course of study, that you
+haven&#8217;t neglected anything?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I mean,&#8221; said Jim, &#8220;that I&#8217;m willing to
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_160' name='page_160'></a>160</span>
+stand or fall on an examination of these children
+in the very text-books we are accused of
+neglecting.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Jennie looked steadily at Jim for a full
+minute, and at the clock. It was nearly time
+for adjournment.</p>
+<p>&#8220;How many pupils of the Woodruff school
+are here?&#8221; she asked. &#8220;All rise, please!&#8221;</p>
+<p>A mass of the audience, in the midst of which
+sat Jennie&#8217;s father, rose at the request.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Why,&#8221; said Jennie, &#8220;I should say we had a
+quorum, anyhow! How many will come back
+to-morrow morning at nine o&#8217;clock, and bring
+your school-books? Please lift hands.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Nearly every hand went up.</p>
+<p>&#8220;And, Mr. Irwin,&#8221; she went on, &#8220;will you
+have the school records, so we may be able to
+ascertain the proper standing of these pupils?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I will,&#8221; said Jim.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Then,&#8221; said Jennie, &#8220;we&#8217;ll adjourn until
+nine o&#8217;clock. I hope to see every one here.
+We&#8217;ll have school here to-morrow. And, Mr.
+Irwin, please remember that you state that
+you&#8217;ll stand or fall on the mastery by these
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_161' name='page_161'></a>161</span>
+pupils of the text-books they are supposed to
+have neglected.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Not the mastery of the text,&#8221; said Jim.
+&#8220;But their ability to do the work the text is
+supposed to fit them for.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well,&#8221; said Jennie, &#8220;I don&#8217;t know but that&#8217;s
+fair.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;But,&#8221; said Mrs. Haakon Peterson, &#8220;we
+don&#8217;t want our children brought up to be yust
+farmers. Suppose we move to town&mdash;where
+does the culture come in?&#8221;</p>
+<hr class='tb' />
+
+<p>The Chicago papers had a news item which
+covered the result of the examinations; but
+the great sensation of the Woodruff District
+lay in the Sunday feature carried by one of
+them.</p>
+<p>It had a picture of Jim Irwin, and one of
+Jennie Woodruff&mdash;the latter authentic, and
+the former gleaned from the morgue, and apparently
+the portrait of a lumber-jack. There
+was also a very free treatment by the cartoonist
+of Mr. Simms carrying a rifle with the
+intention of shooting up the school board in
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_162' name='page_162'></a>162</span>
+case the decision went against the schoolmaster.</p>
+<hr class='tb' />
+
+<p>&#8220;When it became known,&#8221; said the news
+story, &#8220;that the schoolmaster had bet his job
+on the proficiency of his school in studies supposed
+and alleged to have been studiously
+neglected, the excitement rose to fever heat.
+Local sports bet freely on the result, the odds
+being eight to five on General Proficiency
+against the field. The field was Jim Irwin and
+his school. And the way those rural kids rose
+in their might and ate up the text-books was
+simply scandalous. There was a good deal of
+nervousness on the part of some of the small
+starters, and some bursts of tears at excusable
+failures. But when the fight was over, and
+the dead and wounded cared for, the school
+board and the county superintendent were
+forced to admit that they wished the average
+school could do as well under a similar test.</p>
+<p>&#8220;The local Mr. Dooley is Cornelius Bonner,
+a member of the &#8216;board.&#8217; When asked for a
+statement of his views after the county superintendent
+had decided that her old sweetheart
+was to be allowed the priceless boon of earning
+forty dollars a month during the remainder
+of his contract, Mr. Bonner said, &#8216;Aside from
+being licked, we&#8217;re all right. But we&#8217;ll get this
+guy yet, don&#8217;t fall down and fergit that!&#8217;</p>
+<p>&#8220;&#8216;The examinations tind to show,&#8217; said Mr.
+Bonner, when asked for his opinion on the result,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_163' name='page_163'></a>163</span>
+&#8216;that in or-r-rder to larn anything you
+shud shtudy somethin&#8217; ilse. But we&#8217;ll git this
+guy yit!&#8217;&#8221;</p>
+<hr class='tb' />
+
+<p>&#8220;Jim,&#8221; said Colonel Woodruff, as they rode
+home together, &#8220;the next heat is the school
+election. We&#8217;ve got to control that board next
+year&mdash;and we&#8217;ve got to do it by electing one
+out of three.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Is that a possibility?&#8221; asked Jim. &#8220;Aren&#8217;t
+we sure to be defeated at last? Shouldn&#8217;t I quit
+at the end of my contract? All I ever hoped for
+was to be allowed to fulfill that. And is it worth
+the fight?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s not only possible,&#8221; replied the colonel,
+&#8220;but probable. As for being worth while&mdash;why,
+this thing is too big to drop. I&#8217;m just
+beginning to understand what you&#8217;re driving
+at. And I like being a wild-eyed reformer more
+and more.&#8221;</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<a name='XIV_THE_COLONEL_TAKES_THE_FIELD' id='XIV_THE_COLONEL_TAKES_THE_FIELD'></a>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_164' name='page_164'></a>164</span>
+<h2>CHAPTER XIV</h2>
+<h3>THE COLONEL TAKES THE FIELD</h3>
+</div>
+
+<p>Every Iowa county has its Farmers&#8217;
+Institute. Usually it is held in the county
+seat, and is a gathering of farmers for the
+ostensible purpose of listening to improving
+discussions and addresses both instructive and
+entertaining. Really, in most cases, the
+farmers&#8217; institutes have been occasions for the
+cultivation of relations between a few of the
+exceptional farmers and their city friends and
+with one another. Seldom is anything done
+which leads to any better selling methods for
+the farmers, any organization looking to cooperative
+effort, or anything else that an agricultural
+economist from Ireland, Germany or
+Denmark would suggest as the sort of action
+which the American farmer must take if he is
+to make the most of his life and labor.</p>
+<p>The Woodruff District was interested in the
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_165' name='page_165'></a>165</span>
+institute however, because of the fact that a
+rural-school exhibit was one of its features that
+year, and that Colonel Woodruff had secured
+an urgent invitation to the school to take part
+in it.</p>
+<p>&#8220;We&#8217;ve got something new out in our district
+school,&#8221; said he to the president of the institute.</p>
+<p>&#8220;So I hear,&#8221; said the president&mdash;&#8220;mostly a
+fight, isn&#8217;t it?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Something more,&#8221; said the colonel. &#8220;If
+you&#8217;ll persuade our school to make an exhibit
+of real rural work in a real rural school, I&#8217;ll
+promise you something worth seeing and discussing.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Such exhibits are now so common that it is
+not worth while for us to describe it; but then,
+the sight of a class of children testing and
+weighing milk, examining grains for viability
+and foul seeds, planning crop rotations, judging
+grains and live stock was so new in that county
+as to be the real sensation of the institute.</p>
+<p>Two persons were a good deal embarrassed
+by the success of the exhibit. One was the
+county superintendent, who was constantly in
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_166' name='page_166'></a>166</span>
+receipt of undeserved compliments upon her
+wisdom in fostering really &#8220;practical work in
+the schools.&#8221; The other was Jim Irwin, who
+was becoming famous, and who felt he had
+done nothing to deserve fame. Professor
+Withers, an extension lecturer from Ames, took
+Jim to dinner at the best hotel in the town, for
+the purpose of talking over with him the needs
+of the rural schools. Jim was in agony. The
+colored waiter fussed about trying to keep Jim
+in the beaten track of hotel manners, restored
+to him the napkin which Jim failed to use,
+and juggled back into place the silverware
+which Jim misappropriated to alien and unusual
+uses. But, when the meal had progressed
+to the stage of conversation, the waiter noticed
+that gradually the uncouth farmer became
+master of the situation, and the well-groomed
+college professor the interested listener.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You&#8217;ve got to come down to our farmers&#8217;
+week next year, and tell us about these things,&#8221;
+said he to Jim. &#8220;Can&#8217;t you?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Jim&#8217;s brain reeled. He go to a gathering of
+real educators and tell his crude notions! How
+could he get the money for his expenses? But
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_167' name='page_167'></a>167</span>
+he had that gameness which goes with supreme
+confidence in the thing dealt with.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ll come,&#8221; said he.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Thank you,&#8221; said the Ames man, &#8220;There&#8217;s
+a small honorarium attached, you know.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Jim was staggered. What was an honorarium?
+He tried to remember what an honorarium
+is, and could get no further than the
+thought that it is in some way connected with
+the Latin root of &#8220;honor.&#8221; Was he obliged to
+pay an honorarium for the chance to speak
+before the college gathering? Well, he&#8217;d save
+money and pay it. The professor must be able
+to understand that it couldn&#8217;t be expected that
+a country school-teacher would be able to pay
+much.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&mdash;I&#8217;ll try to take care of the honorarium,&#8221;
+said he. &#8220;I&#8217;ll come.&#8221;</p>
+<p>The professor laughed. It was the first joke
+the gangling innovator had perpetrated.</p>
+<p>&#8220;It won&#8217;t bother you to take care of it,&#8221; said
+he, &#8220;but if you&#8217;re not too extravagant it will
+pay you your expenses and give you a few dollars
+over.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Jim breathed more freely. An honorarium
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_168' name='page_168'></a>168</span>
+was paid to the person receiving the honor,
+then. What a relief!</p>
+<p>&#8220;All right,&#8221; he exclaimed. &#8220;I&#8217;ll be glad to
+come!&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Let&#8217;s consider that settled,&#8221; said the
+professor. &#8220;And now I must be going back to
+the opera-house. My talk on soil sickness comes
+next. I tell you, the winter wheat crop has
+been&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+<p>But Jim was not able to think much of the
+winter wheat problem as they went back to
+the auditorium. He was worth putting on the
+program at a state meeting! He was worth
+the appreciation of a college professor, trained
+to think on the very matters Jim had been
+so long mulling over in isolation and blindness!
+He was actually worth paying for his
+thoughts.</p>
+<p>Calista Simms thought she saw something
+shining and saint-like about the homely face
+of her teacher as he came to her at her post
+in the room in which the school exhibit was
+held. Calista was in charge of the little children
+whose work was to be demonstrated that
+day, and was in a state of exaltation to which
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_169' name='page_169'></a>169</span>
+her starved being had hitherto been a stranger.
+Perhaps there was something similar in her
+condition of fervent happiness to that of Jim.
+She, too, was doing something outside the
+sordid life of the Simms cabin. She yearned
+over the children in her care, and would have
+been glad to die for them&mdash;and besides was not
+Newton Bronson in charge of the corn exhibit,
+and a member of the corn-judging team? To
+the eyes of the town girls who passed about
+among the exhibits, she was poorly dressed;
+but if they could have seen the clothes she
+had worn on that evening when Jim Irwin
+first called at their cabin and failed to give a
+whoop from the big road, they could perhaps
+have understood the sense of wellbeing and
+happiness in Calista&#8217;s soul at the feeling of her
+whole clean underclothes, her neat, if cheap,
+dress, and the &#8220;boughten&#8221; cloak she wore&mdash;and
+any of them, even without knowledge of this,
+might have understood Calista&#8217;s joy at the
+knowledge that Newton Bronson&#8217;s eyes were
+on her from his station by the big pillar, no
+matter how many town girls filed by. For
+therein they would have been in a realm of
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_170' name='page_170'></a>170</span>
+the passions quite universal in its appeal to the
+feminine soul.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Hello, Calista!&#8221; said Jim. &#8220;How are you
+enjoying it?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh!&#8221; said Calista, and drew a long, long
+breath. &#8220;Ah&#8217;m enjoying myse&#8217;f right much,
+Mr. Jim.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Any of the home folks coming in to see?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes, seh,&#8221; answered Calista. &#8220;All the
+school board have stopped by this morning.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Jim looked about him. He wished he could
+see and shake hands with his enemies, Bronson,
+Peterson and Bonner: and if he could tell them
+of his success with Professor Withers of the
+State Agricultural College, perhaps they would
+feel differently toward him. There they were
+now, over in a corner, with their heads together.
+Perhaps they were agreeing among
+themselves that he was right in his school
+methods, and they wrong. He went toward
+them, his face still beaming with that radiance
+which had shone so plainly to the eyes of
+Calista Simms, but they saw in it only a grin
+of exultation over his defeat of them at the
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_171' name='page_171'></a>171</span>
+hearing before Jennie Woodruff. When Jim
+had drawn so close as almost to call for the
+extended hand, he felt the repulsion of their
+attitudes and sheered off on some pretended
+errand to a dark corner across the room.</p>
+<p>They resumed their talk.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m a Dimocrat,&#8221; said Con Bonner, &#8220;and you
+fellers is Republicans, and we&#8217;ve fought each
+other about who we was to hire for teacher;
+but when it comes to electing my successor, I
+think we shouldn&#8217;t divide on party lines.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;The fight about the teacher,&#8221; said Haakon
+Peterson, &#8220;is a t&#8217;ing of the past. All our candidates
+got odder yobs now.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes,&#8221; said Ezra Bronson. &#8220;Prue Foster
+wouldn&#8217;t take our school now if she could
+get it&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;And as I was sayin&#8217;,&#8221; went on Bonner, &#8220;I
+want to get this guy, Jim Irwin. An&#8217; bein&#8217;
+the cause of his gittin&#8217; the school, I&#8217;d like to be
+on the board to kick him off; but if you fellers
+would like to have some one else, I won&#8217;t run,
+and if the right feller is named, I&#8217;ll line up
+what friends I got for him.&#8221;
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_172' name='page_172'></a>172</span>
+&#8220;You got no friend can git as many wotes as
+you can,&#8221; said Peterson. &#8220;I tank you better
+run.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;What say, Ez?&#8221; asked Bonner.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Suits me all right,&#8221; said Bronson. &#8220;I guess
+we three have had our fight out and understand
+each other.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;All right,&#8221; returned Bonner, &#8220;I&#8217;ll take the
+office again. Let&#8217;s not start too soon, but say
+we begin about a week from Sunday to line up
+our friends, to go to the school election and
+vote kind of unanimous-like?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Suits me,&#8221; said Bronson.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Wery well,&#8221; said Peterson.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t like the way Colonel Woodruff acts,&#8221;
+said Bonner. &#8220;He rounded up that gang of
+kids that shot us all to pieces at that hearing,
+didn&#8217;t he?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I tank not,&#8221; replied Peterson. &#8220;I tank he
+was yust interested in how Yennie managed it.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Looked mighty like he was managin&#8217; the
+demonstration,&#8221; said Bonner. &#8220;What d&#8217;ye
+think, Ez?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Too small a matter for the colonel to monkey
+with,&#8221; said Bronson. &#8220;I reckon he was just
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_173' name='page_173'></a>173</span>
+interested in Jennie&#8217;s dilemmer. It ain&#8217;t reasonable
+that Colonel Woodruff after the p&#8217;litical
+career he&#8217;s had would mix up in school district
+politics.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well,&#8221; said Bonner, &#8220;he seems to take a lot
+of interest in this exhibition here. I think
+we&#8217;d better watch the colonel. That decision
+of Jennie&#8217;s might have been because she&#8217;s stuck
+on Jim Irwin, or because she takes a lot of
+notice of what her father says.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Or she might have thought the decision was
+right,&#8221; said Bronson. &#8220;Some people do, you
+know.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Right!&#8221; scoffed Bonner. &#8220;In a pig&#8217;s wrist!
+I tell you that decision was crooked.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Vell,&#8221; said Haakon Peterson, &#8220;talk of
+crookedness wit&#8217; Yennie Woodruff don&#8217;t get
+wery fur wit&#8217; me.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, I don&#8217;t mean anything bad, Haakon,&#8221;
+replied Bonner, &#8220;but it wasn&#8217;t an all-right decision.
+I think she&#8217;s stuck on the guy.&#8221;</p>
+<p>The caucus broke up after making sure that
+the three members of the school board would
+be as one man in maintaining a hostile front
+to Jim Irwin and his tenure of office. It
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_174' name='page_174'></a>174</span>
+looked rather like a foregone conclusion, in a
+little district wherein there were scarcely
+twenty-five votes. The three members of the
+board with their immediate friends and dependents
+could muster two or three ballots
+each&mdash;and who was there to oppose them? Who
+wanted to be school director? It was a post
+of no profit, little honor and much vexation.
+And yet, there are always men to be found
+who covet such places. Curiously there are always
+those who covet them for no ascertainable
+reason, for often they are men who have no
+theory of education to further, and no fondness
+for affairs of the intellect. In the Woodruff
+District, however, the incumbents saw no candidate
+in view who could be expected to stand
+up against the rather redoubtable Con Bonner.
+Jim&#8217;s hold upon his work seemed fairly secure
+for the term of his contract, since Jennie had
+decided that he was competent; and after that
+he himself had no plans. He could not expect
+to be retained by the men who had so bitterly
+attacked him. Perhaps the publicity of his
+Ames address would get him another place with
+a sufficient stipend so that he could support his
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_175' name='page_175'></a>175</span>
+mother without the aid of the little garden, the
+cows and the fowls&mdash;and perhaps he would ask
+Colonel Woodruff to take him back as a farm-hand.
+These thoughts thronged his mind as
+he stood apart and alone after his rebuff by
+the caucusing members of the school board.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t see,&#8221; said a voice over against the
+cooking exhibit, &#8220;what there is in this to
+set people talking? Buttonholes! Cookies!
+Humph!&#8221;</p>
+<p>It was Mrs. Bonner who had clearly come
+to scoff. With her was Mrs. Bronson, whose
+attitude was that of a person torn between
+conflicting influences. Her husband had indicated
+to the crafty Bonner and the subtle Peterson
+that while he was still loyal to the school
+board, and hence perforce opposed to Jim
+Irwin, and resentful to the decision of the
+county superintendent, his adhesion to the institutions
+of the Woodruff District as handed
+down by the fathers was not quite of the
+thick-and-thin type. For he had suggested that
+Jennie might have been sincere in rendering
+her decision, and that some people agreed with
+her: so Mrs. Bronson, while consorting with
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_176' name='page_176'></a>176</span>
+the censorious Mrs. Bonner evinced restiveness
+when the school and its work was condemned.
+Was not her Newton in charge of a part of
+this show! Had he not taken great interest
+in the project? Was he not an open and defiant
+champion of Jim Irwin, and a constant
+and enthusiastic attendant upon, not only his
+classes, but a variety of evening and Saturday
+affairs at which the children studied arithmetic,
+grammar, geography, writing and spelling, by
+working on cows, pigs, chickens, grains,
+grasses, soils and weeds? And had not Newton
+become a better boy&mdash;a wonderfully better
+boy? Mrs. Bronson&#8217;s heart was filled with resentment
+that she also could not be enrolled
+among Jim Irwin&#8217;s supporters. And when
+Mrs. Bonner sneered at the buttonholes and
+cookies, Mrs. Bronson, knowing how the little
+fingers had puzzled themselves over the one,
+and young faces had become floury and red
+over the other, flared up a little.</p>
+<p>&#8220;And I don&#8217;t see,&#8221; said she, &#8220;anything to
+laugh at when the young girls do the best they
+can to make themselves capable housekeepers.
+I&#8217;d like to help them.&#8221;
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_177' name='page_177'></a>177</span>
+She turned to Mrs. Bonner as if to add &#8220;If
+this be treason, make the most of it!&#8221; but
+that lady was far too good a diplomat to be
+cornered in the same enclosure with a rupture
+of relations.</p>
+<p>&#8220;And quite right, too,&#8221; said she, &#8220;in the
+proper place, and at the proper time. The
+little things ought to be helped by every real
+woman&mdash;of course!&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Of course,&#8221; repeated Mrs. Bronson.</p>
+<p>&#8220;At home, now, and by their mothers,&#8221; added
+Mrs. Bonner.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well,&#8221; said Mrs. Bronson, &#8220;take them
+Simms girls, now. They have to have help
+outside their home if they are ever going to
+be like other folks.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes,&#8221; agreed Mrs. Bonner, &#8220;and a lot more
+help than a farm-hand can give &#8217;em in school.
+Pretty poor trash, they, and I shouldn&#8217;t wonder
+if there was a lot we don&#8217;t know about why
+they come north.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;As for that,&#8221; replied Mrs. Bronson, &#8220;I don&#8217;t
+know as it&#8217;s any of my business so long as
+they behave themselves.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Again Mrs. Bonner felt the situation getting
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_178' name='page_178'></a>178</span>
+out of hand, and again she returned to
+the task of keeping Mrs. Bronson in alignment
+with the forces of accepted Woodruff District
+conditions.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Ain&#8217;t it some of our business?&#8221; she
+queried. &#8220;I wonder now! By the way Newtie
+keeps his eye on that Simms girl, I shouldn&#8217;t
+wonder if it might turn out your business.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Pshaw!&#8221; scoffed Mrs. Bronson. &#8220;Puppy
+love!&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You can&#8217;t tell how far it&#8217;ll go,&#8221; persisted
+Mrs. Bonner. &#8220;I tell you these schools are
+getting to be nothing more than sparkin&#8217;
+bees, from the county superintendent down.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well, maybe,&#8221; said Mrs. Bronson, &#8220;but I
+don&#8217;t see sparkin&#8217; in everything boys and girls
+do as quick as some.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I wonder,&#8221; said Mrs. Bonner, &#8220;if Colonel
+Woodruff would be as friendly to Jim Irwin
+if he knew that everybody says Jennie decided
+he was to keep his certif&#8217;kit because she wants
+him to get along in the world, so he can marry
+her?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t know as she is so very friendly to
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_179' name='page_179'></a>179</span>
+him,&#8221; replied Mrs. Bronson; &#8220;and Jim and
+Jennie are both of age, you know.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes, but how about our schools bein&#8217; ruined
+by a love affair?&#8221; interrogated Mrs. Bonner, as
+they moved away. &#8220;Ain&#8217;t that your business
+and mine?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Instead of desiring further knowledge of
+what they were discussing, Jim felt a dreadful
+disgust at the whole thing. Disgust at being
+the subject of gossip, at the horrible falsity
+of the picture he had been able to paint to the
+people of his objects and his ambitions, and
+especially at the desecration of Jennie by such
+misconstruction of her attitude toward him
+officially and personally. Jennie was vexed at
+him, and wanted him to resign from his position.
+He firmly believed that she was surprised
+at finding herself convinced that he was entitled
+to a decision in the matter of his competency
+as a teacher. She was against him, he
+believed, and as for her being in love with
+him&mdash;to hear these women discuss it was intolerable.</p>
+<p>He felt his face redden as at the hearing of
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_180' name='page_180'></a>180</span>
+some horrible indecency. He felt himself
+stripped naked, and he was hotly ashamed that
+Jennie should be associated with him in the
+exposure. And while he was raging inwardly,
+paying the penalty of his new-found place in
+the public eye&mdash;a publicity to which he was
+not yet hardened&mdash;he heard other voices. Professor
+Withers, County Superintendent Jennie
+and Colonel Woodruff were making an inspection
+of the rural-school exhibit.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I hear he has been having some trouble
+with his school board,&#8221; the professor was
+saying.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes,&#8221; said Jennie, &#8220;he has.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Wasn&#8217;t there an effort made to remove him
+from his position?&#8221; asked the professor.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Proceedings before me to revoke his certificate,&#8221;
+replied Jennie.</p>
+<p>&#8220;On what grounds?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Incompetency,&#8221; answered Jennie. &#8220;I found
+that his pupils were really doing very well in
+the regular course of study&mdash;which he seems
+to be neglecting.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m glad you supported him,&#8221; said the
+professor. &#8220;I&#8217;m glad to find you helping him.&#8221;
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_181' name='page_181'></a>181</span>
+&#8220;Really,&#8221; protested Jennie, &#8220;I don&#8217;t think
+myself&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;What do you think of his notions?&#8221; asked
+the colonel.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Very advanced,&#8221; replied Professor Withers.
+&#8220;Where did he imbibe them all?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;He&#8217;s a Brown Mouse,&#8221; said the colonel.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I beg your pardon,&#8221; said the puzzled
+professor. &#8220;I didn&#8217;t quite understand. A&mdash;a&mdash;what?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;One of papa&#8217;s breeding jokes,&#8221; said Jennie.
+&#8220;He means a phenomenon in heredity&mdash;perhaps
+a genius, you know.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Ah, I see,&#8221; replied the professor, &#8220;a Mendelian
+segregation, you mean?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Certainly,&#8221; said the colonel. &#8220;The sort of
+mind that imbibes things from itself.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well, he&#8217;s rather wonderful,&#8221; declared the
+professor. &#8220;I had him to lunch to-day. He
+surprised me. I have invited him to make an
+address at Ames next winter during farmers&#8217;
+week.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;He?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Jennie&#8217;s tone showed her astonishment. Jim
+the underling. Jim the off ox. Jim the thorn
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_182' name='page_182'></a>182</span>
+in the county superintendent&#8217;s side. Jim the
+country teacher! It was stupefying.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, you musn&#8217;t judge him by his looks,&#8221;
+said the professor. &#8220;I really do hope he&#8217;ll take
+some advice on the matter of clothes&mdash;put on
+a cravat and a different shirt and collar when
+he comes to Ames&mdash;but I have no doubt he
+will.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;He hasn&#8217;t any other,&#8221; said the colonel.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well, it won&#8217;t signify, if he has the truth
+to tell us,&#8221; said the professor.</p>
+<p>&#8220;<i>Has</i> he?&#8221; asked Jennie.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Miss Woodruff,&#8221; replied the professor
+earnestly, &#8220;he has something that looks toward
+truth, and something that we need. Just how
+far he will go, just what he will amount to,
+it is impossible to say. But something must
+be done for the rural schools&mdash;something along
+the lines he is trying to follow. He is a struggling
+soul, and he is worth helping. You won&#8217;t
+make any mistake if you make the most of Mr.
+Irwin.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Jim slipped out of a side door and fled. As
+in the case of the conversation between Mrs.
+Bronson and Mrs. Bonner, he was unable to
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_183' name='page_183'></a>183</span>
+discern the favorable auspices in the showing
+of adverse things. He had not sensed Mrs.
+Bronson&#8217;s half-concealed friendliness for him,
+though it was disagreeably plain to Mrs.
+Bonner. And now he neglected the colonel&#8217;s
+evident support of him, and Professor Withers&#8217;
+praise, in Jennie&#8217;s manifest surprise that old
+Jim had been accorded the recognition of a
+place on a college program, and the professor&#8217;s
+criticism of his dress and general appearance.</p>
+<p>It was unjust! What chance had he been
+given to discover what it was fashionable to
+wear, even if he had had the money to buy
+such clothes as other young men possessed? He
+would never go near Ames! He would stay
+in the Woodruff District where the people
+knew him, and some of them liked him. He
+would finish his school year, and go back to
+work on the farm. He would abandon the
+struggle.</p>
+<p>He started home, on foot as he had come,
+A mile or so out he was overtaken by the
+colonel, driving briskly along with room in his
+buggy for Jim.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_184' name='page_184'></a>184</span></p>
+<p>&#8220;Climb in, Jim!&#8221; said he. &#8220;Dan and Dolly
+didn&#8217;t like to see you walk.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;They&#8217;re looking fine,&#8221; said Jim.</p>
+<p>There is a good deal to say whenever two
+horse lovers get together. Hoofs and coats
+and frogs and eyes and teeth and the queer
+sympathies between horse and man may sometimes
+quite take the place of the weather for
+an hour or so. But when Jim had alighted at
+his own door, the colonel spoke of what had
+been in his mind all the time.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I saw Bonner and Haakon and Ez doing
+some caucusing to-day,&#8221; said he. &#8220;They expect
+to elect Bonner to the board again.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, I suppose so,&#8221; replied Jim.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well, what shall we do about it?&#8221; asked the
+colonel.</p>
+<p>&#8220;If the people want him&mdash;&#8221; began Jim.</p>
+<p>&#8220;The people,&#8221; said the colonel, &#8220;must have
+a choice offered to &#8217;em, or how can you or any
+man tell what they want? How can they tell
+themselves?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Jim was silent. Here was a matter on
+which he really had no ideas except the broad
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_185' name='page_185'></a>185</span>
+and general one that truth is mighty and shall
+prevail&mdash;but that the speed of its forward
+march is problematical.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I think,&#8221; said the colonel, &#8220;that it&#8217;s up to
+us to see that the people have a chance to
+decide. It&#8217;s really Bonner against Jim Irwin.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;That&#8217;s rather startling,&#8221; said Jim, &#8220;but I
+suppose it&#8217;s true. And much chance Jim Irwin
+has!&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I calculate,&#8221; rejoined the colonel, &#8220;that
+what you need is a champion.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;To do what?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;To take that office away from Bonner.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Who can do that?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well, I&#8217;m free to say I don&#8217;t know that
+any one can, but I&#8217;m willing to try. I think
+that in about a week I shall pass the word
+around that I&#8217;d like to serve my country on
+the school board.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Jim&#8217;s face lighted up&mdash;and then darkened.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Even then they&#8217;d be two to one, Colonel.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Maybe,&#8221; replied the colonel, &#8220;and maybe
+not. That would have to be figured on. A
+cracked log splits easy.&#8221;
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_186' name='page_186'></a>186</span></p>
+<p>&#8220;Anyhow,&#8221; Jim went on, &#8220;what&#8217;s the use? I
+shan&#8217;t be disturbed this year&mdash;and after that&mdash;what&#8217;s
+the use?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Why, Jim,&#8221; said the colonel, &#8220;you aren&#8217;t
+getting short of breath are you? Do I see
+frost on your boots? I thought you good for
+the mile, and you aren&#8217;t turning out a quarter
+horse, are you? I don&#8217;t know what all it is
+you want to do, but I don&#8217;t, believe you can
+do it in nine months, can you?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Not in nine years!&#8221; replied Jim.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well, then, let&#8217;s plan for ten years,&#8221; said
+the colonel. &#8220;I ain&#8217;t going to become a reformer
+at my time of life as a temporary job.
+Will you stick if we can swing the thing for
+you?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I will,&#8221; said Jim, in the manner of a person
+taking the vows in some solemn initiation.</p>
+<p>&#8220;All right,&#8221; said the colonel. &#8220;We&#8217;ll keep
+quiet and see how many votes we can muster
+up at the election. How many can you speak
+for?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Jim gave himself for a few minutes to
+thought. It was a new thing to him, this matter
+of mustering votes&mdash;and a thing which he
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_187' name='page_187'></a>187</span>
+had always looked upon as rather reprehensible.
+The citizen should go forth with no
+coercion, no persuasion, no suggestion, and
+vote his sentiments.</p>
+<p>&#8220;How many can you round up?&#8221; persisted
+the colonel.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I think,&#8221; said Jim, &#8220;that I can speak for
+myself and Old Man Simms!&#8221;</p>
+<p>The colonel laughed.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Fine politician!&#8221; he repeated. &#8220;Fine politician!
+Well, Jim, we may get beaten in this,
+but if we are, let&#8217;s not have them going away
+picking their noses and saying they&#8217;ve had no
+fight. You round up yourself and Old Man
+Simms and I&#8217;ll see what I can do&mdash;I&#8217;ll see what
+I can do!&#8221;</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<a name='XV_A_MINOR_CASTS_HALF_A_VOTE' id='XV_A_MINOR_CASTS_HALF_A_VOTE'></a>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_188' name='page_188'></a>188</span>
+<h2>CHAPTER XV</h2>
+<h3>A MINOR CASTS HALF A VOTE</h3>
+</div>
+
+<p>March came in like neither a lion nor a
+lamb, but was scarcely a week old before
+the wild ducks had begun to score the sky
+above Bronson&#8217;s Slew looking for open water
+and badly-harvested corn-fields. Wild geese,
+too, honked from on high as if in wonder that
+these great prairies on which their forefathers
+had been wont fearlessly to alight had been
+changed into a disgusting expanse of farms. If
+geese are favored with the long lives in which
+fable bids us believe, some of these venerable
+honkers must have seen every vernal and autumnal
+phase of the transformation from
+boundless prairie to boundless corn-land. I
+sometimes seem to hear in the bewildering
+trumpetings of wild geese a cry of surprise
+and protest at the ruin of their former paradise.
+Colonel Woodruff&#8217;s hired man, Pete,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_189' name='page_189'></a>189</span>
+had no such foolish notions, however. He
+stopped Newton Bronson and Raymond Simms
+as they tramped across the colonel&#8217;s pasture,
+gun in hand, trying to make themselves believe
+that the shooting was good.</p>
+<p>&#8220;This ain&#8217;t no country to hunt in,&#8221; said he.
+&#8220;Did either of you fellows ever have any real
+duck-shooting?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;The mountings,&#8221; said Raymond, &#8220;air poor
+places for ducks.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Not big enough water,&#8221; suggested Pete.
+&#8220;Some wood-ducks, I suppose?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Along the creeks and rivers, yes seh,&#8221; said
+Raymond, &#8220;and sometimes a flock of wild geese
+would get lost, and some bewildered, and a
+man would shoot one or two&mdash;from the tops of
+the ridges&mdash;but nothing to depend on.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ve never been nowhere,&#8221; said Newton,
+&#8220;except once to Minnesota&mdash;and&mdash;and that
+wasn&#8217;t in the shooting season.&#8221;</p>
+<p>A year ago Newton would have boasted of
+having &#8220;bummed&#8221; his way to Faribault. His
+hesitant speech was a proof of the embarrassment
+his new respectability sometimes inflicted
+upon him.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_190' name='page_190'></a>190</span></p>
+<p>&#8220;I used to shoot ducks for the market at
+Spirit Lake,&#8221; said Pete. &#8220;I know Fred Gilbert
+just as well as I know you. If I&#8217;d &#8217;a&#8217; kep&#8217; on
+shooting I could have made my millions as
+champion wing shot as easy as he has. He
+didn&#8217;t have nothing on me when we was both
+shooting for a livin&#8217;. But that&#8217;s all over, now.
+You&#8217;ve got to go so fur now to get decent
+shooting where the farmers won&#8217;t drive you
+off, that it costs nine dollars to send a postcard
+home.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I think we&#8217;ll have fine shooting on the slew
+in a few days,&#8221; said Newton.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Humph!&#8221; scoffed Pete. &#8220;I give you my
+word, if I hadn&#8217;t promised the colonel I&#8217;d stay
+with him another year, I&#8217;d take a side-door
+Pullman for the Sand Hills of Nebraska or
+the Devil&#8217;s Lake country to-morrow&mdash;if I had
+a gun.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;If it wasn&#8217;t for a passel of things that keep
+me hyeh,&#8221; said Raymond, &#8220;I&#8217;d like to go too.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;The colonel,&#8221; said Pete, &#8220;needs me. He
+needs me in the election to-morrow. What&#8217;s
+the matter of your ol&#8217; man, Newt? What for
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_191' name='page_191'></a>191</span>
+does he vote for that Bonner, and throw down
+an old neighbor?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I can&#8217;t do anything with him!&#8221; exclaimed
+Newton irritably. &#8220;He&#8217;s all tangled up with
+Peterson and Bonner.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well,&#8221; said Pete, &#8220;if he&#8217;d just stay at home,
+it would help some. If he votes for Bonner,
+it&#8217;ll be just about a stand-off.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;He never misses a vote!&#8221; said Newton
+despairingly.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Can&#8217;t you cripple him someway?&#8221; asked
+Pete jocularly. &#8220;Darned funny when a boy o&#8217;
+your age can&#8217;t control his father&#8217;s vote! So
+long!&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I wish I <i>could</i> vote!&#8221; grumbled Newton. &#8220;I
+wish I <i>could</i>! We know a lot more about the
+school, and Jim Irwin bein&#8217; a good teacher than
+dad does&mdash;and we can&#8217;t vote. Why can&#8217;t folks
+vote when they are interested in an election,
+and know about the issues. It&#8217;s tyranny that
+you and I can&#8217;t vote.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I reckon,&#8221; said Raymond, the conservative,
+&#8220;that the old-time people that fixed it thataway
+knowed best.&#8221;
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_192' name='page_192'></a>192</span></p>
+<p>&#8220;Rats!&#8221; sneered Newton, the iconoclast.
+&#8220;Why, Calista knows more about the election of
+school director than dad knows.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;That don&#8217;t seem reasonable,&#8221; protested
+Raymond. &#8220;She&#8217;s prejudyced, I reckon, in
+favor of Mr. Jim Irwin.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well, dad&#8217;s prejudiced against him,&mdash;er,
+no, he hain&#8217;t either. He likes Jim. He&#8217;s just
+prejudiced against giving up his old notions.
+No, he hain&#8217;t neither&mdash;I guess he&#8217;s only prejudiced
+against seeming to give up some old notions
+he seemed to have once! And the kids
+in school would be prejudiced right, anyhow!&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Paw says he&#8217;ll be on hand prompt,&#8221; said
+Raymond. &#8220;But he had to be p&#8217;swaded right
+much. Paw&#8217;s proud&mdash;and he cain&#8217;t read.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Sometimes I think the more people read the
+less sense they&#8217;ve got,&#8221; said Newton. &#8220;I wish
+I could tie dad up! I wish I could get snakebit,
+and make him go for the doctor!&#8221;</p>
+<p>The boys crossed the ridge to the wooded
+valley in which nestled the Simms cabin. They
+found Mrs. Simms greatly exercised in her
+mind because young McGeehee had been found
+playing with some blue vitriol used by Raymond
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_193' name='page_193'></a>193</span>
+in his school work on the treatment of
+seed potatoes for scab.</p>
+<p>&#8220;His hands was all blue with it,&#8221; said she.
+&#8220;Do you reckon, Mr. Newton, that it&#8217;ll pizen
+him?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Did he swallow any of it?&#8221; asked Newton.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Nah!&#8221; said McGeehee scornfully.</p>
+<p>Newton reassured Mrs. Simms, and went
+away pensive. He was in rebellion against the
+strange ways grown men have of discharging
+their duties as citizens&mdash;a rather remarkable
+thing, and perhaps a proof that Jim Irwin&#8217;s
+methods had already accomplished much in
+preparing Newton and Raymond for citizenship.
+He had shown them the fact that voting
+really has some relation to life. At present,
+however, the new wine in the old bottles was
+causing Newton to forget his filial duty, and
+his respect for his father. He wished he could
+lock him up in the barn so he couldn&#8217;t go to
+the school election. He wished he could become
+ill&mdash;or poisoned with blue vitriol or something&mdash;so
+his father would be obliged to go for a
+doctor. He wished&mdash;&mdash;well, why couldn&#8217;t he
+get sick. Mrs. Simms had been about to send
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_194' name='page_194'></a>194</span>
+for the doctor for Buddy when he had explained
+away the apparent necessity. People
+got dreadfully scared about poison&mdash;&mdash; Newton
+mended his pace, and looked happier. He
+looked very much as he had done on the day
+he adjusted the needle-pointed muzzle to his
+dog&#8217;s nose. He looked, in fact, more like a
+person filled with deviltry, than one yearning
+for the right to vote.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ll fix him!&#8221; said he to himself.</p>
+<p>&#8220;What time&#8217;s the election, Ez?&#8221; asked Mrs.
+Bronson at breakfast.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m goin&#8217; at four o&#8217;clock,&#8221; said Ezra. &#8220;And
+I don&#8217;t want to hear any more from any one&#8221;&mdash;looking
+at Newton&mdash;&#8220;about the election. It&#8217;s
+none of the business of the women an&#8217; boys.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Newton took this reproof in an unexpectedly
+submissive spirit. In fact, he exhibited his
+very best side to the family that morning, like
+one going on a long journey, or about to be
+married off, or engaged in some deep dark
+plot.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I s&#8217;pose you&#8217;re off trampin&#8217; the slews at
+the sight of a flock of ducks four miles off as
+usual?&#8221; stated Mr. Bronson challengingly.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_195' name='page_195'></a>195</span></p>
+<p>&#8220;I thought,&#8221; said Newton, &#8220;that I&#8217;d get a
+lot of raisin bait ready for the pocket-gophers
+in the lower meadow. They&#8217;ll be throwing up
+their mounds by the first of April.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Not them,&#8221; said Mr. Bronson, somewhat
+mollified, &#8220;not before May. Where&#8217;d you get
+the raisin idee?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;We learned it in school,&#8221; answered Newton.
+&#8220;Jim had me study a bulletin on the control
+and eradication of pocket-gophers. You use
+raisins with strychnine in &#8217;em&mdash;and it tells
+how.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Some fool notion, I s&#8217;pose,&#8221; said Mr.
+Bronson, rising. &#8220;But go ahead if you&#8217;re careful
+about handlin&#8217; the strychnine.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Newton spent the time from twelve-thirty
+to half after two in watching the clock; and
+twenty minutes to three found him seated in
+the woodshed with a pen-knife in his hand, a
+small vial of strychnine crystals on a stand
+before him, a saucer of raisins at his right
+hand, and one exactly like it, partially filled
+with gopher bait&mdash;by which is meant raisins
+under the skin of each of which a minute
+crystal of strychnine had been inserted on the
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_196' name='page_196'></a>196</span>
+point of the knife. Newton was apparently
+happy and was whistling <i>The Glow-Worm</i>. It
+was a lovely scene if one can forget the gopher&#8217;s
+point of view.</p>
+<p>At three-thirty, Newton went into the house
+and lay down on the horsehair sofa, saying to
+his mother that he felt kind o&#8217; funny and
+thought he&#8217;d lie down a while. At three-forty
+he heard his father&#8217;s voice in the kitchen and
+knew that his sire was preparing to start for
+the scene of battle between Colonel Woodruff
+and Con Bonner, on the result of which hinged
+the future of Jim Irwin and the Woodruff
+school.</p>
+<p>A groan issued from Newton&#8217;s lips&mdash;a
+gruesome groan as of the painful death of a
+person very sensitive to physical suffering.
+But his father&#8217;s voice from the kitchen door
+betrayed no agitation. He was scolding the
+horses as they stood tied to the hitching-post,
+in tones that showed no knowledge of his
+son&#8217;s distressed moans.</p>
+<p>&#8220;What&#8217;s the matter?&#8221;</p>
+<p>It was Newton&#8217;s little sister who asked the
+question, her facial expression evincing appreciation
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_197' name='page_197'></a>197</span>
+of Newton&#8217;s efforts in the line of
+groans, somewhat touched with awe. Even
+though regarded as a pure matter of make-believe,
+such sounds were terrible.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, sister, sister!&#8221; howled Newton, &#8220;run
+and tell &#8217;em that brother&#8217;s dying!&#8221;</p>
+<p>Fanny disappeared in a manner which
+expressed her balanced feelings&mdash;she felt that
+her brother was making believe, but she believed
+for all that, that something awful was
+the matter. So she went rather slowly to the
+kitchen door, and casually remarked that
+Newton was dying on the sofa in the sitting-room.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You little fraud!&#8221; said her father.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Why, Fanny!&#8221; said her mother&mdash;and ran
+into the sitting-room&mdash;whence in a moment,
+with a cry that was almost a scream, she summoned
+her husband, who responded at the top
+of his speed.</p>
+<p>Newton was groaning and in convulsions.
+Horrible grimaces contorted his face, his jaws
+were set, his arms and legs drawn up, and
+his muscles tense.</p>
+<p>&#8220;What&#8217;s the matter?&#8221; His father&#8217;s voice was
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_198' name='page_198'></a>198</span>
+stern as well as full of anxiety. &#8220;What&#8217;s the
+matter, boy?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh!&#8221; cried Newton. &#8220;Oh! Oh! Oh!&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Newtie, Newtie!&#8221; cried his mother, &#8220;where
+are you in pain? Tell mother, Newtie!&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh,&#8221; groaned Newtie, relaxing, &#8220;I feel
+awful!&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;What you been eating?&#8221; interrogated his
+father.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Nothing,&#8221; replied Newton.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I saw you eatin&#8217; dinner,&#8221; said his father.</p>
+<p>Again Newton was convulsed by strong
+spasms, and again his groans filled the hearts
+of his parents with terror.</p>
+<p>&#8220;That&#8217;s all I&#8217;ve eaten,&#8221; said he, when his
+spasms had passed, &#8220;except a few raisins. I
+was putting strychnine in &#8217;em&mdash;&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, heavens!&#8221; cried his mother. &#8220;He&#8217;s
+poisoned! Drive for the doctor, Ezra! Drive!&#8221;</p>
+<p>Mr. Bronson forgot all about the election&mdash;forgot
+everything save antidotes and speed. He
+leaped toward the door. As he passed out, he
+shouted &#8220;Give him an emetic!&#8221; He tore the
+hitching straps from the posts, jumped into the
+buggy and headed for the road. Skilfully avoiding
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_199' name='page_199'></a>199</span>
+an overturn as he rounded into the highway,
+he gave the spirited horses their heads,
+and fled toward town, carefully computing the
+speed the horses could make and still be able
+to return. Mile after mile he covered, passing
+teams, keeping ahead of automobiles and advertising
+panic. Just at the town limits, he
+met the doctor in Sheriff Dilly&#8217;s automobile,
+the sheriff himself at the steering wheel. Mr.
+Bronson signaled them to stop, ignoring the
+fact that they were making similar signs to
+him.</p>
+<p>&#8220;We&#8217;re just starting for your place,&#8221; said
+the doctor. &#8220;Your wife got me on the phone.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Thank God!&#8221; replied Bronson. &#8220;Don&#8217;t fool
+any time away on me. Drive!&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Get in here, Ez,&#8221; said the sheriff. &#8220;Doc
+knows how to drive, and I&#8217;ll come on with your
+team. They need a slow drive to cool &#8217;em off.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Why didn&#8217;t you phone me?&#8221; asked the
+doctor.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Never thought of it,&#8221; replied Bronson. &#8220;I
+hain&#8217;t had the phone only a few years. Drive
+faster!&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I want to get there, or I would,&#8221; answered
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_200' name='page_200'></a>200</span>
+the doctor. &#8220;Don&#8217;t worry. From what your
+wife told me over the phone I don&#8217;t believe
+the boy&#8217;s eaten any more strychnine than I
+have&mdash;and probably not so much.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;He was alive, then?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Alive and making an argument against
+taking the emetic,&#8221; replied the doctor. &#8220;But
+I guess she got it down him.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;d hate to lose that boy, Doc!&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t believe there&#8217;s any danger. It
+doesn&#8217;t sound like a genuine poisoning case
+to me.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Thus reassured, Mr. Bronson was calm, even
+if somewhat tragic in calmness, when he
+entered the death chamber with the doctor.
+Newton was sitting up, his eyes wet, and his
+face pale. His mother had won the argument,
+and Newton had lost his dinner. Haakon
+Peterson occupied an armchair.</p>
+<p>&#8220;What&#8217;s all this?&#8221; asked the doctor. &#8220;How
+you feeling, Newt? Any pain?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m all right,&#8221; said Newton. &#8220;Don&#8217;t give
+me any more o&#8217; that nasty stuff!&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;No,&#8221; said the doctor, &#8220;but if you don&#8217;t tell
+me just what you&#8217;ve been eating, and doing,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_201' name='page_201'></a>201</span>
+and pulling off on us, I&#8217;ll use this&#8221;&mdash;and the
+doctor exhibited a huge stomach pump.</p>
+<p>&#8220;What&#8217;ll you do with that?&#8221; asked Newton
+faintly.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ll put this down into your hold, and unload
+you, that&#8217;s what I&#8217;ll do.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Is the election over, Mr. Peterson?&#8221; asked
+Newton.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes,&#8221; answered Mr. Peterson, &#8220;and the
+votes counted.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Who&#8217;s elected?&#8221; asked Newton.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Colonel Woodruff,&#8221; answered Mr. Peterson.
+&#8220;The vote was twelve to eleven.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well, dad,&#8221; said Newton, &#8220;I s&#8217;pose you&#8217;ll
+be sore, but the only way I could see to get in
+half a vote for Colonel Woodruff was to get
+poisoned and send you after the doctor. If
+you&#8217;d gone, it would &#8217;a&#8217; been a tie, anyhow, and
+probably you&#8217;d &#8217;a&#8217; persuaded somebody to
+change to Bonner. That&#8217;s what&#8217;s the matter
+with me. I killed your vote. Now, you can
+do whatever you like to me&mdash;but I&#8217;m sorry I
+scared mother.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Ezra Bronson seized Newton by the
+throat, but his fingers failed to close. &#8220;Don&#8217;t
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_202' name='page_202'></a>202</span>
+pinch, dad,&#8221; said Newton. &#8220;I&#8217;ve been using
+that neck an&#8217; it&#8217;s tired.&#8221; Mr. Bronson dropped
+his hands to his sides, glared at his son for a
+moment and breathed a sigh of relief.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Why, you darned infernal little fool,&#8221; said
+he. &#8220;I&#8217;ve a notion to take a hamestrap to
+you! If I&#8217;d been there the vote would have
+been eleven to thirteen!&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;There was plenty wotes there for the colonel,
+if he needed &#8217;em,&#8221; said Haakon, whose politician&#8217;s
+mind was already fully adjusted to the
+changed conditions. &#8220;Ay tank the Woodruff
+District will have a junanimous school board
+from dis time on once more. Colonel Woodruff
+is yust the man we have needed.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m with you there,&#8221; said Bronson. &#8220;And
+as for you, young man, if one or both of them
+horses is hurt by the run I give them, I&#8217;ll lick
+you within an inch of your life&mdash;&mdash; Here
+comes Dilly driving &#8217;em in now&mdash;&mdash; I guess
+they&#8217;re all right. I wouldn&#8217;t want to drive a
+good team to death for any young hoodlum like
+him&mdash;&mdash; All right, how much do I owe you.
+Doc?&#8221;</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<a name='XVI_THE_GLORIOUS_FOURTH' id='XVI_THE_GLORIOUS_FOURTH'></a>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_203' name='page_203'></a>203</span>
+<h2>CHAPTER XVI</h2>
+<h3>THE GLORIOUS FOURTH</h3>
+</div>
+
+<p>A good deal of water ran under the
+Woodruff District bridges in the weeks
+between the school election and the Fourth
+of July picnic at Eight-Mile Grove. They were
+very important weeks to Jim Irwin, though
+outwardly uneventful. Great events are often
+mere imperceptible developments of the
+spirit.</p>
+<p>Spring, for instance, brought a sort of
+spiritual crisis to Jim; for he had to face the
+accusing glance of the fields as they were
+plowed and sown while he lived indoors. As
+he labored at the tasks of the Woodruff school
+he was conscious of a feeling not very easily
+distinguished from a sense of guilt. It seemed
+that there must be something almost wicked
+in his failure to be afield with his team in the
+early spring mornings when the woolly anemones
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_204' name='page_204'></a>204</span>
+appeared in their fur coats, the heralds
+of the later comers&mdash;violets, sweet-williams,
+puccoons, and the scarlet prairie lilies.</p>
+<p>A moral crisis accompanies the passing of
+a man from the struggle with the soil to any
+occupation, the productiveness of which is not
+quite so clear. It requires a keenly sensitive
+nature to feel conscious of it, but Jim Irwin
+possessed such a temperament; and from the
+beginning of the daily race with the seasons,
+which makes the life of a northern farmer an
+eight months&#8217; Marathon in which to fall behind
+for a week is to lose much of the year&#8217;s
+reward, the gawky schoolmaster slept uneasily,
+and heard the earliest cock-crow as a soldier
+hears a call to arms to which he has made up
+his mind he will not respond.</p>
+<p>I think there is a real moral principle
+involved. I believe that this deep instinct for
+labor in and about the soil is a valid one, and
+that the gathering together of people in cities
+has been at the cost of an obscure but actual
+moral shock.</p>
+<p>I doubt if the people of the cities can ever
+be at rest in a future full of moral searchings
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_205' name='page_205'></a>205</span>
+of conscience until every man has traced
+definitely the connection of the work he is
+doing with the maintenance of his country&#8217;s
+population. Sometimes those vocations whose
+connection can not be so traced will be recognized
+as wicked ones, and people engaged in
+them will feel as did Jim&mdash;until he worked out
+the facts in the relation of school-teaching to
+the feeding, clothing and sheltering of the
+world. Most school-teaching he believed&mdash;correctly
+or incorrectly&mdash;has very little to do with
+the primary task of the human race; but as far
+as his teaching was concerned, even he believed
+in it. If by teaching school he could
+not make a greater contribution to the productiveness
+of the Woodruff District than by
+working in the fields, he would go back to the
+fields. Whether he could make his teaching
+thus productive or not was the very fact in
+issue between him and the local body politic.</p>
+<p>These are some of the waters that ran under
+the bridges before the Fourth of July picnic at
+Eight-Mile Grove. Few surface indications
+there were of any change in the little community
+in this annual gathering of friends and
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_206' name='page_206'></a>206</span>
+neighbors. Wilbur Smythe made the annual
+address, and was in rather finer fettle than
+usual as he paid his fervid tribute to the starry
+flag, and to this very place as the most favored
+spot in the best country of the greatest state
+in the most powerful, intellectual, freest and
+most progressive nation in the best possible
+of worlds. Wilbur was going strong. Jim Irwin
+read the Declaration rather well, Jennie Woodruff
+thought, as she sat on the platform between
+Deacon Avery, the oldest settler in the
+district, and Mrs. Columbus Brown, the sole
+local representative of the Daughters of the
+American Revolution. Colonel Woodruff presided
+in his Grand Army of the Republic
+uniform.</p>
+<p>The fresh northwest breeze made free with
+the oaks, elms, hickories and box-elders of
+Eight-Mile Grove, and the waters of Pickerel
+Creek glimmered a hundred yards away, beyond
+the flitting figures of the boys who preferred
+to shoot off their own fire-crackers and torpedoes
+and nigger-chasers, rather than to
+listen to those of Wilbur Smythe. Still farther
+off could be heard the voice of a lone lemonade
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_207' name='page_207'></a>207</span>
+vender as he advertised ice-cold lemonade,
+made in the shade, with a brand-new spade,
+by an old maid, as a guaranty that it was the
+blamedest, coldest lemonade ever sold. And
+under the shadiest trees a few incorrigible
+Marthas were spreading the snowy tablecloths
+on which would soon be placed the bountiful
+repasts stored in ponderous wicker baskets
+and hampers. It was a lovely day, in a
+lovely spot&mdash;a good example of the miniature
+forests which grew naturally from time immemorial
+in favored locations on the Iowa
+prairies&mdash;half a square mile of woodland, all
+about which the green corn-rows stood aslant
+in the cool breeze, &#8220;waist-high and laid by.&#8221;</p>
+<p>They were passing down the rough board
+steps from the platform after the exercises had
+terminated in a rousing rendition of <i>America</i>,
+when Jennie Woodruff, having slipped by
+everybody else to reach him, tapped Jim Irwin
+on the arm. He looked back at her over his
+shoulder with his slow gentle smile.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Isn&#8217;t your mother here, Jim?&#8221; she asked.
+&#8220;I&#8217;ve been looking all over the crowd and can&#8217;t
+see her.&#8221;
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_208' name='page_208'></a>208</span></p>
+<p>&#8220;She isn&#8217;t here,&#8221; answered Jim. &#8220;I was in
+hopes that when she broke loose and went to
+your Christmas dinner she would stay loose&mdash;but
+she went home and settled back into her
+rut.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Too bad,&#8221; said Jennie. &#8220;She&#8217;d have had a
+nice time if she had come.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes,&#8221; said Jim, &#8220;I believe she would.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I want help,&#8221; said Jennie. &#8220;Our hamper
+is terribly heavy. Please!&#8221;</p>
+<p>It was rather obvious to Mrs. Bonner that
+Jennie was throwing herself at Jim&#8217;s head; but
+that was an article of the Bonner family creed
+since the decision which closed the hearing at
+the court-house. It must be admitted that the
+young county superintendent found tasks which
+kept the schoolmaster very close to her side. He
+carried the hamper, helped Jennie to spread the
+cloth on the grass, went with her to the well
+for water and cracked ice wherewith to cool it.
