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diff --git a/26987-8.txt b/26987-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..4a86653 --- /dev/null +++ b/26987-8.txt @@ -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: 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 + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BROWN MOUSE *** + +***** This file should be named 26987-8.txt or 26987-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/2/6/9/8/26987/ + +Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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