+In fact, he quite cut Wilbur Smythe out when
+that gentleman made ponderous efforts to obtain
+a share of the favor implied in these permissions.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Sit down, Jim,&#8221; said Mrs. Woodruff, &#8220;you&#8217;ve
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_209' name='page_209'></a>209</span>
+earned a bite of what we&#8217;ve got. It&#8217;s good
+enough, what there is of it, and there&#8217;s enough
+of it, such as it is!&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m sorry,&#8221; said Jim, &#8220;but I&#8217;ve a prior engagement.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Why, Jim!&#8221; protested Jennie. &#8220;I&#8217;ve been
+counting on you. Don&#8217;t desert me!&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m awfully sorry,&#8221; said Jim, &#8220;but I promised.
+I&#8217;ll see you later.&#8221;</p>
+<p>One might have thought, judging by the
+colonel&#8217;s quizzical smile, that he was pleased at
+Jennie&#8217;s loss of her former swain.</p>
+<p>&#8220;We&#8217;ll have to invite Jim longer ahead of
+time,&#8221; said he. &#8220;He&#8217;s getting to be in demand.&#8221;</p>
+<p>He seemed to be in demand&mdash;a fact that Jennie
+confirmed by observation as she chatted
+with Deacon Avery, Mrs. Columbus Brown and
+her husband, and the Orator of the Day, at the
+table set apart for the guests and notables. Jim
+received a dozen invitations as he passed the
+groups seated on the grass&mdash;one of them from
+Mrs. Cornelius Bonner, who saw no particular
+point in advertising disgruntlement. The children
+ran to him and clung to his hands; young
+girls gave him sisterly smiles and such trifles
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_210' name='page_210'></a>210</span>
+as chicken drumsticks, pieces of cake and like
+tidbits. His passage to the numerous groups
+at a square table under a big burr-oak was
+quite an ovation&mdash;an ovation of the significance
+of which he was himself quite unaware.
+The people were just friendly, that was all&mdash;to
+his mind.</p>
+<p>But Jennie&mdash;the daughter of a politician and
+a promising one herself&mdash;Jennie sensed the
+fact that Jim Irwin had won something from
+the people of the Woodruff District in the way
+of deference. Still he was the gangling, Lincolnian,
+ill-dressed, poverty-stricken Jim Irwin
+of old, but Jennie had no longer the feeling
+that one&#8217;s standing was somewhat compromised
+by association with him. He had begun
+to put on something more significant than
+clothes, something which he had possessed all
+the time, but which became valid only as it was
+publicly apprehended. There was a slight air
+of command in his down-sitting and up-rising
+at the picnic. He was clearly the central figure
+of his group, in which she recognized the
+Bronsons, those queer children from Tennessee,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_211' name='page_211'></a>211</span>
+the Simmses, the Talcotts, the Hansens,
+the Hamms and Colonel Woodruff&#8217;s hired man,
+Pete, whose other name is not recorded.</p>
+<p>Jim sat down between Bettina Hansen, a
+flaxen-haired young Brunhilde of seventeen,
+and Calista Simms&mdash;Jennie saw him do it,
+while listening to Wilbur Smythe&#8217;s account of
+the exacting nature of the big law practise he
+was building up,&mdash;and would have been glad to
+exchange places with Calista or Bettina.</p>
+<p>The repast drew to a close; and over by the
+burr-oak the crowd had grown to a circle surrounding
+Jim Irwin.</p>
+<p>&#8220;He seems to be making an address,&#8221; said
+Wilbur Smythe.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well, Wilbur,&#8221; replied the colonel, &#8220;you had
+the first shot at us. Suppose we move over
+and see what&#8217;s under discussion.&#8221;</p>
+<p>As they approached the group, they heard
+Jim Irwin answering something which Ezra
+Bronson had said.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You think so, Ezra,&#8221; said he, &#8220;and it seems
+reasonable that big creameries like those at
+Omaha, Sioux City, Des Moines and the other
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_212' name='page_212'></a>212</span>
+centralizer points can make butter cheaper
+than we would do here&mdash;but we&#8217;ve the figures
+that show that they aren&#8217;t economical.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;They can&#8217;t make good butter, for one
+thing,&#8221; said Newton Bronson cockily.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Why can&#8217;t they?&#8221; asked Olaf Hansen, the
+father of Bettina.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well,&#8221; said Newton, &#8220;they have to have so
+much cream that they&#8217;ve got to ship it so far
+that it gets rotten on the way, and they have
+to renovate it with lime and other ingredients
+before they can churn it.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well,&#8221; said Raymond Simms, &#8220;I reckon they
+sell their butter fo&#8217; all it&#8217;s wuth; an&#8217; they cain&#8217;t
+get within from foah to seven cents a pound
+as much fo&#8217; it as the farmers&#8217; creameries in
+Wisconsin and Minnesota get fo&#8217; theirs.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;That&#8217;s a fact, Olaf,&#8221; said Jim.</p>
+<p>&#8220;How do you kids know so darned much
+about it?&#8221; queried Pete.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Huh!&#8221; sniffed Bettina. &#8220;We&#8217;ve been reading
+about it, and writing letters about it, and
+figuring percentages on it in school all winter.
+We&#8217;ve done arithmetic and geography and
+grammar and I don&#8217;t know what else on it.&#8221;
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_213' name='page_213'></a>213</span></p>
+<p>&#8220;Well, I&#8217;m agin&#8217; any schoolin&#8217;,&#8221; said Pete,
+&#8220;that makes kids smarter in farmin&#8217; than their
+parents and their parents&#8217; hired men. Gi&#8217; me
+another swig o&#8217; that lemonade, Jim!&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You see,&#8221; said Jim to his audience, meanwhile
+pouring the lemonade, &#8220;the centralizer
+creamery is uneconomic in several ways. It
+has to pay excessive transportation charges.
+It has to pay excessive commissions to its cream
+buyers. It has to accept cream without proper
+inspection, and mixes the good with the bad.
+It makes such long shipments that the cream
+spoils in transit and lowers the quality of the
+butter. It can&#8217;t make the best use of the buttermilk.
+All these losses and leaks the farmers
+have to stand. I can prove&mdash;and so can
+the six or eight pupils in the Woodruff school
+who have been working on the cream question
+this winter&mdash;that we could make at least six
+cents a pound on our butter if we had a cooperative
+creamery and all sent our cream
+to it.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well,&#8221; said Ezra Bronson, &#8220;let&#8217;s start
+one.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ll go in,&#8221; said Olaf Hansen.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_214' name='page_214'></a>214</span></p>
+<p>&#8220;Me, too,&#8221; said Con Bonner.</p>
+<p>There was a general chorus of assent. Jim
+had convinced his audience.</p>
+<p>&#8220;He&#8217;s got the jury,&#8221; said Wilbur Smythe to
+Colonel Woodruff.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes,&#8221; said the colonel, &#8220;and right here is
+where he runs into danger. Can he handle the
+crowd when it&#8217;s with him?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well,&#8221; said Jim, &#8220;I think we ought to organize
+one, but I&#8217;ve another proposition first.
+Let&#8217;s get together and pool our cream. By
+that, I mean that we&#8217;ll all sell to the same
+creamery, and get the best we can out of the
+centralizers by the cooperative method. We
+can save two cents a pound in that way, and
+we&#8217;ll learn to cooperate. When we have found
+just how well we can hang together, we&#8217;ll be
+able to take up the cooperative creamery, with
+less danger of falling apart and failing.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Who&#8217;ll handle the pool?&#8221; inquired Mr.
+Hansen.</p>
+<p>&#8220;We&#8217;ll handle it in the school,&#8221; answered
+Jim.</p>
+<p>&#8220;School&#8217;s about done,&#8221; objected Mr. Bronson.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Won&#8217;t the cream pool pretty near pay the
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_215' name='page_215'></a>215</span>
+expenses of running the school all summer?&#8221;
+asked Bonner.</p>
+<p>&#8220;We ought to run the school plant all the
+time,&#8221; said Jim. &#8220;It&#8217;s the only way to get full
+value out of the investment. And we&#8217;ve corn-club
+work, pig-club work, poultry work and
+canning-club work which make it very desirable
+to keep in session with only a week&#8217;s vacation.
+If you&#8217;ll add the cream pool, it will make
+the school the hardest working crowd in the district
+and doing actual farm work, too. I like
+Mr. Bonner&#8217;s suggestion.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well,&#8221; said Haakon Peterson, who had
+joined the group, &#8220;Ay tank we better have a
+meeting of the board and discuss it.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well, darn it,&#8221; said Columbus Brown, &#8220;I
+want in on this cream pool&mdash;and I live outside
+the district!&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;We&#8217;ll let you in, Clumb,&#8221; said the colonel.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Sure!&#8221; said Pete. &#8220;We hain&#8217;t no more
+sense than to let any one in, Clumb. Come in,
+the water&#8217;s fine. We ain&#8217;t proud!&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well,&#8221; said Clumb, &#8220;if this feller is goin&#8217;
+to do school work of this kind, I want in the
+district, too.&#8221;
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_216' name='page_216'></a>216</span></p>
+<p>&#8220;We&#8217;ll come to that one of these days,&#8221; said
+Jim. &#8220;The district is too small.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Wilbur Smythe&#8217;s car stopped at the distant
+gate and honked for him&mdash;a signal which broke
+up the party. Haakon Peterson passed the
+word to the colonel and Mr. Bronson for a
+board meeting the next evening. The picnic
+broke up in a dispersion of staid married couples
+to their homes, and young folks in top
+buggies to dances and displays of fireworks in
+the surrounding villages. Jim walked across
+the fields to his home&mdash;neither old nor young,
+having neither sweetheart with whom to dance
+nor farm to demand labor in its inexorable
+chores. He turned after crawling through a
+wire fence and looked longingly at Jennie as
+she was suavely assisted into the car by the
+frock-coated lawyer.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You saw what he did?&#8221; said the colonel interrogatively,
+as he and his daughter sat on
+the Woodruff veranda that evening. &#8220;Who
+taught him the supreme wisdom of holding
+back his troops when they grew too wild for
+attack?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;He may lose them,&#8221; said Jennie.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_217' name='page_217'></a>217</span></p>
+<p>&#8220;Not so,&#8221; said the colonel. &#8220;Individuals of
+the Brown Mouse type always succeed when
+they find their environment. And I believe
+Jim has found his.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well,&#8221; said Jennie, &#8220;I wish his environment
+would find him some clothes. It&#8217;s a
+shame the way he has to go looking. He&#8217;d be
+nice-appearing if he was dressed anyway.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Would he?&#8221; queried the colonel. &#8220;I wonder,
+now! Well, Jennie, as his oldest friend having
+any knowledge of clothes, I think it&#8217;s up
+to you to act as a committee of one on Jim&#8217;s
+apparel.&#8221;</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<a name='XVII_A_TROUBLE_SHOOTER' id='XVII_A_TROUBLE_SHOOTER'></a>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_218' name='page_218'></a>218</span>
+<h2>CHAPTER XVII</h2>
+<h3>A TROUBLE SHOOTER</h3>
+</div>
+
+<p>A sudden July storm had drenched the
+fields and filled the swales with water.
+The cultivators left the corn-fields until the
+next day&#8217;s sun and a night of seepage might
+once more fit the black soil for tillage. The
+little boys rolled up their trousers and tramped
+home from school with the rich mud squeezing
+up between their toes, thrilling with the electricity
+of clean-washed nature, and the little
+girls rather wished they could go barefooted,
+too, as, indeed, some of the more sensible did.</p>
+<p>A lithe young man with climbers on his legs
+walked up a telephone pole by the roadside to
+make some repairs to the wires, which had been
+whipped into a &#8220;cross&#8221; by the wind of the storm
+and the lashing of the limbs of the roadside
+trees. He had tied his horse to a post up the
+road, and was running out the trouble on the
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_219' name='page_219'></a>219</span>
+line, which was plentifully in evidence just
+then. Wind and lightning had played hob with
+the system, and the line repairer was cheerfully
+profane, in the manner of his sort, glad
+by reason of the fire of summer in his veins,
+and incensed at the forces of nature which had
+brought him out through the mud to the Woodruff
+District to do these piffling jobs that any
+of the subscribers ought to have known how
+to do themselves, and none of which took more
+than a few minutes of his time when he reached
+the seat of the difficulty.</p>
+<p>Jim Irwin, his school out for the day, came
+along the muddy road with two of his pupils,
+a bare-legged little boy and a tall girl with
+flaxen hair&mdash;Bettina Hansen and her small
+brother Hans, who refused to answer to any
+name other than Hans Nilsen. His father&#8217;s
+name was Nils Hansen, and Hans, a born conservative,
+being the son of Nils, regarded himself
+as rightfully a Nilsen, and disliked the
+&#8220;Hans Hansen&#8221; on the school register. Thus
+do European customs sometimes survive among
+us.</p>
+<p>Hans strode through the pool of water which
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_220' name='page_220'></a>220</span>
+the shower had spread completely over the low
+turnpike a few rods from the pole on which
+the trouble shooter was at work, and the electrician
+ceased his labors and rested himself on
+a cross-arm while he waited to see what the
+flaxen-haired girl would do when she came to it.</p>
+<p>Jim and Bettina stopped at the water&#8217;s edge.
+&#8220;Oh!&#8221; cried she, &#8220;I can&#8217;t get through!&#8221; The
+trouble shooter felt the impulse to offer his
+aid, but thought it best on the whole, to leave
+the matter in the hands of the lank schoolmaster.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ll carry you across,&#8221; said Jim.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m too heavy,&#8221; answered Bettina.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Nonsense!&#8221; said Jim.</p>
+<p>&#8220;She&#8217;s awful heavy,&#8221; piped Hans. &#8220;Better
+take off your shoes, anyhow!&#8221;</p>
+<p>Jim thought of the welfare of his only good
+trousers, and saw that Hans&#8217; suggestion was
+good; but a mental picture of himself with
+shoes in hand and bare legs restrained him.
+He took Bettina in his arms and went slowly
+across, walking rather farther with his blushing
+burden than was strictly necessary. Bettina
+was undoubtedly heavy; but she was also
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_221' name='page_221'></a>221</span>
+wonderfully pleasant to feel in arms which had
+never borne such a burden before; and her
+arms about his neck as he slopped through the
+pond were curiously thrilling. Her cheek
+brushed his as he set her upon her feet and
+felt, rather than thought, that if there had only
+been a good reason for it, Bettina would have
+willingly been carried much farther.</p>
+<p>&#8220;How strong you are!&#8221; she panted. &#8220;I&#8217;m
+awful heavy, ain&#8217;t I?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Not very,&#8221; said Jim, with scholastic accuracy.
+&#8220;You&#8217;re just right. I&mdash;I mean,
+you&#8217;re simply well-nourished and wholesomely
+plump!&#8221;</p>
+<p>Bettina blushed still more rosily.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You&#8217;ve ruined your clothes,&#8221; said she.
+&#8220;Now you&#8217;ll have to come home with me and
+let me&mdash;see who&#8217;s there!&#8221;</p>
+<p>Jim looked up at the trouble shooter, and
+went over to the foot of the pole. The man
+walked down, striking his spurs deep into the
+wood for safety.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Hello!&#8221; said he. &#8220;School out?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;For the day,&#8221; said Jim. &#8220;Any important
+work on the telephone line now?&#8221;
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_222' name='page_222'></a>222</span></p>
+<p>&#8220;Just trouble-shooting,&#8221; was the answer. &#8220;I
+have to spend three hours hunting these troubles,
+to one in fixing &#8217;em up.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Do they take much technical skill?&#8221; asked
+Jim.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Mostly shakin&#8217; out crosses, and puttin&#8217; in
+new carbons in the arresters,&#8221; replied the
+trouble man. &#8220;Any one ought to do any of &#8217;em
+with five minutes&#8217; instruction. But these
+farmers&mdash;they&#8217;d rather have me drive ten
+miles to take a hair-pin from across the binding-posts
+than to do it themselves. That&#8217;s the
+way they are!&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Will you be out here to-morrow?&#8221; queried
+the teacher.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Sure!&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;d like to have you show my class in manual
+training something about the telephone,&#8221;
+said Jim. &#8220;The reason we can&#8217;t fix our own
+troubles, if they are as simple as you say, is
+because we don&#8217;t know how simple they are.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ll tell you what I&#8217;ll do, Professor,&#8221; said
+the trouble man. &#8220;I&#8217;ll bring a phone with me
+and give &#8217;em a lecture. I don&#8217;t see how I can
+employ the company&#8217;s time any better than in
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_223' name='page_223'></a>223</span>
+beating a little telephone sense into the heads
+of the community. Set the time, and I&#8217;ll be
+there with bells.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Bettina and her teacher walked on up the
+shady lane, feeling that they had a secret.
+They were very nearly on a parity as to the
+innocence of soul with which they held this
+secret, except that Bettina was much more
+single-minded toward it than Jim. To her he
+had been gradually attaining the status of a
+hero whose clasp of her in that iron-armed way
+was mysteriously blissful&mdash;and beyond that
+her mind had not gone. To Jim, Bettina represented
+in a very sweet way the disturbing influences
+which had recently risen to the threshold
+of consciousness in his being, and which
+were concretely but not very hopefully embodied
+in Jennie Woodruff.</p>
+<p>Thus interested in each other, they turned
+the corner which took them out of sight of the
+lineman, and stopped at the shady avenue leading
+up to Nils Hansen&#8217;s farmstead. Little
+Hans Nilsen had disappeared by the simple
+method of cutting across lots. Bettina&#8217;s girlish
+instinct called for something more than the
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_224' name='page_224'></a>224</span>
+casual good-by which would have sufficed yesterday.
+She lingered, standing close by Jim
+Irwin.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Won&#8217;t you come in and let me clean the
+mud off you,&#8221; she asked, &#8220;and give you some
+dry socks?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, no!&#8221; replied Jim. &#8220;It&#8217;s almost as far
+to your house as it is home. Thank you, no.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;There&#8217;s a splash of mud on your face,&#8221; said
+Bettina. &#8220;Let me&mdash;&#8221; And with her little
+handkerchief she began wiping off the mud.
+Jim stooped to permit the attention, but not
+much, for Bettina was of the mold of women
+of whom warriors are born&mdash;their faces approached,
+and Jim recognized a crisis in the
+fact that Bettina&#8217;s mouth was presented for a
+kiss. Jim met the occasion like the gentleman
+he was. He did not leave her stung by rejection;
+neither did he obey the impulse to respond
+to the invitation according to his man&#8217;s instinct;
+he took the rosy face between his palms
+and kissed her forehead&mdash;and left her in possession
+of her self-respect. After that Bettina
+Hansen felt, somehow, that the world could
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_225' name='page_225'></a>225</span>
+not possibly contain another man like Jim Irwin&mdash;a
+conviction which she still cherishes
+when that respectful caress has been swept
+into the cloudy distance of a woman&#8217;s memories.</p>
+<p>Pete, Colonel Woodruff&#8217;s hired man, was
+watering the horses at the trough when the
+trouble shooter reached the Woodruff telephone.
+County Superintendent Jennie had run
+for her father&#8217;s home in her little motor-car
+in the face of the shower, and was now on the
+bench where once she had said &#8220;Humph!&#8221; to
+Jim Irwin&mdash;and thereby started in motion the
+factors in this story.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Anything wrong with your phone?&#8221; asked
+the trouble man of Pete.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Nah,&#8221; replied Pete. &#8220;It was on the blink
+till you done something down the road.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Crossed up,&#8221; said the lineman. &#8220;These
+trees along here are something fierce.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;d cut &#8217;em all if they was mine,&#8221; said Pete,
+&#8220;but the colonel set &#8217;em out, along about sixty-six,
+and I reckon they&#8217;ll have to go on
+a-growin&#8217;.&#8221;
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_226' name='page_226'></a>226</span></p>
+<p>&#8220;Who&#8217;s your school-teacher?&#8221; asked the telephone
+man.</p>
+<p>The county superintendent pricked up her
+ears&mdash;being quite properly interested in matters
+educational.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Feller name of Irwin,&#8221; said Pete.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Not much of a looker,&#8221; said the trouble
+shooter.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Nater of the sile,&#8221; said Pete. &#8220;He an&#8217; I
+both worked in it together till it roughened up
+our complexions.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Farmer, eh?&#8221; said the lineman interrogatively.
+&#8220;Well, he&#8217;s the first farmer I ever saw
+in my life that recognized there&#8217;s education in
+the telephone business. I&#8217;m goin&#8217; to teach
+a class in telephony at the schoolhouse to-morrow.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Don&#8217;t get swelled up,&#8221; said Pete. &#8220;He has
+everybody tell them young ones about everything&mdash;blacksmith,
+cabinet-maker, pie-founder,
+cookie-cooper, dressmaker&mdash;even down to telephones.
+He&#8217;ll have them scholars figurin&#8217; on
+telephones, and writin&#8217; compositions on &#8217;em,
+and learnin&#8217; &#8217;lectricity from &#8217;em an&#8217; things like
+that&#8221;
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_227' name='page_227'></a>227</span></p>
+<p>&#8220;He must be some feller,&#8221; said the lineman.
+&#8220;And who&#8217;s his star pupil?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Didn&#8217;t know he had one,&#8221; said Pete.
+&#8220;Why?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Girl,&#8221; said the trouble-shooter. &#8220;Goes to
+school from the farm where the Western Union
+brace is used at the road.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Nils Hansen&#8217;s girl?&#8221; asked Pete.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Toppy little filly,&#8221; said the lineman, &#8220;with
+silver mane&mdash;looks like she&#8217;d pull a good load
+and step some.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;M&#8217;h&#8217;m,&#8221; grunted Pete. &#8220;Bettina Hansen.
+Looks well enough. What about her?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Again the county superintendent, seated on
+the bench, pricked up her ears that she might
+learn, mayhap, something of educational interest.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I never wanted to be a school-teacher as
+bad,&#8221; continued the shooter of trouble, &#8220;as I
+did when this farmer got to the low place in
+the road with the fair Bettina this afternoon
+when they was comin&#8217; home from school. The
+water was all over the road&mdash;&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Then I win a smoke from the roadmaster,&#8221;
+said Pete. &#8220;I bet him it would overflow.&#8221;
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_228' name='page_228'></a>228</span></p>
+<p>&#8220;Well, if I was in the professor&#8217;s place, I&#8217;d
+be glad to pay the bet,&#8221; said the worldly lineman.
+&#8220;And I&#8217;ll say this for him, he rose equal
+to the emergency and caved the emergency&#8217;s
+head in. He carried her across the pond, and
+her a-clingin&#8217; to his neck in a way to make
+your mouth water. She wasn&#8217;t a bit mad about
+it, either.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;d rather have a good cigar any ol&#8217; time,&#8221;
+said Pete. &#8220;Nothin&#8217; but a yaller-haired kid&mdash;an&#8217;
+a Dane at that. I had a dame once up
+at Spirit Lake&mdash;&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well, I must be drivin&#8217; on,&#8221; said the lineman.
+&#8220;Got to get up a lecture for Professor
+Irwin to-morrow&mdash;and maybe I&#8217;ll be able to
+meet that yaller-haired kid. So long!&#8221;</p>
+<p>The county superintendent recognized at
+once the educational importance of the matter,
+when one of her country teachers adopted the
+policy of calling in everybody available who
+could teach the pupils anything special, and
+converting the school into a local Chautauqua
+served by local lecturers. She made a run of ten
+miles to hear the trouble shooter&#8217;s lecture. She
+saw the boys and some of the girls give an explanation
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_229' name='page_229'></a>229</span>
+of the telephone and the use of it.
+She heard the teacher give as a language exercise
+the next day an essay on the ethics and
+proprieties of eavesdropping on party lines;
+and she saw the beginning of an arrangement
+under which the boys of the Woodruff school
+took the contract to look after easily-remedied
+line troubles in the neighborhood on the basis
+which paid for a telephone for the school, and
+swelled slightly the fund which Jim was accumulating
+for general purposes. Incidentally,
+she saw how really educational was the work
+of the day, and that to which it led.</p>
+<p>She had no curiosity to which she would
+have confessed, about the relations between
+Jim Irwin and his &#8220;star pupil,&#8221; that young
+Brunhilde&mdash;Bettina Hansen; but her official
+duty required her to observe the attitude of
+pupils to teachers&mdash;Bettina among them.
+Clearly, Jim was looked upon by the girls,
+large and small, as a possession of theirs. They
+competed for the task of keeping his desk in
+order, and of dusting and tidying up the schoolroom.
+There was something of exaltation of
+sentiment in this. Bettina&#8217;s eyes followed him
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_230' name='page_230'></a>230</span>
+about the room in a devotional sort of way;
+but so, too, did those of the ten-year-olds. He
+was loved, that was clear, by Bettina, Calista
+Simms and all the rest&mdash;an excellent thing in
+a school.</p>
+<p>All the same, Jennie met Jim rather oftener
+after the curious conversation between those
+rather low fellows, Pete and the trouble
+shooter. As autumn approached, and the time
+came for Jim to begin to think of his trip to
+Ames, Colonel Woodruff&#8217;s hint that she should
+assume charge of the problem of Jim&#8217;s clothes
+for the occasion, came more and more often to
+her mind. Would Jim be able to buy suitable
+clothes? Would he understand that he ought
+not to appear in the costume which was tolerable
+in the Woodruff District only because the
+people there were accustomed to seeing him
+dressed like a tramp? Could she approach the
+subject with any degree of safety? Really
+these were delicate questions; and considering
+the fact that Jennie had quite dismissed her
+old sweetheart from the list of eligibles&mdash;had
+never actually admitted him to it, in fact&mdash;they
+assumed great importance to her mind.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_231' name='page_231'></a>231</span>
+Once, only a little more than a year ago, she
+had scoffed at Jim&#8217;s mention of the fact that
+he might think of marrying; and now she could
+not think of saying to him kindly, &#8220;Jim, you
+really must have some better clothes to wear
+when you go to Ames!&#8221; It would have been
+far easier last summer.</p>
+<p>Somehow, Jim had been acquiring dignity
+and unapproachability. She must sidle up to
+the subject. She did. She took him into her
+runabout one day as he was striding toward
+town in that plowed-ground manner of his, and
+gave him a spin over to the fair grounds and
+two or three times around the half-mile track.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m going to Ames to hear your speech,&#8221;
+said she.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m glad of that,&#8221; said Jim. &#8220;More of the
+farmers are going from this neighborhood than
+ever before. I&#8217;ll feel at home, if they all sit
+together where I can talk at them.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Who&#8217;s going?&#8221; asked Jennie.</p>
+<p>&#8220;The Bronsons, Con Bonner and Nils Hansen
+and Bettina,&#8221; replied Jim. &#8220;That&#8217;s all
+from our district&mdash;and Columbus Brown and
+probably others from near-by localities.&#8221;
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_232' name='page_232'></a>232</span></p>
+<p>&#8220;I shall have to have some clothes,&#8221; said
+Jennie.</p>
+<p>Jim failed to respond to this, as clearly out
+of his field. They were passing the county fair
+buildings, and he began expatiating on the
+kind of county fair he would have&mdash;a great
+county exposition with the schools as its central
+thought&mdash;a clearing house for the rural
+activities of all the country schools.</p>
+<p>&#8220;And pa&#8217;s going to have a suit before we
+go, too,&#8221; said Jennie. &#8220;Here are some samples
+I got of Atkins, the tailor. Which would
+be the most becoming do you think?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Jim looked the samples over carefully, but
+had little to say as to their adaptation to
+Colonel Woodruff&#8217;s sartorial needs. Jennie
+laid great stress on the excellent quality of one
+or two samples, and carefully specified the
+prices of them. Jim exhibited no more than
+a languid and polite interest, and gave not the
+slightest symptom of ever having considered
+even remotely the contingency of having a
+tailor-made suit. Jennie sidled closer to the
+subject.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I should think it would be awfully hard for
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_233' name='page_233'></a>233</span>
+you to get fitted in the stores,&#8221; said she, &#8220;you
+are so very tall.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It would be,&#8221; said Jim, &#8220;if I had ever considered
+the matter of looks very much. I guess
+I&#8217;m not constructed on any plan the clothing
+manufacturers have regarded as even remotely
+possible. How about this county fair idea?
+Couldn&#8217;t we do this next fall? You organize
+the teachers&mdash;&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+<p>Jennie advanced the spark, cut out the muffler
+and drowned the rest of Jim&#8217;s remarks in
+wind and dust.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I give it up, dad,&#8221; said she to her father
+that evening.</p>
+<p>&#8220;What?&#8221; queried the colonel.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Jim Irwin&#8217;s clothes,&#8221; she replied. &#8220;I think
+he&#8217;ll go to Ames in a disgraceful plight, but I
+can&#8217;t get any closer to the subject than I have
+done.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, then you haven&#8217;t heard the news,&#8221; said
+the colonel. &#8220;Jim&#8217;s going to have his first
+made-to-measure suit for Ames. It&#8217;s all fixed.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Who&#8217;s making it?&#8221; asked Jennie.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Gustaf Paulsen, the Dane that&#8217;s just opened
+a shop in town.&#8221;
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_234' name='page_234'></a>234</span>
+&#8220;A Dane?&#8221; queried Jennie. &#8220;Isn&#8217;t he related
+to some of the neighbors?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;A brother to Mrs. Hansen,&#8221; answered the
+colonel.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Bettina&#8217;s uncle!&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Ratherly,&#8221; said the colonel jocularly, &#8220;seeing
+as how Bettina&#8217;s Mrs. Hansen&#8217;s daughter.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Clothes are rather important, but the difference
+between a suit made by Atkins the
+tailor, and one built by Gustaf Paulsen, the
+new Danish craftsman, could not be supposed
+to be crucially important, even when designed
+for a very dear friend. And Jim was scarcely
+that&mdash;of course not! Why, then, did the
+county superintendent hastily run to her room,
+and cry? Why did she say to herself that the
+Hansens were very good people, and well-to-do,
+and it would be a fine thing for Jim and his
+mother,&mdash;and then cry some more? Colonel
+failed to notice Jennie&#8217;s unceremonious retirement
+from circulation that evening, and had he
+known all about what took place, he would
+have been as mystified as you or I.</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<a name='XVIII_JIM_GOES_TO_AMES' id='XVIII_JIM_GOES_TO_AMES'></a>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_235' name='page_235'></a>235</span>
+<h2>CHAPTER XVIII</h2>
+<h3>JIM GOES TO AMES</h3>
+</div>
+
+<p>The boat tipped over, and Jim Irwin was
+left struggling in the water. It was in the
+rapids just above the cataract&mdash;and poor Jim
+could not swim a stroke. Helpless, terrified,
+gasping, he floated to destruction, and Jennie
+Woodruff was not able to lift a hand to help
+him. To see any human being swept to such
+an end is dreadful, but for a county superintendent
+to witness the drowning of one of her
+best&mdash;though sometimes it must be confessed
+most insubordinate&mdash;teachers, under such circumstances,
+is unspeakable; and when that
+teacher is a young man who was once that
+county superintendent&#8217;s sweetheart, and falls
+in, clothed in a new made-to-order suit in
+which he looks almost handsome despite his
+manifest discomfort in his new cravat and
+starched collar, the experience is something almost
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_236' name='page_236'></a>236</span>
+impossible to endure. That is why Jennie
+gripped her seat until she must have
+scratched the varnish. That is why she felt
+she must go to him&mdash;and do something. She
+could not endure it a moment longer, she felt;
+and there he floated away, his poor pale face
+dipping below the waves, his sad, long, homely
+countenance sadder than ever, his lovely&mdash;yes,
+she must confess it now, his eyes were lovely!&mdash;his
+lovely blue eyes, so honest and true, wide
+with terror; and she unable to give him so
+much as a cry of encouragement!</p>
+<p>And then Jim began to swim. He cast aside
+the roll of manuscript which he had held in
+his hand when the waters began to rise about
+him, and struck out for the shore with strong
+strokes&mdash;wild and agitated at first, but gradually
+becoming controlled and coordinated, and
+Jennie drew a long breath as he finally came
+to shore, breasting the waves like Triton, and
+master of the element in which he moved.
+There was a burst of applause, and people went
+forward to congratulate the greenhorn who
+had really made good.</p>
+<p>Jennie felt like throwing her arms about
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_237' name='page_237'></a>237</span>
+his neck and weeping out her joy at his escape,
+and his restoration to her. Her eyes told
+him something of this; for there was a look
+in them which reminded him of fifteen years
+ago. Bettina Hansen was proud of him, and
+Con Bonner shook his hand and said that he
+agreed with him. Neither Bettina nor Con had
+noticed the capsizing of the boat or saw the
+form of Jim as it went drifting toward the
+cataract. But Jim knew how near he had been
+to disaster, and knew that Jennie knew. For
+she had seen him turn pale when he came on
+the platform to make his address at the farmers&#8217;
+meeting at Ames, had seen him begin the
+speech he had committed to memory, had observed
+how unable he was to remember it, had
+noted his confusion as he tried to find his manuscript,
+and then his place of beginning in it&mdash;and
+when his confusion had seemingly quite
+overcome him, had seen him begin talking to
+his audience just as he had talked to the political
+meeting that time when he had so deeply
+offended her, and had observed how he won
+first their respect, then their attention, then
+apparently their convictions.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_238' name='page_238'></a>238</span></p>
+<p>To Jennie&#8217;s agitated mind Jim had barely
+escaped being drowned in the ocean of his own
+unreadiness and confusion under trying conditions.
+And she was right. Jim had never felt
+more the upstart uneducated farm-hand than
+when he was introduced to that audience by
+Professor Withers, nor more completely disgraced
+than when he concluded his remarks.
+Even the applause was to him a kindly effort
+on the part of the audience to comfort him in
+his failure. His only solace was the look in
+Jennie&#8217;s eyes.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Young man,&#8221; said an old farmer who wore
+thick glasses and looked like a Dutch burgomaster,
+&#8220;I want to have a little talk with you.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;This is Mr. Hofmyer of Pottawatomie County,&#8221;
+said the dean of the college.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m glad to meet you,&#8221; said Jim. &#8220;I can
+talk to you now.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;No,&#8221; said Jennie. &#8220;I know Mr. Hofmyer
+will excuse you until after dinner. We have
+a little party for Mr. Irwin, and we shall be
+late if we don&#8217;t hurry.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Where can I see you after supper?&#8221; asked
+Mr. Hofmyer.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_239' name='page_239'></a>239</span></p>
+<p>Easy it was to satisfy Mr. Hofmyer; and Jim
+was carried off to a dinner given by County
+Superintendent Jennie to Jim, the dean, Professor
+Withers, and one or two others&mdash;and a wonderfully
+select and distinguished company it
+seemed to Jim. Jennie seized a moment&#8217;s opportunity
+to say, &#8220;You did beautifully, Jim;
+everybody says so.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I failed!&#8221; said. Jim. &#8220;You know I failed.
+I couldn&#8217;t remember my speech. I can&#8217;t stay
+here feasting. I want to get out in the snow.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You made the best address of the meeting;
+and you did it because you forgot your speech,&#8221;
+insisted Jennie.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Does anybody else think so?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Why, Jim! You must learn to believe in
+what you have done. Even Con Bonner says
+it was the best. He says he didn&#8217;t think you
+had it in ye!&#8221;</p>
+<p>This advice from her to &#8220;believe in what you
+have done,&#8221;&mdash;wasn&#8217;t there something new in
+Jennie&#8217;s attitude here? Wasn&#8217;t his belief in
+what he was doing precisely the thing which
+had made him such a nuisance to the county
+superintendent? However, Jim couldn&#8217;t stop
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_240' name='page_240'></a>240</span>
+to answer the question which popped up in his
+mind.</p>
+<p>&#8220;What does Professor Withers say?&#8221; he
+asked.</p>
+<p>&#8220;He&#8217;s delighted&mdash;silly!&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Silly!&#8221; How wonderful it was to be called
+&#8220;silly&#8221;&mdash;in that tone.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I shouldn&#8217;t have forgotten the speech if it
+hadn&#8217;t been for this darned boiled shirt and
+collar, and for wearing a cravat,&#8221; urged Jim
+in extenuation.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You ought to &#8217;ve worn them around the
+house for a week before coming,&#8221; said Jennie.
+&#8220;Why didn&#8217;t you ask my advice?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I will, next time, Jennie,&#8221; said Jim. &#8220;I
+didn&#8217;t suppose I needed a bitting-rig&mdash;but I
+guess I did!&#8221;</p>
+<p>Jennie ran away then to ask Nils Hansen
+and Bettina to join their dinner party. She
+had a sudden access of friendliness for the
+Hansens. Nils refused because he was going
+out to see the college herds fed; but at Jennie&#8217;s
+urgent request, reinforced by pats and hugs,
+Bettina consented. Jennie was very happy, and
+proved herself a beaming hostess. The dean
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_241' name='page_241'></a>241</span>
+devoted himself to Bettina&mdash;and Jim found out
+afterward that this inquiring gentleman was
+getting at the mental processes of a specimen
+pupil in one of the new kind of rural schools,
+in which he was only half inclined to believe.
+He thanked Jim for his speech, and said it was
+&#8220;most suggestive and thought-provoking,&#8221; and
+as the party broke up slipped into Jim&#8217;s hand
+a check for the honorarium. It was not until
+then that Jim felt quite sure that he was actually
+to be paid for his speech; and he felt a
+good deal like returning the check to the conscience
+fund of the State of Iowa, if it by any
+chance possessed such a fund. But the breach
+made in his financial entrenchments by the expenses
+of the trip and the respectable and well-fitting
+suit of clothes overcame his feeling of
+getting something for nothing. If he hadn&#8217;t
+given the state anything, he had at least expended
+something&mdash;a good deal in fact&mdash;on the
+state&#8217;s account.</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<a name='XIX_JIM_S_WORLD_WIDENS' id='XIX_JIM_S_WORLD_WIDENS'></a>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_242' name='page_242'></a>242</span>
+<h2>CHAPTER XIX</h2>
+<h3>JIM&#8217;S WORLD WIDENS</h3>
+</div>
+
+<p>Mr. Hofmyer was waiting to give Jim
+the final convincing proof that he had
+produced an effect with his speech.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Do you teach the kind of school you lay
+out in your talk?&#8221; he asked.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I try to,&#8221; said Jim, &#8220;and I believe I do.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well,&#8221; said Mr. Hofmyer, &#8220;that&#8217;s the kind
+of education I b&#8217;lieve in. I kep&#8217; school back
+in Pennsylvany fifty years ago, and I made the
+scholars measure things, and weigh things, and
+apply their studies as fur as I could.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;All good teachers have always done that,&#8221;
+said Jim. &#8220;Froebel, Pestalozzi, Colonel Parker&mdash;they
+all had the idea which is at the bottom
+of my work; &#8216;learn to do by doing,&#8217; and connecting
+up the school with life.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;M&#8217;h&#8217;m,&#8221; grunted Mr. Hofmyer, &#8220;I hain&#8217;t
+been able to see how Latin connects up with a
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_243' name='page_243'></a>243</span>
+high-school kid&#8217;s life&mdash;unless he can find a
+Latin settlement som&#8217;eres and git a job clerkin&#8217;
+in a store.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;But it used to relate to life,&#8221; said Jim, &#8220;the
+life of the people who made Greek and Latin a
+part of everybody else&#8217;s education as well as
+their own. Latin and Greek were the only languages
+in which anything worth much was
+written, you know. But now&#8221;&mdash;Jim spread
+out his arms as if to take in the whole world&mdash;&#8220;science,
+the marvelous literature of our
+tongue in the last three centuries! And to
+make a child learn Latin with all that, a thousand
+times richer than all the literature of
+Latin, lying unused before him!&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Know any Latin?&#8221; asked Mr. Hofmyer.</p>
+<p>Jim blushed, as one caught in condemning
+what he knows nothing about.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&mdash;I have studied the grammar, and read
+<i>Cæsar</i>,&#8221; he faltered, &#8220;but that isn&#8217;t much. I
+had no teacher, and I had to work pretty hard,
+and it didn&#8217;t go very well.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ve had all the Latin they gave in the colleges
+of my time,&#8221; said Mr. Hofmyer, &#8220;if I do
+talk dialect; and I&#8217;ll agree with you so far as
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_244' name='page_244'></a>244</span>
+to say that it would have been a crime for
+me to neglect the chemistry, bacteriology, physics,
+engineering and other sciences that pertain
+to farmin&#8217;&mdash;if there&#8217;d been any such sciences
+when I was gettin&#8217; my schoolin&#8217;.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;And yet,&#8221; said Jim, &#8220;some people want us
+to guide ourselves by the courses of study made
+before these sciences existed.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t, by hokey!&#8221; said Mr. Hofmyer. &#8220;I&#8217;ll
+be dag-goned if you ain&#8217;t right. I wouldn&#8217;t &#8217;a&#8217;
+said so before I heard that speech&mdash;but I say
+so now.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Jim&#8217;s face lighted up at this, the first convincing
+evidence that he had scored.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I b&#8217;lieve, too,&#8221; went on Mr. Hofmyer, &#8220;that
+your idee would please our folks. I&#8217;ve been the
+stand-patter in our parts&mdash;mostly on English
+and&mdash;say German. What d&#8217;ye say to comin&#8217;
+down and teachin&#8217; our school? We&#8217;ve got a
+two-room affair, and I was made a committee
+of one to find a teacher.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&mdash;I don&#8217;t see how&mdash;&#8221; Jim stammered, all
+taken aback by this new breeze of recognition.</p>
+<p>&#8220;We can&#8217;t pay much,&#8221; said Mr. Hofmyer.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_245' name='page_245'></a>245</span>
+&#8220;You have charge of the dis-<i>cip</i>-line in the
+whole school, and teach in Number Two room.
+Seventy-five dollars a month. Does it appeal
+to ye?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Appeal to him! Why, eighteen months ago
+it would have been worth crawling across the
+state after, and now to have it offered to him&mdash;it
+was stupendous. And yet, how about the
+Simmses, Colonel Woodruff, the Hansens and
+Newton Bronson, now just getting a firm start
+on the upward path to usefulness and real happiness?
+How could he leave the little, crude,
+puny structure on which he had been working&mdash;on
+which he had been merely practising&mdash;for
+a year, and remove to the new field? Jim
+was in exactly the same situation in which
+every able young minister of the gospel finds
+himself sooner or later. The Lord was calling
+to a broader field&mdash;but how could he be sure
+it was the Lord?</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m afraid I can&#8217;t,&#8221; said Jim Irwin,
+&#8220;but&mdash;&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;If you&#8217;re only &#8217;fraid you can&#8217;t,&#8221; said Mr.
+Hofmyer, &#8220;think it over. I&#8217;ve got your post-office
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_246' name='page_246'></a>246</span>
+address on this program, and we&#8217;ll write
+you a formal offer. We may spring them figures
+a little. Think it over.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You mustn&#8217;t think,&#8221; said Jim, &#8220;that we&#8217;ve
+<i>done</i> all the things I mentioned in my talk, or
+that I haven&#8217;t made any mistakes or failures.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Your county superintendent didn&#8217;t mention
+any failures,&#8221; said Mr. Hofmyer.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Did you talk with her about my work?&#8221; inquired
+Jim, suddenly very curious.</p>
+<p>&#8220;M&#8217;h&#8217;m.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Then I don&#8217;t see why you want me,&#8221; Jim
+went on.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Why?&#8221; asked Mr. Hofmyer.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I had not supposed,&#8221; said Jim, &#8220;that she
+had a very high opinion of my work.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I didn&#8217;t ask her about that,&#8221; said Mr. Hofmyer,
+&#8220;though I guess she thinks well of it. I
+asked her what you are tryin&#8217; to do, and what
+sort of a fellow you are. I was favorably impressed;
+but she didn&#8217;t mention any failures.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;We haven&#8217;t succeeded in adopting a successful
+system of selling our cream,&#8221; said Jim.
+&#8220;I believe we can do it, but we haven&#8217;t.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Wal,&#8221; said Mr. Hofmyer, &#8220;I d&#8217;know as I&#8217;d
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_247' name='page_247'></a>247</span>
+call that a failure. The fact that you&#8217;re tryin&#8217;
+of it shows you&#8217;ve got the right idees. We&#8217;ll
+write ye, and mebbe pay your way down to
+look us over. We&#8217;re a pretty good crowd, the
+neighbors think.&#8221;</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<a name='XX_THINK_OF_IT' id='XX_THINK_OF_IT'></a>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_248' name='page_248'></a>248</span>
+<h2>CHAPTER XX</h2>
+<h3>THINK OF IT</h3>
+</div>
+
+<p>Ames was an inspiration. Jim Irwin received
+from the great agricultural college
+more real education in this one trip than many
+students get from a four years&#8217; course in its
+halls; for he had spent ten years in getting
+ready for the experience. The great farm of
+hundreds of acres, all under the management
+of experts, the beautiful campus, the commodious
+classrooms and laboratories, and especially
+the barns, the greenhouses, gardens,
+herds and flocks filled him with a sort of apostolic
+joy.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Every school,&#8221; said he to Professor Withers,
+&#8220;ought to be doing a good deal of the work
+you have to do here.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ll admit,&#8221; said the professor, &#8220;that much
+of our work in agriculture is pretty elementary.&#8221;
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_249' name='page_249'></a>249</span></p>
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s intermediate school work,&#8221; said Jim.
+&#8220;It&#8217;s a wrong to force boys and girls to leave
+their homes and live in a college to get so much
+of what they should have before they&#8217;re ten
+years old.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;There&#8217;s something in what you say,&#8221; said
+the professor, &#8220;but some experiment station
+men seem to think that agriculture in the common
+schools will take from the young men and
+women the felt need, and therefore the desire
+to come to the college.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;If you can&#8217;t give them anything better than
+high-school work,&#8221; said Jim, &#8220;that will be so;
+but if the science and art of agriculture is what
+I think it is, it would make them hungry for the
+advanced work that really can&#8217;t be done at
+home. To make the children wait until they&#8217;re
+twenty is to deny them more than half what
+the college ought to give them&mdash;and make them
+pay for what they don&#8217;t get.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I think you&#8217;re right,&#8221; said the professor.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Give us the kind of schools I ask for,&#8221; cried
+Jim, &#8220;and I&#8217;ll fill a college like this in every congressional
+district in Iowa, or I&#8217;ll force you to
+tear this down and build larger.&#8221;
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_250' name='page_250'></a>250</span></p>
+<p>The professor laughed at his enthusiasm.</p>
+<p>More nearly happy, and rather shorter of
+money than he had recently been, Jim journeyed
+home among the companions from his
+own neighborhood, in a frenzy of plans for the
+future. Mr. Hofmyer had dropped from his
+mind, until Con Bonner, his old enemy, drew
+him aside in the vestibule of the train and
+spoke to him in the mysterious manner peculiar
+to politicians.</p>
+<p>&#8220;What kind of a proposition did that man
+Hofmeister make you?&#8221; he inquired. &#8220;He
+asked me about you, and I told him you&#8217;re a
+crackerjack.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m much obliged,&#8221; replied Jim.</p>
+<p>&#8220;No use in back-cappin&#8217; a fellow that&#8217;s
+tryin&#8217; to make somethin&#8217; of himself,&#8221; said Bonner.
+&#8220;That ain&#8217;t good politics, nor good sense.
+Anything to him?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;He offered me a salary of seventy-five dollars
+a month to take charge of his school,&#8221; said
+Jim.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well,&#8221; said Con, &#8220;we&#8217;ll be sorry to lose yeh,
+but you can&#8217;t turn down anything like that.&#8221;
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_251' name='page_251'></a>251</span></p>
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t know,&#8221; said Jim. &#8220;I haven&#8217;t decided.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Bonner scrutinized his face sharply, as if to
+find out what sort of game he was playing.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well,&#8221; said he, at last, &#8220;I hope you can stay
+with us, o&#8217; course. I&#8217;m licked, and I never
+squeal. If the rist of the district can stand
+your kind of thricks, I can. And say, Jim&#8221;&mdash;here
+he grew still more mysterious&mdash;&#8220;if you do
+stay, some of us would like to have you be
+enough of a Dimmycrat to go into the next con&#8217;vintion
+f&#8217;r county superintendent.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Why,&#8221; replied Jim, &#8220;I never thought of
+such a thing!&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well, think of it,&#8221; said Con. &#8220;The county&#8217;s
+close, and wid a pop&#8217;lar young educator&mdash;an&#8217; a
+farmer, too, it might be done. Think of it.&#8221;</p>
+<p>It must be confessed that Jim was almost
+dazed at the number of &#8220;propositions&#8221; of which
+he was now required to &#8220;think&#8221;&mdash;and that Bonner&#8217;s
+did not at first impress him as having
+anything back of it but blarney. He was to
+find out later, however, that the wily Con had
+made up his mind that the ambition of Jim
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_252' name='page_252'></a>252</span>
+to serve the rural schools in a larger sphere
+might be used for the purpose of bringing to
+earth what he regarded as the soaring political
+ambitions of the Woodruff family.</p>
+<p>To defeat the colonel in the defeat of his
+daughter when running for her traditionally-granted
+second term; to get Jim Irwin out of
+the Woodruff District by kicking him up-stairs
+into a county office; to split the forces which
+had defeated Mr. Bonner in his own school district;
+and to do these things with the very instrument
+used by the colonel on that sad but
+glorious day of the last school election&mdash;these,
+to Mr. Bonner, would be diabolically fine things
+to do&mdash;things worthy of those Tammany politicians
+who from afar off had won his admiration.</p>
+<p>Jim had scarcely taken his seat in the car,
+facing Jennie Woodruff and Bettina Hansen in
+the Pullman, when Columbus Brown, pathmaster
+of the road district and only across the
+way from residence in the school district, came
+down the aisle and called Jim to the smoking-room.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Did an old fellow named Hoffman from Pottawatomie
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_253' name='page_253'></a>253</span>
+County ask you to leave us and take
+his school?&#8221; he asked.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Mr. Hofmyer,&#8221; said Jim, &#8220;&mdash;yes, he did.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well,&#8221; said Columbus, &#8220;I don&#8217;t want to ask
+you to stand in your own light, but I hope you
+won&#8217;t let him toll you off there among strangers.
+We&#8217;re proud of you, Jim, and we don&#8217;t
+want to lose you.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Proud of him! Sweet music to the underling&#8217;s
+ears! Jim blushed and stammered.</p>
+<p>&#8220;The fact is,&#8221; said Columbus, &#8220;I know that
+Woodruff District job hain&#8217;t big enough for
+you any more; but we can make it bigger. If
+you&#8217;ll stay, I believe we can pull off a deal to
+consolidate some of them districts, and make
+you boss of the whole shooting match.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I appreciate this, Clumb,&#8221; said Jim, &#8220;but I
+don&#8217;t believe you can do it.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well, think of it,&#8221; said Columbus. &#8220;And
+don&#8217;t do anything till you talk with me and a
+few of the rest of the boys.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Think of it&#8221; again!</p>
+<p>A fine home-coming it was for Jim, with the
+colonel waiting at the station with a double
+sleigh, and the chance to ride into the snowy
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_254' name='page_254'></a>254</span>
+country in the same seat with Jennie&mdash;a chance
+which was blighted by the colonel&#8217;s placing of
+Jennie, Bettina and Nils Hansen in the broad
+rear seat, and Jim in front with himself. A
+fine ride, just the same, over fine roads, and
+past fine farmsteads snuggled into their rectangular
+wrappages of trees set out in the old
+pioneer days. The colonel would not allow him
+to get out and walk when he could really have
+reached home more quickly by doing so; no, he
+set the Hansens down at their door, took Jennie
+home, and then drove the lightened sleigh
+merrily to the humble cabin of the rather excited
+young schoolmaster.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Did you make any deal with those people
+down in the western part of the state?&#8221; asked
+the colonel. &#8220;Jennie wrote me that you&#8217;ve got
+an offer.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;No,&#8221; said Jim, and he told the colonel about
+the proposal of Mr. Hofmyer.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well,&#8221; said the colonel, &#8220;in my capacity of
+wild-eyed reformer, I&#8217;ve made up my mind that
+the first four miles in the trip is to make the
+rural teacher&#8217;s job a bigger job. It&#8217;s got to
+be a man&#8217;s size, woman&#8217;s size job, or we can&#8217;t
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_255' name='page_255'></a>255</span>
+get real men and real women to stay in the
+work.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I think that&#8217;s a statesmanlike formulation
+of it,&#8221; said Jim.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well,&#8221; said the colonel, &#8220;don&#8217;t turn down
+the Pottawatomie County job until we have a
+chance to see what we can do. I&#8217;ll get some
+kind of a meeting together, and what I want
+you to do is to use this offer as a club over
+this helpless school district. What we need is
+to be held up. Do the Jesse James act, Jim!&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I can&#8217;t, Colonel!&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes, you can, too. Will you try it?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I want to treat everybody fairly,&#8221; said Jim,
+&#8220;including Mr. Hofmyer. I don&#8217;t know what
+to do, hardly.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well, I&#8217;ll get the meeting together,&#8221; said
+the colonel, &#8220;and in the meantime, think of
+what I&#8217;ve said.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Another thing to think of! Jim rushed into
+the house and surprised his mother, who had
+expected him to arrive after a slow walk from
+town through the snow. Jim caught her in
+his arms, from which she was released a moment
+later, quite flustered and blushing.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_256' name='page_256'></a>256</span></p>
+<p>&#8220;Why, James,&#8221; said she, &#8220;you seem excited.
+What&#8217;s happened?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Nothing, mother,&#8221; he replied, &#8220;except that
+I believe there&#8217;s just a possibility of my being a
+success in the world!&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;My boy, my boy!&#8221; said she, laying her hand
+on his arm, &#8220;if you were to die to-night, you&#8217;d
+die the greatest success any boy ever was&mdash;if
+your mother is any judge.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Jim kissed her, and went up to his attic to
+change his clothes. Inside the waistcoat was
+a worn envelope, which he carefully opened,
+and took from it a letter much creased from
+many foldings. It was the old letter from Jennie,
+written when the comical mistake had been
+made of making him the teacher of the Woodruff
+school. It still contained her rather fussy
+cautions about being &#8220;too original,&#8221; and the
+sage statement that &#8220;the wheel runs easiest in
+the beaten track.&#8221; It was written before the
+vexation and trouble he had caused her; but he
+did not read the advice, nor think of the coolness
+which had come between them&mdash;he read
+only the sentence in which Jennie had told of
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_257' name='page_257'></a>257</span>
+her father&#8217;s interest in Jim&#8217;s success, ending
+with the underscored words, &#8220;<i>I&#8217;m for you, too.</i>&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I wonder,&#8221; said Jim, as he went out to do
+the evening&#8217;s tasks, &#8220;I wonder if she <i>is</i> for
+me!&#8221;</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<a name='XXI_A_SCHOOL_DISTRICT_HELD_UP' id='XXI_A_SCHOOL_DISTRICT_HELD_UP'></a>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_258' name='page_258'></a>258</span>
+<h2>CHAPTER XXI</h2>
+<h3>A SCHOOL DISTRICT HELD UP</h3>
+</div>
+
+<p>Young McGeehee Simms was loitering
+along the snowy way to the schoolhouse
+bearing a brightly scoured tin pail two-thirds
+full of water. He had been allowed to act as
+Water Superintendent of the Woodruff School
+as a reward of merit&mdash;said merit being an essay
+on which he received credit in both language
+and geography on &#8220;Harvesting Wheat in the
+Tennessee Mountains.&#8221; This had been of vast
+interest to the school in view of the fact that the
+Simmses were the only pupils in the school
+who had ever seen in use that supposedly-obsolete
+harvesting implement, the cradle.
+Buddy&#8217;s essay had been passed over to the class
+in United States history as the evidence of an
+eye-witness concerning farming conditions in
+our grandfathers&#8217; times.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_259' name='page_259'></a>259</span></p>
+<p>The surnameless Pete, Colonel Woodruff&#8217;s
+hired man, halted Buddy at the door.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Mr. Simms, I believe?&#8221; he said.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I reckon you must be lookin&#8217; for my
+brother, Raymond, suh,&#8221; said Buddy.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I am a-lookin&#8217;,&#8221; said Pete impressively,
+&#8220;for Mr. McGeehee Simms.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;That&#8217;s me,&#8221; said Buddy; &#8220;but I hain&#8217;t been
+doin&#8217; nothin&#8217; wrong, suh!&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I have a message here,&#8221; said Pete, &#8220;for Professor
+James E. Irwin. He&#8217;s what-ho within,
+there, ain&#8217;t he?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;He&#8217;s inside, I reckon,&#8221; said Buddy.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Then will you be so kind and condescendin&#8217;
+as to stoop so low as to jump so high as to
+give him this letter?&#8221; asked Pete.</p>
+<p>Buddy took the letter and was considering
+of his reply to this remarkable speech, when
+Pete, gravely saluting, passed on, rather congratulating
+himself on having staged a very
+good burlesque of the dignified manners of
+those queer mountaineers, the Simmses.</p>
+<div class='blockquot'>
+<p>&#8220;Please come to the meeting to-night,&#8221; ran
+the colonel&#8217;s note to Jim; &#8220;and when you come,
+come prepared to hold the district up. If we
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_260' name='page_260'></a>260</span>
+can&#8217;t meet the Pottawatomie County standard
+of wages, we ought to lose you. Everybody in
+the district will be there. Come late, so you
+won&#8217;t hear yourself talked about&mdash;I should recommend
+nine-thirty and war-paint.&#8221;</p>
+</div>
+<p>It was a crisis, no doubt of that; and the responsibility
+of the situation rather sickened
+Jim of the task of teaching. How could he
+impose conditions on the whole school district?
+How could the colonel expect such a thing of
+him? And how could any one look for anything
+but scorn for the upstart field-hand from
+these men who had for so many years made
+him the butt of their good-natured but none
+the less contemptuous ridicule? Who was he,
+anyway, to lay down rules for these substantial
+and successful men&mdash;he who had been for
+all the years of his life at their command, subservient
+to their demands for labor&mdash;their underling?
+Only one thing kept him from dodging
+the whole issue and remaining at home&mdash;the
+colonel&#8217;s matter-of-fact assumption that
+Jim had become master of the situation. How
+could he flee, when this old soldier was fighting
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_261' name='page_261'></a>261</span>
+so valiantly for him in the trenches? So Jim
+went to the meeting.</p>
+<p>The season was nearing spring, and it was
+a mild thawy night. The windows of the
+schoolhouse were filled with heads, evidencing
+the presence of a crowd of almost unprecedented
+size, and the sashes had been thrown
+up for ventilation and coolness. As Jim
+climbed the back fence of the school-yard, he
+heard a burst of applause, from which he
+judged that some speaker had just finished his
+remarks. There was silence when he came
+alongside the window at the right of the chairman&#8217;s
+desk, a silence broken by the voice of
+Old Man Simms, saying &#8220;Mistah Chairman!&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;The chair,&#8221; said the voice of Ezra Bronson,
+&#8220;recognizes Mr. Simms.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Jim halted in indecision. He was not expected
+while the debate was in progress, and
+therefore regarded himself at this time as
+somewhat <i>de trop</i>. There is no rule of manners
+or morals, however, forbidding eavesdropping
+during the proceedings of a public meeting&mdash;and
+anyhow, he felt rather shiveringly
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_262' name='page_262'></a>262</span>
+curious about these deliberations. Therefore
+he listened to the first and last public speech
+of Old Man Simms.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Ah ain&#8217;t no speaker,&#8221; said Old Man Simms,
+&#8220;but Ah cain&#8217;t set here and be quiet an&#8217; go
+home an&#8217; face my ole woman an&#8217; my boys an&#8217;
+gyuhls withouten sayin&#8217; a word fo&#8217; the best
+friend any family evah had, Mr. Jim Irwin.&#8221;
+(Applause.) &#8220;Ah owe it to him that Ah&#8217;ve
+got the right to speak in this meetin&#8217; at all.
+Gentlemen, we-all owe everything to Mr. Jim
+Irwin! Maybe Ah&#8217;ll be thought forrard to
+speak hyah, bein&#8217; as Ah ain&#8217;t no learnin&#8217; an&#8217;
+some may think Ah don&#8217;t pay no taxes; but it
+will be overlooked, I reckon, seein&#8217; as how we&#8217;ve
+took the Blanchard farm, a hundred an&#8217; sixty
+acres, for five yeahs, an&#8217; move in a week from
+Sat&#8217;day. We pay taxes in our rent, Ah reckon,
+an&#8217; howsomever that may be, Ah&#8217;ve come to
+feel that you-all won&#8217;t think hard of me if Ah
+speak what we-uns feel so strong about Mr.
+Jim Irwin?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Old Man Simms finished this exordium with
+the rising inflection, which denoted a direct
+question as to his status in the meeting. &#8220;Go
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_263' name='page_263'></a>263</span>
+on!&#8221; &#8220;You&#8217;ve got as good a right as any one!&#8221;
+&#8220;You&#8217;re all right, old man!&#8221; Such exclamations
+as these came to Jim&#8217;s ears with scarcely
+less gratefulness than to those of Old Man
+Simms&mdash;who stammered and went on.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Ah thank you-all kindly. Gentlemen an&#8217;
+ladies, when Mr. Jim Irwin found us, we was
+scandalous pore, an&#8217; we was wuss&#8217;n pore&mdash;we
+was low-down.&#8221; (Cries of &#8220;No&mdash;No!&#8221;) &#8220;Yes,
+we was, becuz what&#8217;s respectable in the mountings
+is one thing, whar all the folks is pore,
+but when a man gets in a new place, he&#8217;s got
+to lift himse&#8217;f up to what folks does where
+he&#8217;s come to, or he&#8217;ll fall to the bottom of what
+there is in that there community&mdash;an&#8217; maybe
+he&#8217;ll make a place fer himse&#8217;f lower&#8217;n anybody
+else. In the mountings we was good people,
+becuz we done the best we could an&#8217; the best
+any one done; but hyah, we was low-down
+people becuz we hated the people that had mo&#8217;
+learnin&#8217;, mo&#8217; land, mo&#8217; money, an&#8217; mo&#8217; friends
+than what we had. My little gyuhls wasn&#8217;t
+respectable in their clothes. My childern was
+igernant, an&#8217; triflin&#8217;, but I was the most triflin&#8217;
+of all. Ah&#8217;ll leave it to Colonel Woodruff if I
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_264' name='page_264'></a>264</span>
+was good fer a plug of terbacker, or a bakin&#8217; of
+flour at any sto&#8217; in the county. Was I, Colonel?
+Wasn&#8217;t I perfectly wuthless an&#8217; triflin&#8217;?&#8221;</p>
+<p>There was a ripple of laughter, in the midst
+of which the colonel&#8217;s voice was heard saying,
+&#8220;I guess you were, Mr. Simms, I guess you
+were, but&mdash;&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Thankee,&#8221; said Old Man Simms, as if the
+colonel had given a really valuable testimonial
+to his character. &#8220;I sho&#8217; was! Thankee
+kindly! An&#8217;now, what am I good fer? Cain&#8217;t
+I get anything I want at the stores? Cain&#8217;t I
+git a little money at the bank, if I got to
+have it?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You&#8217;re just as good as any man in the district,&#8221;
+said the colonel. &#8220;You don&#8217;t ask for
+more than you can pay, and you can get all
+you ask.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Thankee,&#8221; said Mr. Simms gravely. &#8220;What
+Ah tell you-all is right, ladies and gentlemen.
+An&#8217; what has made the change in we-uns, ladies
+and gentlemen? It&#8217;s the wuk of Mr. Jim
+Irwin with my boy Raymond, the best boy any
+man evah hed, and my gyuhl, Calista, an&#8217;
+Buddy, an&#8217; Jinnie, an&#8217; with me an&#8217; my ole
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_265' name='page_265'></a>265</span>
+woman. He showed us how to get a toe-holt
+into this new kentry. He teached the children
+what orto be did by a rentin&#8217; farmer in Ioway.
+He done lifted us up, an&#8217; made people of us.
+He done showed us that you-all is good people,
+an&#8217; not what we thought you was. Outen what
+he learned in school, my boy Raymond an&#8217; me
+made as good crops as we could last summer,
+an&#8217; done right much wuk outside. We got the
+name of bein&#8217; good farmers an&#8217; good wukkers,
+an&#8217; when Mr. Blanchard moved to town, he said
+he was glad to give us his fine farm for five
+years. Now, see what Mr. Jim Irwin has done
+for a pack o&#8217; outlaws and outcasts. Instid o&#8217;
+hidin&#8217; out from the Hobdays that was lay-wayin&#8217;
+us in the mountings, we&#8217;ll be livin&#8217; in a
+house with two chimleys an&#8217; a swimmin&#8217; tub
+made outen crock&#8217;ryware. We&#8217;ll be in debt a
+whole lot&mdash;an&#8217; we owe it to Mr. Jim Irwin that
+we got the credit to git in debt with, an&#8217; the
+courage to go on and git out agin!&#8221; (Applause.)
+&#8220;Ah could affo&#8217;d to pay Mr. Jim Irwin&#8217;s
+salary mysr&#8217;f, if Ah could. An&#8217; there&#8217;s
+enough men hyah to-night that say they&#8217;ve been
+money-he&#8217;ped by his teachin&#8217; the school to
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_266' name='page_266'></a>266</span>
+make up mo&#8217; than his wages. Let&#8217;s not let Mr.
+Jim Irwin go, neighbors! Let&#8217;s not let him
+go!&#8221;</p>
+<p>Jim&#8217;s heart sank. Surely the case was desperate
+which could call forth such a forlorn-hope
+charge as that of Old Man Simms&mdash;a performance
+on Mr. Simms&#8217; part which warmed
+Jim&#8217;s soul. &#8220;There isn&#8217;t a man in that meeting,&#8221;
+said he to himself, as he walked to the
+schoolhouse door, &#8220;possessed of the greatness
+of spirit of Old Man Simms. If he&#8217;s a fair
+sample of the people of the mountains, they are
+of the stuff of which great nations are made&mdash;if
+they only are given a chance!&#8221;</p>
+<p>Colonel Woodruff was on his feet as Jim
+made his way through the crowd about the
+door.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Mr. Irwin is here, ladies and gentlemen,&#8221;
+said he, &#8220;and I move that we hear from him as
+to what we can do to meet the offer of our
+friends in Pottawatomie County, who have
+heard of his good work, and want him to work
+for them; but before I yield the floor, I want
+to say that this meeting has been worth while
+just to have been the occasion of our all becoming
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_267' name='page_267'></a>267</span>
+better acquainted with our friend and
+neighbor, Mr. Simms. Whatever may have
+been the lack of understanding, on our part,
+of his qualities, they were all cleared up by
+that speech of his&mdash;the best I have ever heard
+in this neighborhood.&#8221;</p>
+<p>More applause, in the midst of which Old
+Man Simms slunk away down in his seat to escape
+observation. Then the chairman said that
+if there was no objection they would hear from
+their well-known citizen, whose growing fame
+was more remarkable for the fact that it had
+been gained as a country schoolmaster&mdash;he need
+not add that he referred to Mr. James E. Irwin.
+More and louder applause.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Friends and neighbors,&#8221; said Jim, &#8220;you ask
+me to say to you what I want you to do. I
+want you to do what you want to do&mdash;nothing
+more nor less. Last year I was glad to be tolerated
+here; and the only change in the situation
+lies in the fact that I have another place
+offered me&mdash;unless there has been a change in
+your feelings toward me and my work. I hope
+there has been; for I know my work is good
+now, whereas I only believed it then.&#8221;
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_268' name='page_268'></a>268</span></p>
+<p>&#8220;Sure it is!&#8221; shouted Con Bonner from a
+front seat, thus signalizing that astute wire-puller&#8217;s
+definite choice of a place in the bandwagon.
+&#8220;Tell us what you want, Jim!&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;What do I want?&#8221; asked Jim. &#8220;More than
+anything else, I want such meetings as this&mdash;often&mdash;and
+a place to hold them. If I stay in
+the Woodruff District, I want this meeting to
+effect a permanent organization to work with
+me. I can&#8217;t teach this district anything. Nobody
+can teach any one anything. All any
+teacher can do is to direct people&#8217;s activities
+in teaching themselves. You are gathered here
+to decide what you&#8217;ll do about the small matter
+of keeping me at work as your hired man. You
+can&#8217;t make any legal decision here, but whatever
+this meeting decides will be law, just the
+same, because a majority of the people of the
+district are here. Such a meeting as this can
+decide almost anything. If I&#8217;m to be your
+hired man, I want a boss in the shape of a
+civic organization which will take in every man
+and woman in the district. Here&#8217;s the place
+and now&#8217;s the time to make that organization&mdash;an
+organization the object of which shall be
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_269' name='page_269'></a>269</span>
+to put the whole district at school, and to boss
+me in my work for the whole district.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Dat sounds good,&#8221; cried Haakon Peterson.
+&#8220;Ve&#8217;ll do dat!&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Then I want you to work out a building
+scheme for the school,&#8221; Jim went on. &#8220;We
+want a place where the girls can learn to cook,
+keep house, take care of babies, sew and learn
+to be wives and mothers. We want a place in
+which Mrs. Hansen can come to show them how
+to cure meat&mdash;she&#8217;s the best hand at that in
+the county&mdash;where Mrs. Bonner can teach them
+to make bread and pastry&mdash;she ought to be
+given a doctor&#8217;s degree for that&mdash;where Mrs.
+Woodruff can teach them the cooking of turkeys,
+Mrs. Peterson the way to give the family
+a balanced ration, and Mrs. Simms induct them
+into the mysteries of weaving rag rugs and
+making jellies and preserves&mdash;you can all learn
+these things from her. There&#8217;s somebody right
+in this neighborhood able to teach anything the
+young people want to learn.</p>
+<p>&#8220;And I want a physician here once in a
+while to examine the children as to their health,
+and a dentist to look after their teeth and teach
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_270' name='page_270'></a>270</span>
+them how to care for them. Also an oculist to
+examine their eyes. And when Bettina Hansen
+comes home from the hospital a trained
+nurse, I want her to have a job as visiting nurse
+right here in the Woodruff District.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I want a counting-room for the keeping of
+the farm accounts and the record of our observation
+in farming. I want cooperation in
+letting us have these accounts.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I want some manual training equipment for
+wood-working and metal working, and a blacksmith
+and wagon shop, in which the boys may
+learn to shoe horses, repair tools, design buildings,
+and practise the best agricultural engineering.
+So I want a blacksmith and handyman
+with tools regularly on the job&mdash;and he&#8217;ll
+more than pay his way. I want some land for
+actual farming. I want to do work in poultry
+according to the most modern breeding discoveries,
+and I want your cooperation in that,
+and a poultry plant somewhere in the district.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I want a laboratory in which we can work
+on seeds, pests, soils, feeds and the like. For
+the education of your children must come out
+of these things.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_271' name='page_271'></a>271</span></p>
+<p>&#8220;I want these things because they are necessary
+if we are to get the culture out of life we
+should get&mdash;and nobody gets culture out of any
+sort of school&mdash;they get it out of life, or they
+don&#8217;t get it at all.</p>
+<p>&#8220;So I want you to build as freely for your
+school as for your cattle and horses and hogs.</p>
+<p>&#8220;The school I ask for will make each of you
+more money than the taxes it will require
+would make if invested in your farm equipment.
+If you are not convinced of this, don&#8217;t
+bother with me any longer. But the money
+the school will make for you&mdash;this new kind
+of rural school&mdash;will be as nothing to the social
+life which will grow up&mdash;a social life
+which will make necessary an assembly-room,
+which will be the social center, because it will
+be the educational center, and the business center
+of the countryside.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I want all these things, and more. But I
+don&#8217;t expect them all at once. I know that
+this district is too small to do all of them, and
+therefore, I am going to tell you of another
+want which will tempt you to think that I am
+crazy. I want a bigger district&mdash;one that will
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_272' name='page_272'></a>272</span>
+give us the financial strength to carry out the
+program I have sketched. This may be a presumptuous
+thing for me to propose; but the
+whole situation here to-night is presumptuous
+on my part, I fear. If you think so, let me
+go; but if you don&#8217;t, please keep this meeting
+together in a permanent organization of grown-up
+members of the Woodruff school, and by
+pulling together, you can do these things&mdash;all
+of them&mdash;and many more&mdash;and you&#8217;ll make the
+Woodruff District a good place to live in and
+die in&mdash;and I shall be proud to live and die
+in it at your service, as the neighborhood&#8217;s hired
+man!&#8221;</p>
+<p>As Jim sat down there was a hush in the
+crowded room, as if the people were dazed at
+his assurance. There was no applause, until
+Jennie Woodruff, now seen by Jim for the first
+time over next the blackboard, clapped her
+gloved hands together and started it; then it
+swept out through the windows in a storm. The
+dust rose from stamping feet until the kerosene
+lamps were dimmed by it. And as the
+noise subsided, Jim saw standing out in front
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_273' name='page_273'></a>273</span>
+the stooped form of B. B. Hamm, one of the
+most prosperous men in the district.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Mr. Chairman&mdash;Ezra Bronson,&#8221; he roared,
+&#8220;this feller&#8217;s crazy, an&#8217; from the sound of
+things, you&#8217;re all as crazy as he is. If this fool
+scheme of his goes through, my farm&#8217;s for sale!
+I&#8217;ll quit before I&#8217;m sold out for taxes!&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Just a minute, B. B.!&#8221; interposed Colonel
+Woodruff. &#8220;This ain&#8217;t as dangerous as you
+think. You don&#8217;t want us to do all this in fifteen
+minutes, do you, Jim?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, as to that,&#8221; replied Jim, &#8220;I just wanted
+you to have in your minds what I have in my
+mind&mdash;and unless we can agree to work toward
+these things there&#8217;s no use in my staying. But
+time&mdash;that&#8217;s another matter. Believe with me,
+and I&#8217;ll work with you.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Get out of here!&#8221; said the colonel to Jim
+in an undertone, &#8220;and leave the rest to your
+friends.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Jim walked out of the room and took the way
+toward his home. A horse tied to the hitching-pole
+had his blanket under foot, and Jim
+replaced it on his back, patting him kindly and
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_274' name='page_274'></a>274</span>
+talking horse language to him. Then he went
+up and down the line of teams, readjusting
+blankets, tying loosened knots, and assuring
+himself that his neighbors&#8217; horses were securely
+tied and comfortable. He knew horses
+better than he knew people, he thought. If he
+could manage people as he could manage horses&mdash;but
+that would be wrong. The horse did his
+work as a servant, submissive to the wills of
+others; the community could never develop anything
+worth while in its common life, until it
+worked the system out for itself. Horse management
+was despotism; man-government must
+be like the government of a society of wild
+horses, the result of the common work of the
+members of the herd.</p>
+<p>Two figures emerged from the schoolhouse
+door, and as he turned toward his home after
+his pastoral calls on the horses, they overtook
+him. They were the figures of Newton Bronson
+and the county superintendent of schools.</p>
+<p>&#8220;We were coming after you,&#8221; said Jennie.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Dad wants you back there again,&#8221; said
+Newton.</p>
+<p>&#8220;What for?&#8221; inquired Jim.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_275' name='page_275'></a>275</span></p>
+<p>&#8220;You silly boy,&#8221; said Jennie, &#8220;you talked
+about the good of the schools all of the time,
+and never said a word about your own salary!
+What do you want? They want to know?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh!&#8221; exclaimed Jim in the manner of one
+who suddenly remembers that he has forgotten
+his umbrella or his pocket-knife. &#8220;I forgot all
+about it. I haven&#8217;t thought about that at all,
+Jennie!&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Jim,&#8221; said she, &#8220;you need a guardian!&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I know it, Jennie,&#8221; said he, &#8220;and I know
+who I want. I want&mdash;&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Please come back,&#8221; said Jennie, &#8220;and tell
+papa how much you&#8217;re going to hold the district
+up for.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You run back,&#8221; said Jim to Newton, &#8220;and
+tell your father that whatever is right in the
+way of salary will be satisfactory to me. I
+leave that to the people.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Newton darted off, leaving the schoolmaster
+standing in the road with the county superintendent.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I can&#8217;t go back there!&#8221; said Jim.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m proud of you, Jim,&#8221; said Jennie. &#8220;This
+community has found its master. They can&#8217;t
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_276' name='page_276'></a>276</span>
+do all you ask now, nor very soon; but finally
+they&#8217;ll do just as you want them to do. And,
+Jim, I want to say that I&#8217;ve been the biggest
+little fool in the county!&#8221;</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<a name='XXII_AN_EMBASSY_FROM_DIXIE' id='XXII_AN_EMBASSY_FROM_DIXIE'></a>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_277' name='page_277'></a>277</span>
+<h2>CHAPTER XXII</h2>
+<h3>AN EMBASSY FROM DIXIE</h3>
+</div>
+
+<p>Superintendent Jennie sat at her
+desk in no very satisfactory frame of mind.
+In the first place court was to convene on the
+following Monday, and both grand jury and
+petit juries would be in session, so that her
+one-room office was not to be hers for a few
+days. Her desk was even now ready to be
+moved into the hall by the janitor. To Wilbur
+Smythe, who did her the honor of calling occasionally
+as the exigencies of his law practise
+took him past the office of the pretty country
+girl on whose shapely shoulders rested the burden
+of the welfare of the schools, she remarked
+that if they didn&#8217;t soon build the new court-house
+so as to give her such accommodations
+as her office really needed, &#8220;they might take
+their old office&mdash;so there!&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Fair woman,&#8221; said Wilbur, as he creased
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_278' name='page_278'></a>278</span>
+his Prince Albert in a parting bow, &#8220;should
+adorn the home!&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Bosh!&#8221; sneered Jennie, rather pleased, all
+the same, &#8220;suppose she isn&#8217;t fair, and hasn&#8217;t
+any home!&#8221;</p>
+<p>This question of adorning a home was no
+nearer settlement with Jennie than it had ever
+been, though increasingly a matter of speculation.</p>
+<p>There were two or three men&mdash;rather good
+catches, too&mdash;who, if they were encouraged&mdash;but
+what was there to any of them? Take Wilbur
+Smythe, now; he would by sheer force of
+persistent assurance and fair abilities eventually
+get a good practise for a country lawyer&mdash;three
+or four thousand a year&mdash;serve in the
+legislature or the state senate, and finally become
+a bank director with a goodly standing
+as a safe business man; but what was there
+to him? This is what Jennie asked her paper-weight
+as she placed it on a pile of unfinished
+examination papers. And the paper-weight
+echoed, &#8220;Not a thing out of the ordinary!&#8221; And
+then, said Jennie, &#8220;Well, you little simpleton,
+who and what are <i>you</i> so out of the ordinary
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_279' name='page_279'></a>279</span>
+that you should sneer at Wilbur Smythe and
+Beckman Fifield and such men?&#8221; And echo
+answered, &#8220;What?&#8221;&mdash;and then the mail-carrier
+came in.</p>
+<p>Down near the bottom of the pile she found
+this letter, signed by a southern state superintendent
+of schools, but dated at Kirksville,
+Missouri:</p>
+<div class='blockquot'>
+<p>&#8220;I am a member of a party of southern educators&mdash;state
+superintendents in the main,&#8221; the
+letter ran, &#8220;<i>en tour</i> of the country to see what
+we can find of an instructive nature in rural
+school work. I assure you that we are being
+richly repaid for the time and expense. There
+are things going on in the schools here in northeastern
+Missouri, for instance, which merit
+much study. We have met Professor Withers,
+of Ames, who suggests that we visit your
+schools, and especially the rural school taught
+by a young man named Irwin, and I wonder if
+you will be free on next Monday morning, if
+we come to your office, to direct us to the
+place? If you could accompany us on the trip,
+and perhaps show us some of your other excellent
+schools, we should be honored and
+pleased. The South is recreating her rural
+schools, and we are coming to believe that we
+shall be better workmen if we create a new
+kind rather than an improvement of the old
+kind.&#8221;</p>
+</div>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_280' name='page_280'></a>280</span></div>
+<p>There was more of this courteous and deferential
+letter, all giving Jennie a sense of being
+saluted by a fine gentleman in satin and ruffles,
+and with a plume on his hat. And then came
+the shock&mdash;a party of state officials were coming
+into the county to study Jim Irwin&#8217;s school!
+They would never come to study Wilbur
+Smythe&#8217;s law practise&mdash;never in the world&mdash;or
+her work as county superintendent&mdash;never!&mdash;and
+Jim was getting seventy-five dollars a
+month, and had a mother to support. Moreover,
+he was getting more than he had asked
+when the colonel had told him to &#8220;hold the district
+up!&#8221; But there could be no doubt that
+there was something <i>to</i> Jim&mdash;the man was out
+of the ordinary. And wasn&#8217;t that just what
+she had been looking for in her mind?</p>
+<p>Jennie wired to her southerner for the number
+of his party, and secured automobiles for
+the trip. She sent a note to Jim Irwin telling
+of the prospective visitation. She would show
+all concerned that she could do some things,
+anyhow, and she would send these people on
+with a good impression of her county.</p>
+<p>She was glad of the automobiles the next
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_281' name='page_281'></a>281</span>
+Monday morning, when at nine-thirty the train
+discharged upon her a dozen very alert, very
+up-to-date, very inquisitive southerners, male
+and female, most of whom seemed to have left
+their &#8220;r&#8217;s&#8221; in the gulf region. It was eleven
+when the party parked their machines before
+the schoolhouse door.</p>
+<p>&#8220;There are visitors here before us,&#8221; said
+Jennie.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Seems rather like an educational shrine,&#8221;
+said Doctor Brathwayt, of Mississippi. &#8220;How
+does he accommodate so many visitors in that
+small edifice?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I am not aware,&#8221; said Jennie, &#8220;that he has
+been in the habit of receiving so very many
+from outside the district. Well, shall we
+go in?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Once inside, Jennie felt a queer return of
+her old aversion to Jim&#8217;s methods&mdash;the aversion
+which had caused her to criticize him so
+sharply on the occasion of her first visit. The
+reason for the return of the feeling lay in the
+fact that the work going on was of the same
+sort, but of a more intense character. It was
+so utterly unlike a school as Jennie understood
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_282' name='page_282'></a>282</span>
+the word, that she glanced back at the group
+of educators with a little blush. The school
+was in a sort of uproar. Not that uproar of
+boredom and mischief of which most of us have
+familiar memories, but a sort of eager uproar,
+in which every child was intensely interested
+in the same thing; and did little rustling things
+because of this interest; something like the
+hum at a football game or a dog-fight.</p>
+<p>On one side of the desk stood Jim Irwin, and
+facing him was a smooth stranger of the old-fashioned
+lightning-rod-agent type&mdash;the shallower
+and laxer sort of salesman of the kind
+whose sole business is to get signatures on the
+dotted line, and let some one else do the rest.
+In short, he was a &#8220;closer.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Standing back of him in evident distress was
+Mr. Cornelius Bonner, and grouped about were
+Columbus Brown, B. B. Hamm, Ezra Bronson,
+A. B. Talcott and two or three others from
+outside the Woodruff District. With envelopes
+in their hands and the light of battle in their
+eyes stood Newton Bronson, Raymond Simms,
+Bettina Hansen, Mary Smith and Angie Talcott,
+the boys filled with delight, the girls rather
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_283' name='page_283'></a>283</span>
+frightened at being engaged in something like
+a debate with the salesman.</p>
+<p>As the latest-coming visitors moved forward,
+they heard the schoolmaster finishing his passage
+at arms with the salesman.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You should not feel exasperated at us, Mr.
+Carmichael,&#8221; said he in tones of the most complete
+respect, &#8220;for what our figures show. You
+are unfortunate in the business proposition you
+offer this community. That is all. Even these
+children have the facts to prove that the
+creamery outfit you offer is not worth within
+two thousand dollars of what you ask for it,
+and that it is very doubtful if it is the sort
+of outfit we should need.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ll bet you a thousand dollars&mdash;&#8221; began
+Carmichael hotly, when Jim waved him down.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Not with me,&#8221; said Jim. &#8220;Your friend, Mr.
+Bonner, there, knows what chance there is for
+you to bet even a thousand cents with me. Besides,
+we know our facts, in this school. We&#8217;ve
+been working on them for a long time.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Bet your life we have!&#8221; interpolated Newton
+Bronson.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Before we finish,&#8221; said Jim, &#8220;I want to
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_284' name='page_284'></a>284</span>
+thank you gentlemen for bringing in Mr. Carmichael.
+We have been reading up on the literature
+of the creamery promoter, and it is a
+very fine thing to have one in the flesh with
+whom to&mdash;to&mdash;demonstrate, if Mr. Carmichael
+will allow me to say so.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Carmichael looked at Bonner, made an expressive
+motion with his head toward the door,
+and turned as if to leave.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well,&#8221; said he, &#8220;I can do plenty of business
+with <i>men</i>. If you <i>men</i> want to make the
+deal I offer you, and I can show you from the
+statistics I&#8217;ve got at the hotel that it&#8217;s a special
+deal just to get started in this part of the
+state, and carries a thousand dollars of cut in
+price to you. Let&#8217;s leave these children and
+this he school-ma&#8217;am and get something done.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I can&#8217;t allow you to depart,&#8221; said Jim more
+gently than before, &#8220;without thanking you for
+the very excellent talk you gave us on the advantage
+of the cooperative creamery over the
+centralizer. We in this school believe in the
+cooperative creamery, and if we can get rid
+of you, Mr. Carmichael, without buying your
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_285' name='page_285'></a>285</span>
+equipment, I think your work here may be productive
+of good.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;He&#8217;s off three or four points on the average
+overrun in the Wisconsin co-ops,&#8221; said Newton.</p>
+<p>&#8220;And we thought,&#8221; said Mary Smith, &#8220;that
+we&#8217;d need more cows than he said to keep up
+a creamery of our own.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh,&#8221; replied Jim, &#8220;but we mustn&#8217;t expect
+Mr. Carmichael to know the subject as well as
+we do, children. He makes a practise of talking
+mostly to people who know nothing about
+it&mdash;and he talks very well. All in favor of
+thanking Mr. Carmichael please say &#8216;Aye.&#8217;&#8221;</p>
+<p>There was a rousing chorus of &#8220;Aye!&#8221; in
+which Mr. Carmichael, followed closely by Mr.
+Bonner, made his exit. B. B. Hamm went forward
+and shook Jim&#8217;s hand slowly and contemplatively,
+as if trying to remember just
+what he should say.</p>
+<p>&#8220;James E. Irwin,&#8221; said he, &#8220;you&#8217;ve saved us
+from being skinned by the smoothest grafter
+that I ever seen.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Not I,&#8221; said Jim; &#8220;the kind of school I
+stand for, Mr. Hamm, will save you more than
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_286' name='page_286'></a>286</span>
+that&mdash;and give you the broadest culture any
+school ever gave. A culture based on life.
+We&#8217;ve been studying life, in this school&mdash;the
+life we all live here in this district.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;He had a smooth partner, too,&#8221; said Columbus
+Brown. Jim looked at Bonner&#8217;s little
+boy in one of the front seats and shook his
+head at Columbus warningly.</p>
+<p>&#8220;If I hadn&#8217;t herded &#8217;em in here to ask you
+a few questions about cooperative creameries,&#8221;
+said Mr. Talcott, &#8220;we&#8217;d have been stuck&mdash;they
+pretty near had our names. And then the
+whole neighborhood would have been sucked in
+for about fifty dollars a name.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;d have gone in for two hundred,&#8221; said
+B. B. Hamm.</p>
+<p>&#8220;May I call a little meeting here for a minute,
+Jim?&#8221; asked Ezra Bronson. &#8220;Why, where&#8217;s
+he gone?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;They&#8217;s some other visitors come in,&#8221; said a
+little girl, pulling her apron in embarrassment
+at the teacher&#8217;s absence.</p>
+<p>Jim had, after what seemed to Jennie an
+interminable while, seen the county superintendent
+and her distinguished party, and was
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_287' name='page_287'></a>287</span>
+now engaged in welcoming them and endeavoring
+to find them seats,&mdash;quite an impossible
+thing at that particular moment, by the way.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Don&#8217;t mind us, Mr. Irwin,&#8221; said Doctor
+Brathwayt. &#8220;This is the best thing we&#8217;ve seen
+on our journeyings. Please go on with the
+proceedin&#8217;s. That gentleman seems to have in
+mind the perfectin&#8217; of some so&#8217;t of organization.
+I&#8217;m intensely interested.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;d like to call a little meetin&#8217; here,&#8221; said
+Ezra to the teacher. &#8220;Seein&#8217; we&#8217;ve busted up
+your program so far, may we take a little while
+longer?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Certainly,&#8221; said Jim. &#8220;The school will
+please come to order.&#8221;</p>
+<p>The pupils took their seats, straightened
+their books and papers, and were at attention.
+Doctor Brathwayt nodded approvingly as if at
+the answer to some question in his mind.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Children,&#8221; said Mr. Irwin, &#8220;you may or may
+not be interested in what these gentlemen are
+about to do&mdash;but I hope you are. Those who
+wish may be members of Mr. Bronson&#8217;s meeting.
+Those who do not prefer to do so may
+take up their regular work.&#8221;
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_288' name='page_288'></a>288</span></p>
+<p>&#8220;Gentlemen,&#8221; said Mr. Bronson to the remains
+of Mr. Carmichael&#8217;s creamery party,
+&#8220;we&#8217;ve been cutting bait in this neighborhood
+about long enough. I&#8217;m in favor of fishing,
+now. It would have been the biggest disgrace
+ever put on this district to have been swindled
+by that sharper, when the man that could have
+set us right on the subject was right here working
+for us, and we never let him have a chance.
+And yet that&#8217;s what we pretty near did. How
+many here favor building a cooperative creamery
+if we can get the farmers in with cows
+enough to make it profitable, and the equipment
+at the right price?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Each man held up a hand.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Here&#8217;s one of our best farmers not voting,&#8221;
+said Mr. Bronson, indicating Raymond Simms.
+&#8220;How about you, Raymond?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Ah reckon paw&#8217;ll come in,&#8221; said Raymond
+blushingly.</p>
+<p>&#8220;He will if you say so,&#8221; said Mr. Bronson.</p>
+<p>Raymond&#8217;s hand went up amid a ripple of
+applause from the pupils, who seemed glad to
+have a voter in their ranks.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Unanimous!&#8221; said Mr. Bronson. &#8220;It is a
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_289' name='page_289'></a>289</span>
+vote! Now I&#8217;d like to hear a motion to perfect
+a permanent organization to build a creamery.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I think we ought to have a secretary first,&#8221;
+said Mr. Talcott, &#8220;and I nominate Mr. James
+E. Irwin for the post.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Quite correct,&#8221; said Mr. Bronson, &#8220;thankee,
+A. B. I was about to forgit the secretary. Any
+other nominations? No &#8217;bjections, Mr. Irwin
+will be declared unanimously elected. Mr. Irwin&#8217;s
+elected. Mr. Irwin, will you please assume
+the duties?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Jim sat down at the desk and began making
+notes.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I think we ought to call this the Anti-Carmichael
+Protective Association,&#8221; said Columbus
+Brown, but Mr. Bronson interrupted him,
+rather frowningly.</p>
+<p>&#8220;All in good time, Clumb,&#8221; said he, &#8220;but this
+is serious work.&#8221; So admonished, the meeting
+appointed committees, fixed upon a time for a
+future meeting, threw a collection of half-dollars
+on the desk to start a petty cash fund,
+made the usual joke about putting the secretary
+under bond, adjourned and dispersed.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_290' name='page_290'></a>290</span></p>
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s a go this time!&#8221; said Newton to Jim.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I think so,&#8221; said Jim, &#8220;with those men interested.
+Well, our study of creameries has
+given a great deal of language work, a good
+deal of arithmetic, some geography, and finally
+saved the people from a swindle. Rather good
+work, Raymond!&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;My mother has a delayed luncheon ready
+for the party,&#8221; said Jennie to Jim. &#8220;Please
+come with us&mdash;please!&#8221;</p>
+<p>But Jim demurred. Getting off at this time
+of day was really out of the question if he was
+to be ready to show the real work of the school
+in the afternoon session.</p>
+<p>&#8220;This has been rather extraordinary,&#8221; said
+Jim, &#8220;but I am very glad you were here. It
+shows the utility of the right sort of work in
+letter-writing, language, geography and arithmetic&mdash;in
+learning things about farming.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It certainly does,&#8221; said Doctor Brathwayt.
+&#8220;I wouldn&#8217;t have missed it under any consideration;
+but I&#8217;m certainly sorry for that
+creamery shark and his accomplice&mdash;to be
+routed by the Fifth Reader grade in farming!&#8221;</p>
+<p>The luncheon was rather a wonderful
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_291' name='page_291'></a>291</span>
+affair&mdash;and its success was unqualified after everybody
+discovered that the majority of those in
+attendance felt much more at home when calling
+it dinner. Colonel Woodruff had fought
+against the regiment of the father of Professor
+Gray, of Georgia, in at least one engagement,
+and tentative plans were laid for the
+meeting of the two old veterans &#8220;some winter
+in the future.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;What d&#8217;ye think of our school?&#8221; asked the
+colonel.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well,&#8221; said Professor Gray, &#8220;it&#8217;s not fair to
+judge, Colonel, on what must have been rather
+an extraordinary moment in the school&#8217;s history.
+I take it that you don&#8217;t put on a representation
+of &#8216;The Knave Unmasked&#8217; every
+morning.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It was more like a caucus than I&#8217;ve ever
+seen it, daddy,&#8221; said Jennie, &#8220;and less like a
+school.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Don&#8217;t you think,&#8221; said Doctor Brathwayt,
+&#8220;that it was less like a school because it was
+more like life? It <i>was</i> life. If I am not mistaken,
+history for this community was making
+in that schoolroom as we entered.&#8221;
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_292' name='page_292'></a>292</span></p>
+<p>&#8220;You&#8217;re perfectly right, Doctor,&#8221; said the
+colonel. &#8220;Columbus Brown and about a dozen
+others living outside the district are calling
+Wilbur Smythe in counsel to perfect plans for
+an election to consolidate a few of these little
+independent districts, for the express purpose
+of giving Jim Irwin a plant that he can do
+something with. Jim&#8217;s got too big for the district,
+and so we&#8217;re going to enlarge the district,
+and the schoolhouse, and the teaching force,
+and the means of educational grace generally.
+That&#8217;s as sure as can be&mdash;after what took place
+this morning.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;He&#8217;s rather a wonderful person, to be found
+in such a position,&#8221; said Professor Gray, &#8220;or
+would be in any region I have visited.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;He&#8217;s a native product,&#8221; said the colonel,
+&#8220;but a wonder all the same. He&#8217;s a Brown
+Mouse, you know.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;A&mdash;a&mdash;?&#8221; Doctor Brathwayt was plainly
+astonished. And so the colonel was allowed to
+tell again the story of the Darbishire brown
+mice, and why he called Jim Irwin one. Doctor
+Brathwayt said it was an interesting Mendelian
+explanation of the appearance of such
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_293' name='page_293'></a>293</span>
+a character as Jim. &#8220;And if you are right,
+Colonel, you&#8217;ll lose him one of these days. You
+can&#8217;t expect to retain a Cæsar, a Napoleon, or
+a Lincoln in a rural school, can you?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t know about that,&#8221; said the colonel.
+&#8220;The great opportunity for such a Brown
+Mouse may be in this very school, right now.
+He&#8217;d have as big an army right here as Socrates
+ever had. The Brown Mouse is the only
+judge of his own proper place.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I think,&#8221; said Mrs. Brathwayt, as they motored
+back to the school, &#8220;that your country
+schoolmaster is rather terrible. The way he
+crushed that Mr. Carmichael was positively
+merciless. Did he know how cruel he was?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I think not,&#8221; said Jennie. &#8220;It was the truth
+that crushed Mr. Carmichael.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;But that vote of thanks,&#8221; said Mrs. Brathwayt.
+&#8220;Surely that was the bitterest irony.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I wonder if it was,&#8221; said Jennie. &#8220;No, I
+am sure it wasn&#8217;t. He wanted to leave the children
+thinking as well as possible of their victim,
+and especially of Mr. Bonner; and there
+was really something in Mr. Carmichael&#8217;s talk
+which could be praised. I have known Jim Irwin
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_294' name='page_294'></a>294</span>
+since we were both children, and I feel
+sure that if he had had any idea that his treatment
+of this man had been unnecessarily cruel,
+it would have given him a lot of pain.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;My dear,&#8221; said Mrs. Brathwayt, &#8220;I think
+you are to be congratulated for having known
+for a long time a genius.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Thank you,&#8221; said Jennie. And Mrs. Brathwayt
+gave her a glance which brought to her
+cheek another blush; but of a different sort
+from the one provoked by the uproar in the
+Woodruff school.</p>
+<p>There could be no doubt now that Jim was
+thoroughly wonderful&mdash;nor that she, the county
+superintendent, was quite as thoroughly a little
+fool. She to be put in authority over him!
+It was too absurd for laughter. Fortunately,
+she hadn&#8217;t hindered him much&mdash;but who was
+to be thanked for that? Was it owing to any
+wisdom of hers? Well, she had decided in his
+favor, in those first proceedings to revoke his
+certificate. Perhaps that was as good a thing
+to remember as was to be found in the record.</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<a name='XXIII_AND_SO_THEY_LIVED' id='XXIII_AND_SO_THEY_LIVED'></a>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_295' name='page_295'></a>295</span>
+<h2>CHAPTER XXIII</h2>
+<h3>AND SO THEY LIVED&mdash;&mdash;</h3>
+</div>
+
+<p>And so it turned out quite as if it were in
+the old ballad, that &#8220;all in the merry
+month of May,&#8221; and also &#8220;all in the merry green
+wood,&#8221; there were great doings about the bold
+little promontory where once stood the cabin
+on the old wood-lot where the Simms family
+had dwelt. The brook ran about the promontory,
+and laid at its feet on three sides a carpet
+of blue-grass, amid clumps of trees and
+wild bushes. Not far afield on either hand
+came the black corn-land, but up and down the
+bluffy sides of the brook for some distance on
+both sides of the King-dragged highway, ran
+the old wood-lot, now regaining much of the
+unkempt appearance which characterized it
+when Jim Irwin had drawn upon himself the
+gentle rebuke of Old Man Simms for not giving
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_296' name='page_296'></a>296</span>
+a whoop from the big road before coming
+into the yard.</p>
+<p>But Old Man Simms was gone, with all the
+Simmses, now thoroughly established on the
+Blanchard farm, and quite happy in their new
+success. The cabin was gone, and in its place
+stood a pretty little bungalow, about which
+blossomed the lilacs and peonies and roses and
+other old-fashioned flowers, planted there long
+ago by some pioneer woman, nourished back to
+thriftiness by old Mrs. Simms, and carefully
+preserved during the struggles with the builders
+of the bungalow by Mrs. Irwin. For this
+was Mrs. Irwin&#8217;s new home. It was, in point
+of fact, the teacher&#8217;s house or schoolmanse for
+the new consolidated Woodruff District, and
+the old Simms wood-lot was the glebe-land of
+the schoolmanse.</p>
+<p>Jim turned over and over in his mind these
+new applications of old, historic, significant
+words, dear to every reader of history&mdash;&#8220;glebe-land,&#8221;
+&#8220;schoolmanse&#8221;&mdash;and it seemed to him
+that they signified the return of many old
+things lost in Merrie England, lost in New England,
+lost all over the English-speaking world,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_297' name='page_297'></a>297</span>
+when the old publicly-paid clergyman ceased
+to be so far the servant of all the people that
+they refused to be taxed for his support. Was
+not the new kind of rural teacher to be a publicly-paid
+leader of thought, of culture, of progress,
+and was he not to have his manse, his
+glebe-land, and his &#8220;living&#8221;? And all because,
+like the old clergymen, he was doing a work
+in which everybody was interested and for
+which they were willing to be taxed. Perhaps
+it was not so high a status as the old; but who
+was to say that? Certainly not Jim Irwin, the
+possessor of the new kind of &#8220;living,&#8221; with its
+&#8220;glebe-land&#8221; and its &#8220;schoolmanse.&#8221; He would
+have rated the new quite as high as the old.</p>
+<p>From the brow of the promontory, a light
+concrete bridge took the pretty little gorge in
+the leap of a single arch, and landed the eye
+at the bottom of the front yard of the schoolhouse.
+Thus the new institution of life was
+in full view of the schoolmanse veranda, and
+yet shut off from it by the dry moat of the
+brook and its tiny meadow of blue-grass.</p>
+<p>Across the road was the creamery, with its
+businesslike unloading platform, and its addition
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_298' name='page_298'></a>298</span>
+in process of construction for the reception
+of the machinery for the cooperative
+laundry. Not far from the creamery, and also
+across the road, stood the blacksmith and
+wheelwright shop. Still farther down the
+stream were the barn, poultry house, pens,
+hutches and yards of the little farm&mdash;small,
+economically made, and unpretentious, as were
+all the buildings save the schoolhouse itself,
+which was builded for the future.</p>
+<p>And even the schoolhouse, when one thinks
+of the uses to which it was to be put&mdash;kitchen,
+nursery, kindergarten, banquet-hall, theater,
+moving-picture hall, classrooms, manual training
+rooms, laboratory and counting-room and
+what-not, was wonderfully small&mdash;Colonel
+Woodruff said far too small&mdash;though it was
+necessarily so large as to be rather astonishing
+to the unexpectant passer-by.</p>
+<p>The unexpectant passer-by this May day,
+however, would have been especially struck by
+the number of motor-cars, buggies and surreys
+parked in the yard back of the creamery, along
+the roadside, and by the driveway running to
+the schoolhouse. People in numbers had arrived
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_299' name='page_299'></a>299</span>
+by five o&#8217;clock in the afternoon, and were
+still coming. They strolled about the place,
+examining the buildings and grounds, and talking
+with the blacksmith and the butter-maker,
+gradually drawing into the schoolhouse like a
+swarm of bees into a hive selected by the
+queen. None of them, however, went across
+the concrete bridge to the schoolmanse, save
+Mrs. Simms, who crossed, consulted with Mrs.
+Irwin about the shrubbery and flowers, and
+went back to Buddie and Jinnie, who were good
+children but natchally couldn&#8217;t be trusted with
+so many other young ones withouten some
+watchin&#8217;.</p>
+<p>&#8220;They&#8217;re coming! They&#8217;re coming!&#8221;</p>
+<p>This was the cry borne to the people in and
+about the schoolhouse by that Hans Hansen
+who would be called Hans Nilsen. Hans had
+been to the top of the little hill and had a look
+toward town. Like a crew manning the rigging,
+or a crowd having its picture taken, the
+assemblage crystallized into forms determined
+by the chances of getting a glimpse of the bungalow
+across the ravine&mdash;on posts, fences,
+trees and hillocks. Still nobody went across
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_300' name='page_300'></a>300</span>
+the bridge, and when McGeehee Simms and
+Johnny Bonner strayed to the bridge-head,
+Mrs. Simms called them back by a minatory,
+&#8220;Buddy, what did I <i>tell</i> you? You come hyah!&#8221;</p>
+<p>A motor-car came over the hillock, ran down
+the road to the driveway to the schoolmanse
+and drew up at the door. Out of it stepped
+Mrs. Woodruff and the colonel, their daughter,
+the county superintendent of schools, and Mr.
+Jim Irwin. Jennie was dressed in a very well-tailored
+traveling costume, and Jim in a moderately
+well-tailored business suit. Mrs. Irwin
+kissed her son and Jennie, and led the way into
+the house. Jennie and Jim followed&mdash;and
+when they went in, the crowd over across the
+ravine burst forth into a tremendous cheer,
+followed by a three-times-three and a tiger.
+The unexpectant passer-by would have been
+rather surprised at this, but we who are acquainted
+with the parties must all begin to
+have our suspicions. The fact that when they
+reached the threshold Jim picked Jennie up in
+his arms and carried her in, will enable any
+good detective to put one and one together and
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_301' name='page_301'></a>301</span>
+make a pair&mdash;which comes pretty near telling
+the whole story.</p>
+<p>By this time it was nearly seven, and Calista
+Simms came across the charmed bridge as a
+despatch-bearer, saying that if Mr. Jim and
+Miss Jennie didn&#8217;t mind, dinner would be
+suhved right soon. It was cooked about right,
+and the folks was gettin&#8217; right hungry&mdash;an&#8217;
+such a crowd! There were fifteen in the
+babies&#8217; room, and for a while they thought the
+youngest Hamm young one had swallowed a
+marble. She would tell &#8217;em they would be right
+over; good-by.</p>
+<p>There was another cheer as the three elderly
+and the two young people emerged from the
+schoolmanse and took their way over the
+bridge to the school side of the velvet-bottomed
+moat; but it did not terminate in three-times-three
+and a tiger. It was, in fact shut off like
+the vibration of a bell dipped in water by the
+sudden rush of the shouters into the big assembly-room,
+now filled with tables for the banquet&mdash;and
+here the domestic economy classes,
+with their mothers, sisters, female cousins and
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_302' name='page_302'></a>302</span>
+aunts, met them, as waiters, hat-snatchers,
+hostesses, floor-managers and cooks, scoring
+the greatest triumph of history in the Woodruff
+District. For everything went off like
+clockwork, especially the victuals&mdash;and such
+victuals!</p>
+<p>There was quantity in meats, breads, vegetables&mdash;and
+there was also savor. There was
+plenty, and there was style. Ask Mrs. Haakon
+Peterson, who yearned for culture, and had
+been afraid her children wouldn&#8217;t get it if Yim
+Irwin taught them nothing but farming. She
+will tell you that the dinner&mdash;which so many
+thought of all the time as supper&mdash;was yust
+as well served as it if had been in the Chamberlain
+Hotel in Des Moines, where she had
+stayed when she went with Haakon to the
+state convention.</p>
+<p>Why shouldn&#8217;t it have been even better
+served? It was planned, cooked, served and
+eaten by people of intelligence and brains, in
+their own house, as a community affair, and
+in a community where, if any one should ask
+you, you are authorized to state that there&#8217;s as
+much wealth to the acre as in any strictly farming
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_303' name='page_303'></a>303</span>
+spot between the two oceans, and where
+you are perfectly safe&mdash;financially&mdash;in dropping
+from a balloon in the dark of the moon,
+and paying a hundred and fifty dollars an acre
+for any farm you happen to land on. Why
+shouldn&#8217;t things have been well done, when
+every one worked, not for money, but for the
+love of the doing, and the love of learning to
+do in the best way?</p>
+<p>Some of these things came out in the
+speeches following the repast&mdash;and some other
+things, too. It was probably not quite fair for
+B. B. Hamm to incorporate in his wishes for
+the welfare and prosperity and so forth of Jim
+and Jennie that stale one about the troubles
+of life, but he wanted to see Jennie blush&mdash;which
+as a matter of fact he did; but she
+failed to grow quite so fiery red as did Jim.
+But B. B. was a good fellow, and a Trojan in
+his work for the cause, and the schoolmaster
+and superintendent of schools forgave him. A
+remark may be a little broad, and still clean,
+and B. B. made a clean speech mainly devoted
+to the increased value of that farm he at one
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_304' name='page_304'></a>304</span>
+memorable time was going to sell before Jim&#8217;s
+fool notions could be carried out.</p>
+<p>Colonel Woodruff made most of the above
+points which I have niched from him. He had
+begun as a reformer late in life, he said, but
+he would leave it to them if he hadn&#8217;t worked
+at the trade steadily after enlistment. He had
+become a follower of Jim Irwin, because Jim&#8217;s
+reform was like dragging the road in front of
+your own farm&mdash;it was reform right at home,
+and not at the county seat, or Des Moines, or
+Washington. He had followed Jim Irwin as he
+had followed Lincoln, and Grant, and Blaine,
+and McKinley&mdash;because Jim Irwin stood for
+more upward growth for the average American
+citizen than the colonel could see any prospect
+of getting from any other choice. And
+he was proud to live in a country like this,
+saved and promoted by the great men he had
+followed, and in a neighborhood served and
+promoted, if not quite saved, by Jim Irwin.
+And he was not so sure about its not being
+saved. Every man and nation had to be saved
+anew every so often, and the colonel believed
+that Jim Irwin&#8217;s new kind of rural school is
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_305' name='page_305'></a>305</span>
+just as necessary to the salvation of this country
+as Lincoln&#8217;s new kind of recognition of
+human rights was half a century ago. &#8220;I am
+about to close my speech,&#8221; said the colonel,
+&#8220;and the small service I have been able to give
+to this nation. I went through the war, neighbors&mdash;and
+am proud of it; but I&#8217;ve done more
+good in the peaceful service of the last three
+years than I did in four of fighting and campaigning.
+That&#8217;s the way I feel about what
+we&#8217;ve done in Consolidated District Number
+One.&#8221; (Vociferous and long-continued applause.)</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, Colonel!&#8221; The voice of Angie Talcott
+rose from away back near the kitchen. &#8220;Can
+Jennie keep on bein&#8217; county superintendent,
+now she&#8217;s married?&#8221;</p>
+<p>A great guffaw of laughter reduced poor
+Angie to tears; and Jennie had to go over and
+comfort her. It was all right for her to ask
+that, and they ought not to laugh at Angie, so
+there! Now, you&#8217;re all right, and let&#8217;s talk
+about the new schoolhouse, and so forth. Jennie
+brought the smiles back to Angle&#8217;s face,
+just in time to hear Jim tell the people amid
+louder cheers that he had been asked to go into
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_306' name='page_306'></a>306</span>
+the rural-school extension work in two states,
+and had been offered a fine salary in either
+place, but that he wasn&#8217;t even considering these
+offers. And about that time, the children began
+to get sleepy and cross and naughty, and
+the women set in motion the agencies which
+moved the crowd homeward.</p>
+<hr class='tb' />
+
+<p>Before a bright wood fire&mdash;which they really
+didn&#8217;t need, but how else was Jim&#8217;s mother to
+show off the little fireplace?&mdash;sat Jim and Jennie.
+They had been together for a week now&mdash;this
+being their home-coming&mdash;and had only
+begun to get really happy.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Isn&#8217;t it fine to have the fireplace?&#8221; said
+Jennie.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes, but we can&#8217;t really afford to burn a fire
+in it&mdash;in Iowa,&#8221; said Jim. &#8220;Fuel&#8217;s too everlastingly
+scarce. If we use it much, the fagots
+and deadwood on our &#8216;glebe-land&#8217; won&#8217;t last
+long.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;If you should take that Oklahoma position,&#8221;
+said Jennie, &#8220;we could afford to have open wood
+fires all the time.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s warmer in Oklahoma,&#8221; said Jim, &#8220;and
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_307' name='page_307'></a>307</span>
+wood&#8217;s more plentiful. Yes&#8221;&mdash;contemplatively&mdash;&#8220;we
+could, dear.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It would be nice, wouldn&#8217;t it?&#8221; said Jennie.</p>
+<p>&#8220;All right,&#8221; said Jim briskly, &#8220;get me my
+writing materials, and we&#8217;ll accept. It&#8217;s still
+open.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Jennie sat looking into the fire oblivious of
+the suggestion. She was smiling. Jim moved
+uneasily, and rose.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well,&#8221; he said, &#8220;I believe I can better guess
+where mother would put those writing materials
+than you could, after all. I&#8217;ll hunt them
+up.&#8221;</p>
+<p>As he passed, Jennie took him by the hand
+and pulled him down on the arm of her chair.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Jim,&#8221; she said, &#8220;don&#8217;t be mean to me! You
+know you wouldn&#8217;t do such a wicked, wicked
+thing at this time as to leave the people here.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;All right,&#8221; said Jim, &#8220;whatever you say is
+the law.&#8221;</p>
+<p>When Jennie spoke again things had taken
+place which caused her voice to emanate from
+Jim&#8217;s shirt-front.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Did you hear,&#8221; said she, &#8220;what Angie Talcott
+asked?&#8221;
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_308' name='page_308'></a>308</span></p>
+<p>&#8220;M&#8217;h&#8217;m,&#8221; said Jim.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well,&#8221; said Jennie, &#8220;now that I&#8217;m married
+can I go on being county superintendent?&#8221;</p>
+<p>There was a long silence.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Would you like to?&#8221; asked Jim.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Kind of,&#8221; said Jennie; &#8220;if I knew enough
+about things to do anything worth while; but
+I&#8217;m afraid that by rising to my full height I
+shall always just fail to be able to see over
+anything.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You&#8217;ve done more for the schools of the
+county,&#8221; said Jim, &#8220;in the last year than any
+other county superintendent has ever done.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;And we shall need the money so like&mdash;so
+like the dickens,&#8221; said Jennie.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, not so badly,&#8221; laughed Jim, &#8220;except for
+the first year. I&#8217;ll have this little farm paying
+as much as some quarter-sections when we get
+squared about. Why, we can make a living on
+this school farm, Jennie,&mdash;or I&#8217;m not fit to be
+the head of the school.&#8221;</p>
+<p>There was another silence, during which
+Jennie took down her hair, and wound it
+around Jim&#8217;s neck.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_309' name='page_309'></a>309</span></p>
+<p>&#8220;It will settle itself soon one of these days
+anyhow,&#8221; said he at last. &#8220;There&#8217;s enough to
+do for both of us right here.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;But they won&#8217;t pay me,&#8221; she protested.</p>
+<p>&#8220;They don&#8217;t pay the ministers&#8217; wives,&#8221; said
+Jim, &#8220;and yet, the ministers with the right sort
+of wives are always the best paid. I guess
+you&#8217;ll be in the bill, Jennie.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Jim walked to the open window and looked
+out over the still landscape. The untidy grounds
+appealed to him&mdash;there would be lessons in
+their improvement for both the children and
+the older people. It was all good. Down in
+the little meadow grew the dreaming trees,
+their round crowns rising as from a sea not
+quite to the level of the bungalow, their thrifty
+leaves glistening in the moonlight. Across
+the pretty bridge lay the silent little campus
+with its twentieth-century temple facing its
+chief priest. It was all good, without and
+within. He went across the hall to bid his
+mother good night. She clung to him convulsively,
+and they had their own five minutes
+which arranged matters for these two silent
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_310' name='page_310'></a>310</span>
+natures on the new basis forever. Jennie was
+in white before the mantel when he returned,
+smiling at the inscription thereon.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Why didn&#8217;t you put it in Latin?&#8221; she inquired.
+&#8220;It would have had so much more distinction.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I wanted it to have meaning instead,&#8221; said
+Jim. &#8220;And besides, nobody who was at hand
+was quite sure how to turn the Latin phrase.
+Are you?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Jennie leaned forward with her elbows on
+her knees, and studied it.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I believe I could,&#8221; said she, &#8220;without any
+pony. But after all, I like it better as it is.
+I like everything, Jim&mdash;everything!&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;LET US CEASE THINKING SO MUCH
+OF AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION, AND
+DEVOTE OURSELVES TO EDUCATIONAL
+AGRICULTURE. SO WILL THE NATION
+BE MADE STRONG.&#8221;</p>
+<div class='ce'>
+<p style=' margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:3em;'>THE END</p>
+</div>
+
+<!-- generated by ppgen.rb version: 2.31 -->
+<!-- timestamp: Tue Oct 21 06:26:58 -0400 2008 -->
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Brown Mouse, by Herbert Quick
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+</body>
+</html>
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@@ -0,0 +1,6693 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Brown Mouse, by Herbert Quick
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Brown Mouse
+
+Author: Herbert Quick
+
+Release Date: October 21, 2008 [EBook #26987]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BROWN MOUSE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE BROWN MOUSE
+
+By
+HERBERT QUICK
+
+Author of
+Aladdin & Company, The Broken Lance
+On Board the Good Ship Earth, Etc.
+
+INDIANAPOLIS
+THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY
+PUBLISHERS
+
+
+
+
+Copyright 1915
+The Bobbs-Merrill Company
+
+Printed in the United States of America
+
+PRESS OF
+BRAUNWORTH & CO.
+BOOK MANUFACTURERS
+BROOKLYN, N. Y.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+CHAPTER
+      I  A Maiden's "Humph"                   1
+     II  Reversed Unanimity                  24
+    III  What Is a Brown Mouse               38
+     IV  The First Day of School             48
+      V  The Promotion of Jennie             55
+     VI  Jim Talks the Weather Cold          65
+    VII  The New Wine                        75
+   VIII  And the Old Bottles                 89
+     IX  Jennie Arranges a Christmas Party   99
+      X  How Jim Was Lined Up               111
+     XI  The Mouse Escapes                  122
+    XII  Facing Trial                       132
+   XIII  Fame or Notoriety                  147
+    XIV  The Colonel Takes the Field        164
+     XV  A Minor Casts Half a Vote          188
+    XVI  The Glorious Fourth                203
+   XVII  A Trouble Shooter                  218
+  XVIII  Jim Goes to Ames                   235
+    XIX  Jim's World Widens                 242
+     XX  Think of It                        248
+    XXI  A School District Held Up          258
+   XXII  An Embassy From Dixie              277
+  XXIII  And So They Lived----              295
+
+
+
+
+THE BROWN MOUSE
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+A MAIDEN'S "HUMPH"
+
+
+A Farm-hand nodded in answer to a question asked him by Napoleon on the
+morning of Waterloo. The nod was false, or the emperor misunderstood--and
+Waterloo was lost. On the nod of a farm-hand rested the fate of Europe.
+
+This story may not be so important as the battle of Waterloo--and it may
+be. I think that Napoleon was sure to lose to Wellington sooner or later,
+and therefore the words "fate of Europe" in the last paragraph should be
+understood as modified by "for a while." But this story may change the
+world permanently. We will not discuss that, if you please. What I am
+endeavoring to make plain is that this history would never have been
+written if a farmer's daughter had not said "Humph!" to her father's hired
+man.
+
+Of course she never said it as it is printed. People never say "Humph!" in
+that way. She just closed her lips tight in the manner of people who have
+a great deal to say and prefer not to say it, and--I dislike to record
+this of a young lady who has been "off to school," but truthfulness
+compels--she grunted through her little nose the ordinary "Humph!" of
+conversational commerce, which was accepted at its face value by the
+farm-hand as an evidence of displeasure, disapproval, and even of
+contempt. Things then began to happen as they never would have done if the
+maiden hadn't "Humphed!" and this is a history of those happenings.
+
+As I have said, it may be more important than Waterloo. _Uncle Tom's
+Cabin_ was, and I hope--I am just beginning, you know--to make this a much
+greater book than _Uncle Tom's Cabin_. And it all rests on a "Humph!"
+Holmes says,
+
+                "Soft is the breath of a maiden's 'Yes,'
+                Not the light gossamer stirs with less."
+
+but what bard shall rightly sing the importance of a maiden's "Humph!"
+when I shall have finished telling what came of what Jennie Woodruff said
+to Jim Irwin, her father's hired man?
+
+Jim brought from his day's work all the fragrances of next year's meadows.
+He had been feeding the crops. All things have opposite poles, and the
+scents of the farm are no exception to the rule. Just now, Jim Irwin
+possessed in his clothes and person the olfactory pole opposite to the
+new-mown hay, the fragrant butter and the scented breath of the lowing
+kine--perspiration and top-dressing.
+
+He was not quite so keenly conscious of this as was Jennie Woodruff. Had
+he been so, the glimmer of her white pique dress on the bench under the
+basswood would not have drawn him back from the gate. He had come to the
+house to ask Colonel Woodruff about the farm work, and having received
+instructions to take a team and join in the road work next day, he had
+gone down the walk between the beds of four o'clocks and petunias to the
+lane. Turning to latch the gate, he saw through the dusk the white dress
+under the tree and drawn by the greatest attraction known in nature, had
+re-entered the Woodruff grounds and strolled back.
+
+A brief hello betrayed old acquaintance, and that social equality which
+still persists in theory between the work people on the American farm and
+the family of the employer. A desultory murmur of voices ensued. Jim Irwin
+sat down on the bench--not too close, be it observed, to the pique
+skirt.... There came into the voices a note of deeper earnestness,
+betokening something quite aside from the rippling of the course of true
+love running smoothly. In the man's voice was a tone of protest and
+pleading....
+
+"I know you are," said she; "but after all these years don't you think you
+should be at least preparing to be something more than that?"
+
+"What can I do?" he pleaded. "I'm tied hand and foot.... I might have
+..."
+
+"You might have," said she, "but, Jim, you haven't ... and I don't see any
+prospects...." "I have been writing for the farm papers," said Jim; "but
+..."
+
+"But that doesn't get you anywhere, you know.... You're a great deal more
+able and intelligent than Ed ---- and see what a fine position he has in
+Chicago...."
+
+"There's mother, you know," said Jim gently.
+
+"You can't do anything here," said Jennie. "You've been a farm-hand for
+fifteen years ... and you always will be unless you pull yourself loose.
+Even a girl can make a place for herself if she doesn't marry and leaves
+the farm. You're twenty-eight years old."
+
+"It's all wrong!" said Jim gently. "The farm ought to be the place for the
+best sort of career--I love the soil!"
+
+"I've been teaching for only two years, and they say I'll be nominated for
+county superintendent if I'll take it. Of course I won't--it seems
+silly--but if it were you, now, it would be a first step to a life that
+leads to something."
+
+"Mother and I can live on my wages--and the garden and chickens and the
+cow," said Jim. "After I received my teacher's certificate, I tried to
+work out some way of doing the same thing on a country teacher's wages. I
+couldn't. It doesn't seem right."
+
+Jim rose and after pacing back and forth sat down again, a little closer
+to Jennie. Jennie moved away to the extreme end of the bench, and the
+shrinking away of Jim as if he had been repelled by some sort of negative
+magnetism showed either sensitiveness or temper.
+
+"It seems as if it ought to be possible," said Jim, "for a man to do work
+on the farm, or in the rural schools, that would make him a livelihood. If
+he is only a field-hand, it ought to be possible for him to save money and
+buy a farm."
+
+"Pa's land is worth two hundred dollars an acre," said Jennie. "Six months
+of your wages for an acre--even if you lived on nothing."
+
+"No," he assented, "it can't be done. And the other thing can't, either.
+There ought to be such conditions that a teacher could make a living."
+
+"They do," said Jennie, "if they can live at home during vacations. _I_
+do."
+
+"But a man teaching in the country ought to be able to marry."
+
+"Marry!" said Jennie, rather unfeelingly, I think. "_You_ marry!" Then
+after remaining silent for nearly a minute, she uttered the
+syllable--without the utterance of which this narrative would not have
+been written. "_You_ marry! Humph!"
+
+Jim Irwin rose from the bench tingling with the insult he found in her
+tone. They had been boy-and-girl sweethearts in the old days at the
+Woodruff schoolhouse down the road, and before the fateful time when
+Jennie went "off to school" and Jim began to support his mother. They had
+even kissed--and on Jim's side, lonely as was his life, cut off as it
+necessarily was from all companionship save that of his tiny home and his
+fellow-workers of the field, the tender little love-story was the sole
+romance of his life. Jennie's "Humph!" retired this romance from
+circulation, he felt. It showed contempt for the idea of his marrying. It
+relegated him to a sexless category with other defectives, and badged him
+with the celibacy of a sort of twentieth-century monk, without the honor
+of the priestly vocation. From another girl it would have been bad enough,
+but from Jennie Woodruff--and especially on that quiet summer night under
+the linden--it was insupportable.
+
+"Good night," said Jim--simply because he could not trust himself to say
+more.
+
+"Good night," replied Jennie, and sat for a long time wondering just how
+deeply she had unintentionally wounded the feelings of her father's
+field-hand; deciding that if he was driven from her forever, it would
+solve the problem of terminating that old childish love affair which still
+persisted in occupying a suite of rooms all of its own in her memory; and
+finally repenting of the unpremeditated thrust which might easily have
+hurt too deeply so sensitive a man as Jim Irwin. But girls are not usually
+so made as to feel any very bitter remorse for their male victims, and so
+Jennie slept very well that night.
+
+Great events, I find myself repeating, sometimes hinge on trivial things.
+Considered deeply, all those matters which we are wont to call great
+events are only the outward and visible results of occurrences in the
+minds and souls of people. Sir Walter Raleigh thought of laying his cloak
+under the feet of Queen Elizabeth as she passed over a mud-puddle, and all
+the rest of his career followed, as the effect of Sir Walter's mental
+attitude. Elias Howe thought of a machine for sewing, Eli Whitney of a
+machine for ginning cotton, George Stephenson of a tubular boiler for his
+locomotive engine, and Cyrus McCormick of a sickle-bar, and the world was
+changed by those thoughts, rather than by the machines themselves. John D.
+Rockefeller thought strongly that he would be rich, and this thought, and
+not the Standard Oil Company, changed the commerce and finance of the
+world. As a man thinketh so is he; and as men think so is the world. Jim
+Irwin went home thinking of the "Humph!" of Jennie Woodruff--thinking with
+hot waves and cold waves running over his body, and swellings in his
+throat. Such thoughts centered upon his club foot made Lord Byron a great
+sardonic poet. That club foot set him apart from the world of boys and
+tortured him into a fury which lasted until he had lashed society with the
+whips of his scorn.
+
+Jim Irwin was not club-footed; far from it. He was bony and rugged and
+homely, with a big mouth, and wide ears, and a form stooped with labor. He
+had fine, lambent, gentle eyes which lighted up his face when he smiled,
+as Lincoln's illuminated his. He was not ugly. In fact, if that quality
+which fair ladies--if they are wise--prize far more than physical beauty,
+the quality called charm, can with propriety be ascribed to a field-hand
+who has just finished a day of the rather unfragrant labor to which I have
+referred, Jim Irwin possessed charm. That is why little Jennie Woodruff
+had asked him to help with her lessons, rather oftener than was necessary,
+in those old days in the Woodruff schoolhouse when Jennie wore her hair
+down her back.
+
+But in spite of this homely charm of personality, Jim Irwin was set off
+from his fellows of the Woodruff neighborhood in a manner quite as
+segregative as was Byron by his deformity. He was different. In local
+parlance, he was an off ox. He was as odd as Dick's hatband. He ran in a
+gang by himself, like Deacon Avery's celebrated bull. He failed to
+matriculate in the boy banditti which played cards in the haymows on rainy
+days, told stereotyped stories that smelled to heaven, raided melon
+patches and orchards, swore horribly like Sir Toby Belch, and played pool
+in the village saloon. He had always liked to read, and had piles of
+literature in his attic room which was good, because it was cheap. Very
+few people know that cheap literature is very likely to be good, because
+it is old and unprotected by copyright. He had Emerson, Thoreau, a John B.
+Alden edition of Chambers' _Encyclopedia of English Literature_, some
+Franklin Square editions of standard poets in paper covers, and a few
+Ruskins and Carlyles--all read to rags. He talked the book English of
+these authors, mispronouncing many of the hard words, because he had never
+heard them pronounced by any one except himself, and had no standards of
+comparison. You find this sort of thing in the utterances of self-educated
+recluses. And he had piles of reports of the secretary of agriculture,
+college bulletins from Ames, and publications of the various bureaus of
+the Department of Agriculture at Washington. In fact, he had a good
+library of publications which can be obtained gratis, or very cheaply--and
+he knew their contents. He had a personal philosophy, which while it had
+cost him the world in which his fellows lived, had given him one of his
+own, in which he moved as lonely as a cloud, and as untouched of the life
+about him.
+
+He seemed superior to the neighbor boys, and felt so; but this feeling was
+curiously mingled with a sense of degradation. By every test of common
+life, he was a failure. His family history was a badge of failure. People
+despised a man who was so incontestably smarter than they, and yet could
+do no better with himself than to work in the fields alongside the tramps
+and transients and hoboes who drifted back and forth as the casual market
+for labor and the lure of the cities swept them. Save for his mother and
+their cow and garden and flock of fowls and their wretched little rented
+house, he was a tramp himself.
+
+His father had been no better. He had come into the neighborhood from
+nobody knows where, selling fruit trees, with a wife and baby in his old
+buggy--and had died suddenly, leaving the baby and widow, and nothing else
+save the horse and buggy. That horse and buggy were still on the Irwin
+books represented by Spot the cow--so persistent are the assets of
+cautious poverty. Mrs. Irwin had labored in kitchen and sewing room until
+Jim had been able to assume the breadwinner's burden--which he did about
+the time he finished the curriculum of the Woodruff District school. He
+was an off ox and odd as Dick's hatband, largely because his duties to his
+mother and his love of reading kept him from joining the gangs whereof I
+have spoken. His duties, his mother, and his father's status as an outcast
+were to him the equivalent of the Byronic club foot, because they took
+away his citizenship in Boyville, and drove him in upon himself, and, at
+first, upon his school books which he mastered so easily and quickly as to
+become the star pupil of the Woodruff District school, and later upon
+Emerson, Thoreau, Ruskin and the poets, and the agricultural reports and
+bulletins.
+
+All this degraded--or exalted--him to the position of an intellectual
+farm-hand, with a sense of superiority and a feeling of degradation. It
+made Jennie Woodruff's "Humph!" potent to keep him awake that night, and
+send him to the road work with Colonel Woodruff's team next morning with
+hot eyes and a hotter heart.
+
+What was he anyhow? And what could he ever be? What was the use of his
+studies in farming practise, if he was always to be an underling whose
+sole duty was to carry out the crude ideas of his employers? And what
+chance was there for a farm-hand to become a farm owner, or even a farm
+renter, especially if he had a mother to support out of the twenty-five or
+thirty dollars of his monthly wages? None.
+
+A man might rise in the spirit, but how about rising in the world?
+
+Colonel Woodruff's gray percherons seemed to feel the unrest of their
+driver, for they fretted and actually executed a clumsy prance as Jim
+Irwin pulled them up at the end of the turnpike across Bronson's Slew--the
+said slew being a peat-marsh which annually offered the men of the
+Woodruff District the opportunity to hold the male equivalent of a sewing
+circle while working out their road taxes, with much conversational gain,
+and no great damage to the road.
+
+In fact, Columbus Brown, the pathmaster, prided himself on the Bronson
+Slew Turnpike as his greatest triumph in road engineering. The work
+consisted in hauling, dragging and carrying gravel out on the low fill
+which carried the road across the marsh, and then watching it slowly
+settle until the next summer.
+
+"Haul gravel from the east gravel bed, Jim," called Columbus Brown from
+the lowest spot in the middle of the turnpike. "Take Newt here to help
+load."
+
+Jim smiled his habitual slow, gentle smile at Newton Bronson, his helper.
+Newton was seventeen, undersized, tobacco-stained, profane and proud of
+the fact that he had once beaten his way from Des Moines to Faribault on
+freight trains. A source of anxiety to his father, and the subject of many
+predictions that he would come to no good end, Newton was out on the road
+work because he was likely to be of little use on the farm. Clearly,
+Newton was on the downward road in a double sense--and yet, Jim Irwin
+rather liked him.
+
+"The fellers have put up a job on you, Jim," volunteered Newton, as they
+began filling the wagon with gravel.
+
+"What sort of job?" asked Jim.
+
+"They're nominating you for teacher," replied Newton.
+
+"Since when has the position of teacher been an elective office?" asked
+Jim.
+
+"Sure, it ain't elective," answered Newton. "But they say that with as
+many brains as you've got sloshing around loose in the neighborhood,
+you're a candidate that can break the deadlock in the school board."
+
+Jim shoveled on silently for a while, and by example urged Newton to earn
+the money credited to his father's assessment for the day's work.
+
+"Aw, what's the use of diggin' into it like this?" protested Newton, who
+was developing an unwonted perspiration. "None of the others are heatin'
+themselves up."
+
+"Don't you get any fun out of doing a good day's work?" asked Jim.
+
+"Fun!" exclaimed Newton. "You're crazy!"
+
+A slide of earth from the top of the pit threatened to bury Newton in
+gravel, sand and good top soil. A sweet-clover plant growing rankly beside
+the pit, and thinking itself perfectly safe, came down with it, its dark
+green foliage anchored by the long roots which penetrated to a depth below
+the gravel pit's bottom. Jim Irwin pulled it loose from its anchorage, and
+after looking attentively at the roots, laid the whole plant on the bank
+for safety.
+
+"What do you want of that weed?" asked Newton.
+
+Jim picked it up and showed him the nodules on its roots--little white
+knobs, smaller than pinheads.
+
+"Know what they are, Newt?"
+
+"Just white specks on the roots," replied Newton.
+
+"The most wonderful specks in the world," said Jim. "Ever hear of the use
+of nitrates to enrich the soil?"
+
+"Ain't that the stuff the old man used on the lawn last spring?"
+
+"Yes," said Jim, "your father used some on his lawn. We don't put it on
+our fields in Iowa--not yet; but if it weren't for those white specks on
+the clover-roots, we should be obliged to do so--as they do back east."
+
+"How do them white specks keep us from needin' nitrates?"
+
+"It's a long story," said Jim. "You see, before there were any plants big
+enough to be visible--if there had been any one to see them--the world was
+full of little plants so small that there may be billions of them in one
+of these little white specks. They knew how to take the nitrates from the
+air----"
+
+"Air!" ejaculated Newton. "Nitrates in the air! You're crazy!"
+
+"No," said Jim. "There are tons of nitrogen in the air that press down on
+your head--but the big plants can't get it through their leaves, or
+their roots. They never had to learn, because when the little
+plants--bacteria--found that the big plants had roots with sap in them,
+they located on those roots and tapped them for the sap they needed.
+They began to get their board and lodgings off the big plants. And in
+payment for their hotel bills, the little plants took nitrogen out of
+the air for both themselves and their hosts."
+
+"What d'ye mean by 'hosts'?"
+
+"Their hotel-keepers--the big plants. And now the plants that have the
+hotel roots for the bacteria furnish nitrogen not only for themselves but
+for the crops that follow. Corn can't get nitrogen out of the air; but
+clover can--and that's why we ought to plow down clover before a crop of
+corn."
+
+"Gee!" said Newt. "If you could get to teach our school, I'd go again."
+
+"It would interfere with your pool playing."
+
+"What business is that o' yours?" interrogated Newt defiantly.
+
+"Well, get busy with that shovel," suggested Jim, who had been working
+steadily, driving out upon the fill occasionally to unload. On his return
+from dumping the next load, Newton seemed, in a superior way, quite
+amiably disposed toward his workfellow--rather the habitual thing in the
+neighborhood.
+
+"I'll work my old man to vote for you for the job," said he.
+
+"What job?" asked Jim.
+
+"Teacher for our school," answered Newt.
+
+"Those school directors," replied Jim, "have become so bullheaded that
+they'll never vote for any one except the applicants they've been voting
+for."
+
+"The old man says he will have Prue Foster again, or he'll give the school
+a darned long vacation, unless Peterson and Bonner join on some one else.
+That would beat Prue, of course."
+
+"And Con Bonner won't vote for any one but Maggie Gilmartin," added Jim.
+
+"And," supplied Newton, "Haakon Peterson says he'll stick to Herman
+Paulson until the Hot Springs freeze over."
+
+"And there you are," said Jim. "You tell your father for me that I think
+he's a mere mule--and that the whole district thinks the same."
+
+"All right," said Newt. "I'll tell him that while I'm working him to vote
+for you."
+
+Jim smiled grimly. Such a position might have been his years ago, if he
+could have left his mother or earned enough in it to keep both alive. He
+had remained a peasant because the American rural teacher is placed
+economically lower than the peasant. He gave Newton's chatter no
+consideration. But when, in the afternoon, he hitched his team with others
+to the big road grader, and the gang became concentrated within talking
+distance, he found that the project of heckling and chaffing him about his
+eminent fitness for a scholastic position was to be the real entertainment
+of the occasion.
+
+"Jim's the candidate to bust the deadlock," said Columbus Brown, with a
+wink. "Just like Garfield in that Republican convention he was nominated
+in--eh, Con?"
+
+"Con" was Cornelius Bonner, an Irishman, one of the deadlocked school
+board, and the captain of the road grader. He winked back at the
+pathmaster.
+
+"Jim's the gray-eyed man o' destiny," he replied, "if he can get two votes
+in that board."
+
+"You'd vote for me, wouldn't you, Con?" asked Jim.
+
+"I'll try annything wance," replied Bonner.
+
+"Try voting with Ezra Bronson once, for Prue Foster," suggested Jim.
+"She's done good work here."
+
+"Opinions differ," said Bonner, "an' when you try annything just for
+wance, it shouldn't be an irrevocable shtip, me bye."
+
+"You're a reasonable board of public servants," said Jim ironically. "I'd
+like to tell the whole board what I think of them."
+
+"Come down to-night," said Bonner jeeringly. "We're going to have a board
+meeting at the schoolhouse and ballot a few more times. Come down, and be
+the Garfield of the convintion. We've lacked brains on the board, that's
+clear. They ain't a man on the board that iver studied algebra, 'r that
+knows more about farmin' than their impl'yers. Come down to the
+schoolhouse, and we'll have a field-hand addriss the school board--and
+begosh, I'll move yer illiction mesilf! Come, now, Jimmy, me bye, be game.
+It'll vary the program, anny-how."
+
+The entire gang grinned. Jim flushed, and then reconquered his calmness of
+spirit.
+
+"All right, Con," said he. "I'll come and tell you a few things--and you
+can do as you like about making the motion."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+REVERSED UNANIMITY
+
+
+The great blade of the grading machine, running diagonally across the road
+and pulling the earth toward its median line, had made several trips, and
+much persiflage about Jim Irwin's forthcoming appearance before the board
+had been addressed to Jim and exchanged by others for his benefit.
+
+To Newton Bronson was given the task of leveling and distributing the
+earth rolled into the road by the grader--a labor which in the interests
+of fitting a muzzle on his big mongrel dog he deserted whenever the
+machine moved away from him. No dog would have seemed less deserving of a
+muzzle, for he was a friendly animal, always wagging his tail, pressing
+his nose into people's palms, licking their clothing and otherwise making
+a nuisance of himself. That there was some mystery about the muzzle was
+evident from Newton's pains to make a secret of it. Its wires were curled
+into a ring directly over the dog's nose, and into this ring Newton had
+fitted a cork, through which he had thrust a large needle which protruded,
+an inch-long bayonet, in front of Ponto's nose. As the grader swept back,
+horses straining, harness creaking and a billow of dark earth rolling
+before the knife, Ponto, fully equipped with this stinger, raced madly
+alongside, a friend to every man, but not unlike some people, one whose
+friendship was of all things to be most dreaded.
+
+As the grader moved along one side of the highway, a high-powered
+automobile approached on the other. It was attempting to rush the swale
+for the hill opposite, and making rather bad weather of the newly repaired
+road. A pile of loose soil that Newton had allowed to lie just across the
+path made a certain maintenance of speed desirable. The knavish Newton
+planted himself in the path of the laboring car, and waved its driver a
+command to halt. The car came to a standstill with its front wheels in the
+edge of the loose earth, and the chauffeur fuming at the possibility of
+stalling--a contingency upon which Newton had confidently reckoned.
+
+"What d'ye want?" he demanded. "What d'ye mean by stopping me in this kind
+of place?"
+
+"I want to ask you," said Newton with mock politeness, "if you have the
+correct time."
+
+The chauffeur sought words appropriate to his feelings. Ponto and his
+muzzle saved him the trouble. A pretty pointer leaped from the car, and
+attracted by the evident friendliness of Ponto's greeting, pricked up its
+ears, and sought, in a spirit of canine brotherhood, to touch noses with
+him. The needle in Ponto's muzzle did its work to the agony and horror of
+the pointer, which leaped back with a yelp, and turned tail. Ponto, in an
+effort to apologize, followed, and finding itself bayonetted at every
+contact with this demon dog, the pointer definitely took flight, howling,
+leaving Ponto in a state of wonder and humiliation at the sudden end of
+what had promised to be a very friendly acquaintance. I have known
+instances not entirely dissimilar among human beings. The pointer's master
+watched its strange flight, and swore. His eye turned to the boy who had
+caused all this, and he alighted pale with anger.
+
+"I've got time," said he, remembering Newton's impudent question, "to give
+you what you deserve."
+
+Newton grinned and dodged, but the bank of loose earth was his undoing,
+and while he stumbled, the chauffeur caught and held him by the collar.
+And as he held the boy, the operation of flogging him in the presence of
+the grading gang grew less to his taste. Again Ponto intervened, for as
+the chauffeur stood holding Newton, the dog, evidently regarding the
+stranger as his master's friend, thrust his nose into the chauffeur's
+palm--the needle necessarily preceding the nose. The chauffeur behaved
+much as his pointer had done, saving and excepting that the pointer did
+not swear.
+
+It was funny--even the pain involved could not make it otherwise than
+funny. The grading gang laughed to a man. Newton grinned even while in the
+fell clutch of circumstance. Ponto tried to smell the chauffeur's
+trousers, and what had been a laugh became a roar, quite general save for
+the fact that the chauffeur did not join in it.
+
+Caution and mercy departed from the chauffeur's mood; and he drew back his
+fist to strike the boy--and found it caught by the hard hand of Jim
+Irwin.
+
+"You're too angry to punish this boy," said Jim gently,--"even if you had
+the right to punish him at all!"
+
+"Oh, cut it out," said a fat man in the rear of the car, who had hitherto
+manifested no interest in anything save Ponto. "Get in, and let's be on
+our way!"
+
+The chauffeur, however, recognized in a man of mature years and full size,
+and a creature with no mysterious needle in his nose, a relief from his
+embarrassment. Unhesitatingly, he released Newton, and blindly, furiously
+and futilely, he delivered a blow meant for Jim's jaw, but which really
+miscarried by a foot. In reply, Jim countered with an awkward swinging
+uppercut, which was superior to the chauffeur's blow in one respect
+only--it landed fairly on the point of the jaw. The chauffeur staggered
+and slowly toppled over into the soft earth which had caused so much of
+the rumpus. Newton Bronson slipped behind a hedge, and took his infernally
+equipped dog with him. The grader gang formed a ring about the combatants
+and waited. Colonel Woodruff, driving toward home in his runabout, held up
+by the traffic blockade, asked what was going on here, and the chauffeur,
+rising groggily, picked up his goggles, climbed into the car; and the
+meeting dissolved, leaving Jim Irwin greatly embarrassed by the fact that
+for the first time in his life, he had struck a man in combat.
+
+"Good work, Jim," said Cornelius Bonner. "I didn't think 'twas in ye!"
+
+"It's beastly," said Jim, reddening. "I didn't know, either."
+
+Colonel Woodruff looked at his hired man sharply, gave him some
+instructions for the next day and drove on. The road gang dispersed for
+the afternoon. Newton Bronson carefully secreted the magic muzzle, and
+chuckled at what had been perhaps the most picturesquely successful bit of
+deviltry in his varied record. Jim Irwin put out his team, got his supper
+and went to the meeting of the school board.
+
+The deadlocked members of the board had been so long at loggerheads that
+their relations had swayed back to something like amity. Jim had scarcely
+entered when Con Bonner addressed the chair.
+
+"Mr. Prisidint," said he, "we have wid us t'night, a young man who nades
+no introduction to an audience in this place, Mr. Jim Irwin. He thinks
+we're bullheaded mules, and that all the schools are bad. At the proper
+time I shall move that we hire him f'r teacher; and pinding that motion, I
+move that he be given the floor. Ye've all heared of Mr. Irwin's ability
+as a white hope, and I know he'll be listened to wid respect!"
+
+Much laughter from the board and the spectators, as Jim arose. He looked
+upon it as ridicule of himself, while Con Bonner regarded it as a tribute
+to his successful speech.
+
+"Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Board," said Jim, "I'm not going to
+tell you anything that you don't know about yourselves. You are simply
+making a farce of the matter of hiring a teacher for this school. It is
+not as if any of you had a theory that the teaching methods of one of
+these teachers would be any better than or much different from those of
+the others. You know, and I know, that whichever is finally engaged, or
+even if your silly deadlock is broken by employing a new candidate, the
+school will be the same old story. It will still be the school it was when
+I came into it a little ragged boy"--here Jim's voice grew a little
+husky--"and when I left it, a bigger boy, but still as ragged as ever."
+
+There was a slight sensation in the audience, as if, as Con Bonner said
+about the knockdown, they hadn't thought Jim Irwin could do it.
+
+"Well," said Con, "you've done well to hold your own."
+
+"In all the years I attended this school," Jim went on, "I never did a bit
+of work in school which was economically useful. It was all dry stuff
+copied from the city schools. No other pupil ever did any real work of the
+sort farmers' boys and girls should do. We copied city schools--and the
+schools we copied are poor schools. We made bad copies of them, too. If
+any of you three men were making a fight for what Roosevelt's Country Life
+Commission called a 'new kind of rural school,' I'd say fight. But you
+aren't. You're just making individual fights for your favorite teachers."
+
+Jim Irwin made a somewhat lengthy speech after the awkwardness wore off,
+so long that his audience was nodding and yawning by the time he reached
+his peroration, in which he abjured Bronson, Bonner and Peterson to study
+his plan of a new kind of rural school,--in which the work of the school
+should be correlated with the life of the home and the farm--a school
+which would be in the highest degree cultural by being consciously useful
+and obviously practical. The sharp spats of applause from the useless
+hands of Newton Bronson gave the final touch of absurdity to a situation
+which Jim had felt to be ridiculous all through. Had it not been for
+Jennie Woodruff's "Humph!" stinging him to do something outside the round
+of duties into which he had fallen, had it not been for the absurd notion
+that perhaps, after they had heard his speech, they would place him in
+charge of the school, and that he might be able to do something really
+important in it, he would not have been there. As he sat down, he felt
+himself a silly clodhopper, filled with the east wind of his own conceit,
+out of touch with the real world of men. He knew himself a dreamer. The
+nodding board of directors, the secretary, actually snoring, and the bored
+audience restored the field-hand to a sense of his proper place.
+
+"We have had the privilege of list'nin'," said Con Bonner, rising, "to a
+great speech, Mr. Prisidint. We should be proud to have a borned orator
+like this in the agricultural pop'lation of the district. A reg'lar
+William Jennin's Bryan. I don't understand what he was trying to tell us,
+but sometimes I've had the same difficulty with the spaches of the Boy
+Orator of the Platte. Makin' a good spache is one thing, and teaching a
+good school is another, but in order to bring this matter before the
+board, I nominate Mr. James E. Irwin, the Boy Orator of the Woodruff
+District, and the new white hope, f'r the job of teacher of this school,
+and I move that when he shall have received a majority of the votes of
+this board, the secretary and prisidint be insthructed to enter into a
+contract with him f'r the comin' year."
+
+The seconding of motions on a board of three has its objectionable
+features, since it seems to commit a majority of the body to the motion in
+advance. The president, therefore, followed usage, when he said--"If
+there's no objection, it will be so ordered. The chair hears no
+objection--and it is so ordered. Prepare the ballots for a vote on the
+election of teacher, Mr. Secretary. Each votes his preference for teacher.
+A majority elects."
+
+For months, the ballots had come out of the box--an empty
+crayon-box--Herman Paulson, one; Prudence Foster, one; Margaret
+Gilmartin, one; and every one present expected the same result now.
+There was no surprise, however, in view of the nomination of Jim Irwin by
+the blarneying Bonner when the secretary smoothed out the first
+ballot, and read: "James E. Irwin, one." Clearly this was the Bonner
+vote; but when the next slip came forth, "James E. Irwin, two," the Board
+of Directors of the Woodruff Independent District were stunned at the
+slowly dawning knowledge that they had made an election! Before they had
+rallied, the secretary drew from the box the third and last ballot,
+and read, "James E. Irwin, three."
+
+President Bronson choked as he announced the result--choked and stammered,
+and made very hard weather of it, but he went through with the motion, as
+we all run in our grooves.
+
+"The ballot having shown the unanimous election of James E. Irwin, I
+declare him elected."
+
+He dropped into his chair, while the secretary, a very methodical man,
+drew from his portfolio a contract duly drawn up save for the signatures
+of the officers of the district, and the name and signature of the
+teacher-elect. This he calmly filled out, and passed over to the
+president, pointing to the dotted line. Mr. Bronson would have signed his
+own death-warrant at that moment, not to mention a perfectly legal
+document, and signed with Peterson and Bonner looking on stonily. The
+secretary signed and shoved the contract over to Jim Irwin.
+
+"Sign there," he said.
+
+Jim looked it over, saw the other signatures, and felt an impulse to dodge
+the whole thing. He could not feel that the action of the board was
+serious. He thought of the platform he had laid down for himself, and was
+daunted. He thought of the days in the open field, and of the untroubled
+evenings with his books, and he shrank from the work. Then he thought of
+Jennie Woodruff's "Humph!"--and he signed!
+
+"Move we adjourn," said Peterson.
+
+"No 'bjection 't's so ordered!" said Mr. Bronson.
+
+The secretary and Jim went out, while the directors waited.
+
+"What the Billy--" began Bonner, and finished lamely! "What for did you
+vote for the dub, Ez?"
+
+"I voted for him," replied Bronson, "because he fought for my boy this
+afternoon. I didn't want it stuck into him too hard. I wanted him to have
+_one_ vote."
+
+"An' I wanted him to have wan vote, too," said Bonner. "I thought mesilf
+the only dang fool on the board--an' he made a spache that airned wan
+vote--but f'r the love of hivin, that dub f'r a teacher! What come over
+you, Haakon--you voted f'r him, too!"
+
+"Ay vanted him to have one wote, too," said Peterson.
+
+And in this wise, Jim became the teacher in the Woodruff District--all on
+account of Jennie Woodruff's "Humph!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+WHAT IS A BROWN MOUSE
+
+
+Immediately upon the accidental election of Jim Irwin to the position of
+teacher of the Woodruff school, he developed habits somewhat like a
+ghost's or a bandit's. That is, he walked of nights and on rainy days.
+
+On fine days, he worked in Colonel Woodruff's fields as of yore. Had he
+been appointed to a position attached to a salary of fifty thousand
+dollars a year, he might have spent six months on a preliminary vacation
+in learning something about his new duties. But Jim's salary was to be
+three hundred and sixty dollars for nine months' work in the Woodruff
+school, and he was to find himself--and his mother. Therefore, he had to
+indulge in his loose habits of night walking and roaming about after hours
+only, or on holidays and in foul weather.
+
+The Simms family, being from the mountings of Tennessee, were rather
+startled one night, when Jim Irwin, homely, stooped and errandless,
+silently appeared in their family circle about the front door. They had
+lived where it was the custom to give a whoop from the big road before one
+passed through the palin's and up to the house. Otherwise, how was one to
+know whether the visitor was friend or foe?
+
+From force of habit, Old Man Simms started for his gun-rack at Jim's
+appearance, but the Lincolnian smile and the low slow speech, so much like
+his own in some respects, ended that part of the matter. Besides, Old Man
+Simms remembered that none of the Hobdays, whose hostilities somewhat
+stood in the way of the return of the Simmses to their native hills, could
+possibly be expected to appear thus in Iowa.
+
+"Stranger," said Mr. Simms, after greetings had been exchanged, "you're
+right welcome, but in my kentry you'd find it dangersome to walk in
+thisaway."
+
+"How so?" queried Jim Irwin.
+
+"You'd more'n likely git shot up some," replied Mr. Simms, "onless you
+whooped from the big road."
+
+"I didn't know that," replied Jim. "I'm ignorant of the customs of other
+countries. Would you rather I'd whoop from the big road--nobody else
+will."
+
+"I reckon," replied Mr. Simms, "that we-all will have to accommodate
+ourse'ves to the ways hyeh."
+
+Evidently Jim was the Simms' first caller since they had settled on the
+little brushy tract whose hills and trees reminded them of their
+mountains. Low hills, to be sure, with only a footing of rocks where the
+creek had cut through, and not many trees, but down in the creek bed, with
+the oaks, elms and box-elders arching overhead, the Simmses could imagine
+themselves beside some run falling into the French Broad, or the Holston.
+The creek bed was a withdrawing room in which to retire from the eternal
+black soil and level corn-fields of Iowa. What if the soil was so poor, in
+comparison with those black uplands, that the owner of the old wood-lot
+could find no renter? It was better than the soil in the mountains, and
+suited the lonesome Simmses much more than a better farm would have done.
+They were not of the Iowa people anyhow, not understood, not their
+equals--they were pore, and expected to stay pore--while the Iowa people
+all seemed to be either well-to-do, or expecting to become so. It was much
+more agreeable to the Simmses to retire to the back wood-lot farm with the
+creek bed running through it.
+
+Jim Irwin asked Old Man Simms about the fishing in the creek, and whether
+there was any duck shooting spring and fall.
+
+"We git right smart of these little panfish," said Mr. Simms, "an' Calista
+done shot two butterball ducks about 'tater-plantin' time."
+
+Calista blushed--but this stranger, so much like themselves, could not see
+the rosy suffusion. The allusion gave him a chance to look about him at
+the family. There was a boy of sixteen, a girl--the duck-shooting
+Calista--younger than Raymond--a girl of eleven, named Virginia, but
+called Jinnie--and a smaller lad who rejoiced in the name of McGeehee, but
+was mercifully called Buddy.
+
+Calista squirmed for something to say. "Raymond runs a line o' traps when
+the fur's prime," she volunteered.
+
+Then came a long talk on traps and trapping, shooting, hunting and the
+joys of the mountings--during which Jim noted the ignorance and poverty of
+the Simmses. The clothing of the girls was not decent according to local
+standards; for while Calista wore a skirt hurriedly slipped on, Jim was
+quite sure--and not without evidence to support his views--that she had
+been wearing when he arrived the same regimentals now displayed by
+Jinnie--a pair of ragged blue overalls. Evidently the Simmses were wearing
+what they had and not what they desired. The father was faded, patched,
+gray and earthy, and the boys looked better than the rest solely because
+we expect boys to be torn and patched. Mrs. Simms was invisible except as
+a gray blur beyond the rain-barrel, in the midst of which her pipe glowed
+with a regular ebb and flow of embers.
+
+On the next rainy day Jim called again and secured the services of Raymond
+to help him select seed corn. He was going to teach the school next
+winter, and he wanted to have a seed-corn frolic the first day, instead of
+waiting until the last--and you had to get seed corn while it was on the
+stalk, if you got the best. No Simms could refuse a favor to the fellow
+who was so much like themselves, and who was so greatly interested in
+trapping, hunting and the Tennessee mountains--so Raymond went with Jim,
+and with Newt Bronson and five more they selected Colonel Woodruff's seed
+corn for the next year, under the colonel's personal superintendence.
+
+In the evening they looked the grain over on the Woodruff lawn, and the
+colonel talked about corn and corn selection. They had supper at half past
+six, and Jennie waited on them--having assisted her mother in the cooking.
+It was quite a festival. Jim Irwin was the least conspicuous person in the
+gathering, but the colonel, who was a seasoned politician, observed that
+the farm-hand had become a fisher of men, and was angling for the souls of
+these boys, and their interest in the school. Jim was careful not to flush
+the covey, but every boy received from the next winter's teacher some
+confidential hint as to plans, and some suggestion that Jim was relying on
+the aid and comfort of that particular boy. Newt Bronson, especially, was
+leaned on as a strong staff and a very present help in time of trouble. As
+for Raymond Simms, it was clearly best to leave him alone. All this talk
+of corn selection and related things was new to him, and he drank it in
+thirstily. He had an inestimable advantage over Newt in that he was
+starved, while Newt was surfeited with "advantages" for which he had no
+use.
+
+"Jennie," said Colonel Woodruff, after the party had broken up, "I'm
+losing the best hand I ever had, and I've been sorry."
+
+"I'm glad he's leaving you," said Jennie. "He ought to do something except
+work in the field for wages."
+
+"I've had no idea he could make good as a teacher--and what is there in it
+if he does?"
+
+"What has he lost if he doesn't?" rejoined Jennie. "And why can't he make
+good?"
+
+"The school board's against him, for one thing," replied the colonel.
+"They'll fire him if they get a chance. They're the laughing-stock of the
+country for hiring him by mistake, and they're irritated. But after seeing
+him perform to-night, I wonder if he can't make good."
+
+"If he could _feel_ like anything but an underling he'd succeed," said
+Jennie.
+
+"That's his heredity," stated the colonel, whose live-stock operations
+were based on heredity. "Jim's a scrub, I suppose; but he acts as if he
+might turn out to be a Brown Mouse."
+
+"What do you mean, pa," scoffed Jennie--"a Brown Mouse!"
+
+"A fellow in Edinburgh," said the colonel, "crossed the Japanese waltzing
+mouse with the common white mouse. Jim's pedling father was a waltzing
+mouse, no good except to jump from one spot to another for no good reason.
+Jim's mother is an albino of a woman, with all the color washed out in one
+way or another. Jim ought to be a mongrel, and I've always considered him
+one. But the Edinburgh fellow every once in a while got out of his
+variously-colored, waltzing and albino hybrids, a brown mouse. It wasn't a
+common house mouse, either, but a wild mouse unlike any he had ever seen.
+It ran away, and bit and gnawed, and raised hob. It was what we breeders
+call a Mendelian segregation of genetic factors that had been in the
+waltzers and albinos all the time--their original wild ancestor of the
+woods and fields. If Jim turns out to be a Brown Mouse, he may be a bigger
+man than any of us. Anyhow, I'm for him."
+
+"He'll have to be a big man to make anything out of the job of a country
+school-teacher," said Jennie.
+
+"Any job's as big as the man who holds it down," said her father.
+
+Next day, Jim received a letter from Jennie.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Dear Jim," it ran. "Father says you are sure to have a hard time--the
+school board's against you, and all that. But he added, 'I'm for Jim,
+anyhow!' I thought you'd like to know this. Also he said, 'Any job's as
+big as the man who holds it down,' And I believe this also, _and I'm for
+you, too!_ You are doing wonders even before the school starts in getting
+the pupils interested in a lot of things, which, while they don't belong
+to school work, will make them friends of yours. I don't see how this will
+help you much, but it's a fine thing, and shows your interest in them.
+Don't be too original. The wheel runs easiest in the beaten track. Yours.
+Jennie."
+
+Jennie's caution made no impression on Jim--but he put the letter away,
+and every evening took it out and read the italicized words, _"I'm for
+you, too!"_ The colonel's dictum, "Any job's as big as the man who holds
+it down," was an Emersonian truism to Jim. It reduced all jobs to an
+equality, and it meant equality in intellectual and spiritual development.
+It didn't mean, for instance, that any job was as good as another in
+making it possible for a man to marry--and Jennie Woodruff's "Humph!"
+returned to kill and drag off her "I'm for you, too!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL
+
+
+I suppose every reader will say that genius consists very largely in
+seeing Opportunity in the set of circumstances or thoughts or impressions
+that constitute Opportunity, and making the best of them.
+
+Jim Irwin would have said so, anyhow. He was full of his Emerson's
+_Representative Men_, and his Carlyle's _French Revolution_, and the other
+old-fashioned, excellent good literature which did not cost over
+twenty-five cents a volume; and he had pored long and with many thrills
+over the pages of Matthews' _Getting on in the World_--which is the best
+book of purely conventional helpfulness in the language. And his view of
+efficiency was that it is the capacity to see opportunity where others
+overlook it, and make the most of it.
+
+All through his life he had had his own plans for becoming great. He was
+to be a general, hurling back the foes of his country; he was to be the
+nation's master in literature; a successful drawing on his slate had
+filled him with ambition, confidently entertained, of becoming a
+Rubens--and the story of Benjamin West in his school reader fanned this
+spark to a flame; science, too, had at times been his chosen field; and
+when he had built a mousetrap which actually caught mice, he saw himself a
+millionaire inventor. As for being president, that was a commonplace in
+his dreams. And all the time, he was barefooted, ill-clad and dreamed his
+dreams to the accompaniment of the growl of the plow cutting the roots
+under the brown furrow-slice, or the wooshing of the milk in the pail. At
+twenty-eight, he considered these dreams over.
+
+As for this new employment, he saw no great opportunity in it. Of any
+spark of genius he was to show in it, of anything he was to suffer in it,
+of those pains and penalties wherewith the world pays its geniuses, Jim
+Irwin anticipated nothing. He went into the small, mean, ill-paid task as
+a part of the day's work, with no knowledge of the stirring of the nation
+for a different sort of rural school, and no suspicion that there lay in
+it any highway to success in life. He was not a college man or even a
+high-school man. All his other dreams had found rude awakening in the fact
+that he had not been able to secure the schooling which geniuses need in
+these days. He was unfitted for the work geniuses do. All he was to be was
+a rural teacher, accidentally elected by a stupid school board, and with a
+hard tussle before him to stay on the job for the term of his contract. He
+could have accepted positions quite as good years ago, save for the fact
+that they would have taken him away from his mother, their cheap little
+home, their garden and their fowls. He rather wondered why he had allowed
+Jennie's sneer to sting him into the course of action which put him in
+this new relation to his neighbors.
+
+But, true to his belief in honest thorough work, like a general preparing
+for battle, he examined his field of operations. His manner of doing this
+seemed to prove to Colonel Woodruff, who watched it with keen interest as
+something new in the world, that Jim Irwin was possibly a Brown Mouse. But
+the colonel knew only a part of Jim's performances. He saw Jim clothed in
+slickers, walking through rainstorms to the houses in the Woodruff
+District, as greedy for every moment of rain as a haymaker for shine; and
+he knew that Jim made a great many evening calls.
+
+But he did not know that Jim was making what our sociologists call a
+survey. For that matter, neither did Jim; for books on sociology cost more
+than twenty-five cents a volume, and Jim had never seen one. However, it
+was a survey. To be sure, he had long known everybody in the district,
+save the Simmses--and he was now a friend of all that exotic race; but
+there is knowing and knowing. He now had note-books full of facts about
+people and their farms. He knew how many acres each family possessed, and
+what sort of farming each husband was doing--live stock, grain or mixed.
+He knew about the mortgages, and the debts. He knew whether the family
+atmosphere was happy and contented, or the reverse. He knew which boys and
+girls were wayward and insubordinate. He made a record of the advancement
+in their studies of all the children, and what they liked to read. He knew
+their favorite amusements. He talked with their mothers and sisters--not
+about the school, to any extent, but on the weather, the horses, the
+automobiles, the silo-filling machinery and the profits of farming.
+
+I suppose that no person who has undertaken the management of the young
+people of any school in all the history of education, ever did so much
+work of this sort before his school opened. Really, though Jennie Woodruff
+did not see how such doings related to school work, Jim Irwin's school was
+running full blast in the homes of the district and the minds of many
+pupils, weeks and weeks before that day when he called them to order on
+the Monday specified in his contract as the first day of school.
+
+Con Bonner, who came to see the opening, voiced the sentiments of the
+older people when he condemned the school as disorderly. To be sure, there
+were more pupils enrolled than had ever entered on a first day in the
+whole history of the school, and it was hard to accommodate them all. But
+the director's criticism was leveled against the free-and-easy air of the
+children. Most of them had brought seed corn and a good-sized corn show
+was on view. There was much argument as to the merits of the various
+entries. Instead of a language lesson from the text-book, Jim had given
+them an exercise based on an examination of the ears of corn.
+
+The number exercises of the little chaps had been worked out with ears and
+kernels of corn. One class in arithmetic calculated the percentage of
+inferior kernels at tip and butt to the full-sized grains in the middle of
+the ear.
+
+All the time, Jim Irwin, awkward and uncouth, clad in his none-too-good
+Sunday suit and trying to hide behind his Lincolnian smile the fact that
+he was pretty badly frightened and much embarrassed, passed among them,
+getting them enrolled, setting them to work, wasting much time and
+laboring like a heavy-laden barge in a seaway.
+
+"That feller'll never do," said Bonner to Bronson next day. "Looks like a
+tramp in the schoolroom."
+
+"Wearin' his best, I guess," said Bronson.
+
+"Half the kids call him 'Jim,'" said Bonner.
+
+"That's all right with me," replied Bronson.
+
+"The room was as noisy as a caucus," was Bonner's next indictment, "and
+the flure was all over corn like a hog-pin."
+
+"Oh! I don't suppose he can get away with it," assented Bronson
+disgustedly, "but that boy of mine is as tickled as a colt with the whole
+thing. Says he's goin' reg'lar this winter."
+
+"That's because Jim don't keep no order," said Bonner. "He lets Newt do as
+he dam pleases."
+
+"First time he's ever pleased to do anything but deviltry," protested
+Bronson. "Oh, I suppose Jim'll fall down, and we'll have to fire him--but
+I wish we could git a _good_ teacher that would git hold of Newt the way
+he seems to!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE PROMOTION OF JENNIE
+
+
+If Jennie Woodruff was the cause of Jim Irwin's sudden irruption into the
+educational field by her scoffing "Humph!" at the idea of a farm-hand's
+ever being able to marry, she also gave him the opportunity to knock down
+the driver of the big motor-car, and perceptibly elevate himself in the
+opinion of the neighborhood, while filling his own heart with something
+like shame.
+
+The fat man who had said "Cut it out" to his driver, was Mr. Charles
+Dilly, a business man in the village at the extreme opposite corner of the
+county. His choice of the Woodruff District as a place for motoring had a
+secret explanation. I am under no obligation to preserve the secret. He
+came to see Colonel Woodruff and Jennie. Mr. Dilly was a candidate for
+county treasurer, and wished to be nominated at the approaching county
+convention. In his part of the county lived the county superintendent--a
+candidate for renomination. He was just a plain garden or field county
+superintendent of schools, no better and no worse than the general
+political run of them, but he had local pride enlisted in his cause, and
+was a good politician.
+
+Mr. Dilly was in the Woodruff District to build a backfire against this
+conflagration of the county superintendent. He expected to use Jennie
+Woodruff to light it withal. That is, while denying that he wished to make
+any deal or trade--every candidate in every convention always says
+that--he wished to say to Miss Woodruff and her father, that if Miss
+Woodruff would permit her name to be used for the office of county
+superintendent of schools, a goodly group of delegates could be selected
+in the other corner of the county who would be glad to reciprocate any
+favors Mr. Charles J. Dilly might receive in the way of votes for county
+treasurer with ballots for Miss Jennie Woodruff for superintendent of
+schools.
+
+Mr. Dilly never inquired as to Miss Woodruff's abilities as an educator.
+That would have been eccentric. Miss Woodruff never asked herself if she
+knew anything about rural education which especially fitted her for the
+task; for was she not a popular and successful teacher--and was not that
+enough? Mr. Dilly merely asked himself if Miss Woodruff's name could
+command strength enough to eliminate the embarrassing candidate in his
+part of the county and leave the field to himself. Miss Woodruff asked
+herself whether the work would not give her a pleasanter life than did
+teaching, a better salary, and more chances to settle herself in life. So
+are the officials chosen who supervise and control the education of the
+farm children of America.
+
+This secret mission to effect a political trade accounted for Mr. Dilly's
+desire that his driver should "cut out" the controversy with Newton
+Bronson, and the personal encounter with Jim Irwin--and it may account for
+Jim's easy victory in his first and only physical encounter. An office
+seeker could scarcely afford to let his friend or employee lick a member
+of a farmers' road gang. It certainly explains the fact that when Jim
+Irwin started home from putting out his team the day after his first call
+on the Simms family, Jennie was waiting at the gate to be congratulated on
+her nomination.
+
+"I congratulate you," said Jim.
+
+"Thanks," said Jennie, extending her hand.
+
+"I hope you're elected," Jim went on, holding the hand; "but there's no
+doubt of that."
+
+"They say not," replied Jennie; "but father says I must go about and let
+the people see me. He believes in working just as if we didn't have a big
+majority for the ticket."
+
+"A woman has an advantage of a man in such a contest," said Jim; "she can
+work just as hard as he can, and at the same time profit by the fact that
+it's supposed she can't."
+
+"I need all the advantage I possess," said Jennie, "and all the votes. Say
+a word for me when on your pastoral rounds."
+
+"All right," said Jim, "what shall I say you'll do for the schools?"
+
+"Why," said Jennie, rather perplexed, "I'll be fair in my examinations of
+teachers, try to keep the unfit teachers out of the schools, visit schools
+as often as I can, and--why, what does any good superintendent do?"
+
+"I never heard of a good county superintendent," said Jim.
+
+"Never heard of one--why, Jim Irwin!"
+
+"I don't believe there is any such thing," persisted Jim, "and if you do
+no more than you say, you'll be off the same piece as the rest. Your
+system won't give us any better schools than we have--of the old sort--and
+we need a new kind."
+
+"Oh, Jim, Jim! Dreaming as of yore! Why can't you be practical! What do
+you mean by a new kind of rural school?"
+
+"A truly-rural rural school," said Jim.
+
+"I can't pronounce it," smiled Jennie, "to say nothing of understanding
+it. What would your tralalooral rural school do?"
+
+"It would be correlated with rural life," said Jim.
+
+"How?"
+
+"It would get education out of the things the farmers and farmers' wives
+are interested in as a part of their lives."
+
+"What, for instance?"
+
+"Dairying, for instance, in this district; and soil management; and
+corn-growing; and farm manual training for boys; and sewing, cooking and
+housekeeping for the girls--and caring for babies!"
+
+Jennie looked serious, after smothering a laugh.
+
+"Jim," said she, "you're going to have a hard enough time to succeed in
+the Woodruff school, if you confine yourself to methods that have been
+tested, and found good."
+
+"But the old methods," urged Jim, "have been tested and found bad. Shall I
+keep to them?"
+
+"They have made the American people what they are," said Jennie. "Don't be
+unpatriotic, Jim."
+
+"They have educated our farm children for the cities," said Jim. "This
+county is losing population--and it's the best county in the world."
+
+"Pessimism never wins," said Jennie.
+
+"Neither does blindness," answered Jim. "It is losing the farms their
+dwellers, and swelling the cities with a proletariat."
+
+For some time, now, Jim had ceased to hold Jennie's hand; and their
+sweetheart days had never seemed farther away.
+
+"Jim," said Jennie, "I may be elected to a position in which I shall be
+obliged to pass on your acts as teacher--in an official way, I mean. I
+hope they will be justifiable."
+
+Jim smiled his slowest and saddest smile.
+
+"If they're not, I'll not ask you to condone them," said he. "But first,
+they must be justifiable to me, Jennie."
+
+"Good night," said Jennie curtly, and left him.
+
+Jennie, I am obliged to admit, gave scant attention to the new career upon
+which her old sweetheart seemed to be entering. She was in politics, and
+was playing the game as became the daughter of a local politician. The
+reader must not by this term get the impression that Colonel Woodruff was
+a man of the grafting tricky sort of which we are prone to think when the
+term is used. The West has been ruled by just such men as he, and the West
+has done rather well, all things considered. Colonel Albert Woodruff went
+south with the army as a corporal in 1861, and came back a lieutenant. His
+title of colonel was conferred by appointment as a member of the staff of
+the governor, long years ago, when he was county auditor. He was not a
+rich man, as I may have suggested, but a well-to-do farmer, whose wife did
+her own work much of the time, not because the colonel could not afford to
+hire "help," but for the reason that "hired girls" were hard to get.
+
+The colonel, having seen the glory of the coming of the Lord in the
+triumph of his side in the great war, was inclined to think that all
+reform had ceased, and was a political stand-patter--a very honest and
+sincere one. Moreover, he was influential enough so that when Mr. Cummins
+or Mr. Dolliver came into the county on political errands, Colonel
+Woodruff had always been called into conference. He was of the old New
+England type, believed very much in heredity, very much in the theory that
+whatever is is right, in so far as it has secured money or power.
+
+He had hated General Weaver and his forces; and had sometimes wondered how
+a man of Horace Boies' opinions had succeeded in being so good a governor.
+He broke with Governor Larrabee when that excellent man had turned against
+the great men who had developed Iowa by building the railroads. He was
+always in the county convention, and preferred to serve on the committee
+on credentials, and leave to others the more showy work of membership in
+the committee on resolutions. He believed in education, provided it did
+not unsettle things. He had a good deal of Latin and some Greek, and lived
+on a farm rather than in a fine house in the county seat because of his
+lack of financial ability. As a matter of fact, he had been too strictly
+scrupulous to do the things--such as dealing in lands belonging to eastern
+speculators who were not advised as to their values, speculating in county
+warrants, buying up tax titles with county money, and the like--by which
+his fellow-politicians who held office in the early years of the county
+had founded their fortunes. A very respectable, honest, American tory was
+the colonel, fond of his political sway, and rather soured by the fact
+that it was passing from him. He had now broken with Cummins and Dolliver
+as he had done years ago with Weaver and later with Larrabee--and this
+breach was very important to him, whether they were greatly concerned
+about it or not.
+
+Such being her family history, Jennie was something of a politician
+herself. She was in no way surprised when approached by party managers on
+the subject of accepting the nomination for county superintendent of
+schools. Colonel Woodruff could deliver some delegates to his daughter,
+though he rather shied at the proposal at first, but on thinking it over,
+warmed somewhat to the notion of having a Woodruff on the county pay-roll
+once more.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+JIM TALKS THE WEATHER COLD
+
+
+"Going to the rally, James?"
+
+Jim had finished his supper, and yearned for a long evening in his attic
+den with his cheap literature. But as the district schoolmaster he was to
+some extent responsible for the protection of the school property, and
+felt some sense of duty as to exhibiting an interest in public affairs.
+
+"I guess I'll have to go, mother," he replied regretfully. "I want to see
+Mr. Woodruff about borrowing his Babcock milk tester, and I'll go that
+way. I guess I'll go on to the meeting."
+
+He kissed his mother when he went--a habit from which he never deviated,
+and another of those personal peculiarities which had marked him as
+different from the other boys of the neighborhood. His mother urged his
+overcoat upon him in vain--for Jim's overcoat was distinctly a bad one,
+while his best suit, now worn every day as a concession to his scholastic
+position, still looked passably well after several weeks of schoolroom
+duty. She pressed him to wear a muffler about his neck, but he declined
+that also. He didn't need it, he said; but he was thinking of the
+incongruity of a muffler with no overcoat. It seemed more logical to
+assume that the weather was milder than it really was, on that sharp
+October evening, and appear at his best, albeit rather aware of the cold.
+Jennie was at home, and he was likely to see and be seen of her.
+
+"You can borrow that tester," said the colonel, "and the cows that go with
+it, if you can use 'em. They ain't earning their keep here. But how does
+the milk tester fit into the curriculum of the school? A decoration?"
+
+"We want to make a few tests of the cows in the neighborhood," answered
+Jim. "Just another of my fool notions."
+
+"All right," said the colonel. "Take it along. Going to the speakin'?"
+
+"Certainly, he's going," said Jennie, entering. "This is my meeting,
+Jim."
+
+"Surely, I'm going," assented Jim. "And I think I'll run along."
+
+"I wish we had room for you in the car," said the colonel. "But I'm going
+around by Bronson's to pick up the speaker, and I'll have a chuck-up
+load."
+
+"Not so much of a load as you think," said Jennie. "I'm going with Jim.
+The walk will do me good."
+
+Any candidate warms to her voting population just before election; but
+Jennie had a special kindness for Jim. He was no longer a farm-hand. The
+fact that he was coming to be a center of disturbance in the district, and
+that she quite failed to understand how his eccentric behavior could be
+harmonized with those principles of teaching which she had imbibed at the
+state normal school in itself lifted him nearer to equality with her. A
+public nuisance is really more respectable than a nonentity.
+
+She gave Jim a thrill as she passed through the gate that he opened for
+her. White moonlight on her white furs suggested purity, exaltation, the
+essence of womanhood--things far finer in the woman of twenty-seven than
+the glamour thrown over him by the schoolgirl of sixteen.
+
+Jim gave her no thrill; for he looked gaunt and angular in his skimpy,
+ready-made suit, too short in legs and sleeves, and too thin for the
+season. Yet, as they walked along, Jim grew upon her. He strode on with
+immense strides, made slow to accommodate her shorter steps, and
+embarrassing her by his entire absence of effort to keep step. For all
+that, he lifted his face to the stars, and he kept silence, save for
+certain fragments of his thoughts, in dropping which he assumed that she,
+like himself, was filled with the grandeur of the sparkling sky, its vast
+moon, plowing like an astronomical liner through the cloudlets of a
+wool-pack. He pointed out the great open spaces in the Milky Way,
+wondering at their emptiness, and at the fact that no telescope can find
+stars in them.
+
+They stopped and looked. Jim laid his hard hands on the shoulders of her
+white fur collarette.
+
+"What's the use of political meetings," said Jim, "when you and I can
+stand here and think our way out, even beyond the limits of our
+Universe?"
+
+"A wonderful journey," said she, not quite understanding his mood, but
+very respectful to it.
+
+"And together," said Jim. "I'd like to go on a long, long journey with you
+to-night, Jennie, to make up for the years since we went anywhere
+together."
+
+"And we shouldn't have come together to-night," said Jennie, getting back
+to earth, "if I hadn't exercised my leap-year privilege."
+
+She slipped her arm in his, and they went on in a rather intimate way.
+
+"I'm not to blame, Jennie," said he. "You know that at any time I'd have
+given anything--anything--"
+
+"And even now," said Jennie, taking advantage of his depleted stock of
+words, "while we roam beyond the Milky Way, we aren't getting any votes
+for me for county superintendent."
+
+Jim said nothing. He was quite, quite reestablished on the earth.
+
+"Don't you want me to be elected, Jim?"
+
+Jim seemed to ponder this for some time--a period of taking the matter
+under advisement which caused Jennie to drop his arm and busy herself with
+her skirts.
+
+"Yes," said Jim, at last; "of course I do."
+
+Nothing more was said until they reached the schoolhouse door.
+
+"Well," said Jennie rather indignantly, "I'm glad there are plenty of
+voters who are more enthusiastic about me than you seem to be!"
+
+More interesting to a keen observer than the speeches, were the unusual
+things in the room itself. To be sure, there were on the blackboards
+exercises and outlines, of lessons in language, history, mathematics,
+geography and the like. But these were not the usual things taken from
+text-books. The problems in arithmetic were calculations as to the feeding
+value of various rations for live stock, records of laying hens and
+computation as to the excess of value in eggs produced over the cost of
+feed. Pinned to the wall were market reports on all sorts of farm
+products, and especially numerous were the statistics on the prices of
+cream and butter. There were files of farm papers piled about, and racks
+of agricultural bulletins. In one corner of the room was a typewriting
+machine, and in another a sewing machine. Parts of an old telephone were
+scattered about on the teacher's desk. A model of a piggery stood on a
+shelf, done in cardboard. Instead of the usual collection of text-books in
+the desk, there were hectograph copies of exercises, reading lessons,
+arithmetical tables and essays on various matters relating to agriculture,
+all of which were accounted for by two or three hand-made hectographs--a
+very fair sort of printing plant--lying on a table. The members of the
+school board were there, looking on these evidences of innovation with
+wonder and more or less disfavor. Things were disorderly. The text-books
+recently adopted by the board against some popular protest had evidently
+been pitched, neck and crop, out of the school by the man whom Bonner had
+termed a dub. It was a sort of contempt for the powers that be.
+
+Colonel Woodruff was in the chair. After the speechifying was over, and
+the stereotyped, though rather illogical, appeal had been made for voters
+of the one party to cast the straight ticket, and for those of the other
+faction to scratch, the colonel rose to adjourn the meeting.
+
+Newton Bronson, safely concealed behind taller people, called out, "Jim
+Irwin! speech!"
+
+There was a giggle, a slight sensation, and many voices joined in the call
+for the new schoolmaster.
+
+Colonel Woodruff felt the unwisdom of ignoring the demand. Probably he
+relied upon Jim's discretion and expected a declination.
+
+Jim arose, seedy and lank, and the voices ceased, save for another
+suppressed titter.
+
+"I don't know," said Jim, "whether this call upon me is a joke or not. If
+it is, it isn't a practical one, for I can't talk. I don't care much about
+parties or politics. I don't know whether I'm a Democrat, a Republican or
+a Populist."
+
+This caused a real sensation. The nerve of the fellow! Really, it must in
+justice be said, Jim was losing himself in a desire to tell his true
+feelings. He forgot all about Jennie and her candidacy--about everything
+except his real, true feelings. This proves that he was no politician.
+
+"I don't see much in this county campaign that interests me," he went
+on--and Jennie Woodruff reddened, while her seasoned father covered his
+mouth with his hand to conceal a smile. "The politicians come out into the
+farming districts every campaign and get us hayseeds for anything they
+want. They always have got us. They've got us again! They give us
+clodhoppers the glad hand, a cheap cigar, and a cheaper smile after
+election;--and that's all. I know it, you all know it, they know it. I
+don't blame them so very much. The trouble is we don't ask them to do
+anything better. I want a new kind of rural school; but I don't see any
+prospect, no matter how this election goes, for any change in them. We in
+the Woodruff District will have to work out our own salvation. Our
+political ring never'll do anything but the old things. They don't want
+to, and they haven't sense enough to do it if they did. That's all--and I
+don't suppose I should have said as much as I have!"
+
+There was stark silence for a moment when he sat down, and then as many
+cheers for Jim as for the principal speaker of the evening, cheers mingled
+with titters and catcalls. Jim felt a good deal as he had done when he
+knocked down Mr. Billy's chauffeur--rather degraded and humiliated, as if
+he had made an ass of himself. And as he walked out of the door, the
+future county superintendent passed by him in high displeasure, and walked
+home with some one else.
+
+Jim found the weather much colder than it had been while coming. He really
+needed an Eskimo's fur suit.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE NEW WINE
+
+
+In the little strip of forest which divided the sown from the Iowa sown
+wandered two boys in earnest converse. They seemed to be Boy Trappers, and
+from their backloads of steel-traps one of them might have been Frank
+Merriwell, and the other Dead-Shot Dick. However, though it was only
+mid-December, and the fur of all wild varmints was at its primest, they
+were bringing their traps into the settlements, instead of taking them
+afield. "The settlements" were represented by the ruinous dwelling of the
+Simmses, and the boy who resembled Frank Merriwell was Raymond Simms. The
+other, who was much more barbarously accoutered, whose overalls were
+fringed, who wore a cartridge belt about his person, and carried hatchet,
+revolver, and a long knife with a deerfoot handle, and who so studiously
+looked like Dead-Shot Dick, was our old friend of the road gang, Newton
+Bronson. On the right, on the left, a few rods would have brought the boys
+out upon the levels of rich corn-fields, and in sight of the long rows of
+cottonwoods, willows, box-elders and soft maples along the straight roads,
+and of the huge red barns, each of which possessed a numerous progeny of
+outbuildings, among which the dwelling held a dubious headship. But here,
+they could be the Boy Trappers--a thin fringe of bushes and trees made of
+the little valley a forest to the imagination of the boys. Newton put down
+his load, and sat upon a stump to rest.
+
+Raymond Simms was dimly conscious of a change in Newton since the day when
+they met and helped select Colonel Woodruff's next year's seed corn.
+Newton's mother had a mother's confidence that Newton was now a good boy,
+who had been led astray by other boys, but had reformed. Jim Irwin had a
+distinct feeling of optimism. Newton had quit tobacco and beer, casually
+stating to Jim that he was "in training." Since Jim had shown his ability
+to administer a knockout to that angry chauffeur, he seemed to this
+hobbledehoy peculiarly a proper person for athletic confidences. Newton's
+mind seemed gradually filling up with interests that displaced the
+psychological complex out of which oozed the bad stories and filthy
+allusion. Jim attributed much of this to the clear mountain atmosphere
+which surrounded Raymond Simms, the ignorant barbarian driven out of his
+native hills by a feud. Raymond was of the open spaces, and refused to
+hear fetid things that seemed out of place in them. There was a dignity
+which impressed Newton, in the blank gaze with which Raymond greeted
+Newton's sallies that were wont to set the village pool room in a roar;
+but how could you have a fuss with a feller who knew all about trapping,
+who had seen a man shot, who had shot a bear, who had killed wild turkeys,
+who had trapped a hundred dollars' worth of furs in one winter, who knew
+the proper "sets" for all fur-bearing animals, and whom you liked, and who
+liked you?
+
+As the reason for Newton's improvement in manner of living, Raymond, out
+of his own experience, would have had no hesitation in naming the school
+and the schoolmaster.
+
+"I wouldn't go back on a friend," said Newton, seated on the stump with
+his traps on the ground at his feet, "the way you're going back on me."
+
+"You got no call to talk thataway," replied the mountain boy. "How'm I
+goin' back on you?"
+
+"We was goin' to trap all winter," asseverated Newton, "and next winter we
+were goin' up in the north woods together."
+
+"You know," said Raymond somberly, "that we cain't run any trap line and
+do whut we got to do to he'p Mr. Jim."
+
+Newton sat mute as one having no rejoinder.
+
+"Mr. Jim," went on Raymond, "needs all the he'p every kid in this
+settlement kin give him. He's the best friend I ever had. I'm a pore
+ignerant boy, an' he teaches me how to do things that will make me
+something."
+
+"Darn it all!" said Newton.
+
+"You know," said Raymond, "that you'd think mahgty small of me, if I'd
+desert Mr. Jim Irwin."
+
+"Well, then," replied Newton, seizing his traps and throwing them across
+his shoulder, "come on with the traps, and shut up! What'll we do when the
+school board gets Jennie Woodruff to revoke his certificate and make him
+quit teachin', hey?"
+
+"Nobody'll eveh do that," said Raymond. "I'd set in the schoolhouse do'
+with my rifle and shoot anybody that'd come to th'ow Mr. Jim outen the
+school."
+
+"Not in this country," said Newton. "This ain't a gun country."
+
+"But it orto be either a justice kentry, or a gun kentry," replied the
+mountain boy. "It stands to reason it must be one 'r the otheh, Newton."
+
+"No, it don't, neither," said Newton dogmatically.
+
+"Why should they th'ow Mr. Jim outen the school?" inquired Raymond. "Ain't
+he teachin' us right?"
+
+Newton explained for the tenth time that his father, Mr. Con Bonner and
+Mr. Haakon Peterson had not meant to hire Jim Irwin at all, but each had
+voted for him so that he might have one vote. They were all against him
+from the first, but they had not known how to get rid of him. Now,
+however, Jim had done so many things that no teacher was supposed to do,
+and had left undone so many things that teachers were bound by custom to
+perform, that Newton's father and Mr. Bonner and Mr. Peterson had made up
+up their minds that they would call upon him to resign, and if he
+wouldn't, they would "turn him out" in some way. And the best way if they
+could do it, would be to induce County Superintendent Woodruff, who didn't
+like Jim since the speech he made at the political meeting, to revoke his
+certificate.
+
+"What wrong's he done committed?" asked Raymond. "I don't know what
+teachers air supposed to do in this kentry, but Mr. Jim seems to be the
+only shore-enough teacher I ever see!"
+
+"He don't teach out of the books the school board adopted," replied
+Newton.
+
+"But he makes up better lessons," urged Raymond. "An' all the things we do
+in school, he'ps us make a livin'."
+
+"He begins at eight in the mornin'," said Newton, "an' he has some of us
+there till half past five, and comes back in the evening. And every
+Saturday, some of the kids are doin' something at the schoolhouse."
+
+"They don't pay him for overtime, do they?" queried Raymond. "Well, then,
+they orto, instid of turnin' him out!"
+
+"Well, they'll turn him out!" prophesied Newton. "I'm havin' more fun in
+school than I ever--an' that's why I'm with you on this quittin'
+trapping--but they'll get Jim, all right!"
+
+"I'm having something betteh'n fun," replied Raymond. "My pap has never
+understood this kentry, an' we-all has had bad times hyeh; but Mr. Jim an'
+I have studied out how I can make a betteh livin' next year--and pap says
+we kin go on the way Mr. Jim says. I'll work for Colonel Woodruff a part
+of the time, an' pap kin make corn in the biggest field. It seems we
+didn't do our work right last year--an' in a couple of years, with the
+increase of the hawgs, an' the land we kin get under plow...."
+
+Raymond was off on his pet dream of becoming something better than the
+oldest of the Simms tribe of outcasts, and Newton was subconsciously
+impressed by the fact that never for a moment did Raymond's plans fail to
+include the elevation with him of Calista and Jinnie and Buddy and Pap and
+Mam. It was taken for granted that the Simmses sank or swam together,
+whether their antagonists were poverty and ignorance, or their ancient
+foes, the Hobdays. Newton drew closer to Raymond's side.
+
+It was still an hour before nine--when the rural school traditionally
+"takes up"--when the boys had stored their traps in a shed at the Bronson
+home, and walked on to the schoolhouse. That rather scabby and weathered
+edifice was already humming with industry of a sort. In spite of the
+hostility of the school board, and the aloofness of the patrons of the
+school, the pupils were clearly interested in Jim Irwin's system of rural
+education. Never had the attendance been so large or regular; and one of
+the reasons for sessions before nine and after four was the inability of
+the teacher to attend to the needs of his charges in the five and a half
+hours called "school hours."
+
+This, however, was not the sole reason. It was the new sort of work which
+commanded the attention of Raymond and Newton as they entered. This
+morning, Jim had arranged in various sorts of dishes specimens of grain
+and grass seeds. By each was a card bearing the name of the farm from
+which one of the older boys or girls had brought it. "Wheat, Scotch Fife,
+from the farm of Columbus Smith." "Timothy, or Herd's Grass, from the farm
+of A. B. Talcott." "Alsike Clover, from the farm of B. B. Hamm." Each lot
+was in a small cloth bag which had been made by one of the little girls as
+a sewing exercise; and each card had been written as a lesson in
+penmanship by one of the younger pupils, and contained, in addition to the
+data above mentioned, heads under which to enter the number of grains of
+the seed examined, the number which grew, the percentage of viability, the
+number of alien seeds of weeds and other sorts, the names of these
+adulterants, the weight of true and vitalized, and of foul and alien and
+dead seeds, the value per bushel in the local market of the seeds under
+test, and the real market values of the samples, after dead seeds and
+alien matter had been subtracted.
+
+"Now get busy, here," cried Jim Irwin. "We're late! Raymond, you've a
+quick eye--you count seeds--and you, Calista, and Mary Smith--and mind,
+next year's crop may depend on making no mistakes!"
+
+"Mistakes!" scoffed Mary Smith, a dumpy girl of fourteen. "We don't make
+mistakes any more, teacher."
+
+It was a frolic, rather than a task. All had come with a perfect
+understanding that this early attendance was quite illegal, and not to be
+required of them--but they came.
+
+"Newt," suggested Jim, "get busy on the percentage problems for that
+second class in arithmetic."
+
+"Sure," said Newt. "Let's see.... Good seed is the base, and bad seed and
+dead seed the percentage--find the rate...."
+
+"Oh, you know!" said Jim. "Make them easy and plain and as many as you can
+get out--and be sure that you name the farm every pop!"
+
+"Got you!" answered Newton, and in a fine frenzy went at the job of
+creating a text-book in arithmetic.
+
+"Buddy," said Jim, patting the youngest Simms on the head, "you and
+Virginia can print the reading lessons this morning, can't you?"
+
+"Yes, Mr. Jim," answered both McGeehee Simms and his sister cheerily.
+"Where's the copy?"
+
+"Here," answered the teacher, handing each a typewritten sheet for use as
+the original from which the young mountaineers were to make hectograph
+copies, "and mind you make good copies! Bettina Hansen pretty nearly cried
+last night because she had to write them over so many times on the
+typewriter before she got them all right."
+
+The reading lesson was an article on corn condensed from a farm paper, and
+a selection from _Hiawatha_--the Indian-corn myth.
+
+"We'll be careful, Mr. Jim," said Buddy.
+
+Half past eight, and only half an hour until school would officially be
+"called."
+
+Newton Bronson was writing in aniline ink for the hectographs, such
+problems as these:
+
+"If Mr. Ezra Bronson's seed wheat carries in each 250 grains, ten cockle
+grains, fifteen rye grains, twenty fox-tail seeds, three iron-weed seeds,
+two wild oats grains, twenty-seven wild buckwheat seeds, one wild
+morning-glory seed, and eighteen lamb's quarter seeds, what percentage of
+the seeds sown is wheat, and what foul seed?"
+
+"If in each 250 grains of wheat in Mr. Bronson's bins, 30 are cracked,
+dead or otherwise not capable of sprouting, what per cent, of the seed
+sown will grow?"
+
+"If the foul seed and dead wheat amount to one-eighth by weight of the
+mass, what did Mr. Bronson pay per bushel for the good wheat, if it cost
+him $1.10 in the bin, and what per cent, did he lose by the adulterations
+and the poor wheat?"
+
+Jim ran over these rapidly. "Your mathematics is good, Newton," said the
+schoolmaster, "but if you expect to pass in penmanship, you'll have to
+take more pains."
+
+"How about the grammar?" asked Newton. "The writing is pretty bad, I'll
+own up."
+
+"The grammar is good this morning. You're gradually mastering the art of
+stating a problem in arithmetic in English--and that's improvement."
+
+The hands of Jim Irwin's dollar watch gradually approached the position
+indicating nine o'clock--at which time the schoolmaster rapped on his desk
+and the school came to order. Then, for a while, it became like other
+schools. A glance over the room enabled him to enter the names of the
+absentees, and those tardy. There was a song by the school, the recitation
+in concert of _Little Brown Hands_, some general remarks and directions by
+the teacher, and the primary pupils came forward for their reading
+exercises. A few classes began poring over their text-books, but most of
+the pupils had their work passed out to them in the form of hectograph
+copies of exercises prepared in the school itself.
+
+As the little ones finished their recitations, they passed to the dishes
+of wheat, and began aiding Raymond's squad in the counting and classifying
+of the various seeds. They counted to five, and they counted the fives.
+They laughed in a subdued way, and whispered constantly, but nobody seemed
+disturbed.
+
+"Do they help much, Calista?" asked the teacher, as the oldest Simms girl
+came to his desk for more wheat.
+
+"No, seh, not much," replied Calista, beaming, "but they don't hold us
+back any--and maybe they do he'p a little."
+
+"That's good," said Jim, "and they enjoy it, don't they?"
+
+"Oh, yes, Mr. Jim," assented Calista, "and the way Buddy is learnin' to
+count is fine! They-all will soon know all the addition they is, and a lot
+of multiplication. Angie Talcott knows the kinds of seeds better'n what I
+do!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+AND THE OLD BOTTLES
+
+
+The day passed. Four o'clock came. In order that all might reach home for
+supper, there was no staying, except that Newt Bronson and Raymond Simms
+remained to sweep and dust the schoolroom, and prepare kindling for the
+next morning's fire--a work they had taken upon themselves, so as to
+enable the teacher to put on the blackboards such outlines for the
+morrow's class work as might be required. Jim was writing on the board a
+list of words constituting a spelling exercise. They were not from the
+text-book, but grew naturally out of the study of the seed
+wheat--"cockle," "morning-glory," "convolvulus," "viable," "viability,"
+"sprouting," "iron-weed" and the like. A tap was heard at the door, and
+Raymond Simms opened it.
+
+In filed three women--and Jim Irwin knew as he looked at them that he was
+greeting a deputation, and felt that it meant a struggle. For they were
+the wives of the members of the school board. He placed for them the three
+available chairs, and in the absence of any for himself remained standing
+before them, a gaunt shabby-looking revolutionist at the bar of settled
+usage and fixed public opinion.
+
+Mrs. Haakon Peterson was a tall blonde woman who, when she spoke betrayed
+her Scandinavian origin by the northern burr to her "r's," and a slight
+difficulty with her "j's," her "y's" and long "a's." She was slow-spoken
+and dignified, and Jim felt an instinctive respect for her personality.
+Mrs. Bronson was a good motherly woman, noted for her housekeeping, and
+for her church activities. She looked oftener at her son, and his friend
+Raymond than at the schoolmaster. Mrs. Bonner was the most voluble of the
+three, and was the only one who shook hands with Jim; but in spite of her
+rather offhand manner, Jim sensed in the little, black-eyed Irishwoman the
+real commander of the expedition against him--for such he knew it to be.
+
+"You may think it strange of us coming after hours," said she, "but we
+wanted to speak to you, teacher, without the children here."
+
+"I wish more of the parents would call," said Jim. "At any hour of the
+day."
+
+"Or night either, I dare say," suggested Mrs. Bonner. "I hear you've the
+scholars here at all hours, Jim."
+
+Jim smiled his slow patient smile.
+
+"We do break the union rules, I guess, Mrs. Bonner," said he; "there seems
+to be more to do than we can get done during school hours."
+
+"What right have ye," struck in Mrs. Bonner, "to be burning the district's
+fuel, and wearing out the school's property out of hours like that--not
+that it's anny of my business," she interposed, hastily, as if she had
+been diverted from her chosen point of attack. "I just thought of it,
+that's all. What we came for, Mr. Irwin, is to object to the way the
+teachin's being done--corn and wheat, and hogs and the like, instead of
+the learnin' schools was made to teach."
+
+"Schools were made to prepare children for life, weren't they, Mrs.
+Bonner?"
+
+"To be sure," went on Mrs. Bonner, "I can see an' the whole district can
+see that it's easier for a man that's been a farm-hand to teach farm-hand
+knowledge, than the learnin' schools was set up to teach; but if so be he
+hasn't the book education to do the right thing, we think he should get
+out and give a real teacher a chance."
+
+"What am I neglecting?" asked Jim mildly.
+
+Mrs. Bonner seemed unprepared for the question, and sat for an instant
+mute. Mrs. Peterson interposed her attack while Mrs. Bonner might be
+recovering her wind.
+
+"We people that have had a hard time," she said in a precise way which
+seemed to show that she knew exactly what she wanted, "want to give our
+boys and girls a chance to live easier lives than we lived. We don't want
+our children taught about nothing but work. We want higher things."
+
+"Mrs. Peterson," said Jim earnestly, "we must have first things first.
+Making a living is the first thing--and the highest."
+
+"Haakon and I will look after making a living for our family," said she.
+"We want our children to learn nice things, and go to high school, and
+after a while to the Juniwersity."
+
+"And I," declared Jim, "will send out from this school, if you will let
+me, pupils better prepared for higher schools than have ever gone from
+it--because they will be trained to think in terms of action. They will go
+knowing that thoughts must always be linked with things. Aren't your
+children happy in school, Mrs. Peterson?"
+
+"I don't send them to school to be happy, Yim," replied Mrs. Peterson,
+calling him by the name most familiarly known to all of them; "I send them
+to learn to be higher people than their father and mother. That's what
+America means!"
+
+"They'll be higher people--higher than their parents--higher than their
+teacher--they'll be efficient farmers, and efficient farmers' wives.
+They'll be happy, because they will know how to use more brains in farming
+than any lawyer or doctor or merchant can possibly use in his business.
+I'm educating them to find an outlet for genius in farming!"
+
+"It's a fine thing," said Mrs. Bonner, coming to the aid of her fellow
+soldiers, "to work hard for a lifetime, an' raise nothing but a family of
+farmers! A fine thing!"
+
+"They will be farmers anyhow," cried Jim, "in spite of your
+efforts--ninety out of every hundred of them! And of the other ten, nine
+will be wage-earners in the cities, and wish to God they were back on the
+farm; and the hundredth one will succeed in the city. Shall we educate the
+ninety-and-nine to fail, that the hundredth, instead of enriching the
+rural life with his talents, may steal them away to make the city
+stronger? It is already too strong for us farmers. Shall we drive our best
+away to make it stronger?"
+
+The guns of Mrs. Bonner and Mrs. Peterson were silenced for a moment, and
+Mrs. Bronson, after gazing about at the typewriter, the hectograph, the
+exhibits of weed seeds, the Babcock milk tester, and the other
+unscholastic equipment, pointed to the list of words, and the arithmetic
+problems on the board.
+
+"Do you get them words from the speller?" she asked.
+
+"No," said he, "we got them from a lesson on seed wheat."
+
+"Did them examples come out of an arithmetic book?" cross-examined she.
+
+"No," said Jim, "we used problems we made ourselves. We were figuring
+profits and losses on your cows, Mrs. Bronson!"
+
+"Ezra Bronson," said Mrs. Bronson loftily, "don't need any help in telling
+what's a good cow. He was farming before you was born!"
+
+"Like fun, he don't need help! He's going to dry old Cherry off and fatten
+her for beef; and he can make more money on the cream by beefing about
+three more of 'em. The Babcock test shows they're just boarding on us
+without paying their board!"
+
+The delegation of matrons ruffled like a group of startled hens at this
+interposition, which was Newton Bronson's effective seizing of the
+opportunity to issue a progress bulletin in the research work on the
+Bronson dairy herd.
+
+"Newton!" said his mother, "don't interrupt me when I'm talking to the
+teacher!"
+
+"Well, then," said Newton, "don't tell the teacher that pa knew which cows
+were good and which were poor. If any one in this district wants to know
+about their cows they'll have to come to this shop. And I can tell you
+that it'll pay 'em to come too, if they're going to make anything selling
+cream. Wait until we get out our reports on the herds, ma!"
+
+The women were rather stampeded by this onslaught of the irregular
+troops--especially Mrs. Bronson. She was placed in the position of a woman
+taking a man's wisdom from her ne'er-do-well son for the first time in her
+life. Like any other mother in this position, she felt a flutter of
+pride--but it was strongly mingled with a motherly desire to spank him.
+The deputation rose, with a unanimous feeling that they had been scored
+upon.
+
+"Cows!" scoffed Mrs. Peterson. "If we leave you in this yob, Mr. Irwin,
+our children will know nothing but cows and hens and soils and grains--and
+where will the culture come in? How will our boys and girls appear when we
+get fixed so we can move to town? We won't have no culture at all, Yim!"
+
+"Culture!" exclaimed Jim. "Why--why, after ten years of the sort of school
+I would give you if I were a better teacher, and could have my way, the
+people of the cities would be begging to have their children admitted so
+that they might obtain real culture--culture fitting them for life in the
+twentieth century--"
+
+"Don't bother to get ready for the city children, Jim," said Mrs. Bonner
+sneeringly, "you won't be teaching the Woodruff school that long."
+
+All this time, the dark-faced Cracker had been glooming from a corner,
+earnestly seeking to fathom the wrongness he sensed in the gathering. Now
+he came forward.
+
+"I reckon I may be making a mistake to say anything," said he, "f'r we-all
+is strangers hyeh, an' we're pore; but I must speak out for Mr. Jim--I
+must! Don't turn him out, folks, f'r he's done mo' f'r us than eveh any
+one done in the world!"
+
+"What do you mean?" asked Mrs. Peterson.
+
+"I mean," said Raymond, "that when Mr. Jim began talking school to us, we
+was a pore no-'count lot without any learnin', with nothin' to talk about
+except our wrongs, an' our enemies, and the meanness of the Iowa folks.
+You see we didn't understand you-all. An' now, we have hope. We done got
+hope from this school. We're goin' to make good in the world. We're
+getting education. We're all learnin' to use books. My little sister will
+be as good as anybody, if you'll just let Mr. Jim alone in this school--as
+good as any one. An' I'll he'p pap get a farm, and we'll work and think at
+the same time, an' be happy!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+JENNIE ARRANGES A CHRISTMAS PARTY
+
+
+The great party magnates who made up the tickets from governor down to the
+lowest county office, doubtless regarded the little political plum shaken
+off into the apron of Miss Jennie Woodruff of the Woodruff District, as
+the very smallest and least bloomy of all the plums on the tree; but there
+is something which tends to puff one up in the mere fact of having
+received the votes of the people for any office, especially in a region of
+high average civilization, covering six hundred or seven hundred square
+miles of good American domain. Jennie was a sensible country girl. Being
+sensible, she tried to avoid uppishness. But she did feel some little
+sense of increased importance as she drove her father's little
+one-cylinder runabout over the smooth earth roads, in the crisp December
+weather, just before Christmas.
+
+The weather itself was stimulating, and she was making rapid progress in
+the management of the little car which her father had offered to lend her
+for use in visiting the one hundred or more rural schools soon to come
+under her supervision. She rather fancied the picture of herself, clothed
+in more or less authority and queening it over her little army of
+teachers.
+
+Mr. Haakon Peterson was phlegmatically conscious that she made rather an
+agreeable picture, as she stopped her car alongside his top buggy to talk
+with him. She had bright blue eyes, fluffy brown hair, a complexion
+whipped pink by the breeze, and she smiled at him ingratiatingly.
+
+"Don't you think father is lovely?" said she. "He is going to let me use
+the runabout when I visit the schools."
+
+"That will be good," said Haakon. "It will save you lots of time. I hope
+you make the county pay for the gasoline."
+
+"I haven't thought about that," said Jennie. "Everybody's been so nice to
+me--I want to give as well as receive."
+
+"Why," said Haakon, "you will yust begin to receive when your salary
+begins in Yanuary."
+
+"Oh, no!" said Jennie. "I've received much more than that now! You don't
+know how proud I feel. So many nice men I never knew before, and all my
+old friends like you working for me in the convention and at the polls,
+just as if I amounted to something."
+
+"And you don't know how proud I feel," said Haakon, "to have in county
+office a little girl I used to hold on my lap."
+
+In early times, when Haakon was a flat-capped immigrant boy, he had earned
+the initial payment on his first eighty acres of prairie land as a hired
+man on Colonel Woodruff's farm. Now he was a rather richer man than the
+colonel, and not a little proud of his ascent to affluence. He was a
+mild-spoken, soft-voiced Scandinavian, quite completely Americanized, and
+possessed of that aptitude for local politics which makes so good a
+citizen of the Norwegian and Swede. His influence was always worth fifty
+to sixty Scandinavian votes in any county election. He was a good party
+man and conscious of being entitled to his voice in party matters. This
+seemed to him an opportunity for exerting a bit of political influence.
+
+"Yennie," said he, "this man Yim Irwin needs to be lined up."
+
+"Lined up! What do you mean?"
+
+"The way he is doing in the school," said Haakon, "is all wrong. If you
+can't line him up, he will make you trouble. We must look ahead. Everybody
+has his friends, and Yim Irwin has his friends. If you have trouble with
+him, his friends will be against you when we want to nominate you for a
+second term. The county is getting close. If we go to conwention without
+your home delegation it would weaken you, and if we nominate you, every
+piece of trouble like this cuts down your wote. You ought to line him up
+and have him do right."
+
+"But he is so funny," said Jennie.
+
+"He likes you," said Haakon. "You can line him up."
+
+Jennie blushed, and to conceal her slight embarrassment, got out for the
+purpose of cranking her machine.
+
+"But if I can not line him up?" said she.
+
+"I tank," said Haakon, "if you can't line him up, you will have a chance
+to rewoke his certificate when you take office."
+
+So Jim Irwin was to be crushed like an insect. The little local gearing of
+the big party machine was to crush him. Jennie dimly sensed the tragedy of
+it, but very dimly. Mainly she thought of Mr. Peterson's suggestion as to
+"lining up" Jim Irwin as so thoroughly sensible that she gave it a good
+deal of thought that day. She could not help feeling a little resentment
+at Jim for following his own fads and fancies so far. We always resent the
+necessity of crushing any weak creature which must needs be wiped out. The
+idea that there could be anything fundamentally sane in his overturning of
+the old and tried school methods under which both he and she had been
+educated, was absurd to Jennie. To be sure, everybody had always favored
+"more practical education," and Jim's farm arithmetic, farm physiology,
+farm reading and writing, cow-testing exercises, seed analysis, corn clubs
+and the tomato, poultry and pig clubs he proposed to have in operation the
+next summer, seemed highly practical; but to Jennie's mind, the fact that
+they introduced dissension in the neighborhood and promised to make her
+official life vexatious, seemed ample proof that Jim's work was visionary
+and impractical. Poor Jennie was not aware of the fact that new truth
+always comes bringing, not peace to mankind, but a sword.
+
+"Father," said she that night, "let's have a little Christmas party."
+
+"All right," said the colonel. "Whom shall we invite?"
+
+"Don't laugh," said she. "I want to invite Jim Irwin and his mother, and
+nobody else."
+
+"All right," reiterated the colonel. "But why?"
+
+"Oh," said Jennie, "I want to see whether I can talk Jim out of some of
+his foolishness."
+
+"You want to line him up, do you?" said the colonel. "Well, that's good
+politics, and incidentally, you may get some good ideas out of Jim."
+
+"Rather unlikely," said Jennie.
+
+"I don't know about that," said the colonel, smiling. "I begin to think
+that Jim's a Brown Mouse. I've told you about the Brown Mouse, haven't
+I?"
+
+"Yes," said Jennie. "You've told me. But Professor Darbishire's brown mice
+were simply wild and incorrigible creatures. Just because it happens to
+emerge suddenly from the forests of heredity, it doesn't prove that the
+Brown Mouse is any good."
+
+"Justin Morgan was a Brown Mouse," said the colonel. "And he founded the
+greatest breed of horses in the world."
+
+"You say that," said Jennie, "because you're a lover of the Morgan
+horse."
+
+"Napoleon Bonaparte was a Brown Mouse," said the colonel. "So was George
+Washington, and so was Peter the Great. Whenever a Brown Mouse appears he
+changes things in a little way or a big way."
+
+"For the better, always?" asked Jennie.
+
+"No," said the colonel. "The Brown Mouse may throw back to slant-headed
+savagery. But Jim ... sometimes I think Jim is the kind of Mendelian
+segregation out of which we get Franklins and Edisons and their sort. You
+may get some good ideas out of Jim. Let us have them here for Christmas,
+by all means."
+
+In due time Jennie's invitation reached Jim and his mother, like an
+explosive shell fired from a distance into their humble dwelling--quite
+upsetting things. Twenty-five years constitute rather a long wait for
+social recognition, and Mrs. Irwin had long since regarded herself as
+quite outside society. To be sure, for something like half of this period,
+she had been of society if not in it. She had done the family washings,
+scrubbings and cleanings, had made the family clothes and been a woman of
+all work, passing from household to household, in an orbit determined by
+the exigencies of threshing, harvesting, illness and child-bearing. At
+such times she sat at the family table and participated in the
+neighborhood gossip, in quite the manner of a visiting aunt or other
+female relative; but in spite of the democracy of rural life, there is and
+always has been a social difference between a hired woman and an invited
+guest. And when Jim, having absorbed everything which the Woodruff school
+could give him in the way of education, found his first job at "making a
+hand," Mrs. Irwin, at her son's urgent request, ceased going out to work
+for a while, until she could get back her strength. This she had never
+succeeded in doing, and for a dozen years or more had never entered a
+single one of the houses in which she had formerly served.
+
+"I can't go, James," said she; "I can't possibly go."
+
+"Oh, yes, you can! Why not?" said Jim. "Why not?"
+
+"You know I don't go anywhere," urged Mrs. Irwin.
+
+"That's no reason," said her son.
+
+"I haven't a thing to wear," said Mrs. Irwin.
+
+"Nothing to wear!"
+
+I wonder if any ordinary person can understand the shock with which Jim
+Irwin heard those words from his mother's lips. He was approaching thirty,
+and the association of the ideas of Mother and Costume was foreign to his
+mind. Other women had surfaces different from hers, to be sure--but his
+mother was not as other women. She was just Mother, always at work in the
+house or in the garden, always doing for him those inevitable things which
+made up her part in life, always clothed in the browns, grays, gray-blues,
+neutral stripes and checks which were cheap and common and easily made.
+Clothes! They were in the Irwin family no more than things by which the
+rules of decency were complied with, and the cold of winter turned
+back--but as for their appearance! Jim had never given the thing a thought
+further than to wear out his Sunday best in the schoolroom, to wonder
+where the next suit of Sunday best was to come from, and to buy for his
+mother the cheap and common fabrics which she fashioned into the garments
+in which alone, it seemed to him, she would seem like Mother. A boy who
+lives until he is nearly thirty in intimate companionship with Carlyle,
+Thoreau, Wordsworth, Shakespeare, Emerson, Professor Henry, Liberty H.
+Bailey, Cyril Hopkins, Dean Davenport and the great obscurities of the
+experiment stations, may be excused if his views regarding clothes are
+derived in a transcendental manner from _Sartor Resartus_ and the
+agricultural college tests as to the relation between Shelter and
+Feeding.
+
+"Why, mother," said he, "I think it would be pretty hard to explain to the
+Woodruffs that you stayed away because of clothes. They have seen you in
+the clothes you wear pretty often for the last thirty years!"
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+Was a woman ever quite without a costume?
+
+Mrs. Irwin gazed at vacancy for a while, and went to the old bureau. From
+the bottom drawer she took an old, old black alpaca dress--a dress which
+Jim had never seen. She spread it out on her bed in the alcove off the
+combined kitchen, parlor and dining-room in which they lived, and smoothed
+out the wrinkles. It was almost whole, save for the places where her body,
+once so much fuller than now, had drawn the threads apart--under the arms,
+and at some of the seams--and she handled it as one deals with something
+very precious.
+
+"I never thought I'd wear it again," said she, "but once. I've been saving
+it for my last dress. But I guess it won't hurt to wear it once for the
+benefit of the living."
+
+Jim kissed his mother--a rare thing, save as the caress was called for by
+the established custom between them.
+
+"Don't think of that, mother," said he, "for years and years yet!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+HOW JIM WAS LINED UP
+
+
+There is no doubt that Jennie Woodruff was justified in thinking that they
+were a queer couple. They weren't like the Woodruffs, at all. They were of
+a different pattern. To be sure, Jim's clothes were not especially
+noteworthy, being just shiny, and frayed at cuff and instep, and short of
+sleeve and leg, and ill-fitting and cheap. They betrayed poverty, and the
+inability of a New York sweatshop to anticipate the prodigality of Nature
+in the matter of length of leg and arm, and wealth of bones and joints
+which she had lavished upon Jim Irwin. But the Woodruff table had often
+enjoyed Jim's presence, and the standards prevailing there as to clothes
+were only those of plain people who eat with their hired men, buy their
+clothes at a county seat town, and live simply and sensibly on the fat of
+the land. Jim's queerness lay not so much in his clothes as in his
+personality.
+
+On the other hand, Jennie could not help thinking that Mrs. Irwin's
+queerness was to be found almost solely in her clothes. The black alpaca
+looked undeniably respectable, especially when it was helped out by a
+curious old brooch of goldstone, bordered with flowers in blue and white
+and red and green--tiny blossoms of little stones which looked like the
+flowers which grow at the snow line on Pike's Peak. Jennie felt that it
+must be a cheap affair, but it was decorative, and she wondered where Mrs.
+Irwin got it. She guessed it must have a story--a story in which the
+stooped, rusty, somber old lady looked like a character drawn to harmonize
+with the period just after the war. For the black alpaca dress looked more
+like a costume for a masquerade than a present-day garment, and Mrs. Irwin
+was so oppressed with doubt as to whether she was presentable, with
+knowledge that her dress didn't fit, and with the difficulty of behaving
+naturally--like a convict just discharged from prison after a ten years'
+term--that she took on a stiffness of deportment quite in keeping with the
+idea that she was a female Rip Van Winkle not yet quite awake. But Jennie
+had the keenness to see that if Mrs. Irwin could have had an up-to-date
+costume she would have become a rather ordinary and not bad-looking old
+lady. What Jennie failed to divine was that if Jim could have invested a
+hundred dollars in the services of tailors, haberdashers, barbers and
+other specialists in personal appearance, and could for this hour or so
+have blotted out his record as her father's field-hand, he would have
+seemed to her a distinguished-looking young man. Not handsome, of course,
+but the sort people look after--and follow.
+
+"Come to dinner," said Mrs. Woodruff, who at this juncture had a hired
+girl, but was yoked to the oar nevertheless when it came to turkey and the
+other fixings of a Christmas dinner. "It's good enough, what there is of
+it, and there's enough of it such as it is--but the dressing in the turkey
+would be better for a little more sage!"
+
+The bountiful meal piled mountain high for guest and hired help and family
+melted away in a manner to delight the hearts of Mrs. Woodruff and Jennie.
+The colonel, in stiff starched shirt, black tie and frock coat, carved
+with much empressement, and Jim felt almost for the first time a sense of
+the value of manner.
+
+"I had bigger turkeys," said Mrs. Woodruff to Mrs. Irwin, "but I thought
+it would be better to cook two turkey-hens instead of one great big
+gobbler with meat as tough as tripe and stuffed full of fat."
+
+"One of the hens would 'a' been plenty," replied Mrs. Irwin. "How much did
+they weigh?"
+
+"About fifteen pounds apiece," was the answer. "The gobbler would 'a'
+weighed thirty, I guess. He's pure Mammoth Bronze."
+
+"I wish," said Jim, "that we could get a few breeding birds of the wild
+bronze turkeys from Mexico."
+
+"Why?" asked the colonel.
+
+"They're the original blood of the domestic bronze turkeys," said Jim,
+"and they're bigger and handsomer than the pure-bred bronzes, even.
+They're a better stock than the northern wild turkeys from which our
+common birds originated."
+
+"Where do you learn all these things, Jim?" asked Mrs. Woodruff. "I
+declare, I often tell Woodruff that it's as good as a lecture to have Jim
+Irwin at table. My intelligence has fallen since you quit working here,
+Jim."
+
+There came into Jim's eyes the gleam of the man devoted to a Cause--and
+the dinner tended to develop into a lecture. Jennie saw a little more
+plainly wherein his queerness lay.
+
+"There's an education in any meal, if we would just use the things on the
+table as materials for study, and follow their trails back to their
+starting-points. This turkey takes us back to the chaparral of
+Mexico----"
+
+"What's chaparral?" asked Jennie, as a diversion. "It's one of the words I
+have seen so often and know perfectly to speak it and read it--but after
+all it's just a word, and nothing more."
+
+"Ain't that the trouble with our education, Jim?" queried the colonel,
+cleverly steering Jim back into the track of his discourse.
+
+"They are not even living words," answered Jim, "unless we have clothed
+them in flesh and blood through some sort of concrete notion. 'Chaparral'
+to Jennie is just the ghost of a word. Our civilization is full of
+inefficiency because we are satisfied to give our children these ghosts
+and shucks and husks of words, instead of the things themselves, that can
+be seen and hefted and handled and tested and heard."
+
+Jennie looked Jim over carefully. His queerness was taking on a new
+phase--and she felt a sense of surprise such as one experiences when the
+conjurer causes a rose to grow into a tree before your very eyes. Jim's
+development was not so rapid, but Jennie's perception of it was. She began
+to feel proud of the fact that a man who could make his impractical
+notions seem so plausible--and who was clearly fired with some sort of
+evangelistic fervor--had kissed her, once or twice, on bringing her home
+from the spelling school.
+
+"I think we lose so much time in school," Jim went on, "while the children
+are eating their dinners."
+
+"Well, Jim," said Mrs. Woodruff, "every one but you is down on the human
+level. The poor kids have to eat!"
+
+"But think how much good education there is wrapped up in the school
+dinner--if we could only get it out."
+
+Jennie grew grave. Here was this Brown Mouse actually introducing the
+subject of the school--and he ought to suspect that she was planning to
+line him up on this very thing--if he wasn't a perfect donkey as well as a
+dreamer. And he was calmly wading into the subject as if she were the
+ex-farm-hand country teacher, and he was the county superintendent-elect!
+
+"Eating a dinner like this, mother," said the colonel gallantly, "is an
+education in itself--and eating some others requires one; but just how
+'larnin' is wrapped up in the school lunch is a new one on me, Jim."
+
+"Well," said Jim, "in the first place the children ought to cook their
+meals as a part of the school work. Prior to that they ought to buy the
+materials. And prior to that they ought to keep the accounts of the school
+kitchen. They'd like to do these things, and it would help prepare them
+for life on an intelligent plane, while they prepared the meals."
+
+"Isn't that looking rather far ahead?" asked the county
+superintendent-elect.
+
+"It's like a lot of other things we think far ahead," urged Jim. "The only
+reason why they're far off is because we think them so. It's a
+thought--and a thought is as near the moment we think it as it will ever
+be."
+
+"I guess that's so--to a wild-eyed reformer," said the colonel. "But go
+on. Develop your thought a little. Have some more dressing."
+
+"Thanks, I believe I will," said Jim. "And a little more of the cranberry
+sauce. No more turkey, please."
+
+"I'd like to see the school class that could prepare this dinner," said
+Mrs. Woodruff.
+
+"Why," said Jim, "you'd be there showing them how! They'd get credits in
+their domestic-economy course for getting the school dinner--and they'd
+bring their mothers into it to help them stand at the head of their
+classes. And one detail of girls would cook one week, and another serve.
+The setting of the table would come in as a study--flowers, linen and all
+that. And when we get a civilized teacher, table manners!"
+
+"I'd take on that class," said the hired man, winking at Selma Carlson,
+the maid, from somewhere below the salt. "The way I make my knife feed my
+face would be a great help to the children."
+
+"And when the food came on the table," Jim went on, with a smile at his
+former fellow-laborer, who had heard most of this before as a part of the
+field conversation, "just think of the things we could study while eating
+it. The literary term for eating a meal is discussing it--well, the
+discussion of a meal under proper guidance is much more educative than a
+lecture. This breast-bone, now," said he, referring to the remains on his
+plate. "That's physiology. The cranberry-sauce--that's botany, and
+commerce, and soil management--do you know, Colonel, that the cranberry
+must have an acid soil--which would kill alfalfa or clover?"
+
+"Read something of it," said the colonel, "but it didn't interest me
+much."
+
+"And the difference between the types of fowl on the table--that's
+breeding. And the nutmeg, pepper and cocoanut--that's geography. And
+everything on the table runs back to geography, and comes to us linked to
+our lives by dollars and cents--and they're mathematics."
+
+"We must have something more than dollars and cents in life," said Jennie.
+"We must have culture."
+
+"Culture," cried Jim, "is the ability to think in terms of life--isn't
+it?"
+
+"Like Jesse James," suggested the hired man, who was a careful student of
+the life of that eminent bandit.
+
+There was a storm of laughter at this sally amidst which Jennie wished she
+had thought of something like that. Jim joined in the laughter at his own
+expense, but was clearly suffering from argumentative shock.
+
+"That's the best answer I've had on that point, Pete," he said, after the
+disturbance had subsided. "But if the James boys and the Youngers had had
+the sort of culture I'm for, they would have been successful stock men and
+farmers, instead of train-robbers. Take Raymond Simms, for instance. He
+had all the qualifications of a member of the James gang when he came
+here. All he needed was a few exasperated associates of his own sort, and
+a convenient railway with undefended trains running over it. But after a
+few weeks of real 'culture' under a mighty poor teacher, he's developing
+into the most enthusiastic farmer I know. That's real culture."
+
+"It's snowing like everything," said Jennie, who faced the window.
+
+"Don't cut your dinner short," said the colonel to Pete, "but I think
+you'll find the cattle ready to come in out of the storm when you get good
+and through."
+
+"I think I'll let 'em in now," said Pete, by way of excusing himself. "I
+expect to put in most of the day from now on getting ready to quit eating.
+Save some of everything for me, Selma,--I'll be right back!"
+
+"All right, Pete," said Selma.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+THE MOUSE ESCAPES
+
+
+Jennie played the piano and sang. They all joined in some simple Christmas
+songs. Mrs. Woodruff and Jim's mother went into other parts of the house
+on research work connected with their converse on domestic economy. The
+colonel withdrew for an inspection of the live stock on the eve of the
+threatened blizzard. And Jim was left alone with Jennie in the front
+parlor. After the buzz of conversation, they seemed to have nothing to
+say. Jennie played softly, and looked at nothing, but scrutinized Jim by
+means of the eyes which women have concealed in their back hair. There was
+something new in the man--she sensed that. He was more confident, more
+persuasive, more dynamic. She was used to him only as a static force.
+
+And Jim felt something new, too. He had felt it growing in him ever since
+he began his school work, and knew not the cause of it. The cause,
+however, would not have been a mystery to a wise old yogi who might
+discover the same sort of change in one of his young novices. Jim Irwin
+had been a sort of ascetic since his boyhood. He had mortified the flesh
+by hard labor in the fields, and by flagellations of the brain to drive
+off sleep while he pored over his books in the attic--which was often so
+hot after a day of summer's sun on its low thin roof, that he was forced
+to do his reading in the midmost night. He had looked long on such women
+as Helen of Troy, Cleopatra, Isabel, Cressida, Volumnia, Virginia,
+Evangeline, Agnes Wickfleld and Fair Rosamond; but on women in the flesh
+he had gazed as upon trees walking. The aforesaid spiritual director, had
+this young ascetic been under one, would have foreseen the effects on the
+psychology of a stout fellow of twenty-eight of freedom from the toil of
+the fields, and association with a group of young human beings of both
+sexes. To the novice struggling for emancipation from earthly thoughts, he
+would have recommended fasting and prayer, and perhaps, a hair shirt. Just
+what his prescription would have been for a man in Jim's position is, of
+course, a question. He would, no doubt, have considered carefully his
+patient's symptoms. These were very largely the mental experiences which
+most boys pass through in their early twenties, save, perhaps that, as in
+a belated season, the transition from winter to spring was more sudden,
+and the contrast more violent. Jim was now thrown every day into contact
+with his fellows. He was no longer a lay monk, but an active member of a
+very human group. He was becoming more of a boy, with the boys, and still
+more was he developing into a man with the women. The budding womanhood of
+Calista Simms and the other girls of his school thrilled him as Helen of
+Troy or Juliet had never done. This will not seem very strange to the
+experienced reader, but it astonished the unsophisticated young
+schoolmaster. The floating hair, the heaving bosom, the rosebud mouth, the
+starry eye, the fragrant breath, the magnetic hand--all these disturbed
+the hitherto sedate mind, and filled the brief hours he was accustomed to
+spend in sleep with strange dreams. And now, as he gazed at Jennie, he was
+suddenly aware of the fact that, after all, whenever these thoughts and
+dreams took on individuality, they were only persistent and intensified
+continuations of his old dreams of her. They had always been dormant in
+him, since the days they both studied from the same book. He was quite
+sure, now, that he had never forgotten for a moment, that Jennie was the
+only girl in the world for him. And possibly he was right about this. It
+is perfectly certain, however, that for years he had not consciously been
+in love with her.
+
+Now, however, he arose as from some inner compulsion, and went to her
+side. He wished that he knew enough of music to turn her sheets for her,
+but, alas! the notes were meaningless to him. Still scanning him by means
+of her back hair, Jennie knew that in another moment Jim would lay his
+hand on her shoulder, or otherwise advance to personal nearness, as he had
+done the night of his ill-starred speech at the schoolhouse--and she rose
+in self-defense. Self-defense, however, did not seem to require that he be
+kept at too great a distance; so she maneuvered him to the sofa, and
+seated him beside her. Now was the time to line him up.
+
+"It seems good to have you with us to-day," said she. "We're such old, old
+friends."
+
+"Yes," repeated Jim, "old friends .... We are, aren't we, Jennie?"
+
+"And I feel sure," Jennie went on, "that this marks a new era in our
+friendship."
+
+"Why?" asked Jim, after considering the matter.
+
+"Oh! everything is different, now--and getting more different all the
+time. My new work, and your new work, you know."
+
+"I should like to think," said Jim, "that we are beginning over again."
+
+"Oh, we are, we are, indeed! I am quite sure of it."
+
+"And yet," said Jim, "there is no such thing as a new beginning.
+Everything joins itself to something which went before. There isn't any
+seam."
+
+"No?" said Jennie interrogatively.
+
+"Our regard for each other," Jennie noted most pointedly his word
+"regard"--"must be the continuation of the old regard."
+
+"I hardly know what you mean," said Jennie.
+
+Jim reached over and possessed himself of her hand. She pulled it from him
+gently, but he paid no attention to the little muscular protest, and
+examined the hand critically. On the back of the middle finger he pointed
+out a scar--a very tiny scar.
+
+"Do you remember how you got that?" he asked.
+
+Because Jim clung to the hand, their heads were very close together as she
+joined in the examination.
+
+"Why, I don't believe I do," said she.
+
+"I do," he replied. "We--you and I and Mary Forsythe were playing
+mumble-peg, and you put your hand on the grass just as I threw the
+knife--it cut you, and left that scar."
+
+"I remember, now!" said she. "How such things come back over the memory.
+And did it leave a scar when I pushed you toward the red-hot stove in the
+schoolhouse one blizzardy day, like this, and you peeled the skin off your
+wrist where it struck the stove?"
+
+"Look at it," said he, baring his long and bony wrist. "Right there!"
+
+And they were off on the trail that leads back to childhood. They had
+talked long, and intimately, when the shadows of the early evening crept
+into the corners of the room. He had carried her across the flooded slew
+again after the big rain. They had relived a dozen moving incidents by
+flood and field. Jennie recalled the time when the tornado narrowly missed
+the schoolhouse, and frightened everybody in school nearly to death.
+
+"Everybody but you, Jim," Jennie remembered. "You looked out of the window
+and told the teacher that the twister was going north of us, and would
+kill somebody else."
+
+"Did I?" asked Jim.
+
+"Yes," said Jennie, "and when the teacher asked us to kneel and thank God,
+you said, 'Why should we thank God that somebody else is blowed away?' She
+was greatly shocked."
+
+"I don't see to this day," Jim asserted, "what answer there was to my
+question."
+
+In the gathering darkness Jim again took Jennie's hand, but this time she
+deprived him of it.
+
+He was trembling like a leaf. Let it be remembered in his favor that this
+was the only girl's hand he had ever held.
+
+"You can't find any more scars on it," she said soberly.
+
+"Let me see how much it has changed since I stuck the knife in it," begged
+Jim.
+
+Jennie held it up for inspection.
+
+"It's longer, and slenderer, and whiter, and even more beautiful," said
+he, "than the little hand I cut; but it was then the most beautiful hand
+in the world to me--and still is."
+
+"I must light the lamps," said the county superintendent-elect, rather
+flustered, it must be confessed. "Mama! Where are all the matches?"
+
+Mrs. Woodruff and Mrs. Irwin came in, and the lamplight reminded Jim's
+mother that the cow was still to milk, and that the chickens might need
+attention. The Woodruff sleigh came to the door to carry them home; but
+Jim desired to breast the storm. He felt that he needed the conflict. Mrs.
+Irwin scolded him for his foolishness, but he strode off into the whirling
+drift, throwing back a good-by for general consumption, and a pathetic
+smile to Jennie.
+
+"He's as odd as Dick's hatband," said Mrs. Woodruff, "tramping off in a
+storm like this."
+
+"Did you line him up?" asked the colonel of Jennie.
+
+The young lady started and blushed. She had forgotten all about the
+politics of the situation.
+
+"I--I'm afraid I didn't, papa," she confessed.
+
+"Those brown mice of Professor Darbishire's," said the colonel, "were the
+devil and all to control."
+
+Jennie was thinking of this as she dropped asleep.
+
+"Hard to control!" she thought. "I wonder. I wonder, after all, if Jim is
+not capable of being easily lined up--when he sees how foolish I think he
+is!"
+
+And Jim? He found himself hard to control that night. So much so that it
+was after midnight before he had finished work on a plan for a cooperative
+creamery.
+
+"The boys can be given work in helping to operate it," he wrote on a
+tablet, "which, in connection with the labor performed by the teacher,
+will greatly reduce the expense of operation. A skilled butter-maker, with
+slender white hands"--but he erased this last clause and retired.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+FACING TRIAL
+
+
+A distinct sensation ran through the Woodruff school, but the schoolmaster
+and a group of five big boys and three girls engaged in a very unclasslike
+conference in the back of the room were all unconscious of it. The
+geography classes had recited, and the language work was on. Those too
+small for these studies were playing a game under the leadership of Jinnie
+Simms, who had been promoted to the position of weed-seed monitor.
+
+The game was forfeits. Each child had been encouraged to bring some sort
+of weed from the winter fields--preferably one the seed of which still
+clung to the dried receptacles--but anyhow, a weed. Some pupils had
+brought merely empty tassels, some bare stalks, and some seeds which they
+had winnowed from the grain in their father's bins; and with them they
+played forfeits. They counted out by the "arey, Ira, ickery an'" method,
+and somebody was "It." Then, in order, they presented to him a seed, stalk
+or head of a weed, and if the one who was It could tell the name of the
+weed, the child who brought the specimen became It, and the name was
+written on slates or tablets, and the new It told where the weed or seed
+was collected. If any pupil brought in a specimen the name of which he
+himself could not correctly give, he paid a forfeit. If a specimen was
+brought in not found in the school cabinet--which was coming to contain a
+considerable collection--it was placed there, and the task allotted to the
+best penman in the school to write its proper label. All this caused
+excitement, and not a little buzz--but it ceased when the county
+superintendent entered the room.
+
+For it was after the first of January, and Jennie was visiting the
+Woodruff school.
+
+The group in the back of the room went on with its conference, oblivious
+of the entrance of Superintendent Jennie. Their work was rather absorbing,
+being no more nor less than the compilation of the figures of a cow census
+of the district.
+
+"Altogether," said Mary Talcott, "we have in the district one hundred and
+fifty-three cows."
+
+"I don't make it that," said Raymond Simms. "I don't get but a hundred and
+thirty-eight."
+
+"The trouble is," said Newton Bronson, "that Mary's counting in the Bailey
+herd of Shorthorns."
+
+"Well, they're cows, ain't they?" interrogated Mary.
+
+"Not for this census," said Raymond.
+
+"Why not?" asked Mary. "They're the prettiest cows in the neighborhood."
+
+"Scotch Shorthorns," said Newton, "and run with their calves."
+
+"Leave them out," said Jim, "and to-morrow, I want each one to tell in the
+language class, in three hundred words or less, whether there are enough
+cows in the district to justify a cooperative creamery, and give the
+reason. You'll find articles in the farm papers if you look through the
+card index. Now, how about the census in the adjoining districts?"
+
+"There are more than two hundred within four miles on the roads leading
+west," said a boy.
+
+"My father and I counted up about a hundred beyond us," said Mary. "But I
+couldn't get the exact number."
+
+"Why," said Raymond, "we could find six hundred dairy cows in this
+neighborhood, within an hour's drive."
+
+"Six hundred!" scoffed Newton. "You're crazy! In an hour's drive?"
+
+"I mean an hour's drive each way," said Raymond.
+
+"I believe we could," said Jim. "And after we find how far we will have to
+go to get enough cows, if half of them patronized the creamery, we'll work
+over the savings the business would make, if we could get the prices for
+butter paid the Wisconsin cooperative creameries, as compared with what
+the centralizers pay us, on a basis of the last six months. Who's in
+possession of that correspondence with the Wisconsin creameries?"
+
+"I have it," said Raymond. "I'm hectographing a lot of arithmetic problems
+from it."
+
+"How do you do, Mr. Irwin!" It was the superintendent who spoke.
+
+Jim's brain whirled little prismatic clouds before his vision, as he rose
+and shook Jennie's extended hand.
+
+"Let me give you a chair," said he.
+
+"Oh, no, thank you!" she returned. "I'll just make myself at home. I know
+my way about in this schoolhouse, you know!"
+
+She smiled at the children, and went about looking at their work--which
+was not noticeably disturbed, by reason of the fact that visitors were
+much more frequent now than ever before, and were no rarity. Certainly,
+Jennie Woodruff was no novelty, since they had known her all their lives.
+Most of the embarrassment was Jim's. He rose to the occasion, however,
+went through the routine of the closing day, and dismissed the flock, not
+omitting making an engagement with a group of boys for that evening to
+come back and work on the formalin treatment for smut in seed grains, and
+the blue-vitriol treatment for seed potatoes.
+
+"We hadn't time for these things," said he to the county superintendent,
+"in the regular class work--and it's getting time to take them up if we
+are to clean out the smut in next year's crop."
+
+They repeated Whittier's _Corn Song_ in concert, and school was out.
+
+Alone with her in the old schoolhouse, Jim confronted Jennie in the flesh.
+She felt a sense of his agitation, but if she had known the power of it,
+she would have been astonished. Since that Christmas afternoon when she
+had undertaken to follow Mr. Peterson's advice and line Yim Irwin up, Jim
+had gone through an inward transformation. He had passed from a late,
+cold, backward sexual spring, into a warm June of the spirit, in which he
+had walked amid roses and lilies with Jennie. He was in love with her. He
+knew how insane it was, how much less than nothing had taken place in his
+circumstances to justify the hope that he could ever emerge from the state
+in which she would not say "Humph!" at the thought that he could marry her
+or any one else. Yet, he had made up his mind that he would marry Jennie
+Woodruff .... She ought never have tried to line him up. She knew not what
+she did.
+
+He saw her through clouds of rose and pink; but she looked at him as at a
+foolish man who was making trouble for her, chasing rainbows at her
+expense, and deeply vexing her. She was in a cold official frame of mind.
+
+"Jim," said she, "do you know that you are facing trouble?"
+
+"Trouble," said Jim, "is the natural condition of a man in my state of
+mind. But it is going to be a delicious sort of tribulation."
+
+"I don't know what you mean," she replied in perfect honesty.
+
+"Then I don't know what you mean," replied Jim.
+
+"Jim," she said pleadingly, "I want you to give up this sort of teaching.
+Can't you see it's all wrong?"
+
+"No," answered Jim, in much the manner of a man who has been stabbed by
+his sweetheart. "I can't see that it's wrong. It's the only sort I can do.
+What do you see wrong in it?"
+
+"Oh, I can see some very wonderful things in it," said Jennie, "but it
+can't be done in the Woodruff District. It may be correct in theory, but
+it won't work in practise."
+
+"Jennie," said he, "when a thing won't work, it isn't correct in theory."
+
+"Well, then, Jim," said she, "why do you keep on with it?"
+
+"It works," said Jim. "Anything that's correct in theory will work. If the
+theory seems correct, and yet won't work, it's because something is wrong
+in an unsuspected way with the theory. But my theory is correct, and it
+works."
+
+"But the district is against it."
+
+"Who are the district?"
+
+"The school board are against it."
+
+"The school board elected me after listening to an explanation of my
+theories as to the new sort of rural school in which I believe. I assume
+that they commissioned me to carry out my ideas."
+
+"Oh, Jim!" cried Jennie. "That's sophistry! They all voted for you so you
+wouldn't be without support. Each wanted you to have just one vote. Nobody
+wanted you elected. They were all surprised. You know that!"
+
+"They stood by and saw the contract signed," said Jim, "and--yes, Jennie,
+I _am_ dealing in sophistry! I got the school by a sort of shell-game,
+which the board worked on themselves. But that doesn't prove that the
+district is against me. I believe the people are for me, now, Jennie. I
+really do!"
+
+Jennie rose and walked to the rear of the room and back, twice. When she
+spoke, there was decision in her tone--and Jim felt that it was hostile
+decision.
+
+"As an officer," she said rather grandly, "my relations with the district
+are with the school board on the one hand, and with your competency as a
+teacher on the other."
+
+"Has it come to that?" asked Jim. "Well, I have rather expected it."
+
+His tone was weary. The Lincolnian droop in his great, sad, mournful mouth
+accentuated the resemblance to the martyr president. Possibly his feelings
+were not entirely different from those experienced by Lincoln at some
+crises of doubt, misunderstanding and depression.
+
+"If you can't change your methods," said Jennie, "I suggest that you
+resign."
+
+"Do you think," said Jim, "that changing my methods would appease the men
+who feel that they are made laughing-stocks by having elected me?"
+
+Jennie was silent; for she knew that the school board meant to pursue
+their policy of getting rid of the accidental incumbent regardless of his
+methods.
+
+"They would never call off their dogs," said Jim.
+
+"But your methods would make a great difference with my decision," said
+Jennie.
+
+"Are you to be called upon to decide?" asked Jim.
+
+"A formal complaint against you for incompetency," she replied, "has been
+lodged in my office, signed by the three directors. I shall be obliged to
+take notice of it."
+
+"And do you think," queried Jim, "that my abandonment of the things in
+which I believe in the face of this attack would prove to your mind that I
+am competent? Or would it show me incompetent?"
+
+Again Jennie was silent.
+
+"I guess," said Jim, "that we'll have to stand or fall on things as they
+are."
+
+"Do you refuse to resign?" asked Jennie.
+
+"Sometimes I think it's not worth while to try any longer," said Jim. "And
+yet, I believe that in my way I'm working on the question which must be
+solved if this nation is to stand--the question of making the farm and
+farm life what they should be and may well be. At this moment, I feel like
+surrendering--for your sake more than mine; but I'll have to think about
+it. Suppose I refuse to resign?"
+
+Jennie had drawn on her gloves, and stood ready for departure.
+
+"Unless you resign before the twenty-fifth," said she, "I shall hear the
+petition for your removal on that date. You will be allowed to be present
+and answer the charges against you. The charges are incompetency. I bid
+you good evening!"
+
+"Incompetency!" The disgraceful word, representing everything he had
+always despised, rang through Jim's mind as he walked home. He could think
+of nothing else as he sat at the simple supper which he could scarcely
+taste. Incompetent! Well, had he not always been incompetent, except in
+the use of his muscles? Had he not always been a dreamer? Were not all his
+dreams as foreign to life and common sense as the Milky Way from the
+earth? What reason was there for thinking that this crusade of his for
+better schools had any sounder foundation than his dream of being
+president, or a great painter, or a poet or novelist or philosopher? He
+was just a hayseed, a rube, a misfit, as odd as Dick's hatband, an off ox.
+He _was_ incompetent. He picked up a pen, and began writing. He wrote, "To
+the Honorable the Board of Education of the Independent District of ----"
+And he heard a tap at the door. His mother admitted Colonel Woodruff.
+
+"Hello, Jim," said he.
+
+"Good evening, Colonel," said Jim. "Take a chair, won't you?"
+
+"No," replied the colonel. "I thought I'd see if you and the boys at the
+schoolhouse can't tell me something about the smut in my wheat. I heard
+you were going to work on that to-night."
+
+"I had forgotten!" said Jim.
+
+"I wondered if you hadn't," said the colonel, "and so I came by for you. I
+was waiting up the road. Come on, and ride up with me."
+
+The colonel had always been friendly, but there was a new note in his
+manner to-night. He was almost deferential. If he had been talking to
+Senator Cummins or the president of the state university, his tone could
+not have been more courteous, more careful to preserve the amenities due
+from man to man. He worked with the class on the problem of smut. He
+offered to aid the boys in every possible way in their campaign against
+scab in potatoes. He suggested some tests which would show the real value
+of the treatment. The boys were in a glow of pride at this cooperation
+with Colonel Woodruff. This was real work! Jim and the colonel went away
+together. It had been a great evening.
+
+"Jim," said the colonel, "can these kids spell?"
+
+"You mean these boys?"
+
+"I mean the school."
+
+"I think," said Jim, "that they can outspell any school about here."
+
+"Good," said the colonel. "How are they about reading aloud?"
+
+"Better than they were when I took hold."
+
+"How about arithmetic and the other branches? Have you sort of kept them
+up to the course of study?"
+
+"I have carried them in a course parallel to the text-books," said Jim,
+"and covering the same ground. But it has been vocational work, you
+know--related to life."
+
+"Well," said the colonel, "if I were you, I'd put them over a rapid review
+of the text-books for a few days--say between now and the twenty-fifth."
+
+"What for?"
+
+"Oh, nothing--just to please me .... And say, Jim, I glanced over a
+communication you have started to the more or less Honorable Board of
+Education."
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"Well, don't finish it .... And say, Jim, I think I'll give myself the
+luxury of being a wild-eyed reformer for once."
+
+"Yes," said Jim, dazed.
+
+"And if you think, Jim, that you've got no friends, just remember that I'm
+for you."
+
+"Thank you, Colonel."
+
+"And we'll show them they're in a horse race."
+
+"I don't see ..." said Jim.
+
+"You're not supposed to see," said the colonel, "but you can bet that
+we'll be with them at the finish; and, by thunder! while they're getting a
+full meal, we'll get at least a lunch. See?"
+
+"But Jennie says," began Jim.
+
+"Don't tell me what she says," said the colonel. "She's acting according
+to her judgment, and her lights and other organs of perception, and I
+don't think it fittin' that her father should try to influence her
+official conduct. But you go on and review them common branches, and keep
+your nerve. I haven't felt so much like a scrap since the day we stormed
+Lookout Mountain. I kinder like being a wild-eyed reformer, Jim."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+FAME OR NOTORIETY
+
+
+The office of county superintendent was, as a matter of course, the least
+desirable room of the court-house. I say "room" advisedly, because it
+consisted of a single chamber of moderate size, provided with office
+furniture of the minimum quantity and maximum age. It opened off the
+central hall at the upper end of the stairway which led to the court room,
+and when court was in session, served the extraordinary needs of justice
+as a jury room. At such times the county superintendent's desk was removed
+to the hall, where it stood in a noisy and confusing but very democratic
+publicity. Superintendent Jennie might have anticipated the time when,
+during the March term, offenders passing from the county jail in the
+basement to arraignment at the bar of justice might be able to peek over
+her shoulders and criticize her method of treating examination papers. On
+the twenty-fifth of February, however, this experience lurked unsuspected
+in her official future.
+
+Poor Jennie! She anticipated nothing more than the appearance of Messrs.
+Bronson, Peterson and Bonner in her office to confront Jim Irwin on
+certain questions of fact relating to Jim's competency to hold a teacher's
+certificate. The time appointed was ten o'clock. At nine forty-five
+Cornelius Bonner and his wife entered the office, and took twenty-five per
+cent. of the chairs therein. At nine fifty Jim Irwin came in, haggard,
+weather-beaten and seedy as ever, and looked as if he had neither eaten
+nor slept since his sweetheart stabbed him. At nine fifty-five Haakon
+Peterson and Ezra Bronson came in, accompanied by Wilbur Smythe,
+attorney-at-law, who carried under his arm a code of Iowa, a compilation
+of the school laws of the state, and _Throop on Public Officers_. At nine
+fifty-six, therefore, the crowd in Jennie's office exceeded its seating
+capacity, and Jennie was in a flutter as the realization dawned upon her
+that this promised to be a bigger and more public affair than she had
+anticipated. At nine fifty-nine Raymond Simms opened the office door and
+there filed in enough children, large and small, some of them accompanied
+by their parents, and all belonging to the Woodruff school, to fill
+completely the interstices of the corners and angles of the room and
+between the legs of the grownups. In addition there remained an overflow
+meeting in the hall, under the command of that distinguished military
+gentleman, Colonel Albert Woodruff.
+
+"Say, Bill, come here!" said the colonel, crooking his finger at the
+deputy sheriff.
+
+"What you got here, Al!" said Bill, coming up the stairs, puffing. "Ain't
+it a little early for Sunday-school picnics?"
+
+"This is a school fight in our district," said the colonel. "It's Jennie's
+baptism of fire, I reckon ... and say, you're not using the court room,
+are you?"
+
+"Nope," said Bill.
+
+"Well, why not just slip around, then," said the colonel, "and tell Jennie
+she'd better adjourn to the big room."
+
+Which suggestion was acted upon instanter by Deputy Bill.
+
+"But I can't, I can't," said Jennie to the courteous deputy sheriff. "I
+don't want all this publicity, and I don't want to go into the court
+room."
+
+"I hardly see," said Deputy Bill, "how you can avoid it. These people seem
+to have business with you, and they can't get into your office."
+
+"But they have no business with me," said Jennie. "It's mere curiosity."
+
+Whereupon Wilbur Smythe, who could see no particular point in restricted
+publicity, said, "Madame County Superintendent, this hearing certainly is
+public or quasi-public. Your office is a public one, and while the right
+to attend this hearing may not possibly be a universal one, it surely is
+one belonging to every citizen and taxpayer of the county, and if the
+taxpayer, _qua_ taxpayer, then certainly _a fortiori_ to the members of
+the Woodruff school and residents of that district."
+
+Jennie quailed. "All right, all right!" said she. "But, shall I have to
+sit on the bench!"
+
+"You will find it by far the most convenient place," said Deputy Bill.
+
+Was this the life to which public office had brought her? Was it for this
+that she had bartered her independence--for this and the musty office, the
+stupid examination papers, and the interminable visiting of schools,
+knowing that such supervision as she could give was practically worthless?
+Jim had said to her that he had never heard of such a thing as a good
+county superintendent of schools, and she had thought him queer. And now,
+here was she, called upon to pass on the competency of the man who had
+always been her superior in everything that constitutes mental ability;
+and to make the thing more a matter for the laughter of the gods, she was
+perched on the judicial bench, which Deputy Bill had dusted off for her,
+tipping a wink to the assemblage while doing it. He expected to be a
+candidate for sheriff, one of these days, and was pleasing the crowd. And
+that crowd! To Jennie it was appalling. The school board under the lead of
+Wilbur Smythe took seats inside the railing which on court days divided
+the audience from the lawyers and litigants. Jim Irwin, who had never been
+in a court room before, herded with the crowd, obeying the attraction of
+sympathy, but to Jennie, seated on the bench, he, like other persons in
+the auditorium, was a mere blurry outline with a knob of a head on its
+top.
+
+She couldn't call the gathering to order. She had no idea as to the proper
+procedure. She sat there while the people gathered, stood about whispering
+and talking under their breaths, and finally became silent, all their eyes
+fixed on her, as she wished that the office of county superintendent had
+been abolished in the days of her parents' infancy.
+
+"May it please the court," said Wilbur Smythe, standing before the bar.
+"Or, Madame County Superintendent, I should say ..."
+
+A titter ran through the room, and a flush of temper tinted Jennie's face.
+They were laughing at her! She wouldn't be a spectacle any longer! So she
+rose, and handed down her first and last decision from the bench--a rather
+good one, I think.
+
+"Mr. Smythe," said she, "I feel very ill at ease up here, and I'm going to
+get down among the people. It's the only way I have of getting the
+truth."
+
+She descended from the bench, shook hands with everybody near her, and sat
+down by the attorney's table.
+
+"Now," said she, "this is no formal proceeding and we will dispense with
+red tape. If we don't, I shall get all tangled up in it. Where's Mr.
+Irwin? Please come in here, Jim. Now, I know there's some feeling in these
+things--there always seems to be; but I have none. So I'll just hear why
+Mr. Bronson, Mr. Peterson and Mr. Bonner think that Mr. James E. Irwin
+isn't competent to hold a certificate."
+
+Jennie was able to smile at them now, and everybody felt more at ease,
+save Jim Irwin, the members of the board and Wilbur Smythe. That
+individual arose, and talked down at Jennie.
+
+"I appear for the proponents here," said he, "and I desire to suggest
+certain principles of procedure which I take it belong indisputably to the
+conduct of this hearing."
+
+"Have you a lawyer?" asked the county superintendent of the respondent.
+
+"A what?" exclaimed Jim. "Nobody here has a lawyer!"
+
+"Well, what do you call Wilbur Smythe?" queried Newton Bronson from the
+midst of the crowd.
+
+"He ain't lawyer enough to hurt!" said the thing which the dramatists call
+A Voice.
+
+There was a little tempest of laughter at Wilbur Smythe's expense, which
+was quelled by Jennie's rapping on the table. She was beginning to feel
+the mouth of the situation.
+
+"I have no way of retaining a lawyer," said Jim, on whom the truth had
+gradually dawned. "If a lawyer is necessary, I am without protection--but
+it never occurred to me ..."
+
+"There is nothing in the school laws, as I remember them," said Jennie,
+"giving the parties any right to be represented by counsel. If there is,
+Mr. Smythe will please set me right."
+
+She paused for Mr. Smythe's reply.
+
+"There is nothing which expressly gives that privilege," said Mr. Smythe,
+"but the right to the benefit of skilled advisers is a universal one. It
+can not be questioned. And in opening this case for my clients, I desire
+to call your honor's attention--"
+
+"You may advise your clients all you please," said Jennie, "but I'm not
+going to waste time in listening to speeches, or having a lot of lawyers
+examine witnesses."
+
+"I protest," said Mr. Smythe.
+
+"Well, you may file your protest in writing," said Jennie. "I'm going to
+talk this matter over with these old friends and neighbors of mine. I
+don't want you dipping into it, I say!"
+
+Jennie's voice was rising toward the scream-line, and Mr. Smythe
+recognized the hand of fate. One may argue with a cantankerous judge, but
+the woman, who like necessity, knows no law, and who is smothering in a
+flood of perplexities, is beyond reason. Moreover, Jennie dimly saw that
+what she was doing had the approval of the crowd, and it solved the
+problem of procedure.
+
+There was a little wrangling, and a little protest from Con Bonner, but
+Jennie ruled with a rod of iron, and adhered to her ruling. When the
+hearing was resumed after the noon recess, the crowd was larger than ever,
+but the proceedings consisted mainly in a conference of the principals
+grouped about Jennie at the big lawyers' table. They were talking about
+the methods adopted by Jim in his conduct of the Woodruff school--just
+talking. The only new thing was the presence of a couple of newspaper men,
+who had queried Chicago papers on the story, and been given orders for a
+certain number of words on the case of the farm-hand schoolmaster on trial
+before his old sweetheart for certain weird things he had done in the home
+school in which they had once been classmates. The fact that the old
+school-sweetheart had kicked a lawyer out of the case was not overlooked
+by the gentlemen of the fourth estate. It helped to make it a "good
+story."
+
+By the time at which gathering darkness made it necessary for the bailiff
+to light the lamps, the parties had agreed on the facts. Jim admitted most
+of the allegations. He had practically ignored the text-books. He had
+burned the district fuel and worn out the district furniture early and
+late, and on Saturdays. He had introduced domestic economy and manual
+training, to some extent, by sending the boys to the workshops and the
+girls to the kitchens and sewing-rooms of the farmers who allowed those
+privileges. He had used up a great deal of time in studying farm
+conditions. He had induced the boys to test the cows of the district for
+butter-fat yield. He was studying the matter of a cooperative creamery. He
+hoped to have a blacksmith shop on the schoolhouse grounds sometime, where
+the boys could learn metal working by repairing the farm machinery, and
+shoeing the farm horses. He hoped to install a cooperative laundry in
+connection with the creamery. He hoped to see a building sometime, with an
+auditorium where the people would meet often for moving picture shows,
+lectures and the like, and he expected that most of the descriptions of
+foreign lands, industrial operations, wild animals--in short, everything
+that people should learn about by seeing, rather than reading--would be
+taught the children by moving pictures accompanied by lectures. He hoped
+to open to the boys and girls the wonders of the universe which are
+touched by the work on the farm. He hoped to make good and contented
+farmers of them, able to get the most out of the soil, to sell what they
+produced to the best advantage, and at the same time to keep up the
+fertility of the soil itself. And he hoped to teach the girls in such a
+way that they would be good and contented farmers' wives. He even had in
+mind as a part of the schoolhouse the Woodruff District would one day
+build, an apartment in which the mothers of the neighborhood would leave
+their babies when they went to town, so that the girls could learn the
+care of infants.
+
+"An' I say," interposed Con Bonner, "that we can rest our case right here.
+If that ain't the limit, I don't know what is!"
+
+"Well," said Jennie, "do you desire to rest your case right here?"
+
+Mr. Bonner made no reply to this, and Jennie turned to Jim.
+
+"Now, Mr. Irwin," said she, "while you have been following out these very
+interesting and original methods, what have you done in the way of
+teaching the things called for by the course of study?"
+
+"What is the course of study?" queried Jim. "Is it anything more than an
+outline of the mental march the pupils are ordered to make? Take reading:
+why does it give the children any greater mastery of the printed page to
+read about Casabianca on the burning deck, than about the cause of the
+firing of corn by hot weather? And how can they be given better command of
+language than by writing about things they have found out in relation to
+some of the sciences which are laid under contribution by farming?
+Everything they do runs into numbers, and we do more arithmetic than the
+course requires. There isn't any branch of study--not even poetry and art
+and music--that isn't touched by life. If there is we haven't time for it
+in the common schools. We work out from life to everything in the course
+of study."
+
+"Do you mean to assert," queried Jennie, "that while you have been doing
+all this work which was never contemplated by those who have made up the
+course of study, that you haven't neglected anything?"
+
+"I mean," said Jim, "that I'm willing to stand or fall on an examination
+of these children in the very text-books we are accused of neglecting."
+
+Jennie looked steadily at Jim for a full minute, and at the clock. It was
+nearly time for adjournment.
+
+"How many pupils of the Woodruff school are here?" she asked. "All rise,
+please!"
+
+A mass of the audience, in the midst of which sat Jennie's father, rose at
+the request.
+
+"Why," said Jennie, "I should say we had a quorum, anyhow! How many will
+come back to-morrow morning at nine o'clock, and bring your school-books?
+Please lift hands."
+
+Nearly every hand went up.
+
+"And, Mr. Irwin," she went on, "will you have the school records, so we
+may be able to ascertain the proper standing of these pupils?"
+
+"I will," said Jim.
+
+"Then," said Jennie, "we'll adjourn until nine o'clock. I hope to see
+every one here. We'll have school here to-morrow. And, Mr. Irwin, please
+remember that you state that you'll stand or fall on the mastery by these
+pupils of the text-books they are supposed to have neglected."
+
+"Not the mastery of the text," said Jim. "But their ability to do the work
+the text is supposed to fit them for."
+
+"Well," said Jennie, "I don't know but that's fair."
+
+"But," said Mrs. Haakon Peterson, "we don't want our children brought up
+to be yust farmers. Suppose we move to town--where does the culture come
+in?"
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Chicago papers had a news item which covered the result of the
+examinations; but the great sensation of the Woodruff District lay in the
+Sunday feature carried by one of them.
+
+It had a picture of Jim Irwin, and one of Jennie Woodruff--the latter
+authentic, and the former gleaned from the morgue, and apparently the
+portrait of a lumber-jack. There was also a very free treatment by the
+cartoonist of Mr. Simms carrying a rifle with the intention of shooting up
+the school board in case the decision went against the schoolmaster.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+"When it became known," said the news story, "that the schoolmaster had
+bet his job on the proficiency of his school in studies supposed and
+alleged to have been studiously neglected, the excitement rose to fever
+heat. Local sports bet freely on the result, the odds being eight to five
+on General Proficiency against the field. The field was Jim Irwin and his
+school. And the way those rural kids rose in their might and ate up the
+text-books was simply scandalous. There was a good deal of nervousness on
+the part of some of the small starters, and some bursts of tears at
+excusable failures. But when the fight was over, and the dead and wounded
+cared for, the school board and the county superintendent were forced to
+admit that they wished the average school could do as well under a similar
+test.
+
+"The local Mr. Dooley is Cornelius Bonner, a member of the 'board.' When
+asked for a statement of his views after the county superintendent had
+decided that her old sweetheart was to be allowed the priceless boon of
+earning forty dollars a month during the remainder of his contract, Mr.
+Bonner said, 'Aside from being licked, we're all right. But we'll get this
+guy yet, don't fall down and fergit that!'
+
+"'The examinations tind to show,' said Mr. Bonner, when asked for his
+opinion on the result, 'that in or-r-rder to larn anything you shud shtudy
+somethin' ilse. But we'll git this guy yit!'"
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Jim," said Colonel Woodruff, as they rode home together, "the next heat
+is the school election. We've got to control that board next year--and
+we've got to do it by electing one out of three."
+
+"Is that a possibility?" asked Jim. "Aren't we sure to be defeated at
+last? Shouldn't I quit at the end of my contract? All I ever hoped for was
+to be allowed to fulfill that. And is it worth the fight?"
+
+"It's not only possible," replied the colonel, "but probable. As for being
+worth while--why, this thing is too big to drop. I'm just beginning to
+understand what you're driving at. And I like being a wild-eyed reformer
+more and more."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+THE COLONEL TAKES THE FIELD
+
+
+Every Iowa county has its Farmers' Institute. Usually it is held in the
+county seat, and is a gathering of farmers for the ostensible purpose of
+listening to improving discussions and addresses both instructive and
+entertaining. Really, in most cases, the farmers' institutes have been
+occasions for the cultivation of relations between a few of the
+exceptional farmers and their city friends and with one another. Seldom is
+anything done which leads to any better selling methods for the farmers,
+any organization looking to cooperative effort, or anything else that an
+agricultural economist from Ireland, Germany or Denmark would suggest as
+the sort of action which the American farmer must take if he is to make
+the most of his life and labor.
+
+The Woodruff District was interested in the institute however, because of
+the fact that a rural-school exhibit was one of its features that year,
+and that Colonel Woodruff had secured an urgent invitation to the school
+to take part in it.
+
+"We've got something new out in our district school," said he to the
+president of the institute.
+
+"So I hear," said the president--"mostly a fight, isn't it?"
+
+"Something more," said the colonel. "If you'll persuade our school to make
+an exhibit of real rural work in a real rural school, I'll promise you
+something worth seeing and discussing."
+
+Such exhibits are now so common that it is not worth while for us to
+describe it; but then, the sight of a class of children testing and
+weighing milk, examining grains for viability and foul seeds, planning
+crop rotations, judging grains and live stock was so new in that county as
+to be the real sensation of the institute.
+
+Two persons were a good deal embarrassed by the success of the exhibit.
+One was the county superintendent, who was constantly in receipt of
+undeserved compliments upon her wisdom in fostering really "practical work
+in the schools." The other was Jim Irwin, who was becoming famous, and who
+felt he had done nothing to deserve fame. Professor Withers, an extension
+lecturer from Ames, took Jim to dinner at the best hotel in the town, for
+the purpose of talking over with him the needs of the rural schools. Jim
+was in agony. The colored waiter fussed about trying to keep Jim in the
+beaten track of hotel manners, restored to him the napkin which Jim failed
+to use, and juggled back into place the silverware which Jim
+misappropriated to alien and unusual uses. But, when the meal had
+progressed to the stage of conversation, the waiter noticed that gradually
+the uncouth farmer became master of the situation, and the well-groomed
+college professor the interested listener.
+
+"You've got to come down to our farmers' week next year, and tell us about
+these things," said he to Jim. "Can't you?"
+
+Jim's brain reeled. He go to a gathering of real educators and tell his
+crude notions! How could he get the money for his expenses? But he had
+that gameness which goes with supreme confidence in the thing dealt with.
+
+"I'll come," said he.
+
+"Thank you," said the Ames man, "There's a small honorarium attached, you
+know."
+
+Jim was staggered. What was an honorarium? He tried to remember what an
+honorarium is, and could get no further than the thought that it is in
+some way connected with the Latin root of "honor." Was he obliged to pay
+an honorarium for the chance to speak before the college gathering? Well,
+he'd save money and pay it. The professor must be able to understand that
+it couldn't be expected that a country school-teacher would be able to pay
+much.
+
+"I--I'll try to take care of the honorarium," said he. "I'll come."
+
+The professor laughed. It was the first joke the gangling innovator had
+perpetrated.
+
+"It won't bother you to take care of it," said he, "but if you're not too
+extravagant it will pay you your expenses and give you a few dollars
+over."
+
+Jim breathed more freely. An honorarium was paid to the person receiving
+the honor, then. What a relief!
+
+"All right," he exclaimed. "I'll be glad to come!"
+
+"Let's consider that settled," said the professor. "And now I must be
+going back to the opera-house. My talk on soil sickness comes next. I tell
+you, the winter wheat crop has been--"
+
+But Jim was not able to think much of the winter wheat problem as they
+went back to the auditorium. He was worth putting on the program at a
+state meeting! He was worth the appreciation of a college professor,
+trained to think on the very matters Jim had been so long mulling over in
+isolation and blindness! He was actually worth paying for his thoughts.
+
+Calista Simms thought she saw something shining and saint-like about the
+homely face of her teacher as he came to her at her post in the room in
+which the school exhibit was held. Calista was in charge of the little
+children whose work was to be demonstrated that day, and was in a state of
+exaltation to which her starved being had hitherto been a stranger.
+Perhaps there was something similar in her condition of fervent happiness
+to that of Jim. She, too, was doing something outside the sordid life of
+the Simms cabin. She yearned over the children in her care, and would have
+been glad to die for them--and besides was not Newton Bronson in charge of
+the corn exhibit, and a member of the corn-judging team? To the eyes of
+the town girls who passed about among the exhibits, she was poorly
+dressed; but if they could have seen the clothes she had worn on that
+evening when Jim Irwin first called at their cabin and failed to give a
+whoop from the big road, they could perhaps have understood the sense of
+wellbeing and happiness in Calista's soul at the feeling of her whole
+clean underclothes, her neat, if cheap, dress, and the "boughten" cloak
+she wore--and any of them, even without knowledge of this, might have
+understood Calista's joy at the knowledge that Newton Bronson's eyes were
+on her from his station by the big pillar, no matter how many town girls
+filed by. For therein they would have been in a realm of the passions
+quite universal in its appeal to the feminine soul.
+
+"Hello, Calista!" said Jim. "How are you enjoying it?"
+
+"Oh!" said Calista, and drew a long, long breath. "Ah'm enjoying myse'f
+right much, Mr. Jim."
+
+"Any of the home folks coming in to see?"
+
+"Yes, seh," answered Calista. "All the school board have stopped by this
+morning."
+
+Jim looked about him. He wished he could see and shake hands with his
+enemies, Bronson, Peterson and Bonner: and if he could tell them of his
+success with Professor Withers of the State Agricultural College, perhaps
+they would feel differently toward him. There they were now, over in a
+corner, with their heads together. Perhaps they were agreeing among
+themselves that he was right in his school methods, and they wrong. He
+went toward them, his face still beaming with that radiance which had
+shone so plainly to the eyes of Calista Simms, but they saw in it only a
+grin of exultation over his defeat of them at the hearing before Jennie
+Woodruff. When Jim had drawn so close as almost to call for the extended
+hand, he felt the repulsion of their attitudes and sheered off on some
+pretended errand to a dark corner across the room.
+
+They resumed their talk.
+
+"I'm a Dimocrat," said Con Bonner, "and you fellers is Republicans, and
+we've fought each other about who we was to hire for teacher; but when it
+comes to electing my successor, I think we shouldn't divide on party
+lines."
+
+"The fight about the teacher," said Haakon Peterson, "is a t'ing of the
+past. All our candidates got odder yobs now."
+
+"Yes," said Ezra Bronson. "Prue Foster wouldn't take our school now if she
+could get it"
+
+"And as I was sayin'," went on Bonner, "I want to get this guy, Jim Irwin.
+An' bein' the cause of his gittin' the school, I'd like to be on the board
+to kick him off; but if you fellers would like to have some one else, I
+won't run, and if the right feller is named, I'll line up what friends I
+got for him." "You got no friend can git as many wotes as you can," said
+Peterson. "I tank you better run."
+
+"What say, Ez?" asked Bonner.
+
+"Suits me all right," said Bronson. "I guess we three have had our fight
+out and understand each other."
+
+"All right," returned Bonner, "I'll take the office again. Let's not start
+too soon, but say we begin about a week from Sunday to line up our
+friends, to go to the school election and vote kind of unanimous-like?"
+
+"Suits me," said Bronson.
+
+"Wery well," said Peterson.
+
+"I don't like the way Colonel Woodruff acts," said Bonner. "He rounded up
+that gang of kids that shot us all to pieces at that hearing, didn't he?"
+
+"I tank not," replied Peterson. "I tank he was yust interested in how
+Yennie managed it."
+
+"Looked mighty like he was managin' the demonstration," said Bonner. "What
+d'ye think, Ez?"
+
+"Too small a matter for the colonel to monkey with," said Bronson. "I
+reckon he was just interested in Jennie's dilemmer. It ain't reasonable
+that Colonel Woodruff after the p'litical career he's had would mix up in
+school district politics."
+
+"Well," said Bonner, "he seems to take a lot of interest in this
+exhibition here. I think we'd better watch the colonel. That decision of
+Jennie's might have been because she's stuck on Jim Irwin, or because she
+takes a lot of notice of what her father says."
+
+"Or she might have thought the decision was right," said Bronson. "Some
+people do, you know."
+
+"Right!" scoffed Bonner. "In a pig's wrist! I tell you that decision was
+crooked."
+
+"Vell," said Haakon Peterson, "talk of crookedness wit' Yennie Woodruff
+don't get wery fur wit' me."
+
+"Oh, I don't mean anything bad, Haakon," replied Bonner, "but it wasn't an
+all-right decision. I think she's stuck on the guy."
+
+The caucus broke up after making sure that the three members of the school
+board would be as one man in maintaining a hostile front to Jim Irwin and
+his tenure of office. It looked rather like a foregone conclusion, in a
+little district wherein there were scarcely twenty-five votes. The three
+members of the board with their immediate friends and dependents could
+muster two or three ballots each--and who was there to oppose them? Who
+wanted to be school director? It was a post of no profit, little honor and
+much vexation. And yet, there are always men to be found who covet such
+places. Curiously there are always those who covet them for no
+ascertainable reason, for often they are men who have no theory of
+education to further, and no fondness for affairs of the intellect. In the
+Woodruff District, however, the incumbents saw no candidate in view who
+could be expected to stand up against the rather redoubtable Con Bonner.
+Jim's hold upon his work seemed fairly secure for the term of his
+contract, since Jennie had decided that he was competent; and after that
+he himself had no plans. He could not expect to be retained by the men who
+had so bitterly attacked him. Perhaps the publicity of his Ames address
+would get him another place with a sufficient stipend so that he could
+support his mother without the aid of the little garden, the cows and the
+fowls--and perhaps he would ask Colonel Woodruff to take him back as a
+farm-hand. These thoughts thronged his mind as he stood apart and alone
+after his rebuff by the caucusing members of the school board.
+
+"I don't see," said a voice over against the cooking exhibit, "what there
+is in this to set people talking? Buttonholes! Cookies! Humph!"
+
+It was Mrs. Bonner who had clearly come to scoff. With her was Mrs.
+Bronson, whose attitude was that of a person torn between conflicting
+influences. Her husband had indicated to the crafty Bonner and the subtle
+Peterson that while he was still loyal to the school board, and hence
+perforce opposed to Jim Irwin, and resentful to the decision of the county
+superintendent, his adhesion to the institutions of the Woodruff District
+as handed down by the fathers was not quite of the thick-and-thin type.
+For he had suggested that Jennie might have been sincere in rendering her
+decision, and that some people agreed with her: so Mrs. Bronson, while
+consorting with the censorious Mrs. Bonner evinced restiveness when the
+school and its work was condemned. Was not her Newton in charge of a part
+of this show! Had he not taken great interest in the project? Was he not
+an open and defiant champion of Jim Irwin, and a constant and enthusiastic
+attendant upon, not only his classes, but a variety of evening and
+Saturday affairs at which the children studied arithmetic, grammar,
+geography, writing and spelling, by working on cows, pigs, chickens,
+grains, grasses, soils and weeds? And had not Newton become a better
+boy--a wonderfully better boy? Mrs. Bronson's heart was filled with
+resentment that she also could not be enrolled among Jim Irwin's
+supporters. And when Mrs. Bonner sneered at the buttonholes and cookies,
+Mrs. Bronson, knowing how the little fingers had puzzled themselves over
+the one, and young faces had become floury and red over the other, flared
+up a little.
+
+"And I don't see," said she, "anything to laugh at when the young girls do
+the best they can to make themselves capable housekeepers. I'd like to
+help them." She turned to Mrs. Bonner as if to add "If this be treason,
+make the most of it!" but that lady was far too good a diplomat to be
+cornered in the same enclosure with a rupture of relations.
+
+"And quite right, too," said she, "in the proper place, and at the proper
+time. The little things ought to be helped by every real woman--of
+course!"
+
+"Of course," repeated Mrs. Bronson.
+
+"At home, now, and by their mothers," added Mrs. Bonner.
+
+"Well," said Mrs. Bronson, "take them Simms girls, now. They have to have
+help outside their home if they are ever going to be like other folks."
+
+"Yes," agreed Mrs. Bonner, "and a lot more help than a farm-hand can give
+'em in school. Pretty poor trash, they, and I shouldn't wonder if there
+was a lot we don't know about why they come north."
+
+"As for that," replied Mrs. Bronson, "I don't know as it's any of my
+business so long as they behave themselves."
+
+Again Mrs. Bonner felt the situation getting out of hand, and again she
+returned to the task of keeping Mrs. Bronson in alignment with the forces
+of accepted Woodruff District conditions.
+
+"Ain't it some of our business?" she queried. "I wonder now! By the way
+Newtie keeps his eye on that Simms girl, I shouldn't wonder if it might
+turn out your business."
+
+"Pshaw!" scoffed Mrs. Bronson. "Puppy love!"
+
+"You can't tell how far it'll go," persisted Mrs. Bonner. "I tell you
+these schools are getting to be nothing more than sparkin' bees, from the
+county superintendent down."
+
+"Well, maybe," said Mrs. Bronson, "but I don't see sparkin' in everything
+boys and girls do as quick as some."
+
+"I wonder," said Mrs. Bonner, "if Colonel Woodruff would be as friendly to
+Jim Irwin if he knew that everybody says Jennie decided he was to keep his
+certif'kit because she wants him to get along in the world, so he can
+marry her?"
+
+"I don't know as she is so very friendly to him," replied Mrs. Bronson;
+"and Jim and Jennie are both of age, you know."
+
+"Yes, but how about our schools bein' ruined by a love affair?"
+interrogated Mrs. Bonner, as they moved away. "Ain't that your business
+and mine?"
+
+Instead of desiring further knowledge of what they were discussing, Jim
+felt a dreadful disgust at the whole thing. Disgust at being the subject
+of gossip, at the horrible falsity of the picture he had been able to
+paint to the people of his objects and his ambitions, and especially at
+the desecration of Jennie by such misconstruction of her attitude toward
+him officially and personally. Jennie was vexed at him, and wanted him to
+resign from his position. He firmly believed that she was surprised at
+finding herself convinced that he was entitled to a decision in the matter
+of his competency as a teacher. She was against him, he believed, and as
+for her being in love with him--to hear these women discuss it was
+intolerable.
+
+He felt his face redden as at the hearing of some horrible indecency. He
+felt himself stripped naked, and he was hotly ashamed that Jennie should
+be associated with him in the exposure. And while he was raging inwardly,
+paying the penalty of his new-found place in the public eye--a publicity
+to which he was not yet hardened--he heard other voices. Professor
+Withers, County Superintendent Jennie and Colonel Woodruff were making an
+inspection of the rural-school exhibit.
+
+"I hear he has been having some trouble with his school board," the
+professor was saying.
+
+"Yes," said Jennie, "he has."
+
+"Wasn't there an effort made to remove him from his position?" asked the
+professor.
+
+"Proceedings before me to revoke his certificate," replied Jennie.
+
+"On what grounds?"
+
+"Incompetency," answered Jennie. "I found that his pupils were really
+doing very well in the regular course of study--which he seems to be
+neglecting."
+
+"I'm glad you supported him," said the professor. "I'm glad to find you
+helping him." "Really," protested Jennie, "I don't think myself--"
+
+"What do you think of his notions?" asked the colonel.
+
+"Very advanced," replied Professor Withers. "Where did he imbibe them
+all?"
+
+"He's a Brown Mouse," said the colonel.
+
+"I beg your pardon," said the puzzled professor. "I didn't quite
+understand. A--a--what?"
+
+"One of papa's breeding jokes," said Jennie. "He means a phenomenon in
+heredity--perhaps a genius, you know."
+
+"Ah, I see," replied the professor, "a Mendelian segregation, you mean?"
+
+"Certainly," said the colonel. "The sort of mind that imbibes things from
+itself."
+
+"Well, he's rather wonderful," declared the professor. "I had him to lunch
+to-day. He surprised me. I have invited him to make an address at Ames
+next winter during farmers' week."
+
+"He?"
+
+Jennie's tone showed her astonishment. Jim the underling. Jim the off ox.
+Jim the thorn in the county superintendent's side. Jim the country
+teacher! It was stupefying.
+
+"Oh, you musn't judge him by his looks," said the professor. "I really do
+hope he'll take some advice on the matter of clothes--put on a cravat and
+a different shirt and collar when he comes to Ames--but I have no doubt he
+will."
+
+"He hasn't any other," said the colonel.
+
+"Well, it won't signify, if he has the truth to tell us," said the
+professor.
+
+"_Has_ he?" asked Jennie.
+
+"Miss Woodruff," replied the professor earnestly, "he has something that
+looks toward truth, and something that we need. Just how far he will go,
+just what he will amount to, it is impossible to say. But something must
+be done for the rural schools--something along the lines he is trying to
+follow. He is a struggling soul, and he is worth helping. You won't make
+any mistake if you make the most of Mr. Irwin."
+
+Jim slipped out of a side door and fled. As in the case of the
+conversation between Mrs. Bronson and Mrs. Bonner, he was unable to
+discern the favorable auspices in the showing of adverse things. He had
+not sensed Mrs. Bronson's half-concealed friendliness for him, though it
+was disagreeably plain to Mrs. Bonner. And now he neglected the colonel's
+evident support of him, and Professor Withers' praise, in Jennie's
+manifest surprise that old Jim had been accorded the recognition of a
+place on a college program, and the professor's criticism of his dress and
+general appearance.
+
+It was unjust! What chance had he been given to discover what it was
+fashionable to wear, even if he had had the money to buy such clothes as
+other young men possessed? He would never go near Ames! He would stay in
+the Woodruff District where the people knew him, and some of them liked
+him. He would finish his school year, and go back to work on the farm. He
+would abandon the struggle.
+
+He started home, on foot as he had come, A mile or so out he was overtaken
+by the colonel, driving briskly along with room in his buggy for Jim.
+
+"Climb in, Jim!" said he. "Dan and Dolly didn't like to see you walk."
+
+"They're looking fine," said Jim.
+
+There is a good deal to say whenever two horse lovers get together. Hoofs
+and coats and frogs and eyes and teeth and the queer sympathies between
+horse and man may sometimes quite take the place of the weather for an
+hour or so. But when Jim had alighted at his own door, the colonel spoke
+of what had been in his mind all the time.
+
+"I saw Bonner and Haakon and Ez doing some caucusing to-day," said he.
+"They expect to elect Bonner to the board again."
+
+"Oh, I suppose so," replied Jim.
+
+"Well, what shall we do about it?" asked the colonel.
+
+"If the people want him--" began Jim.
+
+"The people," said the colonel, "must have a choice offered to 'em, or how
+can you or any man tell what they want? How can they tell themselves?"
+
+Jim was silent. Here was a matter on which he really had no ideas except
+the broad and general one that truth is mighty and shall prevail--but that
+the speed of its forward march is problematical.
+
+"I think," said the colonel, "that it's up to us to see that the people
+have a chance to decide. It's really Bonner against Jim Irwin."
+
+"That's rather startling," said Jim, "but I suppose it's true. And much
+chance Jim Irwin has!"
+
+"I calculate," rejoined the colonel, "that what you need is a champion."
+
+"To do what?"
+
+"To take that office away from Bonner."
+
+"Who can do that?"
+
+"Well, I'm free to say I don't know that any one can, but I'm willing to
+try. I think that in about a week I shall pass the word around that I'd
+like to serve my country on the school board."
+
+Jim's face lighted up--and then darkened.
+
+"Even then they'd be two to one, Colonel."
+
+"Maybe," replied the colonel, "and maybe not. That would have to be
+figured on. A cracked log splits easy."
+
+"Anyhow," Jim went on, "what's the use? I shan't be disturbed this
+year--and after that--what's the use?"
+
+"Why, Jim," said the colonel, "you aren't getting short of breath are you?
+Do I see frost on your boots? I thought you good for the mile, and you
+aren't turning out a quarter horse, are you? I don't know what all it is
+you want to do, but I don't, believe you can do it in nine months, can
+you?"
+
+"Not in nine years!" replied Jim.
+
+"Well, then, let's plan for ten years," said the colonel. "I ain't going
+to become a reformer at my time of life as a temporary job. Will you stick
+if we can swing the thing for you?"
+
+"I will," said Jim, in the manner of a person taking the vows in some
+solemn initiation.
+
+"All right," said the colonel. "We'll keep quiet and see how many votes we
+can muster up at the election. How many can you speak for?"
+
+Jim gave himself for a few minutes to thought. It was a new thing to him,
+this matter of mustering votes--and a thing which he had always looked
+upon as rather reprehensible. The citizen should go forth with no
+coercion, no persuasion, no suggestion, and vote his sentiments.
+
+"How many can you round up?" persisted the colonel.
+
+"I think," said Jim, "that I can speak for myself and Old Man Simms!"
+
+The colonel laughed.
+
+"Fine politician!" he repeated. "Fine politician! Well, Jim, we may get
+beaten in this, but if we are, let's not have them going away picking
+their noses and saying they've had no fight. You round up yourself and Old
+Man Simms and I'll see what I can do--I'll see what I can do!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+A MINOR CASTS HALF A VOTE
+
+
+March came in like neither a lion nor a lamb, but was scarcely a week old
+before the wild ducks had begun to score the sky above Bronson's Slew
+looking for open water and badly-harvested corn-fields. Wild geese, too,
+honked from on high as if in wonder that these great prairies on which
+their forefathers had been wont fearlessly to alight had been changed into
+a disgusting expanse of farms. If geese are favored with the long lives in
+which fable bids us believe, some of these venerable honkers must have
+seen every vernal and autumnal phase of the transformation from boundless
+prairie to boundless corn-land. I sometimes seem to hear in the
+bewildering trumpetings of wild geese a cry of surprise and protest at the
+ruin of their former paradise. Colonel Woodruff's hired man, Pete, had no
+such foolish notions, however. He stopped Newton Bronson and Raymond Simms
+as they tramped across the colonel's pasture, gun in hand, trying to make
+themselves believe that the shooting was good.
+
+"This ain't no country to hunt in," said he. "Did either of you fellows
+ever have any real duck-shooting?"
+
+"The mountings," said Raymond, "air poor places for ducks."
+
+"Not big enough water," suggested Pete. "Some wood-ducks, I suppose?"
+
+"Along the creeks and rivers, yes seh," said Raymond, "and sometimes a
+flock of wild geese would get lost, and some bewildered, and a man would
+shoot one or two--from the tops of the ridges--but nothing to depend on."
+
+"I've never been nowhere," said Newton, "except once to
+Minnesota--and--and that wasn't in the shooting season."
+
+A year ago Newton would have boasted of having "bummed" his way to
+Faribault. His hesitant speech was a proof of the embarrassment his new
+respectability sometimes inflicted upon him.
+
+"I used to shoot ducks for the market at Spirit Lake," said Pete. "I know
+Fred Gilbert just as well as I know you. If I'd 'a' kep' on shooting I
+could have made my millions as champion wing shot as easy as he has. He
+didn't have nothing on me when we was both shooting for a livin'. But
+that's all over, now. You've got to go so fur now to get decent shooting
+where the farmers won't drive you off, that it costs nine dollars to send
+a postcard home."
+
+"I think we'll have fine shooting on the slew in a few days," said
+Newton.
+
+"Humph!" scoffed Pete. "I give you my word, if I hadn't promised the
+colonel I'd stay with him another year, I'd take a side-door Pullman for
+the Sand Hills of Nebraska or the Devil's Lake country to-morrow--if I had
+a gun."
+
+"If it wasn't for a passel of things that keep me hyeh," said Raymond,
+"I'd like to go too."
+
+"The colonel," said Pete, "needs me. He needs me in the election
+to-morrow. What's the matter of your ol' man, Newt? What for does he vote
+for that Bonner, and throw down an old neighbor?"
+
+"I can't do anything with him!" exclaimed Newton irritably. "He's all
+tangled up with Peterson and Bonner."
+
+"Well," said Pete, "if he'd just stay at home, it would help some. If he
+votes for Bonner, it'll be just about a stand-off."
+
+"He never misses a vote!" said Newton despairingly.
+
+"Can't you cripple him someway?" asked Pete jocularly. "Darned funny when
+a boy o' your age can't control his father's vote! So long!"
+
+"I wish I _could_ vote!" grumbled Newton. "I wish I _could_! We know a lot
+more about the school, and Jim Irwin bein' a good teacher than dad
+does--and we can't vote. Why can't folks vote when they are interested in
+an election, and know about the issues. It's tyranny that you and I can't
+vote."
+
+"I reckon," said Raymond, the conservative, "that the old-time people that
+fixed it thataway knowed best."
+
+"Rats!" sneered Newton, the iconoclast. "Why, Calista knows more about the
+election of school director than dad knows."
+
+"That don't seem reasonable," protested Raymond. "She's prejudyced, I
+reckon, in favor of Mr. Jim Irwin."
+
+"Well, dad's prejudiced against him,--er, no, he hain't either. He likes
+Jim. He's just prejudiced against giving up his old notions. No, he hain't
+neither--I guess he's only prejudiced against seeming to give up some old
+notions he seemed to have once! And the kids in school would be prejudiced
+right, anyhow!"
+
+"Paw says he'll be on hand prompt," said Raymond. "But he had to be
+p'swaded right much. Paw's proud--and he cain't read."
+
+"Sometimes I think the more people read the less sense they've got," said
+Newton. "I wish I could tie dad up! I wish I could get snakebit, and make
+him go for the doctor!"
+
+The boys crossed the ridge to the wooded valley in which nestled the Simms
+cabin. They found Mrs. Simms greatly exercised in her mind because young
+McGeehee had been found playing with some blue vitriol used by Raymond in
+his school work on the treatment of seed potatoes for scab.
+
+"His hands was all blue with it," said she. "Do you reckon, Mr. Newton,
+that it'll pizen him?"
+
+"Did he swallow any of it?" asked Newton.
+
+"Nah!" said McGeehee scornfully.
+
+Newton reassured Mrs. Simms, and went away pensive. He was in rebellion
+against the strange ways grown men have of discharging their duties as
+citizens--a rather remarkable thing, and perhaps a proof that Jim Irwin's
+methods had already accomplished much in preparing Newton and Raymond for
+citizenship. He had shown them the fact that voting really has some
+relation to life. At present, however, the new wine in the old bottles was
+causing Newton to forget his filial duty, and his respect for his father.
+He wished he could lock him up in the barn so he couldn't go to the school
+election. He wished he could become ill--or poisoned with blue vitriol or
+something--so his father would be obliged to go for a doctor. He
+wished----well, why couldn't he get sick. Mrs. Simms had been about to
+send for the doctor for Buddy when he had explained away the apparent
+necessity. People got dreadfully scared about poison---- Newton mended his
+pace, and looked happier. He looked very much as he had done on the day he
+adjusted the needle-pointed muzzle to his dog's nose. He looked, in fact,
+more like a person filled with deviltry, than one yearning for the right
+to vote.
+
+"I'll fix him!" said he to himself.
+
+"What time's the election, Ez?" asked Mrs. Bronson at breakfast.
+
+"I'm goin' at four o'clock," said Ezra. "And I don't want to hear any more
+from any one"--looking at Newton--"about the election. It's none of the
+business of the women an' boys."
+
+Newton took this reproof in an unexpectedly submissive spirit. In fact, he
+exhibited his very best side to the family that morning, like one going on
+a long journey, or about to be married off, or engaged in some deep dark
+plot.
+
+"I s'pose you're off trampin' the slews at the sight of a flock of ducks
+four miles off as usual?" stated Mr. Bronson challengingly.
+
+"I thought," said Newton, "that I'd get a lot of raisin bait ready for the
+pocket-gophers in the lower meadow. They'll be throwing up their mounds by
+the first of April."
+
+"Not them," said Mr. Bronson, somewhat mollified, "not before May. Where'd
+you get the raisin idee?"
+
+"We learned it in school," answered Newton. "Jim had me study a bulletin
+on the control and eradication of pocket-gophers. You use raisins with
+strychnine in 'em--and it tells how."
+
+"Some fool notion, I s'pose," said Mr. Bronson, rising. "But go ahead if
+you're careful about handlin' the strychnine."
+
+Newton spent the time from twelve-thirty to half after two in watching the
+clock; and twenty minutes to three found him seated in the woodshed with a
+pen-knife in his hand, a small vial of strychnine crystals on a stand
+before him, a saucer of raisins at his right hand, and one exactly like
+it, partially filled with gopher bait--by which is meant raisins under the
+skin of each of which a minute crystal of strychnine had been inserted on
+the point of the knife. Newton was apparently happy and was whistling _The
+Glow-Worm_. It was a lovely scene if one can forget the gopher's point of
+view.
+
+At three-thirty, Newton went into the house and lay down on the horsehair
+sofa, saying to his mother that he felt kind o' funny and thought he'd lie
+down a while. At three-forty he heard his father's voice in the kitchen
+and knew that his sire was preparing to start for the scene of battle
+between Colonel Woodruff and Con Bonner, on the result of which hinged the
+future of Jim Irwin and the Woodruff school.
+
+A groan issued from Newton's lips--a gruesome groan as of the painful
+death of a person very sensitive to physical suffering. But his father's
+voice from the kitchen door betrayed no agitation. He was scolding the
+horses as they stood tied to the hitching-post, in tones that showed no
+knowledge of his son's distressed moans.
+
+"What's the matter?"
+
+It was Newton's little sister who asked the question, her facial
+expression evincing appreciation of Newton's efforts in the line of
+groans, somewhat touched with awe. Even though regarded as a pure matter
+of make-believe, such sounds were terrible.
+
+"Oh, sister, sister!" howled Newton, "run and tell 'em that brother's
+dying!"
+
+Fanny disappeared in a manner which expressed her balanced feelings--she
+felt that her brother was making believe, but she believed for all that,
+that something awful was the matter. So she went rather slowly to the
+kitchen door, and casually remarked that Newton was dying on the sofa in
+the sitting-room.
+
+"You little fraud!" said her father.
+
+"Why, Fanny!" said her mother--and ran into the sitting-room--whence in a
+moment, with a cry that was almost a scream, she summoned her husband, who
+responded at the top of his speed.
+
+Newton was groaning and in convulsions. Horrible grimaces contorted his
+face, his jaws were set, his arms and legs drawn up, and his muscles
+tense.
+
+"What's the matter?" His father's voice was stern as well as full of
+anxiety. "What's the matter, boy?"
+
+"Oh!" cried Newton. "Oh! Oh! Oh!"
+
+"Newtie, Newtie!" cried his mother, "where are you in pain? Tell mother,
+Newtie!"
+
+"Oh," groaned Newtie, relaxing, "I feel awful!"
+
+"What you been eating?" interrogated his father.
+
+"Nothing," replied Newton.
+
+"I saw you eatin' dinner," said his father.
+
+Again Newton was convulsed by strong spasms, and again his groans filled
+the hearts of his parents with terror.
+
+"That's all I've eaten," said he, when his spasms had passed, "except a
+few raisins. I was putting strychnine in 'em----"
+
+"Oh, heavens!" cried his mother. "He's poisoned! Drive for the doctor,
+Ezra! Drive!"
+
+Mr. Bronson forgot all about the election--forgot everything save
+antidotes and speed. He leaped toward the door. As he passed out, he
+shouted "Give him an emetic!" He tore the hitching straps from the posts,
+jumped into the buggy and headed for the road. Skilfully avoiding an
+overturn as he rounded into the highway, he gave the spirited horses their
+heads, and fled toward town, carefully computing the speed the horses
+could make and still be able to return. Mile after mile he covered,
+passing teams, keeping ahead of automobiles and advertising panic. Just at
+the town limits, he met the doctor in Sheriff Dilly's automobile, the
+sheriff himself at the steering wheel. Mr. Bronson signaled them to stop,
+ignoring the fact that they were making similar signs to him.
+
+"We're just starting for your place," said the doctor. "Your wife got me
+on the phone."
+
+"Thank God!" replied Bronson. "Don't fool any time away on me. Drive!"
+
+"Get in here, Ez," said the sheriff. "Doc knows how to drive, and I'll
+come on with your team. They need a slow drive to cool 'em off."
+
+"Why didn't you phone me?" asked the doctor.
+
+"Never thought of it," replied Bronson. "I hain't had the phone only a few
+years. Drive faster!"
+
+"I want to get there, or I would," answered the doctor. "Don't worry. From
+what your wife told me over the phone I don't believe the boy's eaten any
+more strychnine than I have--and probably not so much."
+
+"He was alive, then?"
+
+"Alive and making an argument against taking the emetic," replied the
+doctor. "But I guess she got it down him."
+
+"I'd hate to lose that boy, Doc!"
+
+"I don't believe there's any danger. It doesn't sound like a genuine
+poisoning case to me."
+
+Thus reassured, Mr. Bronson was calm, even if somewhat tragic in calmness,
+when he entered the death chamber with the doctor. Newton was sitting up,
+his eyes wet, and his face pale. His mother had won the argument, and
+Newton had lost his dinner. Haakon Peterson occupied an armchair.
+
+"What's all this?" asked the doctor. "How you feeling, Newt? Any pain?"
+
+"I'm all right," said Newton. "Don't give me any more o' that nasty
+stuff!"
+
+"No," said the doctor, "but if you don't tell me just what you've been
+eating, and doing, and pulling off on us, I'll use this"--and the doctor
+exhibited a huge stomach pump.
+
+"What'll you do with that?" asked Newton faintly.
+
+"I'll put this down into your hold, and unload you, that's what I'll do."
+
+"Is the election over, Mr. Peterson?" asked Newton.
+
+"Yes," answered Mr. Peterson, "and the votes counted."
+
+"Who's elected?" asked Newton.
+
+"Colonel Woodruff," answered Mr. Peterson. "The vote was twelve to
+eleven."
+
+"Well, dad," said Newton, "I s'pose you'll be sore, but the only way I
+could see to get in half a vote for Colonel Woodruff was to get poisoned
+and send you after the doctor. If you'd gone, it would 'a' been a tie,
+anyhow, and probably you'd 'a' persuaded somebody to change to Bonner.
+That's what's the matter with me. I killed your vote. Now, you can do
+whatever you like to me--but I'm sorry I scared mother."
+
+Ezra Bronson seized Newton by the throat, but his fingers failed to close.
+"Don't pinch, dad," said Newton. "I've been using that neck an' it's
+tired." Mr. Bronson dropped his hands to his sides, glared at his son for
+a moment and breathed a sigh of relief.
+
+"Why, you darned infernal little fool," said he. "I've a notion to take a
+hamestrap to you! If I'd been there the vote would have been eleven to
+thirteen!"
+
+"There was plenty wotes there for the colonel, if he needed 'em," said
+Haakon, whose politician's mind was already fully adjusted to the changed
+conditions. "Ay tank the Woodruff District will have a junanimous school
+board from dis time on once more. Colonel Woodruff is yust the man we have
+needed."
+
+"I'm with you there," said Bronson. "And as for you, young man, if one or
+both of them horses is hurt by the run I give them, I'll lick you within
+an inch of your life---- Here comes Dilly driving 'em in now---- I guess
+they're all right. I wouldn't want to drive a good team to death for any
+young hoodlum like him---- All right, how much do I owe you. Doc?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+THE GLORIOUS FOURTH
+
+
+A good deal of water ran under the Woodruff District bridges in the weeks
+between the school election and the Fourth of July picnic at Eight-Mile
+Grove. They were very important weeks to Jim Irwin, though outwardly
+uneventful. Great events are often mere imperceptible developments of the
+spirit.
+
+Spring, for instance, brought a sort of spiritual crisis to Jim; for he
+had to face the accusing glance of the fields as they were plowed and sown
+while he lived indoors. As he labored at the tasks of the Woodruff school
+he was conscious of a feeling not very easily distinguished from a sense
+of guilt. It seemed that there must be something almost wicked in his
+failure to be afield with his team in the early spring mornings when the
+woolly anemones appeared in their fur coats, the heralds of the later
+comers--violets, sweet-williams, puccoons, and the scarlet prairie
+lilies.
+
+A moral crisis accompanies the passing of a man from the struggle with the
+soil to any occupation, the productiveness of which is not quite so clear.
+It requires a keenly sensitive nature to feel conscious of it, but Jim
+Irwin possessed such a temperament; and from the beginning of the daily
+race with the seasons, which makes the life of a northern farmer an eight
+months' Marathon in which to fall behind for a week is to lose much of the
+year's reward, the gawky schoolmaster slept uneasily, and heard the
+earliest cock-crow as a soldier hears a call to arms to which he has made
+up his mind he will not respond.
+
+I think there is a real moral principle involved. I believe that this deep
+instinct for labor in and about the soil is a valid one, and that the
+gathering together of people in cities has been at the cost of an obscure
+but actual moral shock.
+
+I doubt if the people of the cities can ever be at rest in a future full
+of moral searchings of conscience until every man has traced definitely
+the connection of the work he is doing with the maintenance of his
+country's population. Sometimes those vocations whose connection can not
+be so traced will be recognized as wicked ones, and people engaged in them
+will feel as did Jim--until he worked out the facts in the relation of
+school-teaching to the feeding, clothing and sheltering of the world. Most
+school-teaching he believed--correctly or incorrectly--has very little to
+do with the primary task of the human race; but as far as his teaching was
+concerned, even he believed in it. If by teaching school he could not make
+a greater contribution to the productiveness of the Woodruff District than
+by working in the fields, he would go back to the fields. Whether he could
+make his teaching thus productive or not was the very fact in issue
+between him and the local body politic.
+
+These are some of the waters that ran under the bridges before the Fourth
+of July picnic at Eight-Mile Grove. Few surface indications there were of
+any change in the little community in this annual gathering of friends and
+neighbors. Wilbur Smythe made the annual address, and was in rather finer
+fettle than usual as he paid his fervid tribute to the starry flag, and to
+this very place as the most favored spot in the best country of the
+greatest state in the most powerful, intellectual, freest and most
+progressive nation in the best possible of worlds. Wilbur was going
+strong. Jim Irwin read the Declaration rather well, Jennie Woodruff
+thought, as she sat on the platform between Deacon Avery, the oldest
+settler in the district, and Mrs. Columbus Brown, the sole local
+representative of the Daughters of the American Revolution. Colonel
+Woodruff presided in his Grand Army of the Republic uniform.
+
+The fresh northwest breeze made free with the oaks, elms, hickories and
+box-elders of Eight-Mile Grove, and the waters of Pickerel Creek glimmered
+a hundred yards away, beyond the flitting figures of the boys who
+preferred to shoot off their own fire-crackers and torpedoes and
+nigger-chasers, rather than to listen to those of Wilbur Smythe. Still
+farther off could be heard the voice of a lone lemonade vender as he
+advertised ice-cold lemonade, made in the shade, with a brand-new spade,
+by an old maid, as a guaranty that it was the blamedest, coldest lemonade
+ever sold. And under the shadiest trees a few incorrigible Marthas were
+spreading the snowy tablecloths on which would soon be placed the
+bountiful repasts stored in ponderous wicker baskets and hampers. It was a
+lovely day, in a lovely spot--a good example of the miniature forests
+which grew naturally from time immemorial in favored locations on the Iowa
+prairies--half a square mile of woodland, all about which the green
+corn-rows stood aslant in the cool breeze, "waist-high and laid by."
+
+They were passing down the rough board steps from the platform after the
+exercises had terminated in a rousing rendition of _America_, when Jennie
+Woodruff, having slipped by everybody else to reach him, tapped Jim Irwin
+on the arm. He looked back at her over his shoulder with his slow gentle
+smile.
+
+"Isn't your mother here, Jim?" she asked. "I've been looking all over the
+crowd and can't see her."
+
+"She isn't here," answered Jim. "I was in hopes that when she broke loose
+and went to your Christmas dinner she would stay loose--but she went home
+and settled back into her rut."
+
+"Too bad," said Jennie. "She'd have had a nice time if she had come."
+
+"Yes," said Jim, "I believe she would."
+
+"I want help," said Jennie. "Our hamper is terribly heavy. Please!"
+
+It was rather obvious to Mrs. Bonner that Jennie was throwing herself at
+Jim's head; but that was an article of the Bonner family creed since the
+decision which closed the hearing at the court-house. It must be admitted
+that the young county superintendent found tasks which kept the
+schoolmaster very close to her side. He carried the hamper, helped Jennie
+to spread the cloth on the grass, went with her to the well for water and
+cracked ice wherewith to cool it. In fact, he quite cut Wilbur Smythe out
+when that gentleman made ponderous efforts to obtain a share of the favor
+implied in these permissions.
+
+"Sit down, Jim," said Mrs. Woodruff, "you've earned a bite of what we've
+got. It's good enough, what there is of it, and there's enough of it, such
+as it is!"
+
+"I'm sorry," said Jim, "but I've a prior engagement."
+
+"Why, Jim!" protested Jennie. "I've been counting on you. Don't desert
+me!"
+
+"I'm awfully sorry," said Jim, "but I promised. I'll see you later."
+
+One might have thought, judging by the colonel's quizzical smile, that he
+was pleased at Jennie's loss of her former swain.
+
+"We'll have to invite Jim longer ahead of time," said he. "He's getting to
+be in demand."
+
+He seemed to be in demand--a fact that Jennie confirmed by observation as
+she chatted with Deacon Avery, Mrs. Columbus Brown and her husband, and
+the Orator of the Day, at the table set apart for the guests and notables.
+Jim received a dozen invitations as he passed the groups seated on the
+grass--one of them from Mrs. Cornelius Bonner, who saw no particular point
+in advertising disgruntlement. The children ran to him and clung to his
+hands; young girls gave him sisterly smiles and such trifles as chicken
+drumsticks, pieces of cake and like tidbits. His passage to the numerous
+groups at a square table under a big burr-oak was quite an ovation--an
+ovation of the significance of which he was himself quite unaware. The
+people were just friendly, that was all--to his mind.
+
+But Jennie--the daughter of a politician and a promising one
+herself--Jennie sensed the fact that Jim Irwin had won something from the
+people of the Woodruff District in the way of deference. Still he was the
+gangling, Lincolnian, ill-dressed, poverty-stricken Jim Irwin of old, but
+Jennie had no longer the feeling that one's standing was somewhat
+compromised by association with him. He had begun to put on something more
+significant than clothes, something which he had possessed all the time,
+but which became valid only as it was publicly apprehended. There was a
+slight air of command in his down-sitting and up-rising at the picnic. He
+was clearly the central figure of his group, in which she recognized the
+Bronsons, those queer children from Tennessee, the Simmses, the Talcotts,
+the Hansens, the Hamms and Colonel Woodruff's hired man, Pete, whose other
+name is not recorded.
+
+Jim sat down between Bettina Hansen, a flaxen-haired young Brunhilde of
+seventeen, and Calista Simms--Jennie saw him do it, while listening to
+Wilbur Smythe's account of the exacting nature of the big law practise he
+was building up,--and would have been glad to exchange places with Calista
+or Bettina.
+
+The repast drew to a close; and over by the burr-oak the crowd had grown
+to a circle surrounding Jim Irwin.
+
+"He seems to be making an address," said Wilbur Smythe.
+
+"Well, Wilbur," replied the colonel, "you had the first shot at us.
+Suppose we move over and see what's under discussion."
+
+As they approached the group, they heard Jim Irwin answering something
+which Ezra Bronson had said.
+
+"You think so, Ezra," said he, "and it seems reasonable that big
+creameries like those at Omaha, Sioux City, Des Moines and the other
+centralizer points can make butter cheaper than we would do here--but
+we've the figures that show that they aren't economical."
+
+"They can't make good butter, for one thing," said Newton Bronson
+cockily.
+
+"Why can't they?" asked Olaf Hansen, the father of Bettina.
+
+"Well," said Newton, "they have to have so much cream that they've got to
+ship it so far that it gets rotten on the way, and they have to renovate
+it with lime and other ingredients before they can churn it."
+
+"Well," said Raymond Simms, "I reckon they sell their butter fo' all it's
+wuth; an' they cain't get within from foah to seven cents a pound as much
+fo' it as the farmers' creameries in Wisconsin and Minnesota get fo'
+theirs."
+
+"That's a fact, Olaf," said Jim.
+
+"How do you kids know so darned much about it?" queried Pete.
+
+"Huh!" sniffed Bettina. "We've been reading about it, and writing letters
+about it, and figuring percentages on it in school all winter. We've done
+arithmetic and geography and grammar and I don't know what else on it."
+
+"Well, I'm agin' any schoolin'," said Pete, "that makes kids smarter in
+farmin' than their parents and their parents' hired men. Gi' me another
+swig o' that lemonade, Jim!"
+
+"You see," said Jim to his audience, meanwhile pouring the lemonade, "the
+centralizer creamery is uneconomic in several ways. It has to pay
+excessive transportation charges. It has to pay excessive commissions to
+its cream buyers. It has to accept cream without proper inspection, and
+mixes the good with the bad. It makes such long shipments that the cream
+spoils in transit and lowers the quality of the butter. It can't make the
+best use of the buttermilk. All these losses and leaks the farmers have to
+stand. I can prove--and so can the six or eight pupils in the Woodruff
+school who have been working on the cream question this winter--that we
+could make at least six cents a pound on our butter if we had a
+cooperative creamery and all sent our cream to it."
+
+"Well," said Ezra Bronson, "let's start one."
+
+"I'll go in," said Olaf Hansen.
+
+"Me, too," said Con Bonner.
+
+There was a general chorus of assent. Jim had convinced his audience.
+
+"He's got the jury," said Wilbur Smythe to Colonel Woodruff.
+
+"Yes," said the colonel, "and right here is where he runs into danger. Can
+he handle the crowd when it's with him?"
+
+"Well," said Jim, "I think we ought to organize one, but I've another
+proposition first. Let's get together and pool our cream. By that, I mean
+that we'll all sell to the same creamery, and get the best we can out of
+the centralizers by the cooperative method. We can save two cents a pound
+in that way, and we'll learn to cooperate. When we have found just how
+well we can hang together, we'll be able to take up the cooperative
+creamery, with less danger of falling apart and failing."
+
+"Who'll handle the pool?" inquired Mr. Hansen.
+
+"We'll handle it in the school," answered Jim.
+
+"School's about done," objected Mr. Bronson.
+
+"Won't the cream pool pretty near pay the expenses of running the school
+all summer?" asked Bonner.
+
+"We ought to run the school plant all the time," said Jim. "It's the only
+way to get full value out of the investment. And we've corn-club work,
+pig-club work, poultry work and canning-club work which make it very
+desirable to keep in session with only a week's vacation. If you'll add
+the cream pool, it will make the school the hardest working crowd in the
+district and doing actual farm work, too. I like Mr. Bonner's
+suggestion."
+
+"Well," said Haakon Peterson, who had joined the group, "Ay tank we better
+have a meeting of the board and discuss it."
+
+"Well, darn it," said Columbus Brown, "I want in on this cream pool--and I
+live outside the district!"
+
+"We'll let you in, Clumb," said the colonel.
+
+"Sure!" said Pete. "We hain't no more sense than to let any one in, Clumb.
+Come in, the water's fine. We ain't proud!"
+
+"Well," said Clumb, "if this feller is goin' to do school work of this
+kind, I want in the district, too."
+
+"We'll come to that one of these days," said Jim. "The district is too
+small."
+
+Wilbur Smythe's car stopped at the distant gate and honked for him--a
+signal which broke up the party. Haakon Peterson passed the word to the
+colonel and Mr. Bronson for a board meeting the next evening. The picnic
+broke up in a dispersion of staid married couples to their homes, and
+young folks in top buggies to dances and displays of fireworks in the
+surrounding villages. Jim walked across the fields to his home--neither
+old nor young, having neither sweetheart with whom to dance nor farm to
+demand labor in its inexorable chores. He turned after crawling through a
+wire fence and looked longingly at Jennie as she was suavely assisted into
+the car by the frock-coated lawyer.
+
+"You saw what he did?" said the colonel interrogatively, as he and his
+daughter sat on the Woodruff veranda that evening. "Who taught him the
+supreme wisdom of holding back his troops when they grew too wild for
+attack?"
+
+"He may lose them," said Jennie.
+
+"Not so," said the colonel. "Individuals of the Brown Mouse type always
+succeed when they find their environment. And I believe Jim has found
+his."
+
+"Well," said Jennie, "I wish his environment would find him some clothes.
+It's a shame the way he has to go looking. He'd be nice-appearing if he
+was dressed anyway."
+
+"Would he?" queried the colonel. "I wonder, now! Well, Jennie, as his
+oldest friend having any knowledge of clothes, I think it's up to you to
+act as a committee of one on Jim's apparel."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+A TROUBLE SHOOTER
+
+
+A sudden July storm had drenched the fields and filled the swales with
+water. The cultivators left the corn-fields until the next day's sun and a
+night of seepage might once more fit the black soil for tillage. The
+little boys rolled up their trousers and tramped home from school with the
+rich mud squeezing up between their toes, thrilling with the electricity
+of clean-washed nature, and the little girls rather wished they could go
+barefooted, too, as, indeed, some of the more sensible did.
+
+A lithe young man with climbers on his legs walked up a telephone pole by
+the roadside to make some repairs to the wires, which had been whipped
+into a "cross" by the wind of the storm and the lashing of the limbs of
+the roadside trees. He had tied his horse to a post up the road, and was
+running out the trouble on the line, which was plentifully in evidence
+just then. Wind and lightning had played hob with the system, and the line
+repairer was cheerfully profane, in the manner of his sort, glad by reason
+of the fire of summer in his veins, and incensed at the forces of nature
+which had brought him out through the mud to the Woodruff District to do
+these piffling jobs that any of the subscribers ought to have known how to
+do themselves, and none of which took more than a few minutes of his time
+when he reached the seat of the difficulty.
+
+Jim Irwin, his school out for the day, came along the muddy road with two
+of his pupils, a bare-legged little boy and a tall girl with flaxen
+hair--Bettina Hansen and her small brother Hans, who refused to answer to
+any name other than Hans Nilsen. His father's name was Nils Hansen, and
+Hans, a born conservative, being the son of Nils, regarded himself as
+rightfully a Nilsen, and disliked the "Hans Hansen" on the school
+register. Thus do European customs sometimes survive among us.
+
+Hans strode through the pool of water which the shower had spread
+completely over the low turnpike a few rods from the pole on which the
+trouble shooter was at work, and the electrician ceased his labors and
+rested himself on a cross-arm while he waited to see what the
+flaxen-haired girl would do when she came to it.
+
+Jim and Bettina stopped at the water's edge. "Oh!" cried she, "I can't get
+through!" The trouble shooter felt the impulse to offer his aid, but
+thought it best on the whole, to leave the matter in the hands of the lank
+schoolmaster.
+
+"I'll carry you across," said Jim.
+
+"I'm too heavy," answered Bettina.
+
+"Nonsense!" said Jim.
+
+"She's awful heavy," piped Hans. "Better take off your shoes, anyhow!"
+
+Jim thought of the welfare of his only good trousers, and saw that Hans'
+suggestion was good; but a mental picture of himself with shoes in hand
+and bare legs restrained him. He took Bettina in his arms and went slowly
+across, walking rather farther with his blushing burden than was strictly
+necessary. Bettina was undoubtedly heavy; but she was also wonderfully
+pleasant to feel in arms which had never borne such a burden before; and
+her arms about his neck as he slopped through the pond were curiously
+thrilling. Her cheek brushed his as he set her upon her feet and felt,
+rather than thought, that if there had only been a good reason for it,
+Bettina would have willingly been carried much farther.
+
+"How strong you are!" she panted. "I'm awful heavy, ain't I?"
+
+"Not very," said Jim, with scholastic accuracy. "You're just right. I--I
+mean, you're simply well-nourished and wholesomely plump!"
+
+Bettina blushed still more rosily.
+
+"You've ruined your clothes," said she. "Now you'll have to come home with
+me and let me--see who's there!"
+
+Jim looked up at the trouble shooter, and went over to the foot of the
+pole. The man walked down, striking his spurs deep into the wood for
+safety.
+
+"Hello!" said he. "School out?"
+
+"For the day," said Jim. "Any important work on the telephone line now?"
+
+"Just trouble-shooting," was the answer. "I have to spend three hours
+hunting these troubles, to one in fixing 'em up."
+
+"Do they take much technical skill?" asked Jim.
+
+"Mostly shakin' out crosses, and puttin' in new carbons in the arresters,"
+replied the trouble man. "Any one ought to do any of 'em with five
+minutes' instruction. But these farmers--they'd rather have me drive ten
+miles to take a hair-pin from across the binding-posts than to do it
+themselves. That's the way they are!"
+
+"Will you be out here to-morrow?" queried the teacher.
+
+"Sure!"
+
+"I'd like to have you show my class in manual training something about the
+telephone," said Jim. "The reason we can't fix our own troubles, if they
+are as simple as you say, is because we don't know how simple they are."
+
+"I'll tell you what I'll do, Professor," said the trouble man. "I'll bring
+a phone with me and give 'em a lecture. I don't see how I can employ the
+company's time any better than in beating a little telephone sense into
+the heads of the community. Set the time, and I'll be there with bells."
+
+Bettina and her teacher walked on up the shady lane, feeling that they had
+a secret. They were very nearly on a parity as to the innocence of soul
+with which they held this secret, except that Bettina was much more
+single-minded toward it than Jim. To her he had been gradually attaining
+the status of a hero whose clasp of her in that iron-armed way was
+mysteriously blissful--and beyond that her mind had not gone. To Jim,
+Bettina represented in a very sweet way the disturbing influences which
+had recently risen to the threshold of consciousness in his being, and
+which were concretely but not very hopefully embodied in Jennie Woodruff.
+
+Thus interested in each other, they turned the corner which took them out
+of sight of the lineman, and stopped at the shady avenue leading up to
+Nils Hansen's farmstead. Little Hans Nilsen had disappeared by the simple
+method of cutting across lots. Bettina's girlish instinct called for
+something more than the casual good-by which would have sufficed
+yesterday. She lingered, standing close by Jim Irwin.
+
+"Won't you come in and let me clean the mud off you," she asked, "and give
+you some dry socks?"
+
+"Oh, no!" replied Jim. "It's almost as far to your house as it is home.
+Thank you, no."
+
+"There's a splash of mud on your face," said Bettina. "Let me--" And with
+her little handkerchief she began wiping off the mud. Jim stooped to
+permit the attention, but not much, for Bettina was of the mold of women
+of whom warriors are born--their faces approached, and Jim recognized a
+crisis in the fact that Bettina's mouth was presented for a kiss. Jim met
+the occasion like the gentleman he was. He did not leave her stung by
+rejection; neither did he obey the impulse to respond to the invitation
+according to his man's instinct; he took the rosy face between his palms
+and kissed her forehead--and left her in possession of her self-respect.
+After that Bettina Hansen felt, somehow, that the world could not possibly
+contain another man like Jim Irwin--a conviction which she still cherishes
+when that respectful caress has been swept into the cloudy distance of a
+woman's memories.
+
+Pete, Colonel Woodruff's hired man, was watering the horses at the trough
+when the trouble shooter reached the Woodruff telephone. County
+Superintendent Jennie had run for her father's home in her little
+motor-car in the face of the shower, and was now on the bench where once
+she had said "Humph!" to Jim Irwin--and thereby started in motion the
+factors in this story.
+
+"Anything wrong with your phone?" asked the trouble man of Pete.
+
+"Nah," replied Pete. "It was on the blink till you done something down the
+road."
+
+"Crossed up," said the lineman. "These trees along here are something
+fierce."
+
+"I'd cut 'em all if they was mine," said Pete, "but the colonel set 'em
+out, along about sixty-six, and I reckon they'll have to go on
+a-growin'."
+
+"Who's your school-teacher?" asked the telephone man.
+
+The county superintendent pricked up her ears--being quite properly
+interested in matters educational.
+
+"Feller name of Irwin," said Pete.
+
+"Not much of a looker," said the trouble shooter.
+
+"Nater of the sile," said Pete. "He an' I both worked in it together till
+it roughened up our complexions."
+
+"Farmer, eh?" said the lineman interrogatively. "Well, he's the first
+farmer I ever saw in my life that recognized there's education in the
+telephone business. I'm goin' to teach a class in telephony at the
+schoolhouse to-morrow."
+
+"Don't get swelled up," said Pete. "He has everybody tell them young ones
+about everything--blacksmith, cabinet-maker, pie-founder, cookie-cooper,
+dressmaker--even down to telephones. He'll have them scholars figurin' on
+telephones, and writin' compositions on 'em, and learnin' 'lectricity from
+'em an' things like that"
+
+"He must be some feller," said the lineman. "And who's his star pupil?"
+
+"Didn't know he had one," said Pete. "Why?"
+
+"Girl," said the trouble-shooter. "Goes to school from the farm where the
+Western Union brace is used at the road."
+
+"Nils Hansen's girl?" asked Pete.
+
+"Toppy little filly," said the lineman, "with silver mane--looks like
+she'd pull a good load and step some."
+
+"M'h'm," grunted Pete. "Bettina Hansen. Looks well enough. What about
+her?"
+
+Again the county superintendent, seated on the bench, pricked up her ears
+that she might learn, mayhap, something of educational interest.
+
+"I never wanted to be a school-teacher as bad," continued the shooter of
+trouble, "as I did when this farmer got to the low place in the road with
+the fair Bettina this afternoon when they was comin' home from school. The
+water was all over the road----"
+
+"Then I win a smoke from the roadmaster," said Pete. "I bet him it would
+overflow."
+
+"Well, if I was in the professor's place, I'd be glad to pay the bet,"
+said the worldly lineman. "And I'll say this for him, he rose equal to the
+emergency and caved the emergency's head in. He carried her across the
+pond, and her a-clingin' to his neck in a way to make your mouth water.
+She wasn't a bit mad about it, either."
+
+"I'd rather have a good cigar any ol' time," said Pete. "Nothin' but a
+yaller-haired kid--an' a Dane at that. I had a dame once up at Spirit
+Lake----"
+
+"Well, I must be drivin' on," said the lineman. "Got to get up a lecture
+for Professor Irwin to-morrow--and maybe I'll be able to meet that
+yaller-haired kid. So long!"
+
+The county superintendent recognized at once the educational importance of
+the matter, when one of her country teachers adopted the policy of calling
+in everybody available who could teach the pupils anything special, and
+converting the school into a local Chautauqua served by local lecturers.
+She made a run of ten miles to hear the trouble shooter's lecture. She saw
+the boys and some of the girls give an explanation of the telephone and
+the use of it. She heard the teacher give as a language exercise the next
+day an essay on the ethics and proprieties of eavesdropping on party
+lines; and she saw the beginning of an arrangement under which the boys of
+the Woodruff school took the contract to look after easily-remedied line
+troubles in the neighborhood on the basis which paid for a telephone for
+the school, and swelled slightly the fund which Jim was accumulating for
+general purposes. Incidentally, she saw how really educational was the
+work of the day, and that to which it led.
+
+She had no curiosity to which she would have confessed, about the
+relations between Jim Irwin and his "star pupil," that young
+Brunhilde--Bettina Hansen; but her official duty required her to observe
+the attitude of pupils to teachers--Bettina among them. Clearly, Jim was
+looked upon by the girls, large and small, as a possession of theirs. They
+competed for the task of keeping his desk in order, and of dusting and
+tidying up the schoolroom. There was something of exaltation of sentiment
+in this. Bettina's eyes followed him about the room in a devotional sort
+of way; but so, too, did those of the ten-year-olds. He was loved, that
+was clear, by Bettina, Calista Simms and all the rest--an excellent thing
+in a school.
+
+All the same, Jennie met Jim rather oftener after the curious conversation
+between those rather low fellows, Pete and the trouble shooter. As autumn
+approached, and the time came for Jim to begin to think of his trip to
+Ames, Colonel Woodruff's hint that she should assume charge of the problem
+of Jim's clothes for the occasion, came more and more often to her mind.
+Would Jim be able to buy suitable clothes? Would he understand that he
+ought not to appear in the costume which was tolerable in the Woodruff
+District only because the people there were accustomed to seeing him
+dressed like a tramp? Could she approach the subject with any degree of
+safety? Really these were delicate questions; and considering the fact
+that Jennie had quite dismissed her old sweetheart from the list of
+eligibles--had never actually admitted him to it, in fact--they assumed
+great importance to her mind. Once, only a little more than a year ago,
+she had scoffed at Jim's mention of the fact that he might think of
+marrying; and now she could not think of saying to him kindly, "Jim, you
+really must have some better clothes to wear when you go to Ames!" It
+would have been far easier last summer.
+
+Somehow, Jim had been acquiring dignity and unapproachability. She must
+sidle up to the subject. She did. She took him into her runabout one day
+as he was striding toward town in that plowed-ground manner of his, and
+gave him a spin over to the fair grounds and two or three times around the
+half-mile track.
+
+"I'm going to Ames to hear your speech," said she.
+
+"I'm glad of that," said Jim. "More of the farmers are going from this
+neighborhood than ever before. I'll feel at home, if they all sit together
+where I can talk at them."
+
+"Who's going?" asked Jennie.
+
+"The Bronsons, Con Bonner and Nils Hansen and Bettina," replied Jim.
+"That's all from our district--and Columbus Brown and probably others from
+near-by localities."
+
+"I shall have to have some clothes," said Jennie.
+
+Jim failed to respond to this, as clearly out of his field. They were
+passing the county fair buildings, and he began expatiating on the kind of
+county fair he would have--a great county exposition with the schools as
+its central thought--a clearing house for the rural activities of all the
+country schools.
+
+"And pa's going to have a suit before we go, too," said Jennie. "Here are
+some samples I got of Atkins, the tailor. Which would be the most becoming
+do you think?"
+
+Jim looked the samples over carefully, but had little to say as to their
+adaptation to Colonel Woodruff's sartorial needs. Jennie laid great stress
+on the excellent quality of one or two samples, and carefully specified
+the prices of them. Jim exhibited no more than a languid and polite
+interest, and gave not the slightest symptom of ever having considered
+even remotely the contingency of having a tailor-made suit. Jennie sidled
+closer to the subject.
+
+"I should think it would be awfully hard for you to get fitted in the
+stores," said she, "you are so very tall."
+
+"It would be," said Jim, "if I had ever considered the matter of looks
+very much. I guess I'm not constructed on any plan the clothing
+manufacturers have regarded as even remotely possible. How about this
+county fair idea? Couldn't we do this next fall? You organize the
+teachers----"
+
+Jennie advanced the spark, cut out the muffler and drowned the rest of
+Jim's remarks in wind and dust.
+
+"I give it up, dad," said she to her father that evening.
+
+"What?" queried the colonel.
+
+"Jim Irwin's clothes," she replied. "I think he'll go to Ames in a
+disgraceful plight, but I can't get any closer to the subject than I have
+done."
+
+"Oh, then you haven't heard the news," said the colonel. "Jim's going to
+have his first made-to-measure suit for Ames. It's all fixed."
+
+"Who's making it?" asked Jennie.
+
+"Gustaf Paulsen, the Dane that's just opened a shop in town." "A Dane?"
+queried Jennie. "Isn't he related to some of the neighbors?"
+
+"A brother to Mrs. Hansen," answered the colonel.
+
+"Bettina's uncle!"
+
+"Ratherly," said the colonel jocularly, "seeing as how Bettina's Mrs.
+Hansen's daughter."
+
+Clothes are rather important, but the difference between a suit made by
+Atkins the tailor, and one built by Gustaf Paulsen, the new Danish
+craftsman, could not be supposed to be crucially important, even when
+designed for a very dear friend. And Jim was scarcely that--of course not!
+Why, then, did the county superintendent hastily run to her room, and cry?
+Why did she say to herself that the Hansens were very good people, and
+well-to-do, and it would be a fine thing for Jim and his mother,--and then
+cry some more? Colonel failed to notice Jennie's unceremonious retirement
+from circulation that evening, and had he known all about what took place,
+he would have been as mystified as you or I.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+JIM GOES TO AMES
+
+
+The boat tipped over, and Jim Irwin was left struggling in the water. It
+was in the rapids just above the cataract--and poor Jim could not swim a
+stroke. Helpless, terrified, gasping, he floated to destruction, and
+Jennie Woodruff was not able to lift a hand to help him. To see any human
+being swept to such an end is dreadful, but for a county superintendent to
+witness the drowning of one of her best--though sometimes it must be
+confessed most insubordinate--teachers, under such circumstances, is
+unspeakable; and when that teacher is a young man who was once that county
+superintendent's sweetheart, and falls in, clothed in a new made-to-order
+suit in which he looks almost handsome despite his manifest discomfort in
+his new cravat and starched collar, the experience is something almost
+impossible to endure. That is why Jennie gripped her seat until she must
+have scratched the varnish. That is why she felt she must go to him--and
+do something. She could not endure it a moment longer, she felt; and there
+he floated away, his poor pale face dipping below the waves, his sad,
+long, homely countenance sadder than ever, his lovely--yes, she must
+confess it now, his eyes were lovely!--his lovely blue eyes, so honest and
+true, wide with terror; and she unable to give him so much as a cry of
+encouragement!
+
+And then Jim began to swim. He cast aside the roll of manuscript which he
+had held in his hand when the waters began to rise about him, and struck
+out for the shore with strong strokes--wild and agitated at first, but
+gradually becoming controlled and coordinated, and Jennie drew a long
+breath as he finally came to shore, breasting the waves like Triton, and
+master of the element in which he moved. There was a burst of applause,
+and people went forward to congratulate the greenhorn who had really made
+good.
+
+Jennie felt like throwing her arms about his neck and weeping out her joy
+at his escape, and his restoration to her. Her eyes told him something of
+this; for there was a look in them which reminded him of fifteen years
+ago. Bettina Hansen was proud of him, and Con Bonner shook his hand and
+said that he agreed with him. Neither Bettina nor Con had noticed the
+capsizing of the boat or saw the form of Jim as it went drifting toward
+the cataract. But Jim knew how near he had been to disaster, and knew that
+Jennie knew. For she had seen him turn pale when he came on the platform
+to make his address at the farmers' meeting at Ames, had seen him begin
+the speech he had committed to memory, had observed how unable he was to
+remember it, had noted his confusion as he tried to find his manuscript,
+and then his place of beginning in it--and when his confusion had
+seemingly quite overcome him, had seen him begin talking to his audience
+just as he had talked to the political meeting that time when he had so
+deeply offended her, and had observed how he won first their respect, then
+their attention, then apparently their convictions.
+
+To Jennie's agitated mind Jim had barely escaped being drowned in the
+ocean of his own unreadiness and confusion under trying conditions. And
+she was right. Jim had never felt more the upstart uneducated farm-hand
+than when he was introduced to that audience by Professor Withers, nor
+more completely disgraced than when he concluded his remarks. Even the
+applause was to him a kindly effort on the part of the audience to comfort
+him in his failure. His only solace was the look in Jennie's eyes.
+
+"Young man," said an old farmer who wore thick glasses and looked like a
+Dutch burgomaster, "I want to have a little talk with you."
+
+"This is Mr. Hofmyer of Pottawatomie County," said the dean of the
+college.
+
+"I'm glad to meet you," said Jim. "I can talk to you now."
+
+"No," said Jennie. "I know Mr. Hofmyer will excuse you until after dinner.
+We have a little party for Mr. Irwin, and we shall be late if we don't
+hurry."
+
+"Where can I see you after supper?" asked Mr. Hofmyer.
+
+Easy it was to satisfy Mr. Hofmyer; and Jim was carried off to a dinner
+given by County Superintendent Jennie to Jim, the dean, Professor Withers,
+and one or two others--and a wonderfully select and distinguished company
+it seemed to Jim. Jennie seized a moment's opportunity to say, "You did
+beautifully, Jim; everybody says so."
+
+"I failed!" said. Jim. "You know I failed. I couldn't remember my speech.
+I can't stay here feasting. I want to get out in the snow."
+
+"You made the best address of the meeting; and you did it because you
+forgot your speech," insisted Jennie.
+
+"Does anybody else think so?"
+
+"Why, Jim! You must learn to believe in what you have done. Even Con
+Bonner says it was the best. He says he didn't think you had it in ye!"
+
+This advice from her to "believe in what you have done,"--wasn't there
+something new in Jennie's attitude here? Wasn't his belief in what he was
+doing precisely the thing which had made him such a nuisance to the county
+superintendent? However, Jim couldn't stop to answer the question which
+popped up in his mind.
+
+"What does Professor Withers say?" he asked.
+
+"He's delighted--silly!"
+
+"Silly!" How wonderful it was to be called "silly"--in that tone.
+
+"I shouldn't have forgotten the speech if it hadn't been for this darned
+boiled shirt and collar, and for wearing a cravat," urged Jim in
+extenuation.
+
+"You ought to 've worn them around the house for a week before coming,"
+said Jennie. "Why didn't you ask my advice?"
+
+"I will, next time, Jennie," said Jim. "I didn't suppose I needed a
+bitting-rig--but I guess I did!"
+
+Jennie ran away then to ask Nils Hansen and Bettina to join their dinner
+party. She had a sudden access of friendliness for the Hansens. Nils
+refused because he was going out to see the college herds fed; but at
+Jennie's urgent request, reinforced by pats and hugs, Bettina consented.
+Jennie was very happy, and proved herself a beaming hostess. The dean
+devoted himself to Bettina--and Jim found out afterward that this
+inquiring gentleman was getting at the mental processes of a specimen
+pupil in one of the new kind of rural schools, in which he was only half
+inclined to believe. He thanked Jim for his speech, and said it was "most
+suggestive and thought-provoking," and as the party broke up slipped into
+Jim's hand a check for the honorarium. It was not until then that Jim felt
+quite sure that he was actually to be paid for his speech; and he felt a
+good deal like returning the check to the conscience fund of the State of
+Iowa, if it by any chance possessed such a fund. But the breach made in
+his financial entrenchments by the expenses of the trip and the
+respectable and well-fitting suit of clothes overcame his feeling of
+getting something for nothing. If he hadn't given the state anything, he
+had at least expended something--a good deal in fact--on the state's
+account.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+JIM'S WORLD WIDENS
+
+
+Mr. Hofmyer was waiting to give Jim the final convincing proof that he had
+produced an effect with his speech.
+
+"Do you teach the kind of school you lay out in your talk?" he asked.
+
+"I try to," said Jim, "and I believe I do."
+
+"Well," said Mr. Hofmyer, "that's the kind of education I b'lieve in. I
+kep' school back in Pennsylvany fifty years ago, and I made the scholars
+measure things, and weigh things, and apply their studies as fur as I
+could."
+
+"All good teachers have always done that," said Jim. "Froebel, Pestalozzi,
+Colonel Parker--they all had the idea which is at the bottom of my work;
+'learn to do by doing,' and connecting up the school with life."
+
+"M'h'm," grunted Mr. Hofmyer, "I hain't been able to see how Latin
+connects up with a high-school kid's life--unless he can find a Latin
+settlement som'eres and git a job clerkin' in a store."
+
+"But it used to relate to life," said Jim, "the life of the people who
+made Greek and Latin a part of everybody else's education as well as their
+own. Latin and Greek were the only languages in which anything worth much
+was written, you know. But now"--Jim spread out his arms as if to take in
+the whole world--"science, the marvelous literature of our tongue in the
+last three centuries! And to make a child learn Latin with all that, a
+thousand times richer than all the literature of Latin, lying unused
+before him!"
+
+"Know any Latin?" asked Mr. Hofmyer.
+
+Jim blushed, as one caught in condemning what he knows nothing about.
+
+"I--I have studied the grammar, and read _Caesar_," he faltered, "but that
+isn't much. I had no teacher, and I had to work pretty hard, and it didn't
+go very well."
+
+"I've had all the Latin they gave in the colleges of my time," said Mr.
+Hofmyer, "if I do talk dialect; and I'll agree with you so far as to say
+that it would have been a crime for me to neglect the chemistry,
+bacteriology, physics, engineering and other sciences that pertain to
+farmin'--if there'd been any such sciences when I was gettin' my
+schoolin'."
+
+"And yet," said Jim, "some people want us to guide ourselves by the
+courses of study made before these sciences existed."
+
+"I don't, by hokey!" said Mr. Hofmyer. "I'll be dag-goned if you ain't
+right. I wouldn't 'a' said so before I heard that speech--but I say so
+now."
+
+Jim's face lighted up at this, the first convincing evidence that he had
+scored.
+
+"I b'lieve, too," went on Mr. Hofmyer, "that your idee would please our
+folks. I've been the stand-patter in our parts--mostly on English and--say
+German. What d'ye say to comin' down and teachin' our school? We've got a
+two-room affair, and I was made a committee of one to find a teacher."
+
+"I--I don't see how--" Jim stammered, all taken aback by this new breeze
+of recognition.
+
+"We can't pay much," said Mr. Hofmyer. "You have charge of the
+dis-_cip_-line in the whole school, and teach in Number Two room.
+Seventy-five dollars a month. Does it appeal to ye?"
+
+Appeal to him! Why, eighteen months ago it would have been worth crawling
+across the state after, and now to have it offered to him--it was
+stupendous. And yet, how about the Simmses, Colonel Woodruff, the Hansens
+and Newton Bronson, now just getting a firm start on the upward path to
+usefulness and real happiness? How could he leave the little, crude, puny
+structure on which he had been working--on which he had been merely
+practising--for a year, and remove to the new field? Jim was in exactly
+the same situation in which every able young minister of the gospel finds
+himself sooner or later. The Lord was calling to a broader field--but how
+could he be sure it was the Lord?
+
+"I'm afraid I can't," said Jim Irwin, "but----"
+
+"If you're only 'fraid you can't," said Mr. Hofmyer, "think it over. I've
+got your post-office address on this program, and we'll write you a formal
+offer. We may spring them figures a little. Think it over."
+
+"You mustn't think," said Jim, "that we've _done_ all the things I
+mentioned in my talk, or that I haven't made any mistakes or failures."
+
+"Your county superintendent didn't mention any failures," said Mr.
+Hofmyer.
+
+"Did you talk with her about my work?" inquired Jim, suddenly very
+curious.
+
+"M'h'm."
+
+"Then I don't see why you want me," Jim went on.
+
+"Why?" asked Mr. Hofmyer.
+
+"I had not supposed," said Jim, "that she had a very high opinion of my
+work."
+
+"I didn't ask her about that," said Mr. Hofmyer, "though I guess she
+thinks well of it. I asked her what you are tryin' to do, and what sort of
+a fellow you are. I was favorably impressed; but she didn't mention any
+failures."
+
+"We haven't succeeded in adopting a successful system of selling our
+cream," said Jim. "I believe we can do it, but we haven't."
+
+"Wal," said Mr. Hofmyer, "I d'know as I'd call that a failure. The fact
+that you're tryin' of it shows you've got the right idees. We'll write ye,
+and mebbe pay your way down to look us over. We're a pretty good crowd,
+the neighbors think."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+THINK OF IT
+
+
+Ames was an inspiration. Jim Irwin received from the great agricultural
+college more real education in this one trip than many students get from a
+four years' course in its halls; for he had spent ten years in getting
+ready for the experience. The great farm of hundreds of acres, all under
+the management of experts, the beautiful campus, the commodious classrooms
+and laboratories, and especially the barns, the greenhouses, gardens,
+herds and flocks filled him with a sort of apostolic joy.
+
+"Every school," said he to Professor Withers, "ought to be doing a good
+deal of the work you have to do here."
+
+"I'll admit," said the professor, "that much of our work in agriculture is
+pretty elementary."
+
+"It's intermediate school work," said Jim. "It's a wrong to force boys and
+girls to leave their homes and live in a college to get so much of what
+they should have before they're ten years old."
+
+"There's something in what you say," said the professor, "but some
+experiment station men seem to think that agriculture in the common
+schools will take from the young men and women the felt need, and
+therefore the desire to come to the college."
+
+"If you can't give them anything better than high-school work," said Jim,
+"that will be so; but if the science and art of agriculture is what I
+think it is, it would make them hungry for the advanced work that really
+can't be done at home. To make the children wait until they're twenty is
+to deny them more than half what the college ought to give them--and make
+them pay for what they don't get."
+
+"I think you're right," said the professor.
+
+"Give us the kind of schools I ask for," cried Jim, "and I'll fill a
+college like this in every congressional district in Iowa, or I'll force
+you to tear this down and build larger."
+
+The professor laughed at his enthusiasm.
+
+More nearly happy, and rather shorter of money than he had recently been,
+Jim journeyed home among the companions from his own neighborhood, in a
+frenzy of plans for the future. Mr. Hofmyer had dropped from his mind,
+until Con Bonner, his old enemy, drew him aside in the vestibule of the
+train and spoke to him in the mysterious manner peculiar to politicians.
+
+"What kind of a proposition did that man Hofmeister make you?" he
+inquired. "He asked me about you, and I told him you're a crackerjack."
+
+"I'm much obliged," replied Jim.
+
+"No use in back-cappin' a fellow that's tryin' to make somethin' of
+himself," said Bonner. "That ain't good politics, nor good sense. Anything
+to him?"
+
+"He offered me a salary of seventy-five dollars a month to take charge of
+his school," said Jim.
+
+"Well," said Con, "we'll be sorry to lose yeh, but you can't turn down
+anything like that."
+
+"I don't know," said Jim. "I haven't decided."
+
+Bonner scrutinized his face sharply, as if to find out what sort of game
+he was playing.
+
+"Well," said he, at last, "I hope you can stay with us, o' course. I'm
+licked, and I never squeal. If the rist of the district can stand your
+kind of thricks, I can. And say, Jim"--here he grew still more
+mysterious--"if you do stay, some of us would like to have you be
+enough of a Dimmycrat to go into the next con'vintion f'r county
+superintendent."
+
+"Why," replied Jim, "I never thought of such a thing!"
+
+"Well, think of it," said Con. "The county's close, and wid a pop'lar
+young educator--an' a farmer, too, it might be done. Think of it."
+
+It must be confessed that Jim was almost dazed at the number of
+"propositions" of which he was now required to "think"--and that Bonner's
+did not at first impress him as having anything back of it but blarney. He
+was to find out later, however, that the wily Con had made up his mind
+that the ambition of Jim to serve the rural schools in a larger sphere
+might be used for the purpose of bringing to earth what he regarded as the
+soaring political ambitions of the Woodruff family.
+
+To defeat the colonel in the defeat of his daughter when running for her
+traditionally-granted second term; to get Jim Irwin out of the Woodruff
+District by kicking him up-stairs into a county office; to split the
+forces which had defeated Mr. Bonner in his own school district; and to do
+these things with the very instrument used by the colonel on that sad but
+glorious day of the last school election--these, to Mr. Bonner, would be
+diabolically fine things to do--things worthy of those Tammany politicians
+who from afar off had won his admiration.
+
+Jim had scarcely taken his seat in the car, facing Jennie Woodruff and
+Bettina Hansen in the Pullman, when Columbus Brown, pathmaster of the road
+district and only across the way from residence in the school district,
+came down the aisle and called Jim to the smoking-room.
+
+"Did an old fellow named Hoffman from Pottawatomie County ask you to leave
+us and take his school?" he asked.
+
+"Mr. Hofmyer," said Jim, "--yes, he did."
+
+"Well," said Columbus, "I don't want to ask you to stand in your own
+light, but I hope you won't let him toll you off there among strangers.
+We're proud of you, Jim, and we don't want to lose you."
+
+Proud of him! Sweet music to the underling's ears! Jim blushed and
+stammered.
+
+"The fact is," said Columbus, "I know that Woodruff District job hain't
+big enough for you any more; but we can make it bigger. If you'll stay, I
+believe we can pull off a deal to consolidate some of them districts, and
+make you boss of the whole shooting match."
+
+"I appreciate this, Clumb," said Jim, "but I don't believe you can do
+it."
+
+"Well, think of it," said Columbus. "And don't do anything till you talk
+with me and a few of the rest of the boys."
+
+"Think of it" again!
+
+A fine home-coming it was for Jim, with the colonel waiting at the station
+with a double sleigh, and the chance to ride into the snowy country in the
+same seat with Jennie--a chance which was blighted by the colonel's
+placing of Jennie, Bettina and Nils Hansen in the broad rear seat, and Jim
+in front with himself. A fine ride, just the same, over fine roads, and
+past fine farmsteads snuggled into their rectangular wrappages of trees
+set out in the old pioneer days. The colonel would not allow him to get
+out and walk when he could really have reached home more quickly by doing
+so; no, he set the Hansens down at their door, took Jennie home, and then
+drove the lightened sleigh merrily to the humble cabin of the rather
+excited young schoolmaster.
+
+"Did you make any deal with those people down in the western part of the
+state?" asked the colonel. "Jennie wrote me that you've got an offer."
+
+"No," said Jim, and he told the colonel about the proposal of Mr.
+Hofmyer.
+
+"Well," said the colonel, "in my capacity of wild-eyed reformer, I've made
+up my mind that the first four miles in the trip is to make the rural
+teacher's job a bigger job. It's got to be a man's size, woman's size job,
+or we can't get real men and real women to stay in the work."
+
+"I think that's a statesmanlike formulation of it," said Jim.
+
+"Well," said the colonel, "don't turn down the Pottawatomie County job
+until we have a chance to see what we can do. I'll get some kind of a
+meeting together, and what I want you to do is to use this offer as a club
+over this helpless school district. What we need is to be held up. Do the
+Jesse James act, Jim!"
+
+"I can't, Colonel!"
+
+"Yes, you can, too. Will you try it?"
+
+"I want to treat everybody fairly," said Jim, "including Mr. Hofmyer. I
+don't know what to do, hardly."
+
+"Well, I'll get the meeting together," said the colonel, "and in the
+meantime, think of what I've said."
+
+Another thing to think of! Jim rushed into the house and surprised his
+mother, who had expected him to arrive after a slow walk from town through
+the snow. Jim caught her in his arms, from which she was released a moment
+later, quite flustered and blushing.
+
+"Why, James," said she, "you seem excited. What's happened?"
+
+"Nothing, mother," he replied, "except that I believe there's just a
+possibility of my being a success in the world!"
+
+"My boy, my boy!" said she, laying her hand on his arm, "if you were to
+die to-night, you'd die the greatest success any boy ever was--if your
+mother is any judge."
+
+Jim kissed her, and went up to his attic to change his clothes. Inside the
+waistcoat was a worn envelope, which he carefully opened, and took from it
+a letter much creased from many foldings. It was the old letter from
+Jennie, written when the comical mistake had been made of making him the
+teacher of the Woodruff school. It still contained her rather fussy
+cautions about being "too original," and the sage statement that "the
+wheel runs easiest in the beaten track." It was written before the
+vexation and trouble he had caused her; but he did not read the advice,
+nor think of the coolness which had come between them--he read only the
+sentence in which Jennie had told of her father's interest in Jim's
+success, ending with the underscored words, "_I'm for you, too._"
+
+"I wonder," said Jim, as he went out to do the evening's tasks, "I wonder
+if she _is_ for me!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+A SCHOOL DISTRICT HELD UP
+
+
+Young McGeehee Simms was loitering along the snowy way to the schoolhouse
+bearing a brightly scoured tin pail two-thirds full of water. He had been
+allowed to act as Water Superintendent of the Woodruff School as a reward
+of merit--said merit being an essay on which he received credit in both
+language and geography on "Harvesting Wheat in the Tennessee Mountains."
+This had been of vast interest to the school in view of the fact that the
+Simmses were the only pupils in the school who had ever seen in use that
+supposedly-obsolete harvesting implement, the cradle. Buddy's essay had
+been passed over to the class in United States history as the evidence of
+an eye-witness concerning farming conditions in our grandfathers' times.
+
+The surnameless Pete, Colonel Woodruff's hired man, halted Buddy at the
+door.
+
+"Mr. Simms, I believe?" he said.
+
+"I reckon you must be lookin' for my brother, Raymond, suh," said Buddy.
+
+"I am a-lookin'," said Pete impressively, "for Mr. McGeehee Simms."
+
+"That's me," said Buddy; "but I hain't been doin' nothin' wrong, suh!"
+
+"I have a message here," said Pete, "for Professor James E. Irwin. He's
+what-ho within, there, ain't he?"
+
+"He's inside, I reckon," said Buddy.
+
+"Then will you be so kind and condescendin' as to stoop so low as to jump
+so high as to give him this letter?" asked Pete.
+
+Buddy took the letter and was considering of his reply to this remarkable
+speech, when Pete, gravely saluting, passed on, rather congratulating
+himself on having staged a very good burlesque of the dignified manners of
+those queer mountaineers, the Simmses.
+
+  "Please come to the meeting to-night," ran the colonel's note to Jim;
+  "and when you come, come prepared to hold the district up. If we
+  can't meet the Pottawatomie County standard of wages, we ought to
+  lose you. Everybody in the district will be there. Come late, so you
+  won't hear yourself talked about--I should recommend nine-thirty and
+  war-paint."
+
+It was a crisis, no doubt of that; and the responsibility of the situation
+rather sickened Jim of the task of teaching. How could he impose
+conditions on the whole school district? How could the colonel expect such
+a thing of him? And how could any one look for anything but scorn for the
+upstart field-hand from these men who had for so many years made him the
+butt of their good-natured but none the less contemptuous ridicule? Who
+was he, anyway, to lay down rules for these substantial and successful
+men--he who had been for all the years of his life at their command,
+subservient to their demands for labor--their underling? Only one thing
+kept him from dodging the whole issue and remaining at home--the colonel's
+matter-of-fact assumption that Jim had become master of the situation. How
+could he flee, when this old soldier was fighting so valiantly for him in
+the trenches? So Jim went to the meeting.
+
+The season was nearing spring, and it was a mild thawy night. The windows
+of the schoolhouse were filled with heads, evidencing the presence of a
+crowd of almost unprecedented size, and the sashes had been thrown up for
+ventilation and coolness. As Jim climbed the back fence of the
+school-yard, he heard a burst of applause, from which he judged that some
+speaker had just finished his remarks. There was silence when he came
+alongside the window at the right of the chairman's desk, a silence broken
+by the voice of Old Man Simms, saying "Mistah Chairman!"
+
+"The chair," said the voice of Ezra Bronson, "recognizes Mr. Simms."
+
+Jim halted in indecision. He was not expected while the debate was in
+progress, and therefore regarded himself at this time as somewhat _de
+trop_. There is no rule of manners or morals, however, forbidding
+eavesdropping during the proceedings of a public meeting--and anyhow, he
+felt rather shiveringly curious about these deliberations. Therefore he
+listened to the first and last public speech of Old Man Simms.
+
+"Ah ain't no speaker," said Old Man Simms, "but Ah cain't set here and be
+quiet an' go home an' face my ole woman an' my boys an' gyuhls withouten
+sayin' a word fo' the best friend any family evah had, Mr. Jim Irwin."
+(Applause.) "Ah owe it to him that Ah've got the right to speak in this
+meetin' at all. Gentlemen, we-all owe everything to Mr. Jim Irwin! Maybe
+Ah'll be thought forrard to speak hyah, bein' as Ah ain't no learnin' an'
+some may think Ah don't pay no taxes; but it will be overlooked, I reckon,
+seein' as how we've took the Blanchard farm, a hundred an' sixty acres,
+for five yeahs, an' move in a week from Sat'day. We pay taxes in our rent,
+Ah reckon, an' howsomever that may be, Ah've come to feel that you-all
+won't think hard of me if Ah speak what we-uns feel so strong about Mr.
+Jim Irwin?"
+
+Old Man Simms finished this exordium with the rising inflection, which
+denoted a direct question as to his status in the meeting. "Go on!"
+"You've got as good a right as any one!" "You're all right, old man!" Such
+exclamations as these came to Jim's ears with scarcely less gratefulness
+than to those of Old Man Simms--who stammered and went on.
+
+"Ah thank you-all kindly. Gentlemen an' ladies, when Mr. Jim Irwin found
+us, we was scandalous pore, an' we was wuss'n pore--we was low-down."
+(Cries of "No--No!") "Yes, we was, becuz what's respectable in the
+mountings is one thing, whar all the folks is pore, but when a man gets in
+a new place, he's got to lift himse'f up to what folks does where he's
+come to, or he'll fall to the bottom of what there is in that there
+community--an' maybe he'll make a place fer himse'f lower'n anybody else.
+In the mountings we was good people, becuz we done the best we could an'
+the best any one done; but hyah, we was low-down people becuz we hated the
+people that had mo' learnin', mo' land, mo' money, an' mo' friends than
+what we had. My little gyuhls wasn't respectable in their clothes. My
+childern was igernant, an' triflin', but I was the most triflin' of all.
+Ah'll leave it to Colonel Woodruff if I was good fer a plug of terbacker,
+or a bakin' of flour at any sto' in the county. Was I, Colonel? Wasn't I
+perfectly wuthless an' triflin'?"
+
+There was a ripple of laughter, in the midst of which the colonel's voice
+was heard saying, "I guess you were, Mr. Simms, I guess you were,
+but----"
+
+"Thankee," said Old Man Simms, as if the colonel had given a really
+valuable testimonial to his character. "I sho' was! Thankee kindly!
+An'now, what am I good fer? Cain't I get anything I want at the stores?
+Cain't I git a little money at the bank, if I got to have it?"
+
+"You're just as good as any man in the district," said the colonel. "You
+don't ask for more than you can pay, and you can get all you ask."
+
+"Thankee," said Mr. Simms gravely. "What Ah tell you-all is right, ladies
+and gentlemen. An' what has made the change in we-uns, ladies and
+gentlemen? It's the wuk of Mr. Jim Irwin with my boy Raymond, the best boy
+any man evah hed, and my gyuhl, Calista, an' Buddy, an' Jinnie, an' with
+me an' my ole woman. He showed us how to get a toe-holt into this new
+kentry. He teached the children what orto be did by a rentin' farmer in
+Ioway. He done lifted us up, an' made people of us. He done showed us that
+you-all is good people, an' not what we thought you was. Outen what he
+learned in school, my boy Raymond an' me made as good crops as we could
+last summer, an' done right much wuk outside. We got the name of bein'
+good farmers an' good wukkers, an' when Mr. Blanchard moved to town, he
+said he was glad to give us his fine farm for five years. Now, see what
+Mr. Jim Irwin has done for a pack o' outlaws and outcasts. Instid o'
+hidin' out from the Hobdays that was lay-wayin' us in the mountings, we'll
+be livin' in a house with two chimleys an' a swimmin' tub made outen
+crock'ryware. We'll be in debt a whole lot--an' we owe it to Mr. Jim Irwin
+that we got the credit to git in debt with, an' the courage to go on and
+git out agin!" (Applause.) "Ah could affo'd to pay Mr. Jim Irwin's salary
+mysr'f, if Ah could. An' there's enough men hyah to-night that say they've
+been money-he'ped by his teachin' the school to make up mo' than his
+wages. Let's not let Mr. Jim Irwin go, neighbors! Let's not let him go!"
+
+Jim's heart sank. Surely the case was desperate which could call forth
+such a forlorn-hope charge as that of Old Man Simms--a performance on Mr.
+Simms' part which warmed Jim's soul. "There isn't a man in that meeting,"
+said he to himself, as he walked to the schoolhouse door, "possessed of
+the greatness of spirit of Old Man Simms. If he's a fair sample of the
+people of the mountains, they are of the stuff of which great nations are
+made--if they only are given a chance!"
+
+Colonel Woodruff was on his feet as Jim made his way through the crowd
+about the door.
+
+"Mr. Irwin is here, ladies and gentlemen," said he, "and I move that we
+hear from him as to what we can do to meet the offer of our friends in
+Pottawatomie County, who have heard of his good work, and want him to work
+for them; but before I yield the floor, I want to say that this meeting
+has been worth while just to have been the occasion of our all becoming
+better acquainted with our friend and neighbor, Mr. Simms. Whatever may
+have been the lack of understanding, on our part, of his qualities, they
+were all cleared up by that speech of his--the best I have ever heard in
+this neighborhood."
+
+More applause, in the midst of which Old Man Simms slunk away down in his
+seat to escape observation. Then the chairman said that if there was no
+objection they would hear from their well-known citizen, whose growing
+fame was more remarkable for the fact that it had been gained as a country
+schoolmaster--he need not add that he referred to Mr. James E. Irwin. More
+and louder applause.
+
+"Friends and neighbors," said Jim, "you ask me to say to you what I want
+you to do. I want you to do what you want to do--nothing more nor less.
+Last year I was glad to be tolerated here; and the only change in the
+situation lies in the fact that I have another place offered me--unless
+there has been a change in your feelings toward me and my work. I hope
+there has been; for I know my work is good now, whereas I only believed it
+then."
+
+"Sure it is!" shouted Con Bonner from a front seat, thus signalizing that
+astute wire-puller's definite choice of a place in the bandwagon. "Tell us
+what you want, Jim!"
+
+"What do I want?" asked Jim. "More than anything else, I want such
+meetings as this--often--and a place to hold them. If I stay in the
+Woodruff District, I want this meeting to effect a permanent organization
+to work with me. I can't teach this district anything. Nobody can teach
+any one anything. All any teacher can do is to direct people's activities
+in teaching themselves. You are gathered here to decide what you'll do
+about the small matter of keeping me at work as your hired man. You can't
+make any legal decision here, but whatever this meeting decides will be
+law, just the same, because a majority of the people of the district are
+here. Such a meeting as this can decide almost anything. If I'm to be your
+hired man, I want a boss in the shape of a civic organization which will
+take in every man and woman in the district. Here's the place and now's
+the time to make that organization--an organization the object of which
+shall be to put the whole district at school, and to boss me in my work
+for the whole district."
+
+"Dat sounds good," cried Haakon Peterson. "Ve'll do dat!"
+
+"Then I want you to work out a building scheme for the school," Jim went
+on. "We want a place where the girls can learn to cook, keep house, take
+care of babies, sew and learn to be wives and mothers. We want a place in
+which Mrs. Hansen can come to show them how to cure meat--she's the best
+hand at that in the county--where Mrs. Bonner can teach them to make bread
+and pastry--she ought to be given a doctor's degree for that--where Mrs.
+Woodruff can teach them the cooking of turkeys, Mrs. Peterson the way to
+give the family a balanced ration, and Mrs. Simms induct them into the
+mysteries of weaving rag rugs and making jellies and preserves--you can
+all learn these things from her. There's somebody right in this
+neighborhood able to teach anything the young people want to learn.
+
+"And I want a physician here once in a while to examine the children as to
+their health, and a dentist to look after their teeth and teach them how
+to care for them. Also an oculist to examine their eyes. And when Bettina
+Hansen comes home from the hospital a trained nurse, I want her to have a
+job as visiting nurse right here in the Woodruff District.
+
+"I want a counting-room for the keeping of the farm accounts and the
+record of our observation in farming. I want cooperation in letting us
+have these accounts.
+
+"I want some manual training equipment for wood-working and metal working,
+and a blacksmith and wagon shop, in which the boys may learn to shoe
+horses, repair tools, design buildings, and practise the best agricultural
+engineering. So I want a blacksmith and handyman with tools regularly on
+the job--and he'll more than pay his way. I want some land for actual
+farming. I want to do work in poultry according to the most modern
+breeding discoveries, and I want your cooperation in that, and a poultry
+plant somewhere in the district.
+
+"I want a laboratory in which we can work on seeds, pests, soils, feeds
+and the like. For the education of your children must come out of these
+things.
+
+"I want these things because they are necessary if we are to get the
+culture out of life we should get--and nobody gets culture out of any sort
+of school--they get it out of life, or they don't get it at all.
+
+"So I want you to build as freely for your school as for your cattle and
+horses and hogs.
+
+"The school I ask for will make each of you more money than the taxes it
+will require would make if invested in your farm equipment. If you are not
+convinced of this, don't bother with me any longer. But the money the
+school will make for you--this new kind of rural school--will be as
+nothing to the social life which will grow up--a social life which will
+make necessary an assembly-room, which will be the social center, because
+it will be the educational center, and the business center of the
+countryside.
+
+"I want all these things, and more. But I don't expect them all at once. I
+know that this district is too small to do all of them, and therefore, I
+am going to tell you of another want which will tempt you to think that I
+am crazy. I want a bigger district--one that will give us the financial
+strength to carry out the program I have sketched. This may be a
+presumptuous thing for me to propose; but the whole situation here
+to-night is presumptuous on my part, I fear. If you think so, let me go;
+but if you don't, please keep this meeting together in a permanent
+organization of grown-up members of the Woodruff school, and by pulling
+together, you can do these things--all of them--and many more--and you'll
+make the Woodruff District a good place to live in and die in--and I shall
+be proud to live and die in it at your service, as the neighborhood's
+hired man!"
+
+As Jim sat down there was a hush in the crowded room, as if the people
+were dazed at his assurance. There was no applause, until Jennie Woodruff,
+now seen by Jim for the first time over next the blackboard, clapped her
+gloved hands together and started it; then it swept out through the
+windows in a storm. The dust rose from stamping feet until the kerosene
+lamps were dimmed by it. And as the noise subsided, Jim saw standing out
+in front the stooped form of B. B. Hamm, one of the most prosperous men in
+the district.
+
+"Mr. Chairman--Ezra Bronson," he roared, "this feller's crazy, an' from
+the sound of things, you're all as crazy as he is. If this fool scheme of
+his goes through, my farm's for sale! I'll quit before I'm sold out for
+taxes!"
+
+"Just a minute, B. B.!" interposed Colonel Woodruff. "This ain't as
+dangerous as you think. You don't want us to do all this in fifteen
+minutes, do you, Jim?"
+
+"Oh, as to that," replied Jim, "I just wanted you to have in your minds
+what I have in my mind--and unless we can agree to work toward these
+things there's no use in my staying. But time--that's another matter.
+Believe with me, and I'll work with you."
+
+"Get out of here!" said the colonel to Jim in an undertone, "and leave the
+rest to your friends."
+
+Jim walked out of the room and took the way toward his home. A horse tied
+to the hitching-pole had his blanket under foot, and Jim replaced it on
+his back, patting him kindly and talking horse language to him. Then he
+went up and down the line of teams, readjusting blankets, tying loosened
+knots, and assuring himself that his neighbors' horses were securely tied
+and comfortable. He knew horses better than he knew people, he thought. If
+he could manage people as he could manage horses--but that would be wrong.
+The horse did his work as a servant, submissive to the wills of others;
+the community could never develop anything worth while in its common life,
+until it worked the system out for itself. Horse management was despotism;
+man-government must be like the government of a society of wild horses,
+the result of the common work of the members of the herd.
+
+Two figures emerged from the schoolhouse door, and as he turned toward his
+home after his pastoral calls on the horses, they overtook him. They were
+the figures of Newton Bronson and the county superintendent of schools.
+
+"We were coming after you," said Jennie.
+
+"Dad wants you back there again," said Newton.
+
+"What for?" inquired Jim.
+
+"You silly boy," said Jennie, "you talked about the good of the schools
+all of the time, and never said a word about your own salary! What do you
+want? They want to know?"
+
+"Oh!" exclaimed Jim in the manner of one who suddenly remembers that he
+has forgotten his umbrella or his pocket-knife. "I forgot all about it. I
+haven't thought about that at all, Jennie!"
+
+"Jim," said she, "you need a guardian!"
+
+"I know it, Jennie," said he, "and I know who I want. I want----"
+
+"Please come back," said Jennie, "and tell papa how much you're going to
+hold the district up for."
+
+"You run back," said Jim to Newton, "and tell your father that whatever is
+right in the way of salary will be satisfactory to me. I leave that to the
+people."
+
+Newton darted off, leaving the schoolmaster standing in the road with the
+county superintendent.
+
+"I can't go back there!" said Jim.
+
+"I'm proud of you, Jim," said Jennie. "This community has found its
+master. They can't do all you ask now, nor very soon; but finally they'll
+do just as you want them to do. And, Jim, I want to say that I've been the
+biggest little fool in the county!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+AN EMBASSY FROM DIXIE
+
+
+Superintendent Jennie sat at her desk in no very satisfactory frame of
+mind. In the first place court was to convene on the following Monday, and
+both grand jury and petit juries would be in session, so that her one-room
+office was not to be hers for a few days. Her desk was even now ready to
+be moved into the hall by the janitor. To Wilbur Smythe, who did her the
+honor of calling occasionally as the exigencies of his law practise took
+him past the office of the pretty country girl on whose shapely shoulders
+rested the burden of the welfare of the schools, she remarked that if they
+didn't soon build the new court-house so as to give her such
+accommodations as her office really needed, "they might take their old
+office--so there!"
+
+"Fair woman," said Wilbur, as he creased his Prince Albert in a parting
+bow, "should adorn the home!"
+
+"Bosh!" sneered Jennie, rather pleased, all the same, "suppose she isn't
+fair, and hasn't any home!"
+
+This question of adorning a home was no nearer settlement with Jennie than
+it had ever been, though increasingly a matter of speculation.
+
+There were two or three men--rather good catches, too--who, if they were
+encouraged--but what was there to any of them? Take Wilbur Smythe, now; he
+would by sheer force of persistent assurance and fair abilities eventually
+get a good practise for a country lawyer--three or four thousand a
+year--serve in the legislature or the state senate, and finally become a
+bank director with a goodly standing as a safe business man; but what was
+there to him? This is what Jennie asked her paper-weight as she placed it
+on a pile of unfinished examination papers. And the paper-weight echoed,
+"Not a thing out of the ordinary!" And then, said Jennie, "Well, you
+little simpleton, who and what are _you_ so out of the ordinary that you
+should sneer at Wilbur Smythe and Beckman Fifield and such men?" And echo
+answered, "What?"--and then the mail-carrier came in.
+
+Down near the bottom of the pile she found this letter, signed by a
+southern state superintendent of schools, but dated at Kirksville,
+Missouri:
+
+  "I am a member of a party of southern educators--state
+  superintendents in the main," the letter ran, "_en tour_ of the
+  country to see what we can find of an instructive nature in rural
+  school work. I assure you that we are being richly repaid for the
+  time and expense. There are things going on in the schools here in
+  northeastern Missouri, for instance, which merit much study. We have
+  met Professor Withers, of Ames, who suggests that we visit your
+  schools, and especially the rural school taught by a young man named
+  Irwin, and I wonder if you will be free on next Monday morning, if we
+  come to your office, to direct us to the place? If you could
+  accompany us on the trip, and perhaps show us some of your other
+  excellent schools, we should be honored and pleased. The South is
+  recreating her rural schools, and we are coming to believe that we
+  shall be better workmen if we create a new kind rather than an
+  improvement of the old kind."
+
+There was more of this courteous and deferential letter, all giving Jennie
+a sense of being saluted by a fine gentleman in satin and ruffles, and
+with a plume on his hat. And then came the shock--a party of state
+officials were coming into the county to study Jim Irwin's school! They
+would never come to study Wilbur Smythe's law practise--never in the
+world--or her work as county superintendent--never!--and Jim was getting
+seventy-five dollars a month, and had a mother to support. Moreover, he
+was getting more than he had asked when the colonel had told him to "hold
+the district up!" But there could be no doubt that there was something
+_to_ Jim--the man was out of the ordinary. And wasn't that just what she
+had been looking for in her mind?
+
+Jennie wired to her southerner for the number of his party, and secured
+automobiles for the trip. She sent a note to Jim Irwin telling of the
+prospective visitation. She would show all concerned that she could do
+some things, anyhow, and she would send these people on with a good
+impression of her county.
+
+She was glad of the automobiles the next Monday morning, when at
+nine-thirty the train discharged upon her a dozen very alert, very
+up-to-date, very inquisitive southerners, male and female, most of whom
+seemed to have left their "r's" in the gulf region. It was eleven when the
+party parked their machines before the schoolhouse door.
+
+"There are visitors here before us," said Jennie.
+
+"Seems rather like an educational shrine," said Doctor Brathwayt, of
+Mississippi. "How does he accommodate so many visitors in that small
+edifice?"
+
+"I am not aware," said Jennie, "that he has been in the habit of receiving
+so very many from outside the district. Well, shall we go in?"
+
+Once inside, Jennie felt a queer return of her old aversion to Jim's
+methods--the aversion which had caused her to criticize him so sharply on
+the occasion of her first visit. The reason for the return of the feeling
+lay in the fact that the work going on was of the same sort, but of a more
+intense character. It was so utterly unlike a school as Jennie understood
+the word, that she glanced back at the group of educators with a little
+blush. The school was in a sort of uproar. Not that uproar of boredom and
+mischief of which most of us have familiar memories, but a sort of eager
+uproar, in which every child was intensely interested in the same thing;
+and did little rustling things because of this interest; something like
+the hum at a football game or a dog-fight.
+
+On one side of the desk stood Jim Irwin, and facing him was a smooth
+stranger of the old-fashioned lightning-rod-agent type--the shallower and
+laxer sort of salesman of the kind whose sole business is to get
+signatures on the dotted line, and let some one else do the rest. In
+short, he was a "closer."
+
+Standing back of him in evident distress was Mr. Cornelius Bonner, and
+grouped about were Columbus Brown, B. B. Hamm, Ezra Bronson, A. B. Talcott
+and two or three others from outside the Woodruff District. With envelopes
+in their hands and the light of battle in their eyes stood Newton Bronson,
+Raymond Simms, Bettina Hansen, Mary Smith and Angie Talcott, the boys
+filled with delight, the girls rather frightened at being engaged in
+something like a debate with the salesman.
+
+As the latest-coming visitors moved forward, they heard the schoolmaster
+finishing his passage at arms with the salesman.
+
+"You should not feel exasperated at us, Mr. Carmichael," said he in tones
+of the most complete respect, "for what our figures show. You are
+unfortunate in the business proposition you offer this community. That is
+all. Even these children have the facts to prove that the creamery outfit
+you offer is not worth within two thousand dollars of what you ask for it,
+and that it is very doubtful if it is the sort of outfit we should need."
+
+"I'll bet you a thousand dollars--" began Carmichael hotly, when Jim waved
+him down.
+
+"Not with me," said Jim. "Your friend, Mr. Bonner, there, knows what
+chance there is for you to bet even a thousand cents with me. Besides, we
+know our facts, in this school. We've been working on them for a long
+time."
+
+"Bet your life we have!" interpolated Newton Bronson.
+
+"Before we finish," said Jim, "I want to thank you gentlemen for bringing
+in Mr. Carmichael. We have been reading up on the literature of the
+creamery promoter, and it is a very fine thing to have one in the flesh
+with whom to--to--demonstrate, if Mr. Carmichael will allow me to say
+so."
+
+Carmichael looked at Bonner, made an expressive motion with his head
+toward the door, and turned as if to leave.
+
+"Well," said he, "I can do plenty of business with _men_. If you _men_
+want to make the deal I offer you, and I can show you from the statistics
+I've got at the hotel that it's a special deal just to get started in this
+part of the state, and carries a thousand dollars of cut in price to you.
+Let's leave these children and this he school-ma'am and get something
+done."
+
+"I can't allow you to depart," said Jim more gently than before, "without
+thanking you for the very excellent talk you gave us on the advantage of
+the cooperative creamery over the centralizer. We in this school believe
+in the cooperative creamery, and if we can get rid of you, Mr. Carmichael,
+without buying your equipment, I think your work here may be productive of
+good."
+
+"He's off three or four points on the average overrun in the Wisconsin
+co-ops," said Newton.
+
+"And we thought," said Mary Smith, "that we'd need more cows than he said
+to keep up a creamery of our own."
+
+"Oh," replied Jim, "but we mustn't expect Mr. Carmichael to know the
+subject as well as we do, children. He makes a practise of talking mostly
+to people who know nothing about it--and he talks very well. All in favor
+of thanking Mr. Carmichael please say 'Aye.'"
+
+There was a rousing chorus of "Aye!" in which Mr. Carmichael, followed
+closely by Mr. Bonner, made his exit. B. B. Hamm went forward and shook
+Jim's hand slowly and contemplatively, as if trying to remember just what
+he should say.
+
+"James E. Irwin," said he, "you've saved us from being skinned by the
+smoothest grafter that I ever seen."
+
+"Not I," said Jim; "the kind of school I stand for, Mr. Hamm, will save
+you more than that--and give you the broadest culture any school ever
+gave. A culture based on life. We've been studying life, in this
+school--the life we all live here in this district."
+
+"He had a smooth partner, too," said Columbus Brown. Jim looked at
+Bonner's little boy in one of the front seats and shook his head at
+Columbus warningly.
+
+"If I hadn't herded 'em in here to ask you a few questions about
+cooperative creameries," said Mr. Talcott, "we'd have been stuck--they
+pretty near had our names. And then the whole neighborhood would have been
+sucked in for about fifty dollars a name."
+
+"I'd have gone in for two hundred," said B. B. Hamm.
+
+"May I call a little meeting here for a minute, Jim?" asked Ezra Bronson.
+"Why, where's he gone?"
+
+"They's some other visitors come in," said a little girl, pulling her
+apron in embarrassment at the teacher's absence.
+
+Jim had, after what seemed to Jennie an interminable while, seen the
+county superintendent and her distinguished party, and was now engaged in
+welcoming them and endeavoring to find them seats,--quite an impossible
+thing at that particular moment, by the way.
+
+"Don't mind us, Mr. Irwin," said Doctor Brathwayt. "This is the best thing
+we've seen on our journeyings. Please go on with the proceedin's. That
+gentleman seems to have in mind the perfectin' of some so't of
+organization. I'm intensely interested."
+
+"I'd like to call a little meetin' here," said Ezra to the teacher.
+"Seein' we've busted up your program so far, may we take a little while
+longer?"
+
+"Certainly," said Jim. "The school will please come to order."
+
+The pupils took their seats, straightened their books and papers, and were
+at attention. Doctor Brathwayt nodded approvingly as if at the answer to
+some question in his mind.
+
+"Children," said Mr. Irwin, "you may or may not be interested in what
+these gentlemen are about to do--but I hope you are. Those who wish may be
+members of Mr. Bronson's meeting. Those who do not prefer to do so may
+take up their regular work."
+
+"Gentlemen," said Mr. Bronson to the remains of Mr. Carmichael's creamery
+party, "we've been cutting bait in this neighborhood about long enough.
+I'm in favor of fishing, now. It would have been the biggest disgrace ever
+put on this district to have been swindled by that sharper, when the man
+that could have set us right on the subject was right here working for us,
+and we never let him have a chance. And yet that's what we pretty near
+did. How many here favor building a cooperative creamery if we can get the
+farmers in with cows enough to make it profitable, and the equipment at
+the right price?"
+
+Each man held up a hand.
+
+"Here's one of our best farmers not voting," said Mr. Bronson, indicating
+Raymond Simms. "How about you, Raymond?"
+
+"Ah reckon paw'll come in," said Raymond blushingly.
+
+"He will if you say so," said Mr. Bronson.
+
+Raymond's hand went up amid a ripple of applause from the pupils, who
+seemed glad to have a voter in their ranks.
+
+"Unanimous!" said Mr. Bronson. "It is a vote! Now I'd like to hear a
+motion to perfect a permanent organization to build a creamery."
+
+"I think we ought to have a secretary first," said Mr. Talcott, "and I
+nominate Mr. James E. Irwin for the post."
+
+"Quite correct," said Mr. Bronson, "thankee, A. B. I was about to forgit
+the secretary. Any other nominations? No 'bjections, Mr. Irwin will be
+declared unanimously elected. Mr. Irwin's elected. Mr. Irwin, will you
+please assume the duties?"
+
+Jim sat down at the desk and began making notes.
+
+"I think we ought to call this the Anti-Carmichael Protective
+Association," said Columbus Brown, but Mr. Bronson interrupted him, rather
+frowningly.
+
+"All in good time, Clumb," said he, "but this is serious work." So
+admonished, the meeting appointed committees, fixed upon a time for a
+future meeting, threw a collection of half-dollars on the desk to start a
+petty cash fund, made the usual joke about putting the secretary under
+bond, adjourned and dispersed.
+
+"It's a go this time!" said Newton to Jim.
+
+"I think so," said Jim, "with those men interested. Well, our study of
+creameries has given a great deal of language work, a good deal of
+arithmetic, some geography, and finally saved the people from a swindle.
+Rather good work, Raymond!"
+
+"My mother has a delayed luncheon ready for the party," said Jennie to
+Jim. "Please come with us--please!"
+
+But Jim demurred. Getting off at this time of day was really out of the
+question if he was to be ready to show the real work of the school in the
+afternoon session.
+
+"This has been rather extraordinary," said Jim, "but I am very glad you
+were here. It shows the utility of the right sort of work in
+letter-writing, language, geography and arithmetic--in learning things
+about farming."
+
+"It certainly does," said Doctor Brathwayt. "I wouldn't have missed it
+under any consideration; but I'm certainly sorry for that creamery shark
+and his accomplice--to be routed by the Fifth Reader grade in farming!"
+
+The luncheon was rather a wonderful affair--and its success was
+unqualified after everybody discovered that the majority of those in
+attendance felt much more at home when calling it dinner. Colonel Woodruff
+had fought against the regiment of the father of Professor Gray, of
+Georgia, in at least one engagement, and tentative plans were laid for the
+meeting of the two old veterans "some winter in the future."
+
+"What d'ye think of our school?" asked the colonel.
+
+"Well," said Professor Gray, "it's not fair to judge, Colonel, on what
+must have been rather an extraordinary moment in the school's history. I
+take it that you don't put on a representation of 'The Knave Unmasked'
+every morning."
+
+"It was more like a caucus than I've ever seen it, daddy," said Jennie,
+"and less like a school."
+
+"Don't you think," said Doctor Brathwayt, "that it was less like a school
+because it was more like life? It _was_ life. If I am not mistaken,
+history for this community was making in that schoolroom as we entered."
+
+"You're perfectly right, Doctor," said the colonel. "Columbus Brown and
+about a dozen others living outside the district are calling Wilbur Smythe
+in counsel to perfect plans for an election to consolidate a few of these
+little independent districts, for the express purpose of giving Jim Irwin
+a plant that he can do something with. Jim's got too big for the district,
+and so we're going to enlarge the district, and the schoolhouse, and the
+teaching force, and the means of educational grace generally. That's as
+sure as can be--after what took place this morning."
+
+"He's rather a wonderful person, to be found in such a position," said
+Professor Gray, "or would be in any region I have visited."
+
+"He's a native product," said the colonel, "but a wonder all the same.
+He's a Brown Mouse, you know."
+
+"A--a--?" Doctor Brathwayt was plainly astonished. And so the colonel was
+allowed to tell again the story of the Darbishire brown mice, and why he
+called Jim Irwin one. Doctor Brathwayt said it was an interesting
+Mendelian explanation of the appearance of such a character as Jim. "And
+if you are right, Colonel, you'll lose him one of these days. You can't
+expect to retain a Caesar, a Napoleon, or a Lincoln in a rural school, can
+you?"
+
+"I don't know about that," said the colonel. "The great opportunity for
+such a Brown Mouse may be in this very school, right now. He'd have as big
+an army right here as Socrates ever had. The Brown Mouse is the only judge
+of his own proper place."
+
+"I think," said Mrs. Brathwayt, as they motored back to the school, "that
+your country schoolmaster is rather terrible. The way he crushed that Mr.
+Carmichael was positively merciless. Did he know how cruel he was?"
+
+"I think not," said Jennie. "It was the truth that crushed Mr.
+Carmichael."
+
+"But that vote of thanks," said Mrs. Brathwayt. "Surely that was the
+bitterest irony."
+
+"I wonder if it was," said Jennie. "No, I am sure it wasn't. He wanted to
+leave the children thinking as well as possible of their victim, and
+especially of Mr. Bonner; and there was really something in Mr.
+Carmichael's talk which could be praised. I have known Jim Irwin since we
+were both children, and I feel sure that if he had had any idea that his
+treatment of this man had been unnecessarily cruel, it would have given
+him a lot of pain."
+
+"My dear," said Mrs. Brathwayt, "I think you are to be congratulated for
+having known for a long time a genius."
+
+"Thank you," said Jennie. And Mrs. Brathwayt gave her a glance which
+brought to her cheek another blush; but of a different sort from the one
+provoked by the uproar in the Woodruff school.
+
+There could be no doubt now that Jim was thoroughly wonderful--nor that
+she, the county superintendent, was quite as thoroughly a little fool. She
+to be put in authority over him! It was too absurd for laughter.
+Fortunately, she hadn't hindered him much--but who was to be thanked for
+that? Was it owing to any wisdom of hers? Well, she had decided in his
+favor, in those first proceedings to revoke his certificate. Perhaps that
+was as good a thing to remember as was to be found in the record.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+AND SO THEY LIVED----
+
+
+And so it turned out quite as if it were in the old ballad, that "all in
+the merry month of May," and also "all in the merry green wood," there
+were great doings about the bold little promontory where once stood the
+cabin on the old wood-lot where the Simms family had dwelt. The brook ran
+about the promontory, and laid at its feet on three sides a carpet of
+blue-grass, amid clumps of trees and wild bushes. Not far afield on either
+hand came the black corn-land, but up and down the bluffy sides of the
+brook for some distance on both sides of the King-dragged highway, ran the
+old wood-lot, now regaining much of the unkempt appearance which
+characterized it when Jim Irwin had drawn upon himself the gentle rebuke
+of Old Man Simms for not giving a whoop from the big road before coming
+into the yard.
+
+But Old Man Simms was gone, with all the Simmses, now thoroughly
+established on the Blanchard farm, and quite happy in their new success.
+The cabin was gone, and in its place stood a pretty little bungalow, about
+which blossomed the lilacs and peonies and roses and other old-fashioned
+flowers, planted there long ago by some pioneer woman, nourished back to
+thriftiness by old Mrs. Simms, and carefully preserved during the
+struggles with the builders of the bungalow by Mrs. Irwin. For this was
+Mrs. Irwin's new home. It was, in point of fact, the teacher's house or
+schoolmanse for the new consolidated Woodruff District, and the old Simms
+wood-lot was the glebe-land of the schoolmanse.
+
+Jim turned over and over in his mind these new applications of old,
+historic, significant words, dear to every reader of
+history--"glebe-land," "schoolmanse"--and it seemed to him that they
+signified the return of many old things lost in Merrie England, lost in
+New England, lost all over the English-speaking world, when the old
+publicly-paid clergyman ceased to be so far the servant of all the people
+that they refused to be taxed for his support. Was not the new kind of
+rural teacher to be a publicly-paid leader of thought, of culture, of
+progress, and was he not to have his manse, his glebe-land, and his
+"living"? And all because, like the old clergymen, he was doing a work in
+which everybody was interested and for which they were willing to be
+taxed. Perhaps it was not so high a status as the old; but who was to say
+that? Certainly not Jim Irwin, the possessor of the new kind of "living,"
+with its "glebe-land" and its "schoolmanse." He would have rated the new
+quite as high as the old.
+
+From the brow of the promontory, a light concrete bridge took the pretty
+little gorge in the leap of a single arch, and landed the eye at the
+bottom of the front yard of the schoolhouse. Thus the new institution of
+life was in full view of the schoolmanse veranda, and yet shut off from it
+by the dry moat of the brook and its tiny meadow of blue-grass.
+
+Across the road was the creamery, with its businesslike unloading
+platform, and its addition in process of construction for the reception of
+the machinery for the cooperative laundry. Not far from the creamery, and
+also across the road, stood the blacksmith and wheelwright shop. Still
+farther down the stream were the barn, poultry house, pens, hutches and
+yards of the little farm--small, economically made, and unpretentious, as
+were all the buildings save the schoolhouse itself, which was builded for
+the future.
+
+And even the schoolhouse, when one thinks of the uses to which it was to
+be put--kitchen, nursery, kindergarten, banquet-hall, theater,
+moving-picture hall, classrooms, manual training rooms, laboratory and
+counting-room and what-not, was wonderfully small--Colonel Woodruff said
+far too small--though it was necessarily so large as to be rather
+astonishing to the unexpectant passer-by.
+
+The unexpectant passer-by this May day, however, would have been
+especially struck by the number of motor-cars, buggies and surreys parked
+in the yard back of the creamery, along the roadside, and by the driveway
+running to the schoolhouse. People in numbers had arrived by five o'clock
+in the afternoon, and were still coming. They strolled about the place,
+examining the buildings and grounds, and talking with the blacksmith and
+the butter-maker, gradually drawing into the schoolhouse like a swarm of
+bees into a hive selected by the queen. None of them, however, went across
+the concrete bridge to the schoolmanse, save Mrs. Simms, who crossed,
+consulted with Mrs. Irwin about the shrubbery and flowers, and went back
+to Buddie and Jinnie, who were good children but natchally couldn't be
+trusted with so many other young ones withouten some watchin'.
+
+"They're coming! They're coming!"
+
+This was the cry borne to the people in and about the schoolhouse by that
+Hans Hansen who would be called Hans Nilsen. Hans had been to the top of
+the little hill and had a look toward town. Like a crew manning the
+rigging, or a crowd having its picture taken, the assemblage crystallized
+into forms determined by the chances of getting a glimpse of the bungalow
+across the ravine--on posts, fences, trees and hillocks. Still nobody went
+across the bridge, and when McGeehee Simms and Johnny Bonner strayed to
+the bridge-head, Mrs. Simms called them back by a minatory, "Buddy, what
+did I _tell_ you? You come hyah!"
+
+A motor-car came over the hillock, ran down the road to the driveway to
+the schoolmanse and drew up at the door. Out of it stepped Mrs. Woodruff
+and the colonel, their daughter, the county superintendent of schools, and
+Mr. Jim Irwin. Jennie was dressed in a very well-tailored traveling
+costume, and Jim in a moderately well-tailored business suit. Mrs. Irwin
+kissed her son and Jennie, and led the way into the house. Jennie and Jim
+followed--and when they went in, the crowd over across the ravine burst
+forth into a tremendous cheer, followed by a three-times-three and a
+tiger. The unexpectant passer-by would have been rather surprised at this,
+but we who are acquainted with the parties must all begin to have our
+suspicions. The fact that when they reached the threshold Jim picked
+Jennie up in his arms and carried her in, will enable any good detective
+to put one and one together and make a pair--which comes pretty near
+telling the whole story.
+
+By this time it was nearly seven, and Calista Simms came across the
+charmed bridge as a despatch-bearer, saying that if Mr. Jim and Miss
+Jennie didn't mind, dinner would be suhved right soon. It was cooked about
+right, and the folks was gettin' right hungry--an' such a crowd! There
+were fifteen in the babies' room, and for a while they thought the
+youngest Hamm young one had swallowed a marble. She would tell 'em they
+would be right over; good-by.
+
+There was another cheer as the three elderly and the two young people
+emerged from the schoolmanse and took their way over the bridge to the
+school side of the velvet-bottomed moat; but it did not terminate in
+three-times-three and a tiger. It was, in fact shut off like the vibration
+of a bell dipped in water by the sudden rush of the shouters into the big
+assembly-room, now filled with tables for the banquet--and here the
+domestic economy classes, with their mothers, sisters, female cousins and
+aunts, met them, as waiters, hat-snatchers, hostesses, floor-managers and
+cooks, scoring the greatest triumph of history in the Woodruff District.
+For everything went off like clockwork, especially the victuals--and such
+victuals!
+
+There was quantity in meats, breads, vegetables--and there was also savor.
+There was plenty, and there was style. Ask Mrs. Haakon Peterson, who
+yearned for culture, and had been afraid her children wouldn't get it if
+Yim Irwin taught them nothing but farming. She will tell you that the
+dinner--which so many thought of all the time as supper--was yust as well
+served as it if had been in the Chamberlain Hotel in Des Moines, where she
+had stayed when she went with Haakon to the state convention.
+
+Why shouldn't it have been even better served? It was planned, cooked,
+served and eaten by people of intelligence and brains, in their own house,
+as a community affair, and in a community where, if any one should ask
+you, you are authorized to state that there's as much wealth to the acre
+as in any strictly farming spot between the two oceans, and where you are
+perfectly safe--financially--in dropping from a balloon in the dark of the
+moon, and paying a hundred and fifty dollars an acre for any farm you
+happen to land on. Why shouldn't things have been well done, when every
+one worked, not for money, but for the love of the doing, and the love of
+learning to do in the best way?
+
+Some of these things came out in the speeches following the repast--and
+some other things, too. It was probably not quite fair for B. B. Hamm to
+incorporate in his wishes for the welfare and prosperity and so forth of
+Jim and Jennie that stale one about the troubles of life, but he wanted to
+see Jennie blush--which as a matter of fact he did; but she failed to grow
+quite so fiery red as did Jim. But B. B. was a good fellow, and a Trojan
+in his work for the cause, and the schoolmaster and superintendent of
+schools forgave him. A remark may be a little broad, and still clean, and
+B. B. made a clean speech mainly devoted to the increased value of that
+farm he at one memorable time was going to sell before Jim's fool notions
+could be carried out.
+
+Colonel Woodruff made most of the above points which I have niched from
+him. He had begun as a reformer late in life, he said, but he would leave
+it to them if he hadn't worked at the trade steadily after enlistment. He
+had become a follower of Jim Irwin, because Jim's reform was like dragging
+the road in front of your own farm--it was reform right at home, and not
+at the county seat, or Des Moines, or Washington. He had followed Jim
+Irwin as he had followed Lincoln, and Grant, and Blaine, and
+McKinley--because Jim Irwin stood for more upward growth for the average
+American citizen than the colonel could see any prospect of getting from
+any other choice. And he was proud to live in a country like this, saved
+and promoted by the great men he had followed, and in a neighborhood
+served and promoted, if not quite saved, by Jim Irwin. And he was not so
+sure about its not being saved. Every man and nation had to be saved anew
+every so often, and the colonel believed that Jim Irwin's new kind of
+rural school is just as necessary to the salvation of this country as
+Lincoln's new kind of recognition of human rights was half a century ago.
+"I am about to close my speech," said the colonel, "and the small service
+I have been able to give to this nation. I went through the war,
+neighbors--and am proud of it; but I've done more good in the peaceful
+service of the last three years than I did in four of fighting and
+campaigning. That's the way I feel about what we've done in Consolidated
+District Number One." (Vociferous and long-continued applause.)
+
+"Oh, Colonel!" The voice of Angie Talcott rose from away back near the
+kitchen. "Can Jennie keep on bein' county superintendent, now she's
+married?"
+
+A great guffaw of laughter reduced poor Angie to tears; and Jennie had to
+go over and comfort her. It was all right for her to ask that, and they
+ought not to laugh at Angie, so there! Now, you're all right, and let's
+talk about the new schoolhouse, and so forth. Jennie brought the smiles
+back to Angle's face, just in time to hear Jim tell the people amid louder
+cheers that he had been asked to go into the rural-school extension work
+in two states, and had been offered a fine salary in either place, but
+that he wasn't even considering these offers. And about that time, the
+children began to get sleepy and cross and naughty, and the women set in
+motion the agencies which moved the crowd homeward.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+Before a bright wood fire--which they really didn't need, but how else was
+Jim's mother to show off the little fireplace?--sat Jim and Jennie. They
+had been together for a week now--this being their home-coming--and had
+only begun to get really happy.
+
+"Isn't it fine to have the fireplace?" said Jennie.
+
+"Yes, but we can't really afford to burn a fire in it--in Iowa," said Jim.
+"Fuel's too everlastingly scarce. If we use it much, the fagots and
+deadwood on our 'glebe-land' won't last long."
+
+"If you should take that Oklahoma position," said Jennie, "we could afford
+to have open wood fires all the time."
+
+"It's warmer in Oklahoma," said Jim, "and wood's more plentiful.
+Yes"--contemplatively--"we could, dear."
+
+"It would be nice, wouldn't it?" said Jennie.
+
+"All right," said Jim briskly, "get me my writing materials, and we'll
+accept. It's still open."
+
+Jennie sat looking into the fire oblivious of the suggestion. She was
+smiling. Jim moved uneasily, and rose.
+
+"Well," he said, "I believe I can better guess where mother would put
+those writing materials than you could, after all. I'll hunt them up."
+
+As he passed, Jennie took him by the hand and pulled him down on the arm
+of her chair.
+
+"Jim," she said, "don't be mean to me! You know you wouldn't do such a
+wicked, wicked thing at this time as to leave the people here."
+
+"All right," said Jim, "whatever you say is the law."
+
+When Jennie spoke again things had taken place which caused her voice to
+emanate from Jim's shirt-front.
+
+"Did you hear," said she, "what Angie Talcott asked?"
+
+"M'h'm," said Jim.
+
+"Well," said Jennie, "now that I'm married can I go on being county
+superintendent?"
+
+There was a long silence.
+
+"Would you like to?" asked Jim.
+
+"Kind of," said Jennie; "if I knew enough about things to do anything
+worth while; but I'm afraid that by rising to my full height I shall
+always just fail to be able to see over anything."
+
+"You've done more for the schools of the county," said Jim, "in the last
+year than any other county superintendent has ever done."
+
+"And we shall need the money so like--so like the dickens," said Jennie.
+
+"Oh, not so badly," laughed Jim, "except for the first year. I'll have
+this little farm paying as much as some quarter-sections when we get
+squared about. Why, we can make a living on this school farm, Jennie,--or
+I'm not fit to be the head of the school."
+
+There was another silence, during which Jennie took down her hair, and
+wound it around Jim's neck.
+
+"It will settle itself soon one of these days anyhow," said he at last.
+"There's enough to do for both of us right here."
+
+"But they won't pay me," she protested.
+
+"They don't pay the ministers' wives," said Jim, "and yet, the ministers
+with the right sort of wives are always the best paid. I guess you'll be
+in the bill, Jennie."
+
+Jim walked to the open window and looked out over the still landscape. The
+untidy grounds appealed to him--there would be lessons in their
+improvement for both the children and the older people. It was all good.
+Down in the little meadow grew the dreaming trees, their round crowns
+rising as from a sea not quite to the level of the bungalow, their thrifty
+leaves glistening in the moonlight. Across the pretty bridge lay the
+silent little campus with its twentieth-century temple facing its chief
+priest. It was all good, without and within. He went across the hall to
+bid his mother good night. She clung to him convulsively, and they had
+their own five minutes which arranged matters for these two silent natures
+on the new basis forever. Jennie was in white before the mantel when he
+returned, smiling at the inscription thereon.
+
+"Why didn't you put it in Latin?" she inquired. "It would have had so much
+more distinction."
+
+"I wanted it to have meaning instead," said Jim. "And besides, nobody who
+was at hand was quite sure how to turn the Latin phrase. Are you?"
+
+Jennie leaned forward with her elbows on her knees, and studied it.
+
+"I believe I could," said she, "without any pony. But after all, I like it
+better as it is. I like everything, Jim--everything!"
+
+"LET US CEASE THINKING SO MUCH OF AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION, AND DEVOTE
+OURSELVES TO EDUCATIONAL AGRICULTURE. SO WILL THE NATION BE MADE STRONG."
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Brown Mouse, by Herbert Quick
